CHAPTER XXXI

WE HAVE AGAIN TO DEAL WITH THE EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN

The most urgent of Dames is working herself up to a grey squall in her

detestation of imagerial epigrams. Otherwise Gower Woodseer's dash at the

quintessential young man of wealth would prompt to the carrying of it

further, and telling how the tethered flutterer above a 'devil on his

back on a river' was beginning to pull if not drag his withholder and

teaser.

Fleetwood had almost a desire to see the small dot of humanity which drew

the breath from him;--and was indistinguishably the bubbly grin and

gurgle of the nurses, he could swear. He kicked at the bondage to our

common fleshly nature imposed on him by the mother of the little animal.

But there had been a mother to his father: odd movements of a warmish

curiosity brushed him when the cynic was not mounting guard. They were,

it seemed, external--no part of him: like blasts of a wayside furnace

across wintry air. They were, as it chanced, Nature's woman in him

plucking at her separated partner, Custom's man; something of an oriental

voluptuary on his isolated regal seat; and he would suck the pleasures

without a descent into the stale old ruts where Life's convict couple

walk linked to one another, to their issue more.

There was also a cold curiosity to see the male infant such a mother

would have. The grandson of Old Lawless might turn out a rascal,--he

would be no mean one, no coward.

That mother, too, who must have been a touch astonished to find herself a

mother:--Fleetwood laughed a curt bark, and heard rebukes, and pleaded

the marriage-trap to the man of his word; devil and cherub were at the

tug, or say, dog and gentleman, a survival of the schoolboy--that mother,

a girl of the mountains, perhaps wanted no more than smoothing by the

world. 'It is my husband' sounded foolish, sounded freshish,--a new note.

Would she repeat it? The bit of simplicity would bear repeating once.

Gower Woodseer says the creature grows and studies to perfect herself.

She's a good way off that, and may spoil herself in the process; but she

has a certain power. Her donkey obstinacy in refusing compliance, and her

pursuit of 'my husband,' and ability to drench him with ridicule, do not

exhibit the ordinary young female. She stamps her impression on the

people she meets. Her husband is shaken to confess it likewise, despite a

disagreement between them.

He has owned he is her husband: he has not disavowed the consequence.

That fellow, Gower Woodseer, might accuse the husband of virtually lying,

if he by his conduct implied her distastefulness or worse. By heaven! as

felon a deed as could be done. Argue the case anyhow, it should be

undone. Let her but cease to madden. For whatever the rawness of the

woman, she has qualities; and experience of the facile loves of London

very sharply defines her qualities. Think of her as raw, she has the gift

of rareness: forget the donkey obstinacy, her character grasps. In the

grasp of her character, one inclines, and her husband inclines, to become

her advocate. She has only to discontinue maddening.

The wealthy young noble prized any form of rareness wherever it was

visible, having no thought of the purchase of it, except with worship. He

could listen pleased to the talk of a Methodist minister sewing

bootleather. He picked up a roadside tramp and made a friend of him, and

valued the fellow's honesty, submitted to his lectures, pardoned his

insolence. The sight of Carinthia's narrow bedroom and strip of bed over

Sarah Winch's Whitechapel shop had gone a step to drown the bobbing

Whitechapel Countess. At least, he had not been hunted by that gaunt

chalk-quarry ghost since his peep into the room. Own it! she likewise has

things to forgive. Women nurse their larvae of ideas about fair dealing.

But observe the distinction: aid if women understood justice they would

be the first to proclaim, that when two are tied together, the one who

does the other serious injury is more naturally excused than the one

who-tenfold abhorrent if a woman!--calls up the grotesque to extinguish

both.

With this apology for himself, Lord Fleetwood grew tolerant of the person

honourably avowed as his wife. So; therefore, the barrier between him and

his thoughts of her was broken. The thoughts carrying red doses were

selected. Finally, the taste to meet her sprouted. If agreeable, she

could be wooed; if barely agreeable, tormented; if disagreeable, left as

before.

Although it was the hazard of a die, he decided to follow his taste. Her

stay at the castle had kept him long from the duties of his business; and

he could imagine it a grievance if he pleased, but he put it aside.

Alighting at his chief manager's office, he passed through the heated

atmosphere of black-browed, wiry little rebels, who withheld the salute

as they lounged: a posture often preceding the spring in compulsorily

idle workers. He was aware of instinct abroad, an antagonism to the

proprietor's rights. They roused him to stand by them, and were his own

form of instinct, handsomely clothed. It behoved that he should examine

them and the claims against them, to be sure of his ground. He and Mr.

Howell Edwards debated the dispute for an hour; agreeing, partially

differing. There was a weakness on the principle in Edwards. These

fellows fixed to the spot are for compromise too much. An owner of mines

has no steady reckoning of income if the rate of wage is perpetually to

shift according to current, mostly ignorant, versions of the prosperity

of the times. Are we so prosperous? It is far from certain. And if the

rate ascends, the question of easing it down to suit the discontinuance

of prosperity agitating our exchequer--whose demand is for

fixity--perplexes us further.

However, that was preliminary. He and Howell Edwards would dine and

wrangle it out. The earl knew himself a hot disputant after dinner.

Incidentally he heard of Lady Fleetwood as a guest of Mrs. Wythan; and

the circumstance was injurious to him because he stood against Mr.

Wythan's pampering system with his men.

Ines up at the castle smelt of beer, and his eyelids were sottish.

Nothing to do tries the virtue of the best. He sought his excuse in a

heavy lamentation over my lady's unjust suspicion of him,--a known man of

honour, though he did serve his paytron.

The cause of Lady Fleetwood's absence was exposed to her outraged lord,

who had sent the man purely to protect her at this castle, where she

insisted on staying. The suspicion cast on the dreary lusher was the

wife's wild shot at her husband. One could understand a silly woman's

passing terror. Her acting under the dictate of it struck the husband's

ribbed breast as a positive clap of hostilities between them across a

chasm.

His previous placable mood was immediately conceived by him to have been

one of his fits of generosity; a step to a frightful dutiful embrace of

an almost repulsive object. He flung the thought of her back on her

Whitechapel. She returned from that place with smiles, dressed in a

laundry white with a sprinkle of smuts, appearing to him as an adversary

armed and able to strike. There was a blow, for he chewed resentments;

and these were goaded by a remembered shyness of meeting her eyes when he

rounded up the slope of the hill, in view of his castle, where he

supposed she would be awaiting 'my husband.' The silence of her absence

was lively mockery of that anticipation.

Gower came on him sauntering about the grounds.

'You're not very successful down here,' Fleetwood said, without greeting.

'The countess likes the air of this country,' said Gower, evasively,

impertinently, and pointlessly; offensively to the despot employing him

to be either subservient or smart.

'I wish her to leave it.'

'She wishes to see you first.'

'She takes queer measures. I start to-morrow for my yacht at Cardiff.'

There the matter ended; for Fleetwood fell to talking of the mines. At

dinner and after dinner it was the topic, and after Howell Edwards had

departed.

When the man who has a heart will talk of nothing but what concerns his

interests, and the heart is hurt, it may be perceived by a cognizant

friend, that this is his proud mute way of petitioning to have the

tenderer subject broached. Gower was sure of the heart, armoured or

bandaged though it was,--a haunt of evil spirits as well,--and he began:

'Now to speak of me half a minute. You cajoled me out of my Surrey room,

where I was writing, in the vein . . .'

'I've had the scene before me!' the earl interposed. 'Juniper dells and

that tree of the flashing leaf, and that dear old boy, your father, young

as you and me, and saying love of Nature gives us eternal youth. On with

you.'

'I doubted whether I should be of use to you. I told you the amount of

alloy in my motives. A year with you, I have subsistence for ten years

assured to me.'

'Don't be a prosy dog, Gower Woodseer.'

'Will you come over to the Wythans before you go?'

'I will not.'

'You would lengthen your stride across a wounded beast?'

'I see no wound to the beast.'

'You can permit yourself to kick under cover of a metaphor.'

'Tell me what you drive at, Gower.'

'The request is, for you to spare pain by taking one step--an extra

strain on the muscles of the leg. It 's only the leg wants moving.'

'The lady has legs to run away, let them bring her back.'

'Why have me with you, then? I'm useless. But you read us all, see

everything, and wait only for the mood to do the right. You read me, and

I'm not open to everybody. You read the crux of a man like me in my novel

position. You read my admiration of a beautiful woman and effort to keep

honest. You read my downright preference of what most people would call

poverty, and my enjoyment of good cookery and good company. You enlist

among the crew below as one of our tempters. You find I come round to the

thing I like best. Therefore, you have your liking for me; and that's why

you turn to me again, after your natural infidelities. So much for me.

You read this priceless lady quite as clearly. You choose to cloud her

with your moods. She was at a disadvantage, 'arriving in a strange

country, next to friendless; and each new incident bred of a luckless

beginning--I could say more.'

Fleetwood nodded. 'You are read without the words: You read in history,

too, I suppose, that there are two sides to most cases. The loudest is

not often the strongest. However, now the lady shows herself crazed.

That's reading her charitably. Else she has to be taken for a spiteful

shrew, who pretends to suspect anything that's villanous, because she can

hit on no other way of striking.'

'Crazed, is a wide shot and hits half the world,' muttered Gower. 'Lady

Fleetwood had a troubled period after her marriage. She suffered a sort

of kidnapping when she was bearing her child. There's a book by an

Edinburgh doctor might be serviceable to you. It enlightens me. She will

have a distrust of you, as regards the child, until she understands you

by living with you under one roof.'

'Such animals these women are!' Good Lord!' Fleetwood ejaculated. 'I

marry one, and I 'm to take to reading medical books!' He yawned.

'You speak that of women and pretend to love Nature,' said Gower. 'You

hate Nature unless you have it served on a dish by your own cook. That's

the way to the madhouse or the monastery. There we expiate the sin of

sins. A man finds the woman of all women fitted to stick him in the soil,

and trim and point him to grow, and she's an animal for her pains! The

secret of your malady is, you've not yet, though you're on a healthy leap

for the practices of Nature, hopped to the primary conception of what

Nature means. Women are in and of Nature. I've studied them here--had

nothing to do but study them. That most noble of ladies' whole mind was

knotted to preserve her child during her time of endurance up to her

moment of trial. Think it over. It's your one chance of keeping sane.

And expect to hear flat stuff from me while you go on playing tyrant.'

'You certainly take liberties,' Fleetwood's mildest voice remarked.

'I told you I should try you, when you plucked me out of my Surrey nest.'

Fleetwood, passed from a meditative look to a malicious half-laugh. 'You

seem to have studied the "most noble of ladies" latterly rather like a

barrister with a brief for the defendant--plaintiff, if you like!'

'As to that, I'll help you to an insight of a particular weakness of

mine,' said Gower. 'I require to have persons of even the highest value

presented to me on a stage, or else I don't grasp them at all--they 're

simply pictures. I saw the lady; admired, esteemed, sufficiently, I

supposed, until her image appeared to me in the feelings of another. Then

I saw fathoms. No doubt, it was from feeling warmer. I went through the

blood of the other for my impression.'

'Name the other,' said the earl, and his features were sharp.

You can have the name,' Gower answered. 'It was the girl, Madge Winch.'

Fleetwood's hard stare melted to surprise and contemptuous amusement.

'You see the lady to be the "most noble of ladies" through the warming

you get by passing into the feelings of Madge Winch?'

Sarcasm was in the tone, and beneath it a thrill of compassionateness

traversed him and shot a remorseful sting with the vision of those two

young women on the coach at the scene of the fight. He had sentience of

their voices, nigh to hearing them. The forlorn bride's hand given to the

anxious girl behind her gushed an image of the sisterhood binding women

under the pangs they suffer from men. He craved a scourging that he might

not be cursing himself; and he provoked it, for Gower was very sensitive

to a cold breath on the weakness he had laid bare; and when Fleetwood

said: 'You recommend a bath in the feelings of Madge Winch?' the retort

came:--'It might stop you on the road to a cowl.'

Fleetwood put on the mask of cogitation to cover a shudder, 'How?'

'A question of the man or the monk with you, as I fancy I've told you

more than once!'

'You may fancy committing any impertinence and be not much out.'

'The saving of you is that you digest it when you've stewed it down.'

'You try me!'

'I don't impose the connection.'

'No, I take the blame for that.'

They sat in dumbness, fidgeted, sprang to their feet, and lighted bedroom

candles.

Mounting the stairs, Gower was moved to let fall a benevolent look on the

worried son of fortune. 'I warned you I should try you. It ought to be

done politely. If I have to speak a truth I 'm boorish. The divinely

damnable naked truth won't wear ornaments. It's about the same as

pitching a handful of earth.'

'You dirt your hands, hit or miss. Out of this corridor! Into my room,

and spout your worst,' cried the earl.

Gower entered his dressing-room and was bidden to smoke there.

'You're a milder boor when you smoke. That day down in Surrey with the

grand old bootmaker was one of our days, Gower Woodseer! There's no smell

of the boor in him. Perhaps his religion helps him, more than

Nature-worship: not the best for manners. You won't smoke your pipe?--a

cigar? Lay on, then, as hard as you like.'

'You're asking for the debauchee's last luxury--not a correction,' said

Gower, grimly thinking of how his whip might prove effective and punish

the man who kept him fruitlessly out of his bed.

'I want stuff for a place in the memory,' said Fleetwood; and the late

hour, with the profitless talk, made it a stinging taunt.

'You want me to flick your indecision.'

'That's half a hit.'

'I 'm to talk italics, for you to store a smart word or so.'

'True, I swear! And, please, begin.'

'You hang for the Fates to settle which is to be smothered in you, the

man or the lord--and it ends in the monk, if you hang much longer.'

'A bit of a scorpion in his intention,' Fleetwood muttered on a stride.

'I'll tell you this, Gower Woodseer; when you lay on in earnest, your

diction is not so choice. Do any of your remarks apply to Lady

Fleetwood?'

'All should. I don't presume to allude to Lady Fleetwood.'

'She has not charged you to complain?'

'Lady Fleetwood is not the person to complain or condescend to speak of

injuries.'

'She insults me with her insane suspicion.'

A swollen vein on the young nobleman's forehead went to confirm the idea

at the Wythans' that he was capable of mischief. They were right; he was

as capable of villany as of nobility. But he happened to be thanking

Gower Woodseer's whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at Carinthia's

behaviour, while detesting her for causing him to desire it and endure

it, and exonerate his prosy castigator.

He was ignorant of the revenge he had on Gower, whose diction had not

been particularly estimable. In the feebleness of a man vainly courting

sleep, the disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the other through

the remaining hours of darkness, polishing sentences that were natural

spouts of choicest diction; and still the earl's virulent small sneer

rankled. He understood why, after a time. The fervour of advocacy, which

inspires high diction, had been wanting. He had sought more to lash the

earl with his personal disgust and partly to parade his contempt of a

lucrative dependency--than he had felt for the countess. No wonder his

diction was poor. It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort of tongue of a

Master Slender:--flavourless, unsatisfactory, considering its object:

measured to be condemned by its poor achievement. He had nevertheless a

heart to feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading for her,

especially when it ran to its object, as along a shaft of the sun-rays,

from the passionate devotedness of that girl Madge.

He brooded over it till it was like a fire beneath him to drive him from

his bed and across the turfy roller of the hill to the Wythans', in the

front of an autumnal sunrise--grand where the country is shorn of surface

decoration, as here and there we find some unadorned human creature,

whose bosom bears the ball of warmth.