CHAPTER XLI

THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH

To a man issuing from a mortuary where a skull had voice, London may be

restorative as air of Summer Alps. It is by contrast blooming life.

Observe the fellowship of the houses shoulder to shoulder; and that

straight ascending smoke of the preparation for dinner; and the good

policeman yonder, blessedly idle on an orderly Sabbath evening; and the

families of the minor people trotting homeward from the park to tea; here

and again an amiable carriage of the superimposed people driving to pay

visits; they are so social, friendly, inviting to him; they strip him of

the shroud, sing of the sweet old world. He cannot but be moved to the

extremity of the charitableness neighbouring on tears.

A stupefaction at the shock of the positive reminder, echo of the fact

still shouting in his breast, that he had seen Mrs. Burman, and that the

interview was over--the leaf turned and the book shut held Victor in a

silence until his gratefulness to London City was borne down by the more

human burst of gratitude to the dying woman, who had spared him, as much

as she could, a scene of the convulsive pathetic, and had not called on

him for any utterance of penitence. That worm-like thread of voice came

up to him still from sexton-depths: it sounded a larger forgiveness

without the word. He felt the sorrow of it all, as he told Nataly; at the

same time bidding her smell 'the marvellous oxygen of the park.' He

declared it to be quite equal to Lakelands.

She slightly pressed his arm for answer. Perhaps she did not feel so

deeply? She was free of the horrid associations with the scent of

Marechale. At any rate, she had comported herself admirably!

Victor fancied he must have shuddered when he passed by Jarniman at the

door, who was almost now seeing his mistress's ghost--would have the

privilege to-morrow. He called a cab and drove to Mrs. John Cormyn's, at

Nataly's request, for Nesta and mademoiselle: enjoying the Londonized

odour of the cab. Nataly did not respond to his warm and continued

eulogies of Mrs. Burman; she rather disappointed him. He talked of the

gold and white furniture, he just alluded to the Cupid: reserving his

mental comment, that the time-piece was all astray, the Cupid regular on

the swing:--strange, touching, terrible, if really the silly gilt figure

symbolized! . . . And we are a silly figure to be sitting in a cab

imagining such things!--When Nesta and mademoiselle were opposite, he had

the pleasure to see Nataly take Nesta's hand and hold it until they

reached home. Those two talking together in the brief words of their deep

feeling, had tones that were singularly alike: the mezzo-soprano filial

to the divine maternal contralto. Those two dear ones mounted to Nataly's

room.

The two dear ones showed themselves heart in heart together once more;

each looked the happier for it. Dartrey was among their dinner-guests,

and Nataly took him to her little blue-room before she went to bed. He

did not speak of their conversation to Victor, but counselled him to keep

her from excitement. 'My dear fellow, if you had seen her with Mrs.

Burman!' Victor said, and loudly praised her coolness. She was never

below a situation, he affirmed.

He followed his own counsel to humour his Nataly. She began panting at a

word about Mr. Barmby's ready services. When, however, she related the

state of affairs between Dartrey and Nesta, by the avowal of each of them

to her, he said, embracing her: 'Your wisdom shall guide us, my love,'

and almost extinguished a vexation by concealing it.

She sighed: 'If one could think, that a girl with Nesta's revolutionary

ideas of the duties of women, and their powers, would be safe--or at all

rightly guided by a man who is both one of the noblest and the wildest in

the ideas he entertains!'

Victor sighed too. He saw the earldom, which was to dazzle the gossips,

crack on the sky in a futile rocket-bouquet.

She was distressed; she moaned: 'My girl! my girl: I should wish to leave

her with one who is more fixed--the old-fashioned husband. New ideas must

come in politics, but in Society!--and for women! And the young having

heads, are the most endangered. Nesta vows her life to it! Dartrey

supports her!'

'See Colney,' said Victor. 'Odd, Colney does you good; some queer way he

has. Though you don't care for his RIVAL TONGUES,--and the last number

was funny, with Semhians on the Pacific, impressively addressing a

farewell to his cricket-bat, before he whirls it away to Neptune--and the

blue hand of his nation's protecting God observed to seize it!--Dead

failure with the public, of course! However, he seems to seem wise with

you. The poor old fellow gets his trouncing from the critics monthly. See

Colney to-morrow, my love. Now go to sleep. We have got over the worst. I

speak at my Meeting to-morrow and am a champagne-bottle of notes and

points for them.'

His lost Idea drew close to him in sleep: or he thought so, when awaking

to the conception of a people solidified, rich and poor, by the common

pride of simple manhood. But it was not coloured, not a luminous globe:

and the people were in drab, not a shining army on the march to meet the

Future. It looked like a paragraph in a newspaper, upon which a Leading

Article sits, dutifully arousing the fat worm of sarcastic humour under

the ribs of cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. He

would not have it laughed at; still he could not admit it as more than a

skirt of the robe of his Idea. For let none think him a mere City

merchant, millionnaire, boon-fellow, or music-loving man of the world. He

had ideas to shoot across future Ages;--provide against the shrinkage of

our Coal-beds; against, and for, if you like, the thickening, jumbling,

threatening excess of population in these Islands, in Europe, America,

all over our habitable sphere. Now that Mrs. Burman, on her way to bliss,

was no longer the dungeon-cell for the man he would show himself to be,

this name for successes, corporate nucleus of the enjoyments, this Victor

Montgomery Radnor, intended impressing himself upon the world as a

factory of ideas. Colney's insolent charge, that the English have no

imagination--a doomed race, if it be true!--would be confuted. For our

English require but the lighted leadership to come into cohesion, and

step ranked, and chant harmoniously the song of their benevolent aim. And

that astral head giving, as a commencement, example of the right use of

riches, the nation is one, part of the riddle of the future solved.

Surely he had here the Idea? He had it so warmly, that his bath-water

heated. Only the vision was wanted.

On London Bridge he had seen it--a great thing done to the flash of

brilliant results. That was after a fall.

There had been a fall also of the scheme of Lakelands.

Come to us with no superstitious whispers of indications and

significations in the fall!--But there had certainly been a moral fall,

fully to the level of the physical, in the maintaining of that scheme of

Lakelands, now ruined by his incomprehensible Nesta--who had saved him

from falling further. His bath-water chilled. He jumped out and rubbed

furiously with his towels and flesh-brushes, chasing the Idea for simple

warmth, to have Something inside him, to feel just that sustainment; with

the cry: But no one can say I do not love my Nataly! And he tested it to

prove it by his readiness to die for her: which is heroically easier than

the devotedly living, and has a weight of evidence in our internal Courts

for surpassing the latter tedious performance.

His Nesta had knocked Lakelands to pieces. Except for the making of

money, the whole year of an erected Lakelands, notwithstanding

uninterrupted successes, was a blank. Or rather we have to wish it were a

blank. The scheme departs: payment for the enlisted servants of it is in

prospect. A black agent, not willingly enlisted, yet pointing to proofs

of service, refuses payment in ordinary coin; and we tell him we owe him

nothing, that he is not a man of the world, has no understanding of

Nature: and still the fellow thumps and alarums at a midnight door we are

astonished to find we have in our daylight house. How is it? Would other

men be so sensitive to him? Victor was appeased by the assurance of his

possession of an exceptionally scrupulous conscience; and he settled the

debate by thinking: 'After all, for a man like me, battling incessantly,

a kind of Vesuvius, I must have--can't be starved, must be fed--though,

pah! But I'm not to be questioned like other men.--But how about an

aristocracy of the contempt of distinctions?--But there is no escaping

distinctions! my aristocracy despises indulgence.--And indulges?--Say, an

exceptional nature! Supposing a certain beloved woman to pronounce on the

case?--She cannot: no woman can be a just judge of it.'---He cried: My

love of her is testified by my having Barmby handy to right her to-day,

tomorrow, the very instant the clock strikes the hour of my release!

Mention of the clock swung that silly gilt figure. Victor entered into

it, condemned to swing, and be a thrall. His intensity of sensation

launched him on an eternity of the swinging in ridiculous nakedness to

the measure of time gone crazy. He had to correct a reproof of Mrs.

Burman, as the cause of the nonsense. He ran down to breakfast, hopeing

he might hear of that clock stopped, and that sickening motion with it.

Another letter from the Sanfredini in Milan, warmly inviting to her villa

over Como, acted on him at breakfast like the waving of a banner. 'We

go,' Victor said to Nataly, and flattered-up a smile about her lips--too

much a resurrection smile. There was talk of the Meeting at the theatre:

Simeon Fenellan had spoken there in the cause of the deceased Member, was

known, and was likely to have a good reception. Fun and enthusiasm might

be expected.

'And my darling will hear her husband speak to-night,' he whispered as he

was departing; and did a mischief, he had to fear, for a shadowy knot

crossed Nataly's forehead, she seemed paler. He sent back Nesta and

mademoiselle, in consequence, at the end of the Green Park.

Their dinner-hour was early; Simeon Fenellan, Colney Durance, and Mr.

Peridon--pleasing to Nataly for his faithful siege of the French

fortress--were the only guests. When they rose, Nataly drew Victor aside.

He came dismayed to Nesta. She ran to her mother. 'Not hear papa speak?

Oh, mother, mother! Then I stay with her. But can't she come? He is going

to unfold ideas to us. There!'

'My naughty girl is not to poke her fun at orators,' Nataly said. 'No,

dearest; it would agitate me to go. I'm better here. I shall be at peace

when the night is over.'

'But you will be all alone here, dear mother.'

Nataly's eyes wandered to fall on Colney. He proposed to give her his

company. She declined it. Nesta ventured another entreaty, either that

she might be allowed to stay or have her mother with her at the Meeting.

'My love,' Nataly said, 'the thought of the Meeting--' She clasped at her

breast; and she murmured: 'I shall be comforted by your being with him.

There is no danger there. But I shall be happy, I shall be at peace when

this night is over.'

Colney persuaded her to have him for companion. Mr. Peridon, who was to

have driven with Nesta and mademoiselle, won admiration by proposing to

stay for an hour and play some of Mrs. Radnor's favourite pieces. Nesta

and Victor overbore Nataly's objections to the lover's generosity. So Mr.

Peridon was left. Nesta came hurrying back from the step of the carriage

to kiss her mother again, saying: 'Just one last kiss, my own! And she's

not to look troubled. I shall remember everything to tell my own mother.

It will soon be over.'

Her mother nodded; but the embrace was passionate.

Nesta called her father into the passage, bidding him prohibit any

delivery to her mother of news at the door. 'She is easily startled now

by trifles--you have noticed?'

Victor summoned his recollections and assured her he had noticed, as he

believed he had 'The dear heart of her is fretting for the night to be

over! And think! seven days, and she is in Lakelands. A fortnight, and we

have our first Concert. Durandarte! Oh, the dear heart 'll be at peace

when I tell her of a triumphant Meeting. Not a doubt of that, even though

Colney turns the shadow of his back on us.'

'One critic the less for you!' said Nesta. Skepsey was to meet her

carriage at the theatre.

Ten minutes later, Victor and Simeon Fenellan were proceeding thitherward

on foot.

'I have my speech,' said Victor. 'You prepare the way for me, following

our influential friend Dubbleson; Colewort winds up; any one else they

shout for. We shall have a great evening. I suspect I shall find Themison

or Jarniman when I get home. You don't believe in intimations? I've had

crapy processions all day before my eyes. No wonder, after yesterday!'

'Dubbleson mustn't drawl it out too long,' said Fenellan.

'We 'll drop a hint. Where's Dartrey?'

'He'll come. He's in one of his black moods: not temper. He's got a

notion he killed his wife by dragging her to Africa with him. She was not

only ready to go, she was glad to go. She had a bit of the heroine in her

and a certainty of tripping to the deuce if she was left to herself.'

'Tell Nataly that,' said Victor. 'And tell her about Dartrey. Harp on it.

Once she was all for him and our girl. But it's a woman--though the

dearest! I defy any one to hit on the cause of their changes. We must

make the best of things, if we're for swimming. The task for me to-night

will be, to keep from rolling out all I've got in my head. And I'm not

revolutionary, I'm for stability. Only I do see, that the firm

stepping-place asks for a long stride to be taken. One can't get the

English to take a stride--unless it's for a foot behind them: bother old

Colney! Too timid, or too scrupulous, down we go into the mire.

There!--But I want to say it! I want to save the existing order. I want,

Christianity, instead of the Mammonism we 're threatened with. Great

fortunes now are becoming the giants of old to stalk the land: or

mediaeval Barons. Dispersion of wealth, is the secret. Nataly's of that

mind with me. A decent poverty! She's rather wearying, wants a change.

I've a steam-yacht in my eye, for next month on the Mediterranean. All

our set. She likes quiet. I believe in my political recipe for it.'

He thumped on a method he had for preserving aristocracy--true

aristocracy, amid a positively democratic flood of riches.

'It appears to me, you're on the road of Priscilla Graves and Pempton,'

observed Simeon. 'Strike off Priscilla's viands and friend Pempton's

couple of glasses, and there's your aristocracy established; but with

rather a dispersed recognition of itself.'

'Upon my word, you talk like old Colney, except for a twang of your own,'

said Victor. 'Colney sours at every fresh number of that Serial. The

last, with Delphica detecting the plot of Falarique, is really not so

bad. The four disguised members of the Comedie Francaise on board the

vessel from San Francisco, to declaim and prove the superior merits of

the Gallic tongue, jumped me to bravo the cleverness. And Bobinikine

turning to the complexion of the remainder of cupboard dumplings

discovered in an emigrant's house-to-let! And Semhians--I forget what and

Mytharete's forefinger over the bridge of his nose, like a pensive

vulture on the skull of a desert camel! But, I complain, there's nothing

to make the English love the author; and it's wasted, he's basted, and

the book 'll have no sale. I hate satire.'

'Rough soap for a thin skin, Victor. Does it hurt our people much?'

'Not a bit; doesn't touch them. But I want my friends to succeed!'

Their coming upon Westminster Bridge changed the theme. Victor wished the

Houses of Parliament to catch the beams of sunset. He deferred to the

suggestion, that the Hospital's doing so seemed appropriate.

'I'm always pleased to find a decent reason for what is,' he said. Then

he queried: 'But what is, if we look at it, and while we look, Simeon?

She may be going--or she's gone already, poor woman! I shall have that

scene of yesterday everlastingly before my eyes, like a drop-curtain.

Only, you know, Simeon, they don't feel the end, as we in health imagine.

Colney would say, we have the spasms and they the peace. I 've a mind to

send up to Regent's Park with inquiries. It would look respectful. God

forgive me!--the poor woman perverts me at every turn. Though I will say,

a certain horror of death I had--she whisked me out of it yesterday. I

don't feel it any longer. What are you jerking at?'

'Only to remark, that if the thing's done for us, we haven't it so much

on our sensations.'

'More, if we're sympathetic. But that compels us to be philosophic--or

who could live! Poor woman!'

'Waft her gently, Victor!'

'Tush! Now for the South side of the Bridges; and I tell you, Simeon,

what I can't mention to-night: I mean to enliven these poor dear people

on their forsaken South of the City. I 've my scheme. Elected or not, I

shall hardly be accused of bribery when I put down my first instalment.'

Fenellan went to work with that remark in his brain for the speech he was

to deliver. He could not but reflect on the genial man's willingness and

capacity to do deeds of benevolence, constantly thwarted by the position

into which he had plunged himself.

They were received at the verge of the crowd outside the theatre-doors by

Skepsey, who wriggled, tore and clove a way for them, where all were

obedient, but the numbers lumped and clogged. When finally they reached

the stage, they spied at Nesta's box, during the thunder of the rounds of

applause, after shaking hands with Mr. Dubbleson, Sir Abraham Quatley,

Dudley Sowerby, and others; and with Beaves Urmsing--a politician 'never

of the opposite party to a deuce of a funny fellow!--go anywhere to hear

him,' he vowed.

'Miss Radnor and Mademoiselle de Seilles arrived quite safely,' said

Dudley, feasting on the box which contained them and no Dartrey Fenellan

in it.

Nesta was wondering at Dartrey's absence. Not before Mr. Dubbleson, the

chairman, the 'gentleman of local influence,' had animated the drowsed

wits and respiratory organs of a packed audience by yielding place to

Simeon, did Dartrey appear. Simeon's name was shouted, in proof of the

happy explosion of his first anecdote, as Dartrey took seat behind Nesta.

'Half an hour with the dear mother,' he said.

Nesta's eyes thanked him. She pressed the hand of a demure young woman

sitting close behind. Louise de Seilles. 'You know Matilda Pridden.'

Dartrey held his hand out. 'Has she forgiven me?'

Matilda bowed gravely, enfolding her affirmative in an outline of the no

need for it, with perfect good breeding. Dartrey was moved to think

Skepsey's choice of a woman to worship did him honour. He glanced at

Louise. Her manner toward Matilda Pridden showed her sisterly with Nesta.

He said: 'I left Mr. Peridon playing.--A little anxiety to hear that the

great speech of the evening is done; it's nothing else. I'll run to her

as soon as it's over.'

'Oh, good of you! And kind of Mr. Peridon!' She turned to Louise, who

smiled at the simple art of the exclamation, assenting.

Victor below, on the stage platform, indicated the waving of a hand to

them, and his delight at Simeon's ringing points: which were, to

Dartrey's mind, vacuously clever and crafty. Dartrey despised effects of

oratory, save when soldiers had to be hurled on a mark--or citizens

nerved to stand for their country.

Nesta dived into her father's brilliancy of appreciation, a trifle pained

by Dartrey's aristocratic air when he surveyed the herd of heads agape

and another cheer rang round. He smiled with her, to be with her, at a

hit here and there; he would not pretend an approval of this manner of

winning electors to consider the country's interests and their own. One

fellow in the crowded pit, affecting a familiarity with Simeon, that

permitted the taking of liberties with the orator's Christian name,

mildly amused him. He had no objection to hear 'Simmy' shouted, as Louise

de Seilles observed. She was of his mind, in regard to the rough

machinery of Freedom.

Skepsey entered the box.

'We shall soon be serious, Miss Nesta,' he said, after a look at Matilda

Pridden.

There was a prolonged roaring--on the cheerful side.

'And another word about security that your candidate will keep his

promises,' continued Simeon: 'You have his word, my friends!' And he told

the story of the old Governor of Goa, who wanted money and summoned the

usurers, and they wanted security; whereupon he laid his Hidalgo hand on

a cataract of Kronos-beard across his breast, and pulled forth three

white hairs, and presented them: 'And as honourably to the usurious Jews

as to the noble gentleman himself, that security was accepted!'

Emerging from hearty clamours, the illustrative orator fell upon the

question of political specifics:--Mr. Victor Radnor trusted to English

good sense too profoundly to be offering them positive cures, as they

would hear the enemy say he did. Yet a bit of a cure may be offered, if

we 're not for pushing it too far, in pursuit of the science of

specifics, in the style of the foreign physician, probably Spanish, who

had no practice, and wished for leisure to let him prosecute his

anatomical and other investigations to discover his grand medical

nostrum. So to get him fees meanwhile he advertised a cure for

dyspepsia--the resource of starving doctors. And sure enough his patient

came, showing the grand fat fellow we may be when we carry more of the

deciduously mortal than of the scraggy vital upon our persons. Any one at

a glance would have prescribed water-cresses to him: water-cresses

exclusively to eat for a fortnight. And that the good physician did. Away

went his patient, returning at the end of the fortnight, lean, and with

the appetite of a Toledo blade for succulent slices. He vowed he was the

man. Our estimable doctor eyed him, tapped at him, pinched his tender

parts; and making him swear he was really the man, and had eaten nothing

whatever but unadulterated water-cresses in the interval, seized on him

in an ecstasy by the collar of his coat, pushed him into the surgery,

knocked him over, killed him, cut him up, and enjoyed the felicity of

exposing to view the very healthiest patient ever seen under dissecting

hand, by favour of the fortunate discovery of the specific for him. All

to further science!--to which, in spite of the petitions of all the

scientific bodies of the civilized world, he fell a martyr on the

scaffold, poor gentleman! But we know politics to be no such empirical

science.

Simeon ingeniously interwove his analogy. He brought it home to Beaves

Urmsing, whose laugh drove any tone of apology out of it. Yet the orator

was asked: 'Do you take politics for a joke, Simmy?'

He countered his questioner: 'Just to liberate you from your moribund

state, my friend.' And he told the story of the wrecked sailor, found

lying on the sands, flung up from the foundered ship of a Salvation

captain, and how, that nothing could waken him, and there he lay fit for

interment; until presently a something of a voice grew down into his

ears; and it was his old chum Polly, whom he had tied to a board to give

her a last chance in the surges; and Polly shaking the wet from her

feathers, and shouting: 'Polly tho dram dry!'--which struck on the nob of

Jack's memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of the cabin under

Salvationism, and he began heaving, and at last he shook in a lazy way,

and then from sputter to sputter got his laugh loose; and he sat up, and

cried; 'That did it! Now to business!' for he was hungry. 'And when I

catch the ring of this world's laugh from you, my friend . . . !'

Simeon's application of the story was drowned.

After the outburst, they heard his friend again interruptingly: 'You keep

that tongue of yours from wagging, as it did when you got round the old

widow woman for her money, Simmy!'

Victor leaned forward. Simeon towered. He bellowed

'And you keep that tongue of yours from committing incest on a lie!'

It was like a lightning-flash in the theatre. The man went under. Simeon

flowed. Conscience reproached him with the little he had done for Victor,

and he had now his congenial opportunity.

Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed.

To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and the

devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat

rigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise

when some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It was

Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he was not

intelligible or audible but the next moment Victor sprang erect. Dartrey

quitted the box. Nesta beheld her father uttering hurried words to right

and left. He passed from sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey did not

return.

Nesta felt her father's absence as light gone: his eyes rayed light.

Besides she had the anticipation of a speech from him, that would win

Matilda Pridden. She fancied Simeon Fenellan to be rather under the spell

of the hilarity he roused. A gentleman behind him spoke in his ear; and

Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his flow. Matilda Pridden's gaze on

him and the people was painful to behold: Nesta saw her mind. She set

herself to study a popular assembly. It could be serious to the call of

better leadership, she believed. Her father had been telling her of late

of a faith he had in the English, that they (or so her intelligence

translated his remarks) had power to rise to spiritual ascendancy, and be

once more the Islanders heading the world of a new epoch abjuring

materialism--some such idea; very quickening to her, as it would be to

this earnest young woman worshipped by Skepsey. Her father's absence and

the continued shouts of laughter, the insatiable thirst for fun, darkened

her in her desire to have the soul of the good working sister refreshed.

They had talked together; not much: enough for each to see at either's

breast the wells from the founts of life.

The box-door opened, Dartrey came in. He took her hand. She stood-up to

his look. He said to Matilda Pridden: 'Come with us; she will need you.'

'Speak it,' said Nesta.

He said to the other: 'She has courage.'

'I could trust to her,' Matilda Pridden replied.

Nesta read his eyes. 'Mother?'

His answer was in the pressure.

'Ill?'

'No longer.'

'Oh! Dartrey.' Matilda Pridden caught her fast.

'I can walk, dear,' Nesta said.

Dartrey mentioned her father.

She understood: 'I am thinking of him.'

The words of her mother: 'At peace when the night is over,' rang. Along

the gassy passages of the back of the theatre, the sound coming from an

applausive audience was as much a thunder as rage would have been. It was

as void of human meaning as a sea.