CHAPTER I

An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long

before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since his

retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous common,

with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along the borders

of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and so gradually

within a stone's-throw or so of the river-side, where he determined not

solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life. It may be seen

that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had thought fit to

loosen his sword-belt. The pony-carriage, however, had been hired for the

very special purpose of helping him to pass in review the lines of what

he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for building, not too

remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes forth intending to

pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing home a wife, the

circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an airy situation, at a

certain distance in hail of the metropolis he worshipped, was enough to

kindle the General's enthusiasm. He would have taken the first he saw,

had it not been for his daughter, who accompanied him, and at the age of

eighteen was about to undertake the management of his house. Fortune,

under Elizabeth Ople's guiding restraint, directed him to an epitome of

the comforts. The place he fell upon is only to be described in the

tongue of auctioneers, and for the first week after taking it he modestly

followed them by terming it bijou. In time, when his own imagination,

instigated by a state of something more than mere contentment, had been

at work on it, he chose the happy phrase, 'a gentlemanly residence.' For

it was, he declared, a small estate. There was a lodge to it, resembling

two sentry-boxes forced into union, where in one half an old couple sat

bent, in the other half lay compressed; there was a backdrive to

discoverable stables; there was a bit of grass that would have appeared a

meadow if magnified; and there was a wall round the kitchen-garden and a

strip of wood round the flower-garden. The prying of the outside world

was impossible. Comfort, fortification; and gentlemanliness made the

place, as the General said, an ideal English home.

The compass of the estate was half an acre, and perhaps a perch or two,

just the size for the hugging love General Ople was happiest in giving.

He wisely decided to retain the old couple at the lodge, whose members

were used to restriction, and also not to purchase a cow, that would have

wanted pasture. With the old man, while the old woman attended to the

bell at the handsome front entrance with its gilt-spiked gates, he

undertook to do the gardening; a business he delighted in, so long as he

could perform it in a gentlemanly manner, that is to say, so long as he

was not overlooked. He was perfectly concealed from the road. Only one

house, and curiously indeed, only one window of the house, and further to

show the protection extended to Douro Lodge, that window an attic,

overlooked him. And the house was empty.

The house (for who can hope, and who should desire a commodious house,

with conservatories, aviaries, pond and boat-shed, and other joys of

wealth, to remain unoccupied) was taken two seasons later by a lady, of

whom Fame, rolling like a dust-cloud from the place she had left,

reported that she was eccentric. The word is uninstructive: it does not

frighten. In a lady of a certain age, it is rather a characteristic of

aristocracy in retirement. And at least it implies wealth.

General Ople was very anxious to see her. He had the sentiment of humble

respectfulness toward aristocracy, and there was that in riches which

aroused his admiration. London, for instance, he was not afraid to say he

thought the wonder of the world. He remarked, in addition, that the

sacking of London would suffice to make every common soldier of the

foreign army of occupation an independent gentleman for the term of his

natural days. But this is a nightmare! said he, startling himself with an

abhorrent dream of envy of those enriched invading officers: for Booty is

the one lovely thing which the military mind can contemplate in the

abstract. His habit was to go off in an explosion of heavy sighs when he

had delivered himself so far, like a man at war with himself.

The lady arrived in time: she received the cards of the neighbourhood,

and signalized her eccentricity by paying no attention to them, excepting

the card of a Mrs. Baerens, who had audience of her at once. By express

arrangement, the card of General Wilson Ople, as her nearest neighbour,

followed the card of the rector, the social head of the district; and the

rector was granted an interview, but Lady Camper was not at home to

General Ople. She is of superior station to me, and may not wish to

associate with me, the General modestly said. Nevertheless he was

wounded: for in spite of himself, and without the slightest wish to

obtrude his own person, as he explained the meaning that he had in him,

his rank in the British army forced him to be the representative of it,

in the absence of any one of a superior rank. So that he was

professionally hurt, and his heart being in his profession, it may be

honestly stated that he was wounded in his feelings, though he said no,

and insisted on the distinction. Once a day his walk for constitutional

exercise compelled him to pass before Lady Camper's windows, which were

not bashfully withdrawn, as he said humorously of Douro Lodge, in the

seclusion of half-pay, but bowed out imperiously, militarily, like a

generalissimo on horseback, and had full command of the road and levels

up to the swelling park-foliage. He went by at a smart stride, with a

delicate depression of his upright bearing, as though hastening to greet

a friend in view, whose hand was getting ready for the shake. This much

would have been observed by a housemaid; and considering his fine figure

and the peculiar shining silveriness of his hair, the acceleration of his

gait was noticeable. When he drove by, the pony's right ear was flicked,

to the extreme indignation of a mettlesome little animal. It ensued in

consequence that the General was borne flying under the eyes of Lady

Camper, and such pace displeasing him, he reduced it invariably at a step

or two beyond the corner of her grounds.

But neither he nor his daughter Elizabeth attached importance to so

trivial a circumstance. The General punctiliously avoided glancing at the

windows during the passage past them, whether in his wild career or on

foot. Elizabeth took a side-shot, as one looks at a wayside tree. Their

speech concerning Lady Camper was an exchange of commonplaces over her

loneliness: and this condition of hers was the more perplexing to General

Ople on his hearing from his daughter that the lady was very

fine-looking, and not so very old, as he had fancied eccentric ladies

must be. The rector's account of her, too, excited the mind. She had

informed him bluntly, that she now and then went to church to save

appearances, but was not a church-goer, finding it impossible to support

the length of the service; might, however, be reckoned in subscriptions

for all the charities, and left her pew open to poor people, and none but

the poor. She had travelled over Europe, and knew the East. Sketches in

watercolours of the scenes she had visited adorned her walls, and a pair

of pistols, that she had found useful, she affirmed, lay on the

writing-desk in her drawing-room. General Ople gathered from the rector

that she had a great contempt for men: yet it was curiously varied with

lamentations over the weakness of women. 'Really she cannot possibly be

an example of that,' said the General, thinking of the pistols.

Now, we learn from those who have studied women on the chess-board, and

know what ebony or ivory will do along particular lines, or hopping, that

men much talked about will take possession of their thoughts; and

certainly the fact may be accepted for one of their moves. But the whole

fabric of our knowledge of them, which we are taught to build on this

originally acute perception, is shattered when we hear, that it is

exactly the same, in the same degree, in proportion to the amount of work

they have to do, exactly the same with men and their thoughts in the case

of women much talked about. So it was with General Ople, and nothing is

left for me to say except, that there is broader ground than the

chessboard. I am earnest in protesting the similarity of the singular

couples on common earth, because otherwise the General is in peril of the

accusation that he is a feminine character; and not simply was he a

gallant officer, and a veteran in gunpowder strife, he was also (and it

is an extraordinary thing that a genuine humility did not prevent it, and

did survive it) a lord and conqueror of the sex. He had done his pretty

bit of mischief, all in the way of honour, of course, but hearts had

knocked. And now, with his bright white hair, his close-brushed white

whiskers on a face burnt brown, his clear-cut features, and a winning

droop of his eyelids, there was powder in him still, if not shot.

There was a lamentable susceptibility to ladies' charms. On the other

hand, for the protection of the sex, a remainder of shyness kept him from

active enterprise and in the state of suffering, so long as indications

of encouragement were wanting. He had killed the soft ones, who came to

him, attracted by the softness in him, to be killed: but clever women

alarmed and paralyzed him. Their aptness to question and require

immediate sparkling answers; their demand for fresh wit, of a kind that

is not furnished by publications which strike it into heads with a

hammer, and supply it wholesale; their various reading; their power of

ridicule too; made them awful in his contemplation.

Supposing (for the inflammable officer was now thinking, and deeply

thinking, of a clever woman), supposing that Lady Camper's pistols were

needed in her defence one night: at the first report proclaiming her

extremity, valour might gain an introduction to her upon easy terms, and

would not be expected to be witty. She would, perhaps, after the

excitement, admit his masculine superiority, in the beautiful old

fashion, by fainting in his arms. Such was the reverie he passingly

indulged, and only so could he venture to hope for an acquaintance with

the formidable lady who was his next neighbour. But the proud society of

the burglarious denied him opportunity.

Meanwhile, he learnt that Lady Camper had a nephew, and the young

gentleman was in a cavalry regiment. General Ople met him outside his

gates, received and returned a polite salute, liked his appearance and

manners and talked of him to Elizabeth, asking her if by chance she had

seen him. She replied that she believed she had, and praised his

horsemanship. The General discovered that he was an excellent sculler.

His daughter was rowing him up the river when the young gentleman shot

by, with a splendid stroke, in an outrigger, backed, and floating

alongside presumed to enter into conversation, during which he managed to

express regrets at his aunt's turn for solitariness. As they belonged to

sister branches of the same Service, the General and Mr. Reginald Roller

had a theme in common, and a passion. Elizabeth told her father that

nothing afforded her so much pleasure as to hear him talk with Mr. Roller

on military matters. General Ople assured her that it pleased him

likewise. He began to spy about for Mr. Roller, and it sometimes occurred

that they conversed across the wall; it could hardly be avoided. A hint

or two, an undefinable flying allusion, gave the General to understand

that Lady Camper had not been happy in her marriage. He was pained to

think of her misfortune; but as she was not over forty, the disaster was,

perhaps, not irremediable; that is to say, if she could be taught to

extend her forgiveness to men, and abandon her solitude. 'If,' he said to

his daughter, 'Lady Camper should by any chance be induced to contract a

second alliance, she would, one might expect, be humanized, and we should

have highly agreeable neighbours.' Elizabeth artlessly hoped for such an

event to take place.

She rarely differed with her father, up to whom, taking example from the

world around him, she looked as the pattern of a man of wise conduct.

And he was one; and though modest, he was in good humour with himself,

approved himself, and could say, that without boasting of success, he was

a satisfied man, until he met his touchstone in Lady Camper.