CHAPTER XXI

UNDER-CURRENTS IN THE MINDS OF LADY CHARLOTTE AND LORD ORMONT

Another journey of travellers to London, in the rear of the chariot, was

not diversified by a single incident or refreshed by scraps of dialogue.

Lady Charlotte had her brother Rowsley with her, and he might be

taciturn,--she drove her flocks of thoughts, she was busily and

contentedly occupied. Although separation from him stirred her mind more

excitedly over their days and deeds of boy and girl, her having him near,

and having now won him to herself, struck her as that old time's harvest,

about as much as can be hoped for us from life, when we have tasted it.

The scene of the invasion of Steignton by the woman and her aunt, and

that man Morsfield, was a steel engraving among her many rapid and

featureless cogitations. She magnified the rakishness of the woman's hand

on hip in view of the house, and she magnified the woman's insolence in

bringing that man Morsfield--to share probably the hospitality of

Steignton during the master's absence! Her trick of caricature, whenever

she dealt with adversaries, was active upon the three persons under

observation of the windows. It was potent to convince her that her

brother Rowsley had cast the woman to her native obscurity. However, Lady

Charlotte could be just: the woman's figure, and as far as could be seen

of her face, accounted for Rowsley's entanglement.

Why chastize that man Morsfield at all? Calling him out would give a

further dip to the name of Ormont. A pretty idea, to be punishing a roan

for what you thank him for! He did a service; and if he's as mad about

her as he boasts, he can take her and marry her now Rowsley 's free of

her.

Morsfield says he wants to marry her--wants nothing better. Then let him.

Rowsley has shown him there 's no legal impediment. Pity that young

Weyburn had to be sent to do watch-dog duty. But Rowsley would not have

turned her back to travel alone: that is, without a man to guard. He 's

too chivalrous.

The sending of Weyburn, she now fancied, was her own doing, and Lady

Charlotte attributed it to her interpretation of her brother's heart of

chivalry; though it would have been the wiser course, tending straight

and swift to the natural end, if the two women and their Morsfield had

received the dismissal to travel as they came.

One sees it after the event. Yes, only Rowsley would not have dismissed

her without surety that she would be protected. So it was the right thing

prompted on the impulse of the moment. And young Weyburn would meet some

difficulty in protecting his 'Lady Ormont,' if she had no inclination for

it.

Analyzing her impulse of the moment, Lady Charlotte credited herself, not

unjustly, with a certain considerateness for the woman, notwithstanding

the woman's violent intrusion between brother and sister. Knowing the

world, and knowing the upper or Beanstalk world intimately, she winked at

nature's passions. But when the legitimate affection of a brother and

sister finds them interposing, they are, as little parsonically as

possible, reproved. If persistently intrusive, they are handed to the

constable.

How, supposing the case of a wife? Well, then comes the contest; and it

is with an inferior, because not a born, legitimacy of union; which may

be, which here and there is, affection; is generally the habit of

partnership. It is inferior, from not being the union of the blood; it is

a matter merely of the laws and the tastes. No love, she reasoned, is

equal to the love of brother and sister: not even the love of parents for

offspring, or of children for mother and father. Brother and sister have

the holy young days in common; they have lastingly the recollection of

their youth, the golden time when they were themselves, or the best of

themselves. A wife is a stranger from the beginning; she is necessarily

three parts a stranger up to the finish of the history. She thinks she

can absorb the husband. Not if her husband has a sister living! She may

cry and tear for what she calls her own: she will act prudently in bowing

her head to the stronger tie. Is there a wife in Europe who broods on her

husband's merits and his injuries as the sister of Thomas Rowsley, Earl

of Ormont does? or one to defend his good name, one to work for his

fortunes, as devotedly?

Over and over Lady Charlotte drove her flocks, of much the same pattern,

like billows before a piping gale. They might be similar--a puffed

iteration, and might be meaningless and wearisome; the gale was a power

in earnest.

Her brother sat locked-up. She did as a wife would not have done, and

held her peace. He spoke; she replied in a few words--blunt, to the

point, as no wife would have done.

Her dear, warm-hearted Rowsley was shaken by the blow he had been obliged

to deal to the woman--poor woman!--if she felt it. He was always the

principal sufferer where the feelings were concerned. He was never for

hurting any but the enemy.

His 'Ha, here we dine!' an exclamation of a man of imprisoned yawns at

the apparition of the turnkey, was delightful to her, for a proof of

health and sanity and enjoyment of the journey.

'Yes, and I've one bottle left, in the hamper, of the hock you like,' she

said. 'That Mr. Weyburn likes it too. He drank a couple coming down.'

She did not press for talk; his ready appetite was the flower of

conversation to her. And he slept well, he said. Her personal experience

on that head was reserved.

London enfolded them in the late evening of a day brewing storm. My lord

heard at the door of his house that Lady Ormont had not arrived. Yet she

had started a day in advance of him. He looked down, up and round at

Charlotte. He looked into an empty hall. Pagnell was not there. A sight

of Pagnell would, strange to say, have been agreeable.

Storm was in the air, and Aminta was on the road. Lightning has, before

now, frightened carriage-horses. She would not misconduct herself; she

would sit firm. No woman in England had stouter nerve--few men.

But the carriage might be smashed. He was ignorant of the road she had

chosen for her return. Out of Wiltshire there would be no cliffs,

quarries, river-banks, presenting dangers. Those dangers, however, spring

up when horses have the frenzy.

Charlotte was nodded at, for a signal to depart; and she drove off,

speculating on the bullet of a grey eye, which was her brother's adieu to

her.

The earl had apparently a curiosity to inspect vacant rooms. His Aminta's

drawing-room, her boudoir, her bed-chamber, were submissive in showing

bed, knickknacks, furniture. They told the tale of a corpse.

He washed and dressed, and went out to his club to dine, hating the faces

of the servants of the house, just able to bear with the attentions of

his valet.

Thunder was rattling at ten at night. The house was again the tomb.

She had high courage, that girl. She might be in a bed, with her

window-blind up, calmly waiting for the flashes: lightning excited her.

He had seen her lying at her length quietly, her black hair scattered on

the pillow, like shadow of twigs and sprays on moonlit grass, illuminated

intermittently; smiling to him, but her heart out and abroad, wild as any

witch's. If on the road, she would not quail. But it was necessary to be

certain of her having a trusty postillion.

He walked through the drench and scream of a burst cloud to the

posting-office. There, after some trouble, he obtained information

directing him to the neighbouring mews. He had thence to find his way to

the neighbouring pot-house.

The report of the postillion was, on the whole, favourable. The man

understood horses--was middle-aged--no sot; he was also a man with an eye

for weather, proverbially in the stables a cautious hand--slow 'Old

Slow-and-sure,' he was called; by name, Joshua Abnett.

'Oh, Joshua Abnett?' said the earl, and imprinted it on his memory, for

the service it was to do during the night.

Slow-and-sure Joshua Abnett would conduct her safely, barring accidents.

For accidents we must all be prepared. She was a heroine in an accident.

The earl recalled one and more: her calm face, brightened eyes, easy

laughter. Hysterics were not in her family.

She did wrong to let that fellow Morsfield accompany her. Possibly he had

come across her on the road, and she could not shake him off. Judging by

all he knew of her, the earl believed she would not have brought the

fellow into the grounds of Steignton of her free will. She had always a

particular regard for decency.

According to the rumour, Morsfield and the woman Pagnell were very thick

together. He barked over London of his being a bitten dog. He was near to

the mad dog's fate, as soon as a convenient apology for stopping his

career could be invented.

The thinking of the lesson to Morsfield on the one hand, and of the

slow-and-sure postillion Joshua Abriett on the other, lulled Lord Ormont

to a short repose in his desolate house. Of Weyburn he had a glancing

thought, that the young man would be a good dog to guard the countess

from a mad dog, as he had reckoned in commissioning him.

Next day was the day of sunlight Aminta loved.

It happens with the men who can strike, supposing them of the order of

civilized creatures, that when they have struck heavily, however deserved

the blow, a liking for the victim will assail them, if they discover no

support in hatred; and no sooner is the spot of softness touched than

they are invaded by hosts of the stricken person's qualities, which plead

to be taken as virtues, and are persuasive. The executioner did rightly.

But it is the turn for the victim to declare the blow excessive.

Now, a just man, who has overdone the stroke, will indemnify and console

in every way, short of humiliating himself.

He had an unusually clear vision of the scene at Steignton. Surprise and

wrath obscured it at the moment, for reflection to bring it out in sharp

outline; and he was able now to read and translate into inoffensive

English the inherited Spanish of it, which violated nothing of Aminta's

native 'donayre,' though it might look on English soil outlandish or

stagey.

Aminta stood in sunlight on the greensward. She stood hand on hip, gazing

at the house she had so long desired to see, without a notion that she

committed an offence. Implicitly upon all occasions she took her

husband's word for anything he stated, and she did not consequently

imagine him to be at Steignton. So, then, she had no thought of running

down from London to hunt and confound him, as at first it appeared. The

presence of that white-faced Morsfield vindicated her sufficiently so

far. And let that fellow hang till the time for cutting him down! Not

she, but Pagnell, seems to have been the responsible party. And, by the

way, one might prick the affair with Morsfield by telling him publicly

that his visit to inspect Steignton was waste of pains, for he would not

be accepted as a tenant in the kennels, et caetera.

Well, poor girl, she satisfied her curiosity, not aware that a few weeks

farther on would have done it to the full.

As to Morsfield, never once, either in Vienna or in Paris, had she,

warmly admired though she was, all eyes telescoping and sun-glassing on

her, given her husband an hour or half an hour or two minutes of anxiety.

Letters came. The place getting hot, she proposed to leave it.

She had been rather hardly tried. There are flowers we cannot keep

growing in pots. Her fault was, that instead of flinging down her glove

and fighting it out openly, she listened to Pagnell, and began the game

of Pull. If he had a zest for the game, it was to stump the woman

Pagnell. So the veteran fancied in his amended mind.

This intrusive sunlight chased him from the breakfast-table and out of

the house. She would be enjoying it somewhere; but the house empty of a

person it was used to contain had an atmosphere of the vaults, and inside

it the sunlight she loved had an effect of taunting him singularly.

He called on his upholsterer and heard news to please her. The house

hired for a month above Great Marlow was ready; her ladyship could enter

it to-morrow. It pleased my lord to think that she might do so, and not

bother him any more about the presentation at Court during the current

year. In spite of certain overtures from the military authorities, and

roused eulogistic citations of his name in the newspapers and magazines,

he was not on friendly terms with his country yet, having contracted the

fatal habit of irony, which, whether hitting or musing its object, stirs

old venom in our wound, twitches the feelings. Unfortunately for him,

they had not adequate expression unless he raged within; so he had to

shake up wrath over his grievances, that he might be satisfactorily

delivered; and he was judged irreconcilable when he had subsided into the

quietest contempt, from the prospective seat of a country estate, in the

society of a young wife who adored him.

An exile from the sepulchre of that house void of the consecration of

ashes, he walked the streets and became reconciled to street sunlight.

There were no carriage accidents to disturb him with apprehensions.

Besides, the slowness of the postillion Joshua Abnett, which probably

helped to the delay, was warrant of his sureness. And in an accident the

stringy fellow, young Weyburn, could be trusted for giving his attention

to the ladies--especially to the younger of the two, taking him for the

man his elders were at his age. As for Pagnell, a Providence watches over

the Pagnells! Mortals have no business to interfere.

An accident on water would be a frolic to his girl. Swimming was a gift

she had from nature. Pagnell vowed she swam out a mile at Dover when she

was twelve. He had seen her in blue water: he had seen her readiness to

jump to the rescue once when a market-woman, stepping out of a boat to

his yacht on the Tabus, plumped in. She had the two kinds of courage--the

impulsive and the reasoned. What is life to man or woman if we are not to

live it honourably? Men worthy of the name say this. The woman who says

and acts on it is--well, she is fit company for them. But only the woman

of natural courage can say it and act on it.

Would she come by Winchester, or choose the lower road by Salisbury and

Southampton, to smell the sea? perhaps-like her!--dismissing the chariot

and hiring a yacht for a voyage round the coast and up the Thames. She

had an extraordinary love of the sea, yet she preferred soldiers to

sailors. A woman? Never one of them more a woman! But it came of her

quickness to take the colour and share the tastes of the man to whom she

gave herself.

My lord was beginning to distinguish qualities in a character.

He was informed at the mews that Joshua Abnett was on the road still.

Joshua seemed to be a roadster of uncommon unprogressiveness, proper to a

framed picture.

While debating whether to lunch at his loathed club or at a home loathed

more, but open to bright enlivenment any instant, Lord Ormont beheld a

hat lifted and Captain May saluting him. They were near a famous

gambling-house in St. James's Street.

'Good! I am glad to see you,' he said. 'Tell me you know Mr. Morsfield

pretty well. I'm speaking of my affair. He has been trespassing down on

my grounds at Steignton, and I think of taking the prosecution of him

into my own hands. Is he in town?'

'I 've just left his lame devil Cumnock, my lord,' said May, after a

slight grimace. 'They generally run in tandem.'

'Will you let me know?'

'At once, when I hear.'

'You will call on me? Before noon?'

'Any service required?'

'My respects to your wife.'

'Your lordship is very good.'

Captain May bloomed at a civility paid to his wife. He was a smallish,

springy, firm-faced man, devotee of the lady bearing his name and

wielding him. In the days when duelling flourished on our land, frail

women could be powerful.

The earl turned from him to greet Lord Adderwood and a superior officer

of his Profession, on whom he dropped a frigid nod. He held that all but

the rank and file, and a few subalterns, of the service had abandoned him

to do homage to the authorities. The Club he frequented was not his

military Club. Indeed, lunching at any Club in solitariness that day,

with Aminta away from home, was bitter penance. He was rejoiced by Lord

Adderwood's invitation, and hung to him after the lunch; for a horrible

prospect of a bachelor dinner intimated astonishingly that he must have

become unawares a domesticated man.

The solitary later meal of a bachelor was consumed, if the word will suit

a rabbit's form of feeding. He fatigued his body by walking the streets

and the bridge of the Houses of Parliament, and he had some sleep under a

roof where a life like death, or death apeing life, would have seemed to

him the Joshua Abnett, if he had been one to take up images.

Next day he was under the obligation to wait at home till noon. Shortly

before noon a noise of wheels drew him to the window. A young lady, in

whom he recognized Aminta's little school friend, of some name, stepped

out of a fly. He met her in the hall.

She had expected to be welcomed by Aminta, and she was very timid on

finding herself alone with the earl. He, however, treated her as the

harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep

her appointment unless an accident delayed. He had forgotten her name,

but not her favourite pursuit of botany; and upon that he discoursed, and

he was interested, not quite independently of the sentiment of her being

there as a guarantee of Aminta's return. Still he knew his English earth,

and the counties and soil for particular wild-flowers, grasses, mosses;

and he could instruct her and inspire a receptive pupil on the theme of

birds, beasts, fishes, insects, in England and other lands.

He remained discoursing without much weariness till four of the

afternoon. Then he had his reward. The chariot was at the door, and the

mounted figure of Joshua Abnett, on which he cast not a look or a

thought. Aminta was alone. She embraced Selina Collett warmly, and said,

in friendly tones, 'Ah! my lord, you are in advance of me.'

She had dropped Mrs. Pagnell and Mr. Weyburn at two suburban houses;

working upon her aunt's dread of the earl's interrogations as regarded

Mr. Morsfield. She had, she said, chosen to take the journey easily on

her return, and enjoyed it greatly.

My lord studied her manner more than her speech. He would have

interpreted a man's accurately enough. He read hers to signify that she

had really enjoyed her journey, 'made the best of it,' and did not intend

to be humble about her visit to Steignton without his permission; but

that, if hurt at the time, she had recovered her spirits, and was ready

for a shot or two--to be nothing like a pitched battle. And she might

fire away to her heart's content: wordy retorts would not come from him;

he had material surprises in reserve for her. His question concerning

Morsfield knew its answer, and would only be put under pressure.

Comparison of the friends Aminta and Selina was forced by their standing

together, and the representation in little Selina of the inferiority of

the world of women to his Aminta; he thought of several, and splendid

women, foreign and English. The comparison rose sharply now, with

Aminta's novel, airy, homely, unchallengeing assumption of an equal

footing beside her lord, in looks and in tones that had cast off

constraint of the adoring handmaid, to show the full-blown woman,

rightful queen of her half of the dominion. Between the Aminta of then

and now, the difference was marked as between Northern and Southern

women: the frozen-mouthed Northerner and the pearl and rose-nipped

Southerner; those who smirk in dropping congealed monosyllables, and

those who radiantly laugh out the voluble chatter.

Conceiving this to the full in a mind destitute of imagery, but

indicative of the thing as clearly as the planed, unpolished woodwork of

a cabinet in a carpenter's shop, Lord Ormont liked her the better for the

change, though she was not the woman whose absence from his house had

caused him to go mooning half a night through the streets, and though it

forewarned him of a tougher bit of battle, if battle there was to be.

He was a close reader of surfaces. But in truth, the change so notable

came of the circumstance, that some little way down below the surface he

perused, where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect, for the two to

beget a resolution, the battle of the man and the woman had been fought,

and the man beaten.