CHAPTER XXXII

SHOWS HOW TEMPER MAY KINDLE TEMPER AND AN INDIGNANT WOMAN GET HER WEAPON

Judith Marsett stood in her room to receive Nesta's hero. She was

flushed, and had thinned her lips for utterance of a desperate thing,

after the first severe formalities.

Her aim was to preserve an impressive decorum. She was at the same time

burning to speak out furious wrath, in words of savage rawness, if they

should come, as a manner of slapping the world's cheek for the state to

which it reduces its women; whom one of the superior creatures can

insult, and laugh.

Men complaining of the 'peace which is near their extinction,' have but

to shuffle with the sex; they will experience as remarkable a change as

if they had passed off land on to sea.

Dartrey had some flitting notion of the untamed original elements women

can bring about us, in his short observant bow to Mrs. Marsett, following

so closely upon the scene with Mrs. Blathenoy.

But this handsome woman's look of the dull red line of a sombre fire,

that needed only stir of a breath to shoot the blaze, did not at all

alarm him. He felt refreshingly strung by it.

She was discerned at a glance to be an aristocratic member of regions

where the senses perpetually simmer when they are not boiling. The talk

at the Club recurred to him. How could Nesta have come to know the woman?

His questioning of the chapter of marvellous accidents, touched Nesta

simply, as a young girl to be protected, without abhorrently involving

the woman. He had his ideas of the Spirit of Woman stating her case to

the One Judge, for lack of an earthly just one: a story different from

that which is proclaimed pestilential by the body of censors under

conservatory glass; where flesh is delicately nurtured, highly prized;

spirit not so much so; and where the pretty tricking of the flesh is

taken for a spiritual ascendancy.

In spite of her turbulent breast's burden to deliver, Mrs. Marsett's

feminine acuteness was alive upon Dartrey, confirming here and there

Nesta's praises of him. She liked his build and easy carriage of a

muscular frame: her Ned was a heavy man. More than Dartrey's figure, as

she would have said, though the estimate came second, she liked his

manner with her. Not a doubt was there, that he read her position. She

could impose upon some: not upon masculine eyes like these. They did not

scrutinize, nor ruffle a smooth surface with a snap at petty impressions;

and they were not cynically intimate or dominating or tentatively

amorous: clear good fellowship was in them. And it was a blessedness

(whatever might be her feeling later, when she came to thank him at

heart) to be in the presence of a man whose appearance breathed of

offering her common ground, whereon to meet and speak together,

unburdened by the hunting world, and by the stoneing world. Such common

ground seems a kind of celestial to the better order of those excluded

from it.

Dartrey relieved her midway in a rigid practice of the formalities: 'I

think I may guess that you have something to tell me relating to Miss

Radnor?'

'It is.' Mrs. Marsett gathered up for an immediate plunge, and deferred

it. 'I met her--we went out with the riding-master. She took to me. I

like her--I could say' (the woman's voice dropped dead low, in a

tremble), 'I love her. She is young: I could kneel to her. Do you know a

Major Worrell?'

'Worrell? no.'

'He is a-calls himself a friend of my--of Captain Marsett's. He met us

out one day.'

'He permitted himself to speak to Miss Radnor?'

She rejoiced in Dartrey's look. 'Not then. First let me tell you. I can

hardly tell you. But Miss Radnor tells me you are not like other men. You

have made your conclusions already. Are you asking what right I had to be

knowing her? It is her goodness. Accident began it; I did not deceive

her; as soon as ever I could I--I have Captain Marsett's promise to me:

at present he's situated, he--but I opened my heart to her: as much as a

woman can. It came! Did I do very wrong?'

'I'm not here to decide: continue, pray.'

Mrs. Marsett aimed at formal speech, and was driving upon her natural in

anger. 'I swear I did it for the best. She is an innocent girl . . .

young lady: only she has a head; she soon reads things. I saw the kind of

cloud in her. I spoke. I felt bound to: she said she would not forsake

me.--I was bound to! And it was enough to break my heart, to think of her

despising me. No, she forgave, pitied;--she was kind. Those are the

angels who cause us to think of changeing. I don't care for sermons, but

when I meet charity: I won't bore you!'

'You don't.'

'My . . . Captain Marsett can't bear--he calls it Psalmody. He thinks

things ought always to be as they are, with women and men; and women

preachers he does detest. She is not one to preach. You are waiting to

hear what I have to tell. That man Major Worrell has tried to rob me of

everything I ever had to set a value on:--love, I 'd say;--he laughs at a

woman like me loving.'

Dartrey nodded, to signify a known sort of fellow.

'She came here.' Mrs. Marsett's tears had risen. 'I ought not to have let

her come. I invited her--for once: I am lonely. None of my sex--none I

could respect! I meant it for only once. She promised to sing to me. And,

Oh! how she sings! You have heard her. My whole heart came out. I declare

I believe girls exist who can hear our way of life--and I'm not so bad

except compared with that angel, who heard me, and was and is, I could

take oath, no worse for it. Some girls can; she is one. I am all for

bringing them up in complete innocence. If I was a great lady, my

daughters should never know anything of the world until they were

married. But Miss Radnor is a young lady who cannot be hurt. She is above

us. Oh! what a treasure for a man!--and my God! for any man born of woman

to insult a saint, as she is!--He is a beast!'

'Major Worrell met her here?'

'Blame me as much as you like: I do myself. Half my rage with him is at

myself for putting her in the way of such a beast to annoy. Each time she

came, I said it was to be the last. I let her see what a mercy from

heaven she was to me. She would come. It has not been many times. She

wishes me either to . . . Captain Marsett has promised. And nothing seems

hard--to me when my own God's angel is by. She is! I'm not such a bad

woman, but I never before I knew her knew the meaning of the word virtue.

There is the young lady that man worried with his insulting remarks!

though he must have known she was a lady:--because he found her in my

rooms.'

'You were present when, as you say, he insulted her?'

'I was. Here it commenced; and he would see her downstairs.'

'You heard?'

'Of course, I never left her.'

'Give me a notion . . .'

'To get her to make an appointment: to let him conduct her home.'

'She was alone?'

'Her maid was below.'

'And this happened . . .?'

'Yesterday, after dark. My Ned--Captain Marsett encourages him to be

familiar. I should be the lowest of women if I feared the threats of such

a reptile of a man. I could tell you more. I can't always refuse his

visits, though if Ned knew the cur he is! Captain Marsett is easy-going.'

'I should like to know where he lives.'

She went straight to the mantelpiece, and faced about with a card,

handing it, quite aware that it was a charge of powder.

Desperate things to be done excused the desperate said; and especially

they seemed a cover to the bald and often spotty language leaping out of

her, against her better taste, when her temper was up.

'Somewhere not very distant,' said Dartrey perusing. 'Is he in the town

to-day, do you know?'

'I am not sure; he may be. Her name . . .'

'Have no fear. Ladies' names are safe.'

'I am anxious that she may not be insulted again.'

'Did she show herself conscious of it?'

'She stopped speaking: she looked at the door. She may come again--or

never! through that man!'

'You receive him, at his pleasure?'

'Captain Marsett wishes me to. He is on his way home. He calls Major

Worrell my pet spite. All I want is; not to hear of the man. I swear he

came yesterday on the chance of seeing--for he forced his way up past my

servant; he must have seen Miss Radnor's maid below.'

'You don't mean, that he insulted her hearing?'

'Oh! Captain Fenellan, you know the style.'

'Well, I thank you,' Dartrey said. 'The young lady is the daughter of my

dearest friends. She's one of the precious--you're quite right. Keep the

tears back.'

'I will.' She heaved open-mouthed to get physical control of the tide.

'When you say that of her!--how can I help it? It's I fear, because I

fear . . . and I've no right to expect ever . . . but if I'm never again

to look on that dear face, tell her I shall--I shall pray for her in my

grave. Tell her she has done all a woman can, an angel can, to save my

soul. I speak truth: my very soul! I could never go to the utter bad

after knowing her. I don't--you know the world--I'm a poor helpless

woman!--don't swear to give up my Ned if he does break the word he

promised once; I can't see how I could. I haven't her courage. I

haven't--what it is! You know her: it's in her eyes and her voice. If I

had her beside me, then I could starve or go to execution--I could, I am

certain. Here I am, going to do what you men hate. Let me sit.'

'Here's a chair,' said Dartrey. 'I've no time to spare; good day, for the

present. You will permit me to call.'

'Oh! come'; she cried, out of her sobs, for excuse. They were genuine, or

she would better have been able to second her efforts to catch a distinct

vision of his retreating figure.

She beheld him, when he was in the street, turn for the district where

Major Worrell had his lodgeings. That set her mind moving, and her tears

fell no longer.

Major Worrell was not at home. Dartrey was informed that he might be at

his Club.

At the Club he heard of the major as having gone to London and being

expected down in the afternoon. Colonel Sudley named the train: an early

train; the major was engaged to dine at the Club. Dartrey had information

supplied to him concerning Major Worrell and Captain Marsett, also Mrs.

Marsett. She had a history. Worthy citizens read the description of

history with interest when the halo of Royalty is round it. They may, if

their reading extends, perceive, that it has been the main turbid stream

in old Mammon's train since he threw his bait for flesh. They might ask,

too, whether it is likely to cease to flow while he remains potent. The

lady's history was brief, and bore recital in a Club; came off quite

honourably there. Regarding Major Worrell, the tale of him showed him to

have a pass among men. He managed cleverly to get his pleasures out of a

small income and a 'fund of anecdote.' His reputation indicated an

anecdotist of the table, prevailing in the primitive societies, where the

art of conversing does not come by nature, and is exercised in

monosyllabic undertones or grunts until the narrator's well-masticated

popular anecdote loosens a digestive laughter, and some talk ensues. He

was Marsett's friend, and he boasted of not letting Ned Marsett make a

fool of himself.

Dartrey was not long in shaping the man's character: Worrell belonged to

the male birds of upper air, who mangle what female prey they are

forbidden to devour. And he had Miss Radnor's name: he had spoken her

name at the Club overnight. He had roused a sensation, because of a man

being present, Percy Southweare, who was related to a man as good as

engaged to marry her. The major never fell into a quarrel with sons of

nobles, if he could help it, or there might have been a pretty one.

So Colonel Sudley said.

Dartrey spoke musing: 'I don't know how he may class me; I have an

account to square with him.'

'It won't do in these days, my good friend. Come and cool yourself; and

we'll lunch here. I shan't leave you.'

'By all means. We'll lunch, and walk up to the station, and you will

point him out to me.'

Dartrey stated Major Worrell's offence. The colonel was not astonished;

but evidently he thought less of Worrell's behaviour to Miss Radnor in

Mrs. Marsett's presence than of the mention of her name at the Club: and

that, he seemed to think, had a shade of excuse against the charge of

monstrous. He blamed the young lady who could go twice to visit a Mrs.

Marsett; partly exposed a suspicion of her. Dartrey let him talk. They

strolled along the parade, and were near the pier.

Suddenly saying: 'There, beside our friend in clerical garb: here she

comes; judge if that is the girl for the foulest of curs to worry, no

matter where she's found.' Dartrey directed the colonel's attention to

Nesta and Mr. Barmby turning off the pier and advancing.

He saluted. She bowed. There was no contraction of her eyelids; and her

face was white. The mortal life appeared to be deadened in her cold wide

look; as when the storm-wind banks a leaden remoteness, leaving blown

space of sky.

The colonel said: 'No, that's not the girl a gentleman would offend.'

'What man!' cried Dartrey. 'If we had a Society for the trial of your

gentleman!--but he has only to call himself gentleman to get grant of

licence: and your Society protects him. It won't punish, and it won't let

you. But you saw her: ask yourself--what man could offend that girl!'

'Still, my friend, she ought to keep clear of the Marsetts.'

'When I meet him, I shall treat him as one out of the law.'

'You lead on to an ultimate argument with the hangman.'

We 'll dare it, to waken the old country. Old England will count none but

Worrells in time. As for discreet, if you like!--the young lady might

have been more discreet. She's a girl with a big heart. If we were all

everlastingly discreet!'

Dartrey may have meant, that the consequence of a prolonged conformity

would be the generation of stenches to shock to purgeing tempests the

tolerant heavens over such smooth stagnancy. He had his ideas about

movement; about the good of women, and the health of his England. The

feeling of the hopelessness of pleading Nesta's conduct, for the perfect

justification of it to son or daughter of our impressing conventional

world--even to a friend, that friend a true man, a really chivalrous

man--drove him back in a silence upon his natural brotherhood with souls

that dare do. It was a wonder, to think of his finding this kinship in a

woman. In a girl?--and the world holding that virgin spirit to be unclean

or shadowed because its rays were shed on foul places? He clasped the

girl. Her smitten clear face, the face of the second sigh after torture,

bent him in devotion to her image.

The clasping and the worshipping were independent of personal ardours:

quaintly mixed with semi-paternal recollections of the little 'blue

butterfly' of the days at Craye. Farm and Creckholt; and he had heard of

Dudley Sowerby's pretensions to; her hand. Nesta's youthfulness cast

double age on him from the child's past. He pictured the child; pictured

the girl, with her look of solitariness of sight; as in the desolate wide

world, where her noble compassion for a woman had unexpectedly,

painfully, almost by transubstantiation, rack-screwed her to woman's

mind. And above sorrowful, holy were those eyes.

They held sway over Dartrey, and lost it some steps on; his demon temper

urgeing him to strike at Major Worrell, as the cause of her dismayed

expression. He was not the happier for dropping to his nature; but we

proceed more easily, all of us, when the strain which lifts us a foot or

two off our native level is relaxed.