CHAPTER XXVIII

MRS. MARSETT

Little acts of kindness were not beyond the range of Colney Durance, and

he ran down to Brighton, to give the exiled Nesta some taste of her

friendly London circle. The Duvidney ladies knew that the dreaded

gentleman had a regard for the girl. Their own, which was becoming warmer

than they liked to think, was impressed by his manner of conversing with

her. 'Child though she was,' he paid her the compliment of a sober as

well as a satirical review of the day's political matter and recent

publications; and the ladies were introduced, in a wonderment, to the

damsel Delphica. They listened placidly to a discourse upon her

performances, Japanese to their understandings.

At New York, behold, another adventurous representative and advocate of

the European tongues has joined the party: Signor Jeridomani: a

philologer, of course; a politician in addition; Macchiavelli redivivus,

it seems to fair Delphica. The speech he delivers at the Syndicate

Delmonico Dinner, is justly applauded by the New York Press as a

masterpiece of astuteness. He appears to be the only one of the party who

has an eye for the dark. She fancies she may know a more widely awake in

the abstract. But now, thanks to jubilant Journals and Homeric laughter

over the Continent, the secret is out, in so far as the concurrents are

all unmasked and exposed for the edification of the American public. Dr.

Bouthoin's eyebrows are up, Mr. Semhians disfigures his name by greatly

gaping. Shall they return to their Great Britain indignant? Patriotism,

with the sauce of a luxurious expedition at no cost to the private purse,

restrains them. Moreover, there is no sign of any one of the others

intending to quit the expedition; and Mr. Semhians has done a marvel or

two in the cricket-field: Old England looks up where she can. What is

painfully extraordinary to our couple, they find in the frigid attitude

of the Americans toward their 'common tongue'; together with the rumour

of a design to despatch an American rival emissary to Japan.

Nesta listened, inquired, commented, laughed; the ladies could not have a

doubt that she was interested and understood. She would have sketches of

scenes between Delphica and M. Falarique, with whom the young Germania

was cleverly ingenuous indeed--a seminary Celimene; and between Delphica

and M. Mytharete, with whom she was archaeological, ravishingly amoebaean

of Homer. Dr. Gannius holds a trump card in his artless daughter,

conjecturally, for the establishment of the language of the gutturals in

the far East. He has now a suspicion, that the inventive M. Falarique,

melted down to sobriety by misfortune, may some day startle their camp by

the cast of more than a crow into it, and he is bent on establishing

alliances; frightens the supple Signor Jeridomani to lingual fixity;

eulogizes Football, with Dr. Bouthoin; and retracts, or modifies, his

dictum upon the English, that, 'masculine brawn they have in their

bodies, but muscle they have not in their feminine minds'; to exalt them,

for a signally clean, if a dense, people: 'Amousia, not Alousia, is their

enemy:'--How, when we have the noblest crop of poets? 'You have never

heartily embraced those aliens among you until you learnt from us, that

you might brag of them.'--Have they not endowed us with the richest of

languages? 'The words of which are used by you, as old slippers, for

puns.' Mr. Semhians has been superciliously and ineffectively punning in

foreign presences: he and his chief are inwardly shocked by a new

perception; What if, now that we have the populace for paymaster,

subservience to the literary tastes of the populace should reduce the

nation to its lowest mental level, and render us not only unable to

compete with the foreigner, but unintelligible to him, although so

proudly paid at home! Is it not thus that nations are seen of the Highest

to be devouring themselves?

'For,' says Dr. Gannius, as if divining them, 'this excessive and

applauded productiveness, both of your juvenile and your senile, in your

modern literature, is it ever a crop? Is it even the restorative

perishable stuff of the markets? Is it not rather your street-pavement's

patter of raindrops, incessantly in motion, and as fruitful?' Mr.

Semhians appeals to Delphica. 'Genius you have,' says she, stiffening his

neck-band, 'genius in superabundance':--he throttles to the complexion of

the peony:--'perhaps criticism is wanting.' Dr. Gannius adds: 'Perhaps it

is the drill-sergeant everywhere wanting for an unrivalled splendid

rabble!'

Colney left the whole body of concurrents on the raised flooring of a

famous New York Hall, clearly entrapped, and incited to debate before an

enormous audience, as to the merits of their respective languages. 'I

hear,' says Dr. Bouthoin to Mr. Semhians (whose gape is daily extending),

'that the tickets cost ten dollars!'

There was not enough of Delphicafor Nests.

Colney asked: 'Have you seen any of our band?'

'No,' she said, with good cheer, and became thoughtful, conscious of a

funny reason for the wish to hear of the fictitious creature disliked by

Dudley. A funny and a naughty reason, was it? Not so very naughty: but it

was funny; for it was a spirit of opposition to Dudley, without an

inferior feeling at all, such as girls should have.

Colney brought his viola for a duet; they had a pleasant musical evening,

as in old days at Creckholt; and Nesta, going upstairs with the ladies to

bed, made them share her father's amused view of the lamb of the flock

this bitter gentleman became when he had the melodious instrument tucked

under his chin. He was a guest for the night. Dressing in the early hour,

Nests saw him from her window on the parade, and soon joined him, to hear

him at his bitterest, in the flush of the brine. 'These lengths of

blank-faced terraces fronting sea!' were the satirist's present black

beast. 'So these moneyed English shoulder to the front place; and that is

the appearance they offer to their commercial God!' He gazed along the

miles of 'English countenance,' drearily laughing. Changeful ocean seemed

to laugh at the spectacle. Some Orphic joke inspired his exclamation:

'Capital!'

'Come where the shops are,' said Nesta.

'And how many thousand parsons have you here?'

'Ten, I think,' she answered in his vein, and warmed him; leading him

contemplatively to scrutinize her admirers: the Rev. Septimus; Mr.

Sowerby.

'News of our friend of the whimpering flute?'

'Here? no. I have to understand you!'

Colney cast a weariful look backward on the 'regiments of Anglo-Chinese'

represented to him by the moneyed terraces, and said: 'The face of a

stopped watch!--the only meaning it has is past date.'

He had no liking for Dudley Sowerby. But it might have been an allusion

to the general view of the houses. But again, 'the meaning of it past

date,' stuck in her memory. A certain face close on handsome, had a fatal

susceptibility to caricature.

She spoke of her 'exile': wanted Skepsey to come down to her; moaned over

the loss of her Louise. The puzzle of the reason for the long separation

from her parents, was evident in her mind, and unmentioned.

They turned on to the pier.

Nesta reminded him of certain verses he had written to celebrate her

visit to the place when she was a child:

'"And then along the pier we sped,

And there we saw a Whale

He seemed to have a Normous Head,

And not a bit of Tail!"'

'Manifestly a foreigner to our shores, where the exactly inverse

condition rules,' Colney said.

'"And then we scampered on the beach,

To chase the foaming wave;

And when we ran beyond its reach

We all became more brave."'

Colney remarked: 'I was a poet--for once.'

A neat-legged Parisianly-booted lady, having the sea, winds very

enterprising with her dark wavy, locks and jacket and skirts, gave a cry

of pleasure and--a silvery 'You dear!' at sight of Nesta; then at sight

of one of us, moderated her tone to a propriety equalling the most

conventional. 'We ride to-day?'

'I shall be one,' said Nesta.

'It would not be the commonest pleasure to me, if you were absent.'

'Till eleven, then!'

'After my morning letter to Ned.'

She sprinkled silvery sound on that name or on the adieu, blushed,

blinked, frowned, sweetened her lip-lines, bit at the underone, and

passed in a discomposure.

'The lady?' Colney asked.

'She is--I meet her in the troop conducted by the riding-master: Mrs.

Marsett.'

'And who is Ned?'

'It is her husband, to whom she writes every morning. He is a captain in

the army, or was. He is in Norway, fishing.'

'Then the probability is, that the English officer continues his military

studies.'

'Do you not think her handsome, Mr. Durance?'

'Ned may boast of his possession, when he has trimmed it and toned it a

little!

'She is different, if you are alone with her.'

'It is not unusual,' said Colney.

At eleven o'clock he was in London, and Nesta rode beside Mrs. Marsett

amid the troop.

A South-easterly wind blew the waters to shifty goldleaf prints of

brilliance under the sun.

'I took a liberty this morning, I called you "Dear" this morning,' the

lady said. 'It's what I feel, only I have no right to blurt out

everything I feel, and I was ashamed. I am sure I must have appeared

ridiculous. I got quite nervous.'

'You would not be ridiculous to me.'

'I remember I spoke of Ned!

'You have spoken of him before.'

'Oh! I know: to you alone. I should like to pluck out my heart and pitch

it on the waves, to see whether it would sink or swim. That's a funny

idea, isn't it! I tell you everything that comes up. What shall I do when

I lose you! You always make me feel you've a lot of poetry ready-made in

you.'

'We will write. And you will have your husband then.'

'When I had finished my letter to Ned, I dropped my head on it and

behaved like a fool for several minutes. I can't bear the thought of

losing you!'

'But you don't lose me,' said Nesta; 'there is no ground for your

supposing that you will. And your wish not to lose me, binds me to you

more closely.'

'If you knew!' Mrs. Marsett caught at her slippery tongue, and she

carolled: 'If we all knew everything, we should be wiser, and what a

naked lot of people we should be!'

They were crossing the passage of a cavalcade of gentlemen, at the end of

the East Cliff. One among them, large and dominant, with a playful voice

of brass, cried out:

'And how do you do, Mrs. Judith Marsett--ha? Beautiful morning?'

Mrs. Marsett's figure tightened; she rode stonily erect, looked level

ahead. Her woman's red mouth was shut fast on a fighting underlip.

'He did not salute you,' Nesta remarked, to justify her for not having

responded.

The lady breathed a low thunder: 'Coward!'

'He cannot have intended to insult you,' said Nesta.

'That man knows I will not notice him. He is a beast. He will learn that

I carry a horsewhip.'

'Are you not taking a little incident too much to heart?'

The sigh of the heavily laden came from Mrs. Marsett.

'Am I pale? I dare say. I shall go on my knees tonight hating myself that

I was born "one of the frail sex." We are, or we should ride at the

coward and strike him to the ground. Pray, pray do not look distressed!

Now you know my Christian name. That dog of a man barks it out on the

roads. It doesn't matter.'

'He has offended you before?'

'You are near me. They can't hurt me, can't touch me, when I think that I

'm talking with you. How I envy those who call you by your Christian

name!'

'Nesta,' said smiling Nesta. The smile was forced, that she might show

kindness, for the lady was jarring on her.

Mrs. Marsett opened her lips: 'Oh, my God, I shall be crying!--let's

gallop. No, wait, I'll tell you. I wish I could! I will tell you of that

man. That man is Major Worrell. One of the majors who manage to get to

their grade. A retired warrior. He married a handsome woman, above him in

rank, with money; a good woman. She was a good woman, or she would have

had her vengeance, and there was never a word against her. She must have

loved that--Ned calls him, full-blooded ox. He spent her money and he

deceived her.--You innocent! Oh, you dear! I'd give the world to have

your eyes. I've heard tell of "crystal clear," but eyes like yours have

to tell me how deep and clear. Such a world for them to be in! I did

pray, and used your name last night on my knees, that you--I said

Nesta--might never have to go through other women's miseries. Ah me! I

have to tell you he deceived her. You don't quite understand.'

'I do understand,' said Nesta.

'God help you!--I am excited to-day. That man is poison to me. His wife

forgave him three times. On three occasions, that unhappy woman forgave

him. He is great at his oaths, and a big breaker of them. She walked out

one November afternoon and met him riding along with a notorious

creature. You know there are bad women. They passed her, laughing. And

look there, Nesta, see that groyne; that very one.' Mrs. Marsett pointed

her whip hard out. 'The poor lady went down from the height here; she

walked into that rough water look!--steadying herself along it, and she

plunged; she never came out alive. A week after her burial, Major

Worrell--I 've told you enough.'

'We 'll gallop now,' said Nesta.

Mrs. Marsett's talk, her presence hardly less, affected the girl with

those intimations of tumult shown upon smooth waters when the great

elements are conspiring. She felt that there was a cause why she had to

pity, did pity her. It might be, that Captain Marsett wedded one who was

of inferior station,' and his wife had to bear blows from cruel people.

The supposition seemed probable. The girl accepted it; for beyond it, as

the gathering of the gale masked by hills, lay a brewing silence. What?

She did not reflect. Her quick physical sensibility curled to some breath

of heated atmosphere brought about her by this new acquaintance: not

pleasant, if she had thought of pleasure: intensely suggestive of our

life at the consuming tragic core, round which the furnace pants. But she

was unreflecting, feeling only a beyond and hidden.

Besides, she was an exile. Spelling at dark things in the dark, getting

to have the sight which peruses darkness, she touched the door of a

mystery that denied her its key, but showed the lock; and her life was

beginning to know of hours that fretted her to recklessness. Her friend

Louise was absent: she had so few friends--owing to that unsolved reason:

she wanted one, of any kind, if only gentle: and this lady seemed to need

her: and she flattered; Nesta was in the mood for swallowing and

digesting and making sweet blood of flattery.

At one time, she liked Mrs. Marsett best absent: in musing on her,

wishing her well, having said the adieu. For it was wearisome to hear

praises of 'innocence'; and women can do so little to cure that

'wickedness of men,' among the lady's conversational themes; and 'love'

too: it may be a 'plague,' and it may be 'heaven': it is better left

unspoken of. But there were times when Mrs. Marsett's looks and tones

touched compassion to press her hand: an act that had a pledgeing

signification in the girl's bosom: and when, by the simple avoidance of

ejaculatory fervours, Mrs. Marsett's quieted good looks had a shadow of a

tender charm, more pathetic than her outcries were.

These had not always the sanction of polite usage: and her English was

guilty of sudden lapses to the Thameswater English of commerce and

drainage instead of the upper wells. But there are many uneducated ladies

in the land. Many, too, whose tastes in romantic literature betray now

and then by peeps a similarity to Nesta's maid Mary's. Mrs. Marsett liked

love, blood, and adventure. She had, moreover, a favourite noble poet,

and she begged Nesta's pardon for naming him, and she would not name him,

and told her she must not read him until she was a married woman, because

he did mischief to girls. Thereupon she fell into one of her silences,

emerging with a cry of hate of herself for having ever read him. She did

not blame the bard. And, ah, poor bard! he fought his battle: he shall

not be named for the brand on the name. He has lit a sulphur match for

the lover of nature through many a generation; and to be forgiven by sad

frail souls who could accuse him of pipeing devil's agent to them at the

perilous instant--poor girls too!--is chastisement enough. This it is to

be the author of unholy sweets: a Posterity sitting in judgement will

grant, that they were part of his honest battle with the hypocrite

English Philistine, without being dupe of the plea or at all the thirsty

swallower of his sugary brandy. Mrs. Marsett expressed aloud her gladness

of escape in never having met a man like him; followed by her regret that

'Ned' was so utterly unlike; except 'perhaps'--and she hummed; she was

off on the fraternity in wickedness.

Nesta's ears were fatigued. 'My mother writes of you,' she said, to vary

the subject.

Mrs. Marsett looked. She sighed downright: 'I have had my dream of a

friend!--It was that gentleman with you on the pier! Your mother

objects?'

'She has inquired, nothing more.'

'I am not twenty-three: not as old as I should be, for a guide to you. I

know I would never do you harm. That I know. I would walk into that water

first, and take Mrs. Worrell's plunge:--the last bath; a thorough

cleanser for a woman! Only, she was a good woman and didn't want it, as

we--as lots of us do:--to wash off all recollection of having met a man!

Your mother would not like me to call you Nesta! I have never begged you

to call me Judith. Damnable name!' Mrs. Marsett revelled in the heat of

the curse on it, as a relief to torture of the breast, until a sense of

the girl's alarmed hearing sent the word reverberating along her nerves

and shocked her with such an exposure of our Shaggy wild one on a lady's

lips. She murmured: 'Forgive me,' and had the passion to repeat the

epithet in shrieks, and scratch up male speech for a hatefuller; but the

twitch of Nesta's brows made her say: 'Do pardon me. I did something in

Scripture. Judith could again. Since that brute Worrell crossed me riding

with you, I loathe my name; I want to do things. I have offended you.'

'We have been taught differently. I do not use those words. Nothing

else.'

'They frighten you.'

'They make me shut; that is all.'

'Supposing you were some day to discover . . . ta-tata, all the things

there are in the world.' Mrs. Marsett let fly an artificial chirrup. 'You

must have some ideas of me.'

'I think you have had unhappy experiences.'

'Nesta . . . just now and then! the first time we rode out together,

coming back from the downs, I remember, I spoke, without thinking--I was

enraged--of a case in the newspapers; and you had seen it, and you were

not afraid to talk of it. I remember I thought, Well, for a girl, she's

bold! I thought you knew more than a girl ought to know: until--you

did--you set my heart going. You spoke of the poor women like an angel of

compassion. You said, we were all mixed up with their fate--I forget the

words. But no one ever heard in Church anything that touched me so. I

worshipped you. You said, you thought of them often, and longed to find

out what you could do to help. And I thought, if they could hear you, and

only come near you, as I was--ah, my heaven! Unhappy experiences? Yes.

But when men get women on the slope to their perdition, they have no

mercy, none. They deceive, and they lie; they are false in acts and

words; they do as much as murder. They're never hanged for it. They make

the Laws! And then they become fathers of families, and point the finger

at the "wretched creatures." They have a dozen names against women, for

one at themselves.'

'It maddens me at times to think . . . !' said Nesta, burning with the

sting of vile names.

Oh, there are bad women as well as bad men: but men have the power and

the lead, and they take advantage of it; and then they turn round and

execrate us for not having what they have robbed us of!'

'I blame women--if I may dare, at my age,' said Nesta, and her bosom

heaved. 'Women should feel for their sex; they should not allow the

names; they should go among their unhappier sisters. At the worst, they

are sisters! I am sure, that fallen cannot mean--Christ shows it does

not. He changes the tone of Scripture. The women who are made outcasts,

must be hopeless and go to utter ruin. We should, if we pretend to be

better, step between them and that. There cannot be any goodness unless

it is a practiced goodness. Otherwise it is nothing more than paint on

canvas. You speak to me of my innocence. What is it worth, if it is only

a picture and does no work to help to rescue? I fear I think most of the

dreadful names that redden and sicken us.--The Old Testament!--I have a

French friend, a Mademoiselle Louise de Seines--you should hear her: she

is intensely French, and a Roman Catholic, everything which we are not:

but so human, so wise, and so full of the pride of her sex! I love her.

It is love. She will never marry until she meets a man who has the

respect for women, for all women. We both think we cannot separate

ourselves from our sisters. She seems to me to wither men, when she

speaks of their injustice, their snares to mislead and their cruelty when

they have succeeded. She is right, it is the--brute: there is no other

word.'

'And French and good!' Mrs. Marsett ejaculated. 'My Ned reads French

novels, and he says, their women . . . . But your mademoiselle is a real

one. If she says all that, I could kneel to her, French or not. Does she

talk much about men and women?'

'Not often: we lose our tempers. She wants women to have professions; at

present they have not much choice to avoid being penniless. Poverty, and

the sight of luxury! It seems as if we produced the situation, to create

an envious thirst, and cause the misery. Things are improving for them;

but we groan at the slowness of it.'

Mrs. Marsett now declared a belief, that women were nearly quite as bad

as men. 'I don't think I could take up with a profession. Unless to be a

singer. Ah! Do you sing?'

Nesta smiled: 'Yes, I sing.'

'How I should like to hear you! My Ned's a thorough

Englishman--gentleman, you know: he cares only for sport; Shooting,

Fishing, Hunting; and Football, Cricket, Rowing, and matches. He's

immensely proud of England in those things. And such muscle he has!

though he begins to fancy his heart's rather weak. It's digestion, I tell

him. But he takes me to the Opera sometimes--Italian Opera; he can't

stand German. Down at his place in Leicestershire, he tells me, when

there 's company, he has--I'm sure you sing beautifully. When I hear

beautiful singing, even from a woman they tell tales of, upon my word,

it's true, I feel my sins all melting out of me and I'm new-made: I can't

bear Ned to speak. Would you one day, one afternoon, before the end of

next week?--it would do me such real good, you can't guess how much; if I

could persuade you! I know I'm asking something out of rules. For just

half an hour: I judge by your voice in talking. Oh! it would do me

good-good-good to hear you sing. There is a tuned piano--a cottage; I

don't think it sounds badly. You would not see any great harm in calling

on me? once!'

'No,' said Nesta. And it was her nature that projected the word. Her

awakened wits were travelling to her from a distance, and she had an

intimation of their tidings; and she could not have said what they were;

or why, for a moment, she hesitated to promise she would come. Her vision

of the reality of things was without written titles, to put the stamp of

the world on it. She felt this lady to be one encompassed and in the hug

of the elementary forces, which are the terrors to inexperienced pure

young women. But she looked at her, and dared trust those lips, those

eyes. She saw, through whatever might be the vessel, the spirit of the

woman; as the upper nobility of our brood are enabled to do in a crisis

mixed of moral aversion and sisterly sympathy, when nature cries to them,

and the scales of convention, the mud-spots of accident, even

naughtiness, even wickedness, all misfortune's issue, if we but see the

one look upward, fall away. Reason is not excluded from these blind

throbs of a blood that strikes to right the doings of the Fates. Nesta

did not err in her divination of the good and the bad incarnate beside

her, though both good and bad were behind a curtain; the latter sparing

her delicate senses, appealing to chivalry, to the simply feminine claim

on her. Reason, acting in her heart as a tongue of the flames of the

forge where we all are wrought, told her surely that the good

predominated. She had the heart which is at our primal fires when nature

speaks.

She gave the promise to call on Mrs. Marsett and sing to her.

'An afternoon? Oh! what afternoon?' she was asked, and she said: 'This

afternoon, if you like.'

So it was agreed: Mrs. Marsett acted violently the thrill of delight she

felt in the prospect.

The ladies Dorothea and Virginia, consulted, and pronounced the name of

Marsett to be a reputable County name. 'There was a Leicestershire

baronet of the name of Marsett.' They arranged to send their

button-blazing boy at Nesta's heels. Mrs. Marsett resided in a

side-street not very distant from the featureless but washed and orderly

terrace of the glassy stare at sea.