[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D. W. ]

LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA. 

By George Meredith

CONTENTS. 

BOOK 1. I. LOVE AT A SCHOOLII. LADY CHARLOTTEIII. THE TUTORIV. RECOGNITIONV. IN WHICH THE SHADES OF BROWNY AND MATEY ADVANCE AND RETIRE

BOOK 2. VI. IN A MOOD OF LANGUORVII. EXHIBITS EFFECTS OF A PRATTLER'S DOSESVIII. MRS. LAWRENCE FINCHLEYIX. A FLASH OF THE BRUISED WARRIORX. A SHORT PASSAGE IN THE GAME PLAYED BY TWOXI. THE SECRETARY TAKEN AS AN ANTIDOTE

BOOK 3. XII. MORE OF CUPER'S BOYSXIII. WAR AT OLMERXIV. OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDSXV. SHOWING A SECRET FISHED WITHOUT ANGLINGXVI. ALONG TWO ROADS TO STEIGNTON

BOOK 4. XVII. LADY CHARLOTTE'S TRIUMPHXVIII. A SCENE ON THE ROAD BACKXIX. THE PURSUERSXX. AT THE SIGN OF THE JOLLY CRICKETERSXXI. UNDER-CURRENTS IN THE MINDS OF LADY CHARLOTTE AND LORD ORMONTXXII. TREATS OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONTENTION OF BROTHER AND SISTERXXIII. THE ORMONT JEWELS

BOOK 5. XXIV. LOVERS MATEDXXXV. PREPARATIONS FOR A RESOLVEXXVI. VISITS OF FAREWELLXXVII. A MARINE DUETXXVIII. THE PLIGHTINGXXIX. AMINTA TO HER LORDXXX. CONCLUSION

LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA. 

BOOK 1. 

I. LOVE AT A SCHOOLII. LADY CHARLOTTEIII. THE TUTORIV. RECOGNITION

CHAPTER I. 

LOVE AT A SCHOOL

A procession of schoolboys having to meet a procession of schoolgirls onthe Sunday's dead march, called a walk, round the park, could hardly goby without dropping to a hum in its chatter, and the shot of incurioushalf-eyes the petticoated creatures--all so much of a swarm unless youstare at them like lanterns. The boys cast glance because it relievedtheir heaviness; things were lumpish and gloomy that day of the week. The girls, who sped their peep of inquisition before the moment oftransit, let it be seen that they had minds occupied with thoughts oftheir own. 

Our gallant fellows forgot the intrusion of the foreign as soon as it hadpassed. A sarcastic discharge was jerked by chance at the usher and thegoverness--at the old game, it seemed; or why did they keep steeringcolumns to meet? There was no fun in meeting; it would never behappening every other Sunday, and oftener, by sheer toss-penny accident. They were moved like pieces for the pleasure of these two. 

Sometimes the meeting occurred twice during the stupid march-out, when itbecame so nearly vexatious to boys almost biliously oppressed by thetedium of a day merely allowing them to shove the legs along, ironicallynaming it animal excise, that some among them pronounced the shamvariation of monotony to be a bothering nuisance if it was going tohappen every Sunday, though Sunday required diversions. They hated theabsurdity in this meeting and meeting; for they were obliged toanticipate it, as a part of their ignominious weekly performance; andthey could not avoid reflecting on it, as a thing done over again: it hadthem in front and in rear; and it was a kind of broadside mirror, flashing at them the exact opposite of themselves in an identicallysimilar situation, that forced a resemblance. 

Touching the old game, Cuper's fold was a healthy school, owing to thegood lead of the head boy, Matey Weyburn, a lad with a heart for gamesto bring renown, and no thought about girls. His emulation, the fellowsfancied, was for getting the school into a journal of the Sports. Heused to read one sent him by a sporting officer of his name, and talkenviously of public schools, printed whatever they did--a privilege anddignity of which, they had unrivalled enjoyment in the past, days, whenwealth was more jealously exclusive; and he was always prompting forchallenges and saving up to pay expenses; and the fellows were to laughat kicks and learn the art of self-defence--train to rejoice in whipcordmuscles. The son of a tradesman, if a boy fell under the imputation, was worthy of honour with him, let the fellow but show grip andtoughness. He loathed a skulker, and his face was known for any boy whowould own to fatigue or confess himself beaten. "Go to bed, " was one ofhis terrible stings. Matey was good at lessons, too--liked them; likedLatin and Greek; would help a poor stumbler. 

Where he did such good work was in sharpening the fellows to excel. Hekept them to the grindstone, so that they had no time for rusty brooding;and it was fit done by exhortations off a pedestal, like St. Paul at theAthenians, it breathed out of him every day of the week. He carried alight for followers. Whatever he demanded of them, he himself did iteasily. He would say to boys, "You're going to be men, " meaningsomething better than women. There was a notion that Matey despisedgirls. Consequently, never much esteemed, they were in disfavour. Theold game was mentioned only because of a tradition of an usher andgoverness leering sick eyes until they slunk away round a corner andmarried, and set up a school for themselves--an emasculate ending. Comment on it came of a design to show that the whole game had beenexamined dismissed as uninteresting and profitless. 

One of the boys alluded in Matey's presence to their general view uponthe part played by womankind on the stage, confident of a backing; and hehad it, in a way: their noble chief whisked the subject, as not worth adiscussion; but he turned to a younger chap, who said he detested girls, and asked him how about a sister at home; and the youngster coloured, andMatey took him and spun him round, with a friendly tap on the shoulder. 

Odd remarks at intervals caused it to be suspected that he had ideasconcerning girls. They were high as his head above the school; and therethey were left, with Algebra and Homer, for they were not of a sort toinflame; until the boys noticed how he gave up speaking, and fell to hardlooking, though she was dark enough to get herself named Browny. In theabsence of a fair girl of equal height to set beside her, Browny shone. 

She had a nice mouth, ready for a smile at the corners, or so it wasbefore Matey let her see that she was his mark. Now she kept her mouthasleep and her eyes half down, up to the moment of her nearing to pass, when the girl opened on him, as if lifting her eyelids from sleep to thewindow, a full side--look, like a throb, and no disguise--no slyness orboldness either, not a bit of languishing. You might think her heartcame quietly out. 

The look was like the fall of light on the hills from the first ofmorning. It lasted half a minute, and left a ruffle for a good half-hour. Even the younger fellows, without knowing what affected them, weremoved by the new picture of a girl, as if it had been a frontispiece of aromantic story some day to be read. She looked compelled to look, butconsenting and unashamed; at home in submission; just the look that winsobservant boys, shrewd as dogs to read by signs, if they are interestedin the persons. They read Browny's meaning: that Matey had only to comeand snatch her; he was her master, and she was a brave girl, ready to goall over the world with him; had taken to him as he to her, shot forshot. Her taking to the pick of the school was a capital proof that shewas of the right sort. To be sure, she could not much help herself. 

Some of the boys regretted her not being fair. But, as they felt, andsought to explain, in the manner of the wag of a tail, with elbows andeyebrows to one another's understanding, fair girls could never have letfly such look; fair girls are softer, woollier, and when they mean tolook serious, overdo it by craping solemn; or they pinafore a jiggingeagerness, or hoist propriety on a chubby flaxen grin; or else they dartan eye, or they mince and prim and pout, and are sigh-away and dying-ducky, given to girls' tricks. Browny, after all, was the girl forMatey. 

She won a victory right away and out of hand, on behalf of her cloud-and-moon sisters, as against the sunny-meadowy; for slanting intermediatesare not espied of boys in anything: conquered by Browny; they went overto her colour, equal to arguing, that Venus at her mightiest must havebeen dark, or she would not have stood a comparison with the forestGoddess of the Crescent, swanning it through a lake--on the leap for runof the chase--watching the dart, with her humming bow at breast. Thefair are simple sugary thing's, prone to fat, like broad-sops in milk;but the others are milky nuts, good to bite, Lacedaemonian virgins, hardto beat, putting us on our mettle; and they are for heroes, and they canbe brave. So these boys felt, conquered by Browny. A sneaking nativetaste for the forsaken side, known to renegades, hauled at them if herimage waned during the week; and it waned a little, but Sunday restoredand stamped it. 

By a sudden turn the whole upper-school had fallen to thinking of girls, and the meeting on the Sunday was a prospect. One of the day-boardershad a sister in the seminary of Miss Vincent. He was plied to obtaininformation concerning Browny's name and her parents. He had it pat tohand in answer. No parents came to see her; an aunt came now and then. Her aunt's name was not wanted. Browny's name was Aminta Farrell. 

Farrell might pass; Aminta was debated. This female Christian name hada foreign twang; it gave dissatisfaction. Boy after boy had a try at it, with the same effect: you could not speak the name without a pursing ofthe month and a puckering of the nose, beastly to see, as one littlefellow reminded them on a day when Matey was in more than common favour, topping a pitch of rapture, for clean bowling, first ball, middle stumpon the kick, the best bat of the other eleven in a match; and, says thisyoungster, drawling, soon after the cheers and claps had subsided tobusiness, "Aminta. "

He made it funny by saying it as if to himself and the ground, in asubdued way, while he swung his leg on a half-circle, like a skater, hands in pockets. He was a sly young rascal, innocently precociousenough, and he meant no disrespect either to Browny or to Matey; but hehad to run for it, his delivery of the name being so like what was in thebreasts of the senior fellows, as to the inferiority of any Aminta to oldMatey, that he set them laughing; and Browny was on the field, to reprovethem, left of the tea-booth, with her school-mates, part of her headunder a scarlet parasol. 

A girl with such a name as Aminta might not be exactly up to the standardof old Matey, still, if he thought her so and she had spirit, the schoolwas bound to subscribe; and that look of hers warranted her for takingher share in the story, like the brigand's wife loading gnus for himwhile he knocks over the foremost carabineer on the mountain-ledge below, who drops on his back with a hellish expression. 

Browny was then clearly seen all round, instead of only front-face, as on the Sunday in the park, when fellows could not spy backward afterpassing. The pleasure they had in seeing her all round involved no freshstores of observation, for none could tell how she tied her back-hair, which was the question put to them by a cynic of a boy, said to be queasywith excess of sisters. They could tell that she was tall for a girl, or tallish--not a maypole. She drank a cup of tea, and ate a slice ofbread-and-butter; no cake. 

She appeared undisturbed when Matey, wearing his holiday white ducks, and all aglow, entered the booth. She was not expected to faint, onlyshe stood for the foreign Aminta more than for their familiar Browny inhis presence. Not a sign of the look which had fired the school did shethrow at him. Change the colour and you might compare her to a lobsterfixed on end, with a chin and no eyes. Matey talked to Miss Vincent upto the instant of his running to bat. She would have liked to guess howhe knew she had a brother on the medical staff of one of the regiments inIndia: she asked him twice, and his cheeks were redder than cricket inthe sun. He said he read all the reports from India, and asked herwhether she did not admire Lord Ormont, our general of cavalry, whosecharge at the head of fifteen hundred horse in the last great battleshattered the enemy's right wing, and gave us the victory--rolled him upand stretched him out like a carpet for dusting. Miss Vincent exclaimedthat it was really strange, now, he should speak of Lord Ormont, for shehad been speaking of him herself in morning to one of her young ladies, whose mind was bent on his heroic deeds. Matey turned his face to thegroup of young ladies, quite pleased that one of them loved his hero; andhe met a smile here and there--not from Miss Aminta Farrell. She was acomplete disappointment to the boys that day. "Aminta" was mouthed atany allusions to her. 

So, she not being a match for Matey, they let her drop. The flush thathad swept across the school withered to a dry recollection, except whenon one of their Sunday afternoons she fanned the desert. Lord Ormontbecame the subject of inquiry and conversation; and for his own sake--notaltogether to gratify Matey. The Saturday autumn evening's walk home, after the race out to tea at a distant village, too late in the year forcricket, too early for regular football, suited Matey, going at longstrides, for the story of his hero's adventures; and it was nicer thantalk about girls, and puzzling. Here lay a clear field; for he had theright to speak of a cavalry officer: his father died of wounds in theservice, and Matey naturally intended to join the Dragoons; if he couldget enough money to pay for mess, he said, laughing. Lord Ormont was hispattern of a warrior. We had in him a lord who cast off luxury to livelike a Spartan when under arms, with a passion to serve his country andsustain the glory of our military annals. He revived respect for thenoble class in the hearts of Englishmen. He was as good an authority onhorseflesh as any Englishman alive; the best for the management ofcavalry: there never was a better cavalry leader. The boys had come toknow that Browny admired Lord Ormont, so they saw a double reason whyMatey should; and walking home at his grand swing in the October dusk, their school hero drew their national hero closer to them. 

Every fellow present was dead against the usher, Mr. Shalders, when hetook advantage of a pause to strike in with his "Murat!"

He harped on Murat whenever he had a chance. Now he did it for thepurpose of casting eclipse upon Major-General Lord Ormont, the son andgrandson of English earls; for he was an earl by his title, and Murat wasthe son of an innkeeper. Shalders had to admit that Murat might haveserved in the stables when a boy. Honour to Murat, of course, forclimbing the peaks! Shalders, too, might interest him in militaryaffairs and Murat; he did no harm, and could be amusing. It rather addedto his amount of dignity. It was rather absurd, at the same time, for anEnglish usher to be spouting and glowing about a French general, who hadbeen a stable-boy and became a king, with his Murat this, Murat that, andhurrah Murat in red and white and green uniform, tunic and breeches, anda chimney-afire of feathers; and how the giant he was charged at the headof ten thousand horse, all going like a cataract under a rainbow over therocks, right into the middle of the enemy and through; and he a sparkahead, and the enemy streaming on all sides flat away, as you see puffedsmoke and flame of a bonfire. That was fun to set boys jigging. Nowonder how in Russia the Cossacks feared him, and scampered from theshadow of his plumes--were clouds flying off his breath! That was afine warm picture for the boys on late autumn or early winter evenings, Shalders warming his back at the grate, describing bivouacs in the snow. They liked well enough to hear him when he was not opposing Matey andLord Ormont. He perked on his toes, and fetched his hand from behind himto flourish it when his Murat came out. The speaking of his name clappedhim on horseback--the only horseback he ever knew. He was as fond ofgiving out the name Murat as you see in old engravings of tobacco-shopsmen enjoying the emission of their whiff of smoke. 

Matey was not inclined to class Lord Ormont alongside Murat, a first-ratehorseman and an eagle-eye, as Shalders rightly said; and Matey agreedthat forty thousand cavalry under your orders is a toss above fifteenhundred; but the claim for a Frenchman of a superlative merit to swallowand make nothing of the mention of our best cavalry generals irritatedhim to call Murat a mountebank. 

Shalders retorted, that Lord Ormont was a reprobate. 

Matey hoped he would some day write us an essay on the morale ofillustrious generals of cavalry; and Shalders told him he did not advancehis case by talking nonsense. 

Each then repeated to the boys a famous exploit of his hero. Theirverdict was favourable to Lord Ormont. Our English General learnt ridingbefore he was ten years old, on the Pampas, where you ride all day, andcook your steak for your dinner between your seat and your saddle. Herode with his father and his uncle, Muncastle, the famous traveller, intoParaguay. He saw fighting before he was twelve. Before he was twenty hewas learning outpost duty in the Austrian frontier cavalry. He served inthe Peninsula, served in Canada, served in India, volunteered for anychance of distinction. No need to say much of his mastering the pickedIndian swordsmen in single combat: he knew their trick, and was quick tosave his reins when they made a dash threatening the headstroke--aboutthe same as disabling sails in old naval engagements. 

That was the part for the officer; we are speaking of the General. Forthat matter, he had as keen an eye for the field and the moment for hisarm to strike as any Murat. One world have liked to see Murat matchedagainst the sabre of a wily Rajpoot! As to campaigns and strategy, LordOrmont's head was a map. What of Murat and Lord Ormont horse to horseand sword to sword? Come, imagine that, if you are for comparisons. Andif Lord Ormont never headed a lot of thousands, it does not prove he wasunable. Lord Ormont was as big as Murat. More, he was a Christian tohis horses. How about Murat in that respect? Lord Ormont cared for hismen: did Murat so particularly much? And he was as cunning frontingodds, and a thunderbolt at the charge. Why speak of him in the past?He is an English lord, a lord by birth, and he is alive; things may beexpected of him to-morrow or next day. 

Shalders here cut Matey short by meanly objecting to that. 

"Men are mortal, " he said, with a lot of pretended stuff, deploring ourhuman condition in the elegy strain; and he fell to reckoning the Englishhero's age--as that he, Lord Ormont, had been a name in the world for thelast twenty-five years or more. The noble lord could be no chicken. Weare justified in calculating, by the course of nature, that his term ofactivity is approaching, or has approached, or, in fact, has drawn to itsclose. 

"If your estimate, sir, approaches to correctness, " rejoined Matey--tellingly, his comrades thought. 

"Sixty, as you may learn some day, is a serious age, Matthew Weyburn. "

Matey said he should be happy to reach it with half the honours LordOrmont had won. 

"Excepting the duels, " Shalders had the impudence to say. 

"If the cause is a good one!" cried Matey. 

"The cause, or Lord Ormont has been maligned, was reprehensible in theextremest degree. " Shalders cockhorsed on his heels to his toes and backwith a bang. 

"What was the cause, if you please, sir?" a boy, probably naughty, inquired; and as Shalders did not vouchsafe a reply, the bigger boysknew. 

They revelled in the devilish halo of skirts on the whirl encircling LordOrmont's laurelled head. 

That was a spark in their blood struck from a dislike of the tone assumedby Mr. Shalders to sustain his argument; with his "men are mortal, " andtalk of a true living champion as "no chicken, " and the wordy drawl over"justification for calculating the approach of a close to a term ofactivity"--in the case of a proved hero!

Guardians of boys should make sure that the boys are on their side beforethey raise the standard of virtue. Nor ought they to summon morality forsupport of a polemic. Matey Weyburn's object of worship rode superior toa morality puffing its phrasy trumpet. And, somehow, the sacrifice of anenormous number of women to Lord Ormont's glory seemed natural; the verything that should be, in the case of a first-rate military hero andcommander--Scipio notwithstanding. It brightens his flame, and it isagreeable to them. That is how they come to distinction: they have noother chance; they are only women; they are mad to be singed, and theyrush pelf-mall, all for the honour of the candle. 

Shortly after this discussion Matey was heard informing some of thebigger fellows he could tell them positively that Lord Ormont's age wasunder fifty-four--the prime of manhood, and a jolly long way off death!The greater credit to him, therefore, if he bad been a name in the worldfor anything like the period Shalders insinuated, "to get himself out ofa sad quandary. " Matey sounded the queer word so as to fix it stickingto the usher, calling him Mr. Peter Bell Shalders, at which the boysroared, and there was a question or two about names, which belonged toverses, for people caring to read poems. 

To the joy of the school he displayed a greater knowledge of Murat thanShalders had: named the different places in Europe where Lord Ormont andMurat were both springing to the saddle at the same time--one a Marshal, the other a lieutenant; one a king, to be off his throne any day, theother a born English nobleman, seated firm as fate. And he accused Muratof carelessness of his horses, ingratitude to his benefactor, circussystyle. Shalders went so far as to defend Murat for attending to theaffairs of his kingdom, instead of galloping over hedges and ditches toswell Napoleon's ranks in distress. Matey listened to him there; hebecame grave; he nodded like a man saying, "I suppose we must examineit in earnest. " The school was damped to hear him calling it a nicequestion. Still, he said he thought he should have gone; and thatsettled it. 

The boys inclined to speak contemptuously of Shalders. Matey worldnot let them; he contrasted Shalders with the other ushers, who hadno enthusiasms. He said enthusiasms were salt to a man; and he likedShalders for spelling at his battles and thinking he understood them, andadmiring Murat, and leading Virgil and parts of Lucan for his recreation. He said he liked the French because they could be splendidlyenthusiastic. He almost lost his English flavour when he spoke indownright approval of a small French fellow, coming from Orthez, near thePyrenees, for senselessly dashing and kicking at a couple of English whojeered to hear Orthez named--a place trampled under Wellington's heels, on his march across conquered France. The foreign little cockerel was aclever lad, learning English fast, and anxious to show he had got hold ofthe English trick of not knowing when he was beaten. His French vanityinsisted on his engaging the two, though one of them stood aside, and theother let him drive his nose all the compass round at a poker fist. Whatwas worse, Matey examined these two, in the interests of fair play, as ifhe doubted. 

Little Emile Grenat set matters right with his boast to vindicate hiscountry against double the number, and Matey praised him, though he knewEmile had been floored without effort by the extension of a single fist. He would not hear the French abused; he said they were chivalrous, theywere fine fellows, topping the world in some things; his father hadfought them and learnt to respect them. Perhaps his father had learnt torespect Jews, for there was a boy named Abner, he protected, who smeltJewish; he said they ran us Gentiles hard, and carried big guns. 

Only a reputation like Matey's could have kept his leadership from achallenge. Joseph Masner, formerly a rival, went about hinting andshrugging; all to no purpose, you find boys born to be chiefs. On theday of the snow-fight Matey won the toss, and chose J. Masner first pick;and Masner, aged seventeen and some months, big as a navvy, lumberedacross to him and took his directions, proud to stand in the frontcentre, at the head of the attack, and bear the brunt--just what he wasfit for, Matey gave no offence by choosing, half-way down the list, hislittle French friend, whom he stationed beside himself, rather off hisbattle-front, as at point at cricket, not quite so far removed. Two boysat his heels piled ammunition. The sides met midway of a marshy ground, where a couple of flat and shelving banks, formed for a broad new road, good for ten abreast--counting a step of the slopes--ran transverse; andthe order of the game was to clear the bank and drive the enemy on to thefrozen ditch-water. Miss Vincent heard in the morning from the sisterof little Collett of the great engagement coming off; she was moved bycuriosity, and so the young ladies of her establishment beheld the younggentlemen of Mr. Cuper's in furious division, and Matey's sore aim andhard fling, equal to a slinger's, relieving J. Masner of a foremostassailant with a spanker on the nob. They may have fancied him cleverfor selecting a position rather comfortable, as things went, until theyhad sight of him with his little French ally and two others, ammunitionboys to rear, descending one bank and scaling another right into theflank of the enemy, when his old tower of a Masner was being heavilypressed by numbers. Then came a fight hand to hand, but the enemy stoodin a clamp; not to split like a nut between crackers, they gave way androlled, backing in lumps from bank to ditch. 

The battle was over before the young ladies knew. They wondered to seeMatey shuffling on his coat and hopping along at easy bounds to pay hisrespects to Miss Vincent, near whom was Browny; and this time he andBrowny talked together. He then introduced little Emile to her. Shespoke of Napoleon at Brienne, and complimented Matey. He said he wascavalry, not artillery, that day. They talked to hear one another'svoices. By constantly appealing to Miss Vincent he made theirconversation together seem as under her conduct; and she took a slide onsome French phrases with little Emile. Her young ladies looked shrinkingand envious to see the fellows wet to the skin, laughing, wrestling, linking arms; and some, who were clown-faced with a wipe of scarlet, getting friends to rub their cheeks with snow, all of them happy aslarks in air, a big tea steaming for them at the school. Those girlshad a leap and a fail of the heart, glad to hug themselves in their dryclothes, and not so warm as the dripping boys were, nor so madly fond oftheir dress-circle seats to look on at a play they were not allowed evento desire to share. They looked on at blows given and taken in goodtemper, hardship sharpening jollity. The thought of the differencebetween themselves and the boys must have been something like the tightband--call it corset--over the chest, trying to lift and stretch fordraughts of air. But Browny's feeling naturally was, that all thisadvantage for the boys came of Matey Weyburn's lead. 

Miss Vincent with her young ladies walked off in couples, orderly chicks, the usual Sunday march of their every day. The school was coolish tothem; one of the fellows hummed bars of some hymn tune, rather fasterthan church. And next day there was a murmur of letters passing betweenMatey and Browny regularly, little Collett for postman. Anybody mighthave guessed it, but the report spread a feeling that girls are not theentirely artificial beings or flat targets we suppose. The school beganto brood, like air deadening on oven-heat. Winter is hen-mother to theidea of love in schools, if the idea has fairly entered. Various girls ofdifferent colours were selected by boys for animated correspondence, thatnever existed and was vigorously prosecuted, with efforts to represscontempt of them in courtship for their affections. They found theirpart of it by no means difficult when they imagined the lines withoutthe words, or, better still, the letter without the lines. A holysatisfaction belonged to the sealed thing; the breaking of the seal andinspection of the contents imposed perplexity on that sentiment. Theythought of certain possible sentences Matey and Browny would exchange;but the plain, conceivable, almost visible, outside of the letter had astronger spell for them than the visionary inside. This fanciedcontemplation of the love-letter was reversed in them at once by thestartling news of Miss Vincent's discovery and seizure of the sealedthing, and her examination of the burden it contained. Then their thirstwas for drama--to see, to drink every wonderful syllable those lovers hadwritten. 

Miss Vincent's hand was upon one of Matey's letters. She had come acrossthe sister of little Collett, Selina her name was, carrying it. She sawnothing of the others. Aminta was not the girl to let her. Nor did Mr. Cuper dare demand from Matey a sight or restitution of the young lady'shalf of the correspondence. He preached heavily at Matey; deplored thatthe boy he most trusted, etc. --the school could have repeated it withouthearing. We know the master's lecture in tones--it sings up to singdown, and touches nobody. As soon as he dropped to natural talk, andspoke of his responsibility and Miss Vincent's, Matey gave the word ofa man of honour that he would not seek to communicate farther with MissFarrell at the school. 

Now there was a regular thunder-hash among the boys on the rare occasionswhen they met the girls. All that Matey and Browny were forbidden towrite they looked--much like what it had been before the discovery;and they dragged the boys back from promised instant events. It was, nevertheless, a heaving picture, like the sea in the background of amarine piece at the theatre, which rouses anticipations of storm, andshows readiness. Browny's full eyebrow sat on her dark eye like a cloudof winter noons over the vanishing sun. Matey was the prisoner gazing atlight of a barred window and measuring the strength of the bars. Shelooked unhappy, but looked unbeaten more. Her look at him fed the schoolon thoughts of what love really is, when it is not fished out of booksand poetry. For though she was pale, starved and pale, they could seeshe was never the one to be sighing; and as for him, he looked grounddower all to edge. However much they puzzled over things, she made themfeel they were sure, as to her, that she drove straight and meant blood, the life or death of it: all her own, if need be, and confidence in thecaptain she had chosen. She could have been imagined saying, There is astorm, but I am ready to embark with you this minute. 

That sign of courage in real danger ennobled her among girls. The nameBrowny was put aside for a respectful Aminta. Big and bright events tocome out in the world were hinted, from the love of such a couple. Theboys were not ashamed to speak the very word love. How he does love thatgirl! Well, and how she loves him! She did, but the boys had to beseeing her look at Matey if they were to put the girl on some balancedequality with a fellow she was compelled to love. It seemed to them thathe gave, and that she was a creature carried to him, like driftwood alongthe current of the flood, given, in spite of herself. When they sawthose eyes of hers they were impressed with an idea of her as a voluntarygiver too; pretty well the half to the bargain; and it confused theirnotion of feminine inferiority. They resolved to think her anexceptional girl, which, in truth, they could easily do, for nonebut an exceptional girl could win Matey to love her. 

Since nothing appeared likely to happen at the school, they speculatedupon what would occur out in the world, and were assisted to conjecture, by a rumour, telling of Aminta Farrell's aunt as a resident at Dover. Those were days when the benevolently international M. De Porquet hadbegun to act as interpreter to English schools in the portico of theFrench language; and under his guidance it was asked, in contempt of theanswer, Combien de postes d'ici a Douvres? But, accepting the rumour asa piece of information, the answer became important. Ici was twentymiles to the north-west of London. How long would it take Matey to reachDonvres? Or at which of the combien did he intend to waylay and awaywith Aminta? The boys went about pounding at the interrogative Frenchphrase in due sincerity, behind the burlesque of traveller botheringcoachman. Matey's designs could be finessed only by a knowledge of hischaracter: that he was not the fellow to give up the girl he had takento; and impediments might multiply, but he would bear them down. Three days before the break-up of the school another rumour came tearingthrough it: Aminta's aunt had withdrawn her from Miss Vincent's. And nowrose the question, two-dozen-mouthed, Did Matey know her address atDouvres? His face grew stringy and his voice harder, and his eyes readyto burst from a smother of fire. All the same, he did his work: he wasthe good old fellow at games, considerate in school affairs, kind to theyoungsters; he was heard to laugh. He liked best the company of hislittle French friend from Orthez, over whose shoulder his hand was laidsometimes as they strolled and chatted in two languages. He really wenta long way to make French fellows popular, and the boys were sorry thatlittle Emile was off to finish his foreign education in Germany. HisEnglish was pretty good, thanks to Matey. He went away, promising toremember Old England, saying he was French first, and a Briton next. He had lots of plunk; which accounted for Matey's choice of him as afriend among the juniors. 

CHAPTER II. 

LADY CHARLOTTE

Love-passages at a school must produce a ringing crisis if they are toleave the rosy impression which spans the gap of holidays. Neither Mateynor Browny returned to their yoke, and Cuper's boys recollected thecouple chiefly on Sundays. They remembered several of Matey's doings andsayings: his running and high leaping, his bowling, a maxim or two ofhis, and the tight strong fellow he was; also that the damsel's colourdistinctly counted for dark. She became nearly black in their minds. Well, and Englishmen have been known to marry Indian princesses: somehave a liking for negresses. There are Nubians rather pretty inpictures, if you can stand thick lips. Her colour does not matter, provided the girl is of the right sort. The exchange of letters betweenthe lovers was mentioned. The discovery by Miss Vincent of their coolhabit of corresponding passed for an incident; and there it remained, stiff as a poet, not being heated by a story to run. So the foregoneexcitement lost warmth, and went out like a winter sun at noon or a matchlighted before the candle is handy. 

Lord Ormont continued to be a subject of discussion from time to time, for he was a name in the newspapers; and Mr. Shalders had been worked byMatey Weyburn into a state of raw antagonism at the mention of thegallant General; he could not avoid sitting in judgement on him. 

According to Mr. Shalders, the opinion of all thoughtful people inEngland was with John Company and the better part of the Press to condemnLord Ormont in his quarrel with the Commissioner of one of the Indianprovinces, who had the support of the Governor of his Presidency and ofthe Viceroy; the latter not unreservedly, yet ostensibly inclined tocondemn a too prompt military hand. The Gordian knot of a difficulty cutis agreeable in the contemplation of an official chief hesitating to usethe sword and benefiting by having it done for him. Lord Ormontcertainly cut the knot. 

Mr. Shalders was cornered by the boys, coming at him one after anotherwithout a stop, vowing it was the exercise of a military judgement upona military question at a period of urgency, which had brought about thequarrel with the Commissioner and the reproof of the Governor. Hebetrayed the man completely cornered by generalizing. He said--

"We are a civilian people; we pride ourselves on having civilianmethods. "

"How can that be if we have won India with guns and swords?"

"But that splendid jewel for England's tiara won, " said he (and he mightas well have said crown), "we are bound to sheathe the sword and governby the Book of the Law. "

"But if they won't have the Book of the Law!"

"They knew the power behind it. "

"Not if we knock nothing harder than the Book of the Law upon theirskulls. "

"Happily for the country, England's councils are not directed by boys!"

"Ah, but we're speaking of India, Mr. Shalders. "

"You are presuming to speak of an act of insubordination committed by amilitary officer under civilian command. "

"What if we find an influential prince engaged in conspiracy?"

"We look for proof. "

"Suppose we have good proof?"

"We summon him to exonerate himself. "

"No; we mount and ride straight away into his territory, spot thetreason, deport him, and rule in his place!"

It was all very well for Mr. Shalders to say he talked to boys; he wascornered again, as his shrug confessed. 

The boys asked among themselves whether he would have taken the same viewif his Murat had done it!

These illogical boys fought for Matey Weyburn in their defence of LordOrmont. Somewhere, they wee sure, old Matey was hammering to the sameend--they could hear him. Thought of him inspired them to unwontedargumentative energy, that they might support his cause; and scatter thegloomy prediction of the school, as going to the dogs now Matey had left. 

The subject provoked everywhere in Great Britain a division similar tothat between master and boys at Cuper's establishment: one party for ourmodern English magisterial methods with Indians, the other for thedecisive Oriental at the early time, to suit their native tastes; and theBook of the Law is to be conciliatingly addressed to their sentiments bya benign civilizing Power, or the sword is out smartly at the hint of awarning to protect the sword's conquests. Under one aspect we appearpotteringly European; under another, drunk of the East. 

Lord Ormont's ride at the head of two hundred horsemen across a stretchof country including hill and forest, to fall like a bolt from the blueon the suspected Prince in the midst of his gathering warriors, was ahandsome piece of daring, and the high-handed treatment of the Prince washeld by his advocates to be justified by the provocation, and the result. He scattered an unprepared body of many hundreds, who might haveenveloped him, and who would presumptively have stood their ground, hadthey not taken his handful to be the advance of regiments. These are thedeeds that win empires! the argument in his favour ran. Are they of acharacter to maintain empires? the counter-question was urged. Men of adeliberative aspect were not wanting in approval of the sharp and summaryof the sword in air when we have to deal with Indians. They chose toregard it as a matter of the dealing with Indians, and put aside thequestion of the contempt of civil authority. 

Counting the cries, Lord Ormont won his case. Festival aldermen, smokingclubmen, buckskin squires, obsequious yet privately excitable tradesmen, sedentary coachmen and cabmen, of Viking descent, were set to think likeboys about him: and the boys, the women, and the poets formed a tipsychorea. Journalists, on the whole, were fairly halved, as regardednumbers. In relation to weight, they were with the burgess and thepresbyter; they preponderated heavily in the direction of England'sburgess view of all cases disputed between civilian and soldier. But that was when the peril was over. 

Admirers of Lord Ormont enjoyed a perusal of a letter addressed by him tothe burgess's journal; and so did his detractors. The printing of it wasan act of editorial ruthlessness. The noble soldier had no mould in hisintellectual or educational foundry for the casting of sentences; and theeditor's leading type to the letter, without further notice of thewriter--who was given a prominent place or scaffolding for the executionof himself publicly, if it pleased him to do that thing--tickled thecritical mind. Lord Ormont wrote intemperately. 

His Titanic hurling of blocks against critics did no harm to an enemyskilled in the use of trimmer weapons, notably the fine one of lettingbig missiles rebound. He wrote from India, with Indian heat--"curry andcapsicums, " it was remarked. He dared to claim the countenance of theCommander-in-chief of the Army of India for an act disapproved by theIndia House. Other letters might be on their way, curryer than thepreceding, his friends feared; and might also be malevolently printed, similarly commissioning the reverberation of them to belabour his namebefore the public. Admirers were still prepared to admire; but aldermennot at the feast, squire-archs not in the saddle or at the bottle, somefew of the juvenile and female fervent, were becoming susceptible to afrosty critical tone in the public pronunciation of Lord Ormont's namesince the printing of his letter and the letters it called forth. Noneof them doubted that his case was good. The doubt concerned the effecton it of his manner of pleading it. And if he damaged his case, hecompromised his admirers. Why, the case of a man who has cleverly won abold stroke for his country must be good, as long as he holds his tongue. A grateful country will right him in the end: he has only to wait, andnot so very long. "This I did: now examine it. " Nothing more needed tobe said by him, if that. 

True, he has a temper. It is owned that he is a hero. We take him withhis qualities, impetuosity being one, and not unsuited to his arm of theservice, as be has shown. If his temper is high, it is an element of acharacter proved heroical. So has the sun his blotches, and we believethat they go to nourish the luminary, rather than that they are a diseaseof the photosphere. 

Lord Ormont's apologists had to contend with anecdotes and dicta nowpouring in from offended Britons, for illustration of an impetuosityfit to make another Charley XII. Of Sweden--a gratuitous Coriolanushaughtiness as well, new among a people accustomed socially to bow thehead to their nobles, and not, of late, expecting a kick for their pains. Newspapers wrote of him that, "a martinet to subordinates, he was knownfor the most unruly of lieutenants. " They alluded to current sayings, as that he "habitually took counsel of his horse on the field when amovement was entrusted to his discretion. " Numerous were thejournalistic sentences running under an air of eulogy of the lordlywarrior purposely to be tripped, and producing their damnable effect, despite the obvious artifice. The writer of the letter from Bombay, signed Ormont, was a born subject for the antithetical craftsmen'stricky springes. 

He was, additionally, of infamous repute for morale in burgessestimation, from his having a keen appreciation of female beauty anda prickly sense of masculine honour. The stir to his name rousedpestilential domestic stories. In those days the aristocrat stillclaimed licence, and eminent soldier-nobles, comporting themselves asimitative servants of their god Mars, on the fields of love and war, stood necessarily prepared to vindicate their conduct as the field of themeasured paces, without deeming themselves bounden to defend the coursethey took. Our burgess, who bowed head to his aristocrat, and hired thesoldier to fight for him, could not see that such mis-behaviournecessarily ensued. Lord Ormont had fought duels at home and abroad. His readiness to fight again, and against odds, and with a totally unusedweapon, was exhibited by his attack on the Press in the columns of thePress. It wore the comical face to the friends deploring it, whichbelongs to things we do that are so very like us. They agreed with hisdevoted sister, Lady Charlotte Eglett, as to the prudence of keeping himout of England for a time, if possible. 

At the first perusal of the letter, Lady Charlotte quitted her place inLeicestershire, husband, horses, guests, the hunt, to scour across avacant London and pick up acquaintances under stress to be spots there inthe hunting season, with them to gossip for counsel on the subject of"Ormont's hand-grenade, " and how to stop and extinguish a second. Shewas a person given to plain speech. "Stinkpot" she called it, whenacknowledging foul elements in the composition and the harm it did tothe unskilful balist. Her view of the burgess English imaged a mightymonster behind bars, to whom we offer anything but our hand. As soon ashe gets held of that he has you; he won't let it loose with flesh on thebones. We must offend him--we can't be man or woman without offendinghis tastes and his worships; but while we keep from contact (i. E. Intercommunication) he may growl, he is harmless. Witness the manyoccasions when her brother offended worse, and had been unworried, onlygrowled at, and distantly, not in a way to rouse concern; and at the neatreview, or procession into the City, or public display of any sort, Ormont had but to show himself, he was the popular favourite immediately. He had not committed the folly of writing a letter to a newspaper then. 

Lady Charlotte paid an early visit to the office of the great Londonsolicitor, Arthur Abner, who wielded the law as an instrument ofprotection for countless illustrious people afflicted by what they stiror attract in a wealthy metropolis. She went simply to gossip of herbrother's affairs with a refreshing man of the world, not given tocircumlocutions, and not afraid of her: she had no deeper object;but fancying she heard the clerk, on his jump from the stool, inform herthat Mr. Abner was out, "Out?" she cried, and rattled the room, thumping, under knitted brows. "Out of town?" For a man of business takingholidays, when a lady craves for gossip, disappointed her faith in him ascruelly as the shut-up, empty inn the broken hunter knocking at a hollowdoor miles off home. 

Mr. Abner, hatted and gloved and smiling, came forth. "Going out, theman meant, Lady Charlotte. At your service for five minutes. "

She complimented his acuteness, in the remark, "You see I've only come tochat, " and entered his room. 

He led her to her theme: "The excitement is pretty well over. "

"My brother's my chief care--always was. I'm afraid he'll bepitchforking at it again, and we shall have another blast. That letterought never to have been printed. That editor deserves the horsewhip forletting it appear. If he prints a second one I shall treat him as apersonal enemy. "

"Better make a friend of him. "

"How?"

"Meet him at my table. "

She jumped an illumined half-about on her chair. "So I will, then. Whatare the creature's tastes?"

"Hunts, does he?" The editor rose in her mind from the state of neuterto something of a man. "I recollect an article in that paper on theOrmont duel. I hate duelling, but I side with my brother. I had tolaugh, though. Luckily, there's no woman on hand at present, as far asI know. Ormont's not likely to be hooked by garrison women or blacks. Those coloured women--some of ours too--send the nose to the clouds;not a bad sign for health. And there are men like that old CardinalGuicciardini tells of... Hum! Ormont's not one of them. I hope he'llstay in India till this blows over, or I shall be hearing ofprovocations. "

"You have seen the Duke?"

She nodded. Her reserve was a summary of the interview. "Kind, as healways is, " she said. "Ormont has no chance of employment unless there'sa European war. They can't overlook him in case of war. He'll have topray for that. "

"Let us hope we shan't get it. "

"My wish; but I have to think of my brother. If he's in England with noemployment, he's in a mess with women and men both. He kicks if he'slaid aside to rust. He has a big heart. That's what I said: all hewants is to serve his country. If you won't have war, give him Gibraltaror Malta, or command of one of our military districts. The South-eastern'll be vacant soon. He'd like to be Constable of the Castle, and have aneye on France. "

"I think he's fond of the French?"

"Loves the French. Expects to have to fight them all the same. He loveshis country best. Here's the man everybody's abusing!"

"I demur, my lady. I was dining the other day with a client of mine, anda youngster was present who spoke of Lord Ormont in a way I should likeyou to have heard. He seemed to know the whole of Lord Ormont's career, from the time of the ride to Paraguay up to the capture of the plottingRajah. He carried the table. "

"Good boy! We must turn to the boys for justice, then. Name your dayfor this man, this editor. "

"I will see him. You shall have the day to-night. "

Lady Charlotte and the editor met. She was racy, he anecdotal. Stag, fox, and hare ran before them, over fields and through drawing-rooms: thescent was rich. They found that they could talk to one another as theythought; that he was not the Isle-bound burgess, nor she the posturedEnglish great lady; and they exchanged salt, without which your currentscandal is of exhausted savour. They enjoyed the peculiar novel relishof it, coming from a social pressman and a dame of high society. Thedifferent hemispheres became known as one sphere to these birds of broadwing convening in the upper blue above a quartered carcase earth. 

A week later a letter, the envelope of a bulky letter in Lord Ormont'shandwriting, reached Lady Charlotte. There was a line from the editor:

 "Would it please your ladyship to have this printed?"

She read the letter, and replied:

 "Come to me for six days; you shall have the best mount in the county. "

An editor devoid of malice might probably have forborne to print a letterthat appealed to Lady Charlotte, or touched her sensations, as if aglimpse of the moon, on the homeward ride in winter on a nodding horse, had suddenly bared to view a precipitous quarry within two steps. Thereis no knowing: few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of theirfriends; and an editor, to whom an exhibition of the immenselypreposterous on the part of one writing arrogantly must be provocative, would feel the interests of his Journal, not to speak of the claims ofreaders, pluck at him when he meditated the consignment of such aprecious composition to extinction. Lady Charlotte withheld a sight ofthe letter from Mr. Eglett. She laid it in her desk, understanding wellthat it was a laugh lost to the world. Poets could reasonably feign itto shake the desk inclosing it. She had a strong sense of humour; hermind reverted to the desk in a way to make her lips shut grimly. Shesided with her brother. 

Only pen in hand did he lay himself open to the enemy. In his personalintercourse he was the last of men to be taken at a disadvantage. LadyCharlotte was brought round to the distasteful idea of some help comingfrom a legitimate adjunct at his elbow: a restraining woman--wife, it hadto be said. And to name the word wife for Thomas Rowsley, Earl ofOrmont, put up the porcupine quills she bristled with at the survey of asex thirsting, and likely to continue thirsting, for such honour. Whatwoman had she known fit to bear the name? She had assumed the judicialseat upon the pretensions of several, and dismissed them to their limbo, after testifying against them. Who is to know the fit one in these minesof deception? Women of the class offering wives decline to be taken ontrial; they are boxes of puzzles--often dire surprises. Her brother knewthem well enough to shy at the box. Her brother Rowsley had a funnypride, like a boy at a game, at the never having been caught by one amongthe many he made captive. She let him have it all to himself. 

He boasted it to a sister sharing the pride exultant in the cry of thehawk, scornful of ambitions poultry, a passed finger-post to the plucked, and really regretful that no woman had been created fit for him. Whenshe was not aiding with her brother, women, however contemptible fortheir weakness, appeared to her as better than barn-door fowl, or verminin their multitudes gnawing to get at the cheese-trap. She could behumane, even sisterly, with women whose conduct or prattle did notoutrage plain sense, just as the stickler for the privileges of her classwas large-heartedly charitable to the classes flowing in oily orderlinessround about below it--if they did so flow. Unable to read woman'scharacter, except upon the broadest lines as it were the spider's mainthreads of its web, she read men minutely, from the fact that they wereneither mysteries nor terrors to her; but creatures of importunateappetites, humorous objects; very manageable, if we leave the road totheir muscles, dress their wounds, smoothe their creases, plume theirvanity; and she had an unerring eye for the man to be used when a blowwas needed, methods for setting him in action likewise. She knew howmuch stronger than ordinary men the woman who can put them in motion. They can be set to serve as pieces of cannon, under compliments on theirsuperior powers, which were not all undervalued by her on their ownmerits, for she worshipped strength. But the said, with a certain amountof truth, that the women unaware of the advantage Society gave them (asto mastering men) were fools. 

Tender, is not a word coming near to Lady Charlotte. Thoughtful onbehalf of the poor foolish victims of men she was. She had saved some, avenged others. It should be stated, that her notion of saving was thesaving of them from the public: she had thrown up a screen. The savingof them from themselves was another matter--hopeless, to her thinking. How preach at a creature on the bend of passion's rapids! One might aswell read a chapter from the Bible to delirious patients. When once awoman is taken with the love-passion, we must treat her as bitten; hideher antics from the public: that is the principal business. If sherecovers, she resumes her place, and horrid old Nature, who drove her tothe frenzy, is unlikely to bother or, at least, overthrow her again, unless she is one of the detestable wantons, past compassion orconsideration. In the case reviewed, the woman has gone through fire, and is none the worse for her experiences: worth ten times what she was, to an honest man, if men could be got to see it. Some do. Of those menwho do not, Lady Charlotte spoke with the old family-nurse humour, whichis familiar with the tricks and frailties of the infants; and it is aknife to probe the male, while seemingly it does the part of the napkin--pities and pats. They expect a return of much for the little that isnext to nothing. They are fall of expectations: and of what else?They are hard bargainers. 

She thought this of men; and she liked men by choice. She had oldnurse's preference for the lustier male child. The others are pulingthings, easier to rear, because they bend better; and less esteemed, though they give less trouble, rouse less care. But when it came to theduel between the man and the woman, her sense of justice was moved tojoin her with the party of her unfairly handled sisters--a strong party, if it were not so cowardly, she had to think. 

Mr. Eglett, her husband, accepted her--accepted the position into whichhe naturally fell beside her, and the ideas she imposed on him; for shenever went counter to his principles. These were the fixed principles ofa very wealthy man, who abhorred debt, and was punctilious in veracity, scrupulous in cleanliness of mind and body, devoted to the honour of hiscountry, the interests of his class. She respected the high landmarkpossessing such principles; and she was therefore enabled to lead withoutthe wish to rule. As it had been between them at the beginning, so itwas now, when they were grandparents running on three lines of progenyfrom two daughters and a son: they were excellent friends. Few couplescan say more. The union was good English grey--that of a prolongedNovember, to which we are reconciled by occasions for the hunt and thegun. She was, nevertheless, an impassioned woman. The feeling for herbrother helped to satisfy her heart's fires, though as little with herbrother as with her husband was she demonstrative. Lord Ormontdisrelished the caresses of relatives. 

She, for her part, had so strong a sympathy on behalf of poor gentlemenreduced to submit to any but a young woman's hug, that when, bronzed fromIndia, he quitted the carriage and mounted her steps at Olmer, the desireto fling herself on his neck and breast took form in the words: "Here youare home again, Rowsley; glad to have you. " They shook hands firmly. 

He remained three days at Olmer. His temper was mild, his frame of mindbad as could be. Angry evaporations had left a residuum of solid scornfor these "English, " who rewarded soldierly services as though it were aquestion of damaged packages of calico. He threatened to take the firstoffer of a foreign State "not in insurrection. " But clear sky wasoverhead. He was the Rowsley of the old boyish delight in field sports, reminiscences of prowlings and trappings in the woods, gropings alongwater-banks, enjoyment of racy gossip. He spoke wrathfully of "one oftheir newspapers" which steadily persisted in withholding frompublication every letter he wrote to it, after printing the first. And if it printed one, why not the others?

Lady Charlotte put it on the quaintness of editors. 

He had found in London, perhaps, reason for saying that he should dowell to be "out of this country" as early as he could; adding, presently, that he meant to go, though "it broke his heart to keep away from a sixmonths' rest at Steignton, " his Wiltshire estate. 

No woman was in the field. Lady Charlotte could have submitted to theintrusion of one of those at times wholesome victims, for the sake of themollification the unhappy proud thing might bring to a hero smartingunder injustice at the hands of chiefs and authorities. 

He passed on to Steignton, returned to London, and left England forSpain, as he wrote word, saying he hoped to settle at Steignton neatyear. He was absent the next year, and longer. Lady Charlotte had thesurprising news that Steignton was let, shooting and all, for five years;and he had no appointment out of England or at home. When he came toOlmer again he was under one of his fits of reserve, best undisturbed. Her sympathy with a great soldier snubbed, an active man rusting, kepther from remonstrance. 

Three years later she was made meditative by the discovery of a woman'sbeing absolutely in the field, mistress of the field; and having beenthere for a considerable period, dating from about the time when heturned his back on England to visit a comrade-in-arms condemned by thedoctors to pass the winter in Malaga; and it was a young woman, a girlin her teens, a handsome girl. Handsome was to be expected; Ormontbargained for beauty. But report said the girl was very handsome, andshowed breeding: she seemed a foreigner, walked like a Goddess, sat herhorse the perfect Amazon. Rumour called her a Spaniard. 

"Not if she rides!" Lady Charlotte cut that short. 

Rumour had subsequently more to say. The reporter in her ear did notconfirm it, and she was resolutely deaf to a story incredible of herbrother--the man, of all men living, proudest of his name, blood, station. So proud was he by nature, too, that he disdained to complainof rank injustice; he maintained a cheerful front against adversity andobloquy. And this man of complete self-command, who has every form ofnoble pride, gets cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college! Doyou imagine it? To suppose of a man cherishing the name of Ormont, thathe would bestow it legally on a woman, a stranger, and imperil his raceby mixing blood with a creature of unknown lineage, was--why, of course, it was to suppose him struck mad, and there never had been madness amongthe Ormonts: they were too careful of the purity of the strain. LadyCharlotte talked. She was excited, and ran her sentences to blanks, acunning way for ministering consolation to her hearing, where thesentence intended a question, and the blank ending caught up the querytone and carried it dwindling away to the most distant of throttledinterrogatives. She had, in this manner, only to ask, --her hearingreceived the comforting answer it desired; for she could take that thinfar sound as a travelling laughter of incredulity, triumphant derision. 

This meant to her--though she scarcely knew it, though the most wilful ofwomen declined to know it--a state of alarm. She had said of her brotherin past days that he would have his time of danger after striking sixty. The dangerous person was to be young. 

But, then, Ormont had high principles with regard to the dues to hisfamily. His principles could always be trusted. The dangerous youngperson would have to be a person of lineage, of a certain station atleast: no need for a titled woman, only for warranted good blood. Isthat to be found certificated out of the rolls of Society? It may justpossibly be found, without certificate, however, in those muddled cavernswhere the excluded intermingle. Here and there, in a peasant family, or a small country tradesman's just raised above a peasant, honestregenerating blood will be found. Nobles wanting refreshment from thesoil might do worse than try a slip of one of those juicy weeds; ill-fated, sickly Royalties would be set-up striding through another half-century with such invigoration, if it could be done for them! There aretales. The tales are honourably discredited by the crazy constitutionsof the heirs to the diadem. 

Yes, but we are speculating on the matter seriously, as though it wereone of intimate concern to the family. What is there to make us thinkthat Ormont would marry? Impossible to imagine him intimidated. Unlikely that he, a practised reader of women, having so little of thewoman in him, would be melted by a wily girl; as women in the twilightsituation have often played the trick to come into the bright beams. How? They do a desperate thing, and call it generosity, and then theyappeal from it to my lord's generosity; and so the two generosities driveoff in a close carriage with a friend and a professional landlady for theblessing of the parson, and are legitimately united. Women have wonround fools to give way in that way. And quite right too! thought LadyCharlotte, siding with nature and justice, as she reflected that no womancreated would win round her brother to give way in that way. He was tooacute. The moment the woman showed sign of becoming an actress, her doomwas written. "Poor idiot!" was not uncharitably inscribed by thesisterly lady on the tombstone of hopes aimed with scarce pardonableambition at her brother. 

She blew away the rumour. Ormont, she vowed, had not entitled any womanto share and bear his title. And this was her interpretation of thereport: he permitted (if he did permit) the woman to take his name, that he might have a scornful fling at the world maltreating him. Besides, the name was not published, it was not to be seen in the papers;it passed merely among male friends, tradesmen, servants: no great harmin that. 

Listen further. Here is an unknown girl: why should he marry her?A girl consenting to the place beside a man of his handsome ripe age, is either bought, or she is madly enamoured; she does not dictate terms. Ormont is not of the brute buyers in that market. One sees it is thegirl who leads the dance. A girl is rarely so madly enamoured as whenshe falls in love with her grandfather; she pitches herself at his head. This had not happened for the first time in Ormont's case; and he hadnever proposed marriage. Why should he do it now?

But again, if the girl has breeding to some extent, he might think it herdue that she should pass under the safeguard of his name, out of sight. 

Then, so far the report is trustworthy. We blow the rumour out ofbelief. A young woman there is: she is not a wife. Lady Charlotteallowed her the fairly respectable post of Hecate of the Shades, as longas the girl was no pretender to the place and name in the upper sphere. Her deductions were plausible, convincing to friends shaken by hervehement manner of coming at them. She convinced herself by means of hermultitude of reasons for not pursuing inquiry. Her brother said nothing. There was no need for him to speak. He seemed on one or two occasions inthe act of getting himself together for the communication of a secret;and she made ready to listen hard, with ears, eyebrows, shut month, and agleam at the back of her eyes, for a signification of something she wouldrefer him to after he had spoken. He looked at her and held his peace, or virtually held it, --that is, he said not one word on the subject shewas to have told him she had anticipated. Lady Charlotte ascribed it tohis recollection of the quick blusher, the pained blusher, she was in hergirlhood at mention or print of the story of men and women. Who, nothaving known her, could conceive it! But who could conceive that, behindthe positive, plain-dealing, downright woman of the world, there was attimes, when a nerve was touched or an old blocked path of imaginationthrown open, a sensitive youthfulness; still quick to blush as far as theskin of a grandmother matron might show it!

CHAPTER III. 

THE TUTOR

There was no counting now on Lord Ormont's presence in the Britishgathering seasons, when wheatears wing across our fields or swallowsreturn to their eaves. He forsook the hunt to roam the Continent, one ofthe vulgar band of tourists, honouring town only when Mayflies had flown, and London's indiscriminate people went about without their volatileheads. 

Lady Charlotte put these changed conditions upon the behaviour of themilitary authorities to her brother, saying that the wonder was he didnot shake the dust of his country from his feet. In her wise head sherejoiced to think he was not the donkey she sketched for admiration; andshe was partly consoled, or played at the taking of a comfort needed inher perpetual struggle with a phantom of a fact, by the reflection that ayoung woman on his arm would tense him to feel himself more at homeabroad. Her mind's habit of living warmly beside him in separation wasvexed by the fixed intrusion of a female third person, who checked therun of intimate chatter, especially damped the fancied talk over earlydays--of which the creature was ignorant; and her propinquity to himarrested or broke the dialogue Lady Charlotte invented and pressed torenew. But a wife, while letting him be seen, would have insisted onappropriating the thought of him--all his days, past as well as present. An impassioned sister's jealousy preferred that it should not be a wifereigning to dispute her share of her brother in imagination. 

Then came a rumour, telling of him as engaged upon the composition of hisMemoirs. 

Lady Charlotte's impulsive outcry: "Writing them?" signified her groundsfor alarm. 

Happily, Memoirs are not among the silly deeds done in a moment; theywere somewhere ahead and over the hills: a band of brigands rather than ahomely shining mansion, it was true; but distant; and a principalquestion shrieked to know whether he was composing them for publication. She could look forward with a girl's pleasure to the perusal of them inmanuscript, in a woody nook, in a fervour of partizanship, easilyavoiding sight of errors, grammatical or moral. She chafed at thepossible printing and publishing of them. That would be equivalent to anexhibition of him clean-stripped for a run across London--brilliant inhimself, spotty in the offence. Published Memoirs indicate the end of aman's activity, and that he acknowledges the end; and at a period of LordOrmont's life when the denial of it should thunder. They are his finalchapter, making mummy of the grand figure they wrap in the printed stuff. They are virtually his apology. Can those knowing Lord Ormont hear himapologize? But it is a craven apology if we stoop to expound: we areseen as pleading our case before the public. Call it by any name youplease, and under any attitude, it is that. And set aside the writing:it may be perfect; the act is the degradation. It is a rousing ofswarms. His friends and the public will see the proudest nobleman of hisday, pleading his case in mangled English, in the headlong of an out-poured, undrilled, rabble vocabulary, doubling the ridicule by hisimperturbability over the ridicule he excites: he who is no moreridiculous, cried the partizan sister, conjuring up the scene, not an acemore ridiculous, than a judge of assize calling himself miserable sinneron Sunday before the parson, after he has very properly condemned half ascore of weekday miserable sinners to penal servitude or the rope. Nobody laughs at the judge. Everybody will be laughing at the scornfulman down half-way to his knee-cape with a stutter of an apology forhaving done his duty to his country, after stigmatizing numbers forinability or ill-will to do it. But Ormont's weapon is the sword, not apen! Lady Charlotte hunted her simile till the dogs had it or it ran toearth. 

She struck at the conclusion, that the young woman had been persuadinghim. An adoring young woman is the person to imagine and induce to thecommission of such folly. "What do you think? You have seen her, yousay?" she asked of a man she welcomed for his flavour of the worldling'sfine bile. 

Lord Adderwood made answer: "She may be having a hand in it. Sheworships, and that is your way of pulling gods to the ground. "

"Does she understand good English?"

"Speaks it. "

"Can she write?"

"I have never had a letter from her. "

"You tell me Morsfield admires the woman--would marry her to-morrow, if he could get her. "

"He would go through the ceremony Ormont has performed, I do not doubt. "

"I don't doubt all of you are ready. She doesn't encourage one?"

"On the contrary, all. "

"She's clever. This has been going on for now seven years, and, as faras I know, she has my brother fast. "

"She may have done the clever trick of having him fast from thebeginning. "

"She'd like people to think it. "

"She has an aunt to advertise it. "

"Ormont can't swallow the woman, I'm told. "

"Trying, if one is bound to get her down!"

"Boasts of the connection everywhere she's admitted, Randeller says. "

"Randeller procures the admission to various parti-coloured places. "

"She must be a blinking moll-owl! And I ask any sane Christian or Pagan--proof enough!--would my brother Rowsley let his wife visit those places, those people? Monstrous to have the suspicion that he would, you knowhim! Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, for example. I say nothing to hurt thepoor woman; I back her against her imbecile of a husband. He brings acharge he can't support; she punishes him by taking three years' lease ofindependence and kicks up the grass all over the paddock, and then comescuckoo, barking his name abroad to have her home again. You can win theshyest filly to corn at last. She goes, and he digests ruefully thehotch-potch of a dish the woman brings him. Only the world spies a side-head at her, husbanded or not, though the main fault was his, and she hada right to insist that he should be sure of his charge before he smackedher in the face with it before the world. In dealing with a woman, a mancommonly prudent--put aside chivalry, justice, and the rest--should bindhimself to disbelieve what he can't prove. Otherwise, let him expect hiswhipping, with or without ornament. My opinion is, Lawrence Finchley hadno solid foundation for his charge, except his being an imbecile. Shewasn't one of the adventurous women to jump the bars, --the gate had to bepushed open, and he did it. There she is; and I ask you, would mybrother Rowsley let his wife be intimate with her? And there are others. And, sauf votre respect, the men--Morsfield for one, Randeller another!"

"They have a wholesome dread of the lion. "

"If they smell a chance with the lion's bone--it's the sweeter for beingthe lion's. These metaphors carry us off our ground. I must let theseOrmont Memoirs run and upset him, if they get to print. I've only tooppose, printed they'll be. The same if I say a word of this woman, hemarries her to-morrow morning. You speak of my driving men. Why can't Idrive Ormont? Because I'm too fond of him. There you have the secret ofthe subjection of women: they can hold their own, and a bit more, whenthey've no enemy beating inside. "

"Hearts!--ah, well, it's possible. I don't say no; I've not discoveredthem, " Lord Adderwood observed. 

They are rarely discovered in the haunts he frequented. 

Her allusion to Mrs. Lawrence Finchley rapped him smartly, and sheadmired his impassiveness under the stroke. Such a spectacle was one ofher pleasures. 

Lady Charlotte mentioned incidentally her want of a tutor for hergrandson Leo during the winter holidays. He suggested an application tothe clergyman of her parish. She was at feud with the Rev. StephenHampton-Evey, and would not take, she said, a man to be a bootblack inher backyard or a woman a scullery-wench in her kitchen upon hisrecommendation. She described the person of Mr. Hampton-Evey, his mannerof speech, general opinions, professional doctrines; rolled him into aball and bowled him, with a shrug for lamentation, over the decay of thegood old order of manly English Protestant clergymen, who drank theirport, bothered nobody about belief, abstained from preaching theirsermon, if requested; were capital fellows in the hunting-field, too; forif they came, they had the spur to hunt in the devil's despite. Now weare going to have a kind of bitter, clawed, forked female, in vestmentsover breeches. "How do you like that bundling of the sexes?"

Lord Adderwood liked the lines of division to be strictly and invitinglydefinite. He was thinking, as he reviewed the frittered appearance ofthe Rev. Stephen Hampton-Evey in Lady Charlotte's hinds, of thepossibility that Lord Ormont, who was reputed to fear nobody, feared her. In which case, the handsome young woman passing among his associates asthe pseudo Lady Ormont might be the real one after all, and IsabellaLawrence Finchley prove right in the warning she gave to dogs of chase. 

The tutor required by Lady Charlotte was found for her by Mr. Abner. Their correspondence on the subject filled the space of a week, and thenthe gentleman hired to drive a creaky wheel came down from London toOlmer, arriving late in the evening. 

Lady Charlotte's blunt "Oh!" when he entered her room and bowed upon theannouncement of his name, was caused by an instantaneous perception andrefection that it would be prudent to keep her grand-daughter Philippa, aged between seventeen and eighteen, out of his way. 

"You are friend of Mr. Abner's, are you?"

He was not disconcerted. He replied, in an assured and pleasant voice, "I have hardly the pretension to be called a friend, madam. "

"Are you a Jew?"

Her abruptness knocked something like a laugh almost out of him, but herestrained the signs of it. 

"I am not. "

"You wouldn't be ashamed to tell me you were one if you were?"

"Not at all. "

"You like the Jews?"

"Those I know I like. "

"Not many Christians have the good sense and the good heart of ArthurAbner. Now go and eat. Come back to me when you've done. I hope youare hungry. Ask the butler for the wine you prefer. "

She had not anticipated the enrolment in her household of a man so youngand good-looking. These were qualifications for Cupid's business, whichhis unstrained self-possession accentuated to a note of danger to herchicks, because she liked the taste of him. Her grand-daughter Philippawas in the girl's waxen age; another, Beatrice, was coming to it. Bothwere under her care; and she was a vigilant woman, with an intuition anda knowledge of sex. She did not blame Arthur Abner for sending her agood-looking young man; she had only a general idea that tutors in ahouse, and even visiting tutors, should smell of dust and wear a snuffyappearance. The conditions will not always insure the tutors fromfoolishness, as her girl's experience reminded her, but they protect thegirl. 

"Your name is Weyburn; your father was an officer in the army, killed onthe battle-field, Arthur Abner tells me, " was her somewhat severely-tonedgreeting to the young tutor on his presenting himself the second time. 

It had the sound of the preliminary of an indictment read in a Court ofLaw. 

"My father died of his wounds in hospital, " he said. 

"Why did you not enter the service?"

"Want of an income, my lady. "

"Bad look-out. Army or Navy for gentlemen, if they stick to the schoolof honour. The sedentary professions corrupt men: bad for the blood. Those monastery monks found that out. They had to birch the devil out ofthem three times a day and half the night, howling like full-moon dogsall through their lives, till the flesh was off them. That was theirexercise, if they were for holiness. My brother, Lord Ormont, has neverbeen still in his youth or his manhood. See him now. He counts hisyears by scores; and be has about as many wrinkles as you when you'resmiling. His cheeks are as red as yours now you're blushing. You oughtto have left off that trick by this time. It's well enough in a boy. "

Against her will she was drawn to the young man, and her consciousness ofit plucked her back to caution with occasional jerks--quaint alternationsof the familiar and the harshly formal, in the stranger's experience. 

"If I have your permission, Lady Charlotte, " said he, "the reason why Imount red a little--if I do it--is, you mention Lord Ormont, and I havefollowed his career since I was the youngest of boys. "

"Good to begin with the worship of a hero. He can't sham, can't deceive--not even a woman; and you're old enough to understand the temptation:they're so silly. All the more, it's a point of honour with a man ofhonour to shield her from herself. When it's a girl--"

The young man's eyebrows bent. 

"Chapters of stories, if you want to hear them, " she resumed; "and I canvouch some of them true. Lord Ormont was never one of the wolves in ahood. Whatever you hear of him; you may be sure he laid no trap. He'sjust the opposite to the hypocrite; so hypocrites date him. I've heardthem called high-priests of decency. Then we choose to be indecent andhonest, if there's a God to worship. Fear, they're in the habit ofsaying--we are to fear God. A man here, a Rev. Hampton-Evey, you'll hearhim harp on 'fear God. ' Hypocrites may: honest sinners have no fear. And see the cause: they don't deceive themselves--that is why. Do youthink we call love what we fear? They love God, or they disbelieve. And if they believe in Him, they know they can't conceal anything fromHim. Honesty means piety: we can't be one without the other. And hereare people--parsons--who talk of dying as going into the presence of ourMaker, as if He had been all the while outside the world He created. Those parsons, I told the Rev. Hampton-Evey here, make infidels--theymake a puzzle of their God. I'm for a rational Deity. They preach upa supernatural eccentric. I don't say all: I've heard good sermons, and met sound-headed clergymen--not like that gaping Hampton-Evey, when a woman tells him she thinks for herself. We have him sitting onour pariah. A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon; but a femalefree-thinker is one of Satan's concubines. He took it upon himself toreproach me--flung his glove at my feet, because I sent a cheque to apoor man punished for blasphemy. The man had the right to his opinions, and he had the courage of his opinions. I doubt whether the Rev. Hampton-Evey would go with a willing heart to prison for his. All thebetter for him if he comes head-up out of a trial. But now see: allthese parsons and judges and mobcaps insist upon conformity. A man withcommon manly courage comes before them, and he's cast in penalties. Yetwe know from history, in England, France, Germany, that the time ofnonconformity brought out the manhood of the nation. Now, I say, anation, to be a nation, must have men--I mean brave men. That's whatthose hosts of female men combine to try to stifle. They won't succeed, but we shall want a war to teach the country the value of courage. Youcatch what I am driving at? They accuse my brother of immorality becausehe makes no pretence to be better than the men of his class. "

Weyburn's eyelids fluttered. Her kite-like ascent into the general, withthe sudden drop on her choice morsel, switched his humour at the momentwhen he was respectfully considering that her dartings and gyrations hadmotive as mach as the flight of the swallow for food. They had meaning;and here was one of the great ladies of the land who thought for herself, and was thoughtful for the country. If she came down like a bird winged, it was her love of her brother that did it. His look at Lady Charlotteglistened. 

She raised her defences against the basilisk fascinating Philippa; andwith a vow to keep them apart and deprive him of his chance, she relapsedupon the stiff frigidity which was not natural to her. It lasted longenough to put him on his guard under the seductions of a noble dame'scondescension to a familiar tone. But, as he was too well bred to showthe change in his mind for her change of manner, and as she was thesister of his boyhood's hero, and could be full of flavour, his eyesretained something of their sparkle. They were ready to lighten again, in the way peculiar to him, when she, quite forgetting her defence ofPhilippa, disburdened herself of her antagonisms and enthusiasms, herhates and her loves all round the neighbourhood and over the world, wonto confidential communication by this young man's face. She confessed asmuch, had he been guided to perceive it. She said, "Arthur Abner's areader of men: I can trust his word about them. "

Presently, it is true, she added: "No man's to be relied upon wherethere's a woman. " She refused her implicit trust to saints--"if ever aman really was a saint before he was canonized!"

Her penetrative instinct of sex kindled the scepticism. Sex she saw atplay everywhere, dogging the conduct of affairs, directing them at times;she saw it as the animation of nature, senselessly stigmatized, hypocritically concealed, active in our thoughts where not in our deeds;and the declining of the decorous to see it, or admit the sight, got themabhorred bad names from her, after a touch at the deadly poison coming ofthat blindness, or blindfoldedness, and a grimly melancholy shrug overthe cruelties resulting--cruelties chiefly affecting women. 

"You're too young to have thought upon such matters, " she said, for afinish to them. 

That was hardly true. 

"I have thought, " said Weyburn, and his head fell to reckoning of thesmall sum of his thoughts upon them. 

He was pulled up instantly for close inspection by the judge. "What isyour age?"

"I am in my twenty-sixth year. "

"You have been among men: have you studied women?"

"Not largely, Lady Charlotte. Opportunity has been wanting at French andGerman colleges. "

"It's only a large and a close and a pretty long study of them that canteach you anything; and you must get rid of the poetry about them, and besure you haven't lost it altogether. That's what is called the goldenmean. I'm not for the golden mean in every instance; it's a way ofexhorting to brutal selfishness. I grant it's the right way in thosequestions. You'll learn in time. " Her scanning gaze at the young man'sface drove him along an avenue of his very possible chances of learning. "Certain to. But don't tell me that at your age you have thought aboutwomen. You may say you have felt. A young man's feelings about womenare better reading for him six or a dozen chapters farther on. Then hecan sift and strain. It won't be perfectly clear, but it will do. "

Mr. Eglett hereupon threw the door open, and ushered in Master Leo. 

Lady Charlotte noticed that the tutor shook the boy's hand offhandedly, with not a whit of the usual obtrusive geniality, and merely dropped hima word. Soon after, he was talking to Mr. Eglett of games at home andgames abroad. Poor fun over there! We head the world in field games, atall events. He drew a picture of a foreigner of his acquaintance lookingon at football. On the other hand, French boys and German, having passeda year or two at an English school, get the liking for our games, and doa lot of good when they go home. The things we learn from them are todance, to sing, and to study:--they are more in earnest than we aboutstudy. They teach us at fencing too. The tutor praised fencing as anexercise and an accomplishment. He had large reserves of eulogy forboxing. He knew the qualities of the famous bruisers of the time, citedfisty names, whose owners were then to be seen all over an admiring landin prints; in the glorious defensive-offensive attitude, England's own--Touch me, if you dare! with bullish, or bull-dog, or oak-bole fronts forthe blow, handsome to pugilistic eyes. 

The young tutor had lighted on a pet theme of Mr. Eglett's--the excellingvirtues of the practice of pugilism in Old England, and the school ofhonour that it is to our lower population. "Fifty times better for themthan cock-fighting, " he exclaimed, admitting that he could be aninterested spectator at a ring or the pit cock-fighting or ratting. 

"Ratting seems to have more excuse, " the tutor said, and made no sign ofa liking for either of those popular pastimes. As he disapproved withoutsqueamishness, the impulsive but sharply critical woman close by nodded;and she gave him his dues for being no courtier. 

Leo had to be off to bed. The tutor spared him any struggle overthe shaking of hands, and saying, "Goodnight, Leo, " continued theconversation. The boy went away, visibly relieved of the cramp thatseizes on a youngster at the formalities pertaining to these chillyand fateful introductions. 

"What do you think of the look of him?" Mr. Eglett asked. 

The tutor had not appeared to inspect the boy. "Big head, " he remarked. "Yes, Leo won't want pushing at books when he's once in harness. He willhave six weeks of me. It's more than the yeomanry get for drill perannum, and they're expected to know something of a soldier's duties. There's a chance of putting him on the right road in certain matters. We'll walk, or ride, or skate, if the frost holds to-morrow: no lessonsthe first day. "

"Do as you think fit, " said lady Charlotte. 

The one defect she saw in the tutor did not concern his pupil. And agirl, if hit, would be unable to see that this tutor, judged as a man, was to some extent despicable for accepting tutorships, and, one mightsay, dishonouring the family of a soldier of rank and distinction, bycoming into houses at the back way, with footing enough to air his graceswhen once established there. He ought to have knocked at every door inthe kingdom for help, rather than accept tutorships, and disturbhouseholds (or providently-minded mistresses of them) with all sorts ofprobably groundless apprehensions, founded naturally enough on the goodlooks he intrudes. 

This tutor committed the offence next day of showing he had a firm andeasy seat in the saddle, which increased Lady Charlotte's liking for himand irritated her watchful forecasts. She rode with the young man afterlunch, "to show him the country, " and gave him a taste of what he tookfor her variable moods. He misjudged her. Like a swimmer going throughwarm and cold springs of certain lake waters, he thought her a capriciousladyship, dangerous for intimacy, alluring to the deeps and gripping withcramps. 

She pushed him to defend his choice of the tutor's profession. 

"Think you understand boys?" she caught up his words; "you can't. Youcan humour them, as you humour women. They're just as hard to read. Anddon't tell me a young man can read women. Boys and women go on theirinstincts. Egyptologists can spell you hieroglyphs; they'd be stumped, as Leo would say, to read a spider out of an ink-pot over a sheet ofpaper. "

"One gets to interpret by degrees, by observing their habits, " the tutorsaid, and vexed her with a towering complacency under provocation thatwent some way further to melt the woman she was, while her knowledge ofthe softness warned her still more of the duty of playing dragon roundsuch a young man in her house. The despot is alert at every issue, toevery chance; and she was one, the wakefuller for being benevolent; hermind had no sleep by day. 

For a month she subjected Mr. Matthew Weyburn to the microscope of herobservation and the probe of her instinct. He proved that he couldmanage without cajoling a boy. The practical fact established, byagreement between herself and the unobservant gentleman who was herhusband, Lady Charlotte allowed her meditations to drop an indifferentglance at the speculative views upon education entertained by this youngtutor. To her mind they were flighty; but she liked him, and as herfeelings dictated to her mind when she had not to think for others, shespoke of his views toleratingly, almost with an implied approval, afterpassing them through the form of burlesque to which she customarilytreated things failing to waft her enthusiasm. In regard to Philippa, hebehaved well: he bestowed more of his attention on Beatrice, nearer Leo'sage, in talk about games and story-books and battles; nothing that he didwhen the girls were present betrayed the strutting plumed cock, bent toattract, or the sickly reptile, thirsty for a prize above him and meaningto have it, like Satan in Eden. Still, of course, he could not help hisbeing a handsome fellow, having a vivid face and eyes transparent, whether blue or green, to flame of the brain exciting them; and thatbecomes a picture in the dream of girls--a picture creating the dreamoften. And Philippa had asked her grandmother, very ingenuously indeed, with a most natural candour, why "they saw so little of Leo's hero. "Simple female child!

However, there was no harm done, and Lady Charlotte liked him. She likedfew. Forthwith, in the manner of her particular head, a restless head, she fell to work at combinations. 

Thus:--he is a nice young fellow, well bred, no cringing courtier, accomplished, good at classics, fairish at mathematics, a scholar inFrench, German, Italian, with a shrewd knowledge of the different races, and with sound English sentiment too, and the capacity for writing goodEnglish, although in those views of his the ideas are unusual, thereforeun-English, profoundly so. But his intentions are patriotic; they wouldnot displease Lord Ormont. He has a worship of Lord Ormont. All we cansay on behalf of an untried inferior is in that, --only the valiant admiredevotedly. Well, he can write grammatical, readable English. What ifLord Ormont were to take him as a secretary while the Memoirs are inhand? He might help to chasten the sentences laughed at by thosenewspapers. Or he might, being a terrible critic of writing, and funnyabout styles, put it in an absurd light, that would cause the Memoirs tobe tossed into the fire. He was made for the post of secretary! Theyoung man's good looks would be out of harm's way then. If any sprig ofwomankind come across him there, it will, at any rate, not be a girl. Women must take care of themselves. Only the fools among them run tomischief in the case of a handsome young fellow. 

Supposing a certain woman to be one of the fools? Lady Charlotte merelysuggested it in the dashing current of her meditations--did not strike itout interrogatively. The woman would be a fine specimen among her class;that was all. For the favourite of Lord Ormont to stoop from her placebeside him--ay, but women do; heroes have had the woeful experience ofthat fact. First we see them aiming themselves at their hero; next theyare shooting an eye at the handsome man. The thirst of nature comesafter that of their fancy, in conventional women. Sick of the herotried, tired of their place in the market, no longer ashamed toacknowledge it, they begin to consult their own taste for beauty--theyhave it quite as much as the men have it; and when their worshippedfigure of manliness, in a romantic sombrero, is a threadbare giant, showing bruises, they sink on their inherent desire for a dance with thehandsome man. And the really handsome man is the most extraordinary ofthe rarities. No wonder that when he appears he slays them, walks overthem like a pestilence!

This young Weyburn would touch the fancy of a woman of a romantic turn. Supposing her enthusiastic in her worship of the hero, after a number ofyears--for anything may be imagined where a woman is concerned--why, another enthusiasm for the same object, and on the part of a stranger, astranger with effective eyes, rapidly leads to sympathy. Suppose thereverse--the enthusiasm gone to dust, or become a wheezy old bellows, asit does where there's disparity of age, or it frequently does--then thesympathy with a good-looking stranger comes more rapidly still. 

These were Lady Charlotte's glances right and left--idle flights of theeye of a mounted Amazon across hedges at the canter along the main roadof her scheme; which was to do a service to the young man she liked andto the brother she loved, for the marked advantage of both equally;perhaps for the chance of a little gossip to follow about that tenaciouswoman by whom her brother was held hard and fast, kept away from friendsand relatives, isolated, insomuch as to have given up living on hisestate--the old home!--because he would not disgrace it or incur odium bytaking her there. 

In consequence of Lord Ormont's resistance to pressure from her on two orthree occasions, she chose to nurse and be governed by the maxim forherself: Never propose a plan to him, if you want it adopted. That washer way of harmlessly solacing love's vindictiveness for an injury. 

She sent Arthur Abner a letter, thanking him for his recommendation ofyoung Mr. Weyburn, stating her benevolent wishes as regarded the youngman and "those hateful Memoirs, " requesting that her name should not bementioned in the affair, because she was anxious on all grounds to havethe proposal accepted by her brother. She could have vowed to herselfthat she wrote sincerely. 

"He must want a secretary. He would be shy at an offer of one from me. Do you hint it, if you get a chance. You gave us Mr. Weyburn, and Mr. Eglett and I like him. Ormont would too, I am certain. You have obligedhim before; this will be better than anything you have done for us. Itwill stop the Memoirs, or else give them a polish. Your young friend hasmade me laugh over stuff taken for literature until we put on ourspectacles. Leo jogs along in harness now, and may do some work atschool yet. "

Having posted her letter, she left the issue to chance, as we may whenconscience is easy. An answer came the day before Weyburn's departure. Arthur Abner had met Lord Ormont in the street, had spoken of the rumourof Memoirs promised to the world, hinted at the possible need for asecretary; "Lord Ormont would appoint a day to see Mr. Weyburn. "

Lady Charlotte considered that to be as good as the engagement. 

"So we keep you in the family, " she said. "And now look here: you oughtto know my brother's ways, if you're going to serve him. You'll have toguess at half of everything he tells you; he'll expect you to know thewhole. There's no man so secret. Why? He fears nothing; I can't tellwhy. And what his mouth shuts on, he exposes as if in his hand. Ofcourse he's proud, and good reason. You'll see when you mustn't offend. A lady's in the house--I hear of it. She takes his name, they say. Shemay be a respectable woman--I've heard no scandal. We have to hear of aLady Ormont out of Society! We have to suppose it means there's not tobe a real one. He can't marry if he has allowed her to go about bearinghis name. She has a fool of an aunt, I'm told; as often in the house asnot. Good proof of his fondness for the woman, if he swallows half ayear of the aunt! Well, you won't, unless you've mere man's eyes, beable to help seeing him trying to hide what he suffers from that aunt. He bears it, like the man he is; but woe to another betraying it! Shehas a tongue that goes like the reel of a rod, with a pike bolting out ofthe shallows to the snag he knows--to wind round it and defy you to pull. Often my brother Rowsley and I have fished the day long, and in hardweather, and brought home a basket; and he boasted of it more than ofanything he has ever done since. That woman holds him away from me now. I say no harm of her. She may be right enough from her point of view; orit mayn't be owing to her. I wouldn't blame a woman. Well, but my pointwith you is, you swallow the woman's aunt--the lady's aunt--withoutbetraying you suffer at all. Lord Ormont has eyes of an eagle for aspeck above the surface. All the more because the aunt is a gabblingidiot does he--I say it seeing it--fire up to defend her from the sneerof the lip or half a sign of it! No, you would be an your guard; I cantrust you. Of course you'd behave like the gentleman you are where anykind of woman's concerned; but you mustn't let a shadow be seen, thinkwhat you may. The woman--lady--calling herself Lady Ormont, --poor woman, I should do the same in her place, --she has a hard game to play; I haveto be for my family: she has manners, I'm told; holds herself properly. She fancies she brings him up to the altar, in the end, by decentbehaviour. That's a delusion. It's creditable to her, only she can'tunderstand the claims of the family upon a man like my brother. When youhave spare time--'kick-ups, ' he need to call it, writing to me fromschool--come here; you're welcome, after three days' notice. I shall beglad to see you again. You've gone some way to make a man of Leo. "

He liked her well: he promised to come. She was a sinewy bite of thegentle sex, but she had much flavour, and she gave nourishment. 

"Let me have three days' notice, " she repeated. 

"Not less, Lady Charlotte, " said he. 

Weyburn received intimation from Arthur Abner of the likely day LordOrmont would appoint, and he left Olmer for London to hold himself inreadiness. Lady Charlotte and Leo drove him to meet the coach. Philippa, so strangely baffled in her natural curiosity, begged for aseat; she begged to be allowed to ride. Petitions were rejected. Shestood at the window seeing "Grandmama's tutor, " as she named him, carriedoff by grandmama. Her nature was avenged on her tyrant grandmama: itbrought up almost to her tongue thoughts which would have remainedsubterranean, under control of her habit of mind, or the nursery'smodesty, if she had been less tyrannically treated. They weresubterranean thoughts, Nature's original, such as the sense of injusticewill rouse in young women; and they are better unstirred, for they ripengirls over-rapidly when they are made to revolve near the surface. Itflashed on the girl why she had been treated tyrannically. 

"Grandmama has good taste in tutors, " was all that she said while thethoughts rolled over. 

CHAPTER IV. 

RECOGNITION

Our applicant for the post of secretary entered the street of LordOrmont's London house, to present himself to his boyhood's hero byappointment. 

He was to see, perhaps to serve, the great soldier. Things had come tothis; and he thought it singular. But for the previous introduction toLady Charlotte, he would have thought it passing wonderful. He ascribedit to the whirligig. 

The young man was not yet of an age to gather knowledge of himself and oflife from his present experience of the fact, that passionate devotion toan object strikes a vein through circumstances, as a travelling run offlame darts the seeming haphazard zigzags to catch at the dry of deadwood amid the damp; and when passion has become quiescent in the admirer, there is often the unsubsided first impulsion carrying it on. He willalmost sorely embrace his idol with one or other of the senses. 

Weyburn still read the world as it came to him, by bite, marvelling atthis and that, after the fashion of most of us. He had not deserted hisadolescent's hero, or fallen upon analysis of a past season. But he wasnow a young man, stoutly and cognizantly on the climb, with a good aimoverhead, axed green youth's enthusiasms a step below his heels: one ofthe lovers of life, beautiful to behold, when we spy into them; generallytheir aspect is an enlivenment, whatever may be the carving of theirfeatures. For the sake of holy unity, this lover of life, whose gazewas to the front in hungry animation, held fast to his young dreams, perceiving a soul of meaning in them, though the fire might have goneout; and he confessed to a past pursuit of delusions. Young men of thiskind will have, for the like reason, a similar rational sentiment onbehalf of our world's historic forward march, while admitting thathistory has to be taken from far backward if we would gain assuranceof man's advance. It nerves an admonished ambition. 

He was ushered into a London house's library, looking over a niggardenclosure of gravel and dull grass, against a wall where ivy dribbled. An armchair was beside the fireplace. To right and left of it a floreatecompany of books in high cases paraded shoulder to shoulder, without agap; grenadiers on the line. Weyburn read the titles on their scarlet-and-blue facings. They were approved English classics; honouredveterans, who have emerged from the conflict with contemporary opinion, stamped excellent, or have been pushed by the roar of contemporaneousapplauses to wear the leather-and-gilt uniform of our Immortals, until amore qualmish posterity disgorges them. The books had costly bindings. Lord Ormont's treatment of Literature appeared to resemble LadyCharlotte's, in being reverential and uninquiring. The books she boughtto read were Memoirs of her time by dead men and women once known to her. These did fatigue duty in cloth or undress. It was high drill with allof Lord Ormont's books, and there was not a modern or a minor name amongthe regiments. They smelt strongly of the bookseller's lump lots byorder; but if a show soldiery, they were not a sham, like a certain rowof venerably-titled backs, that Lady Charlotte, without scruple, leftstanding to blow an ecclesiastical trumpet of empty contents; any onemight have his battle of brains with them, for the twining of an absentkey. 

The door opened. Weyburn bowed to his old star in human shape: a greyhead on square shoulders, filling the doorway. He had seen at Olmer LadyCharlotte's treasured miniature portrait of her brother; a perfectlikeness, she said--complaining the neat instant of injustice done tothe fire of his look. 

Fire was low down behind the eyes at present. They were quick to scanand take summary of their object, as the young man felt while observingfor himself. Height and build of body were such as might be expected inthe brother of Lady Charlotte and from the tales of his prowess. Weyburnhad a glance back at Cuper's boys listening to the tales. 

The soldier-lord's manner was courteously military--that of anestablished superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he mustneeds enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor'sformal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a citycreditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp receipt upon payment. 

The ceremony over, he pitched a bugle voice to fit the contracted area:"I hear from Mr. Abner that you have made acquaintance with Olmer. Goodhunting country there. "

"Lady Charlotte kindly gave me a mount, my lord. "

"I knew your father by name--Colonel Sidney Weyburn. You lost him atToulouse. We were in the Peninsula; I was at Talavera with him. Bad dayfor our cavalry. "

"Our officers were young at their work then. "

"They taught the Emperor's troops to respect a charge of English horse. It was teaching their fox to set traps for them. "

Lord Ormont indicated a chair. He stood. 

"The French had good cavalry leaders, " Weyburn said, for cover to acontinued study of the face, "Montbrun, yes: Murat, Lassalle, Bessieres. Under the Emperor they had. "

"You think them not at home in the saddle, my lord?"

"Frenchmen have nerves; horses are nerves. They pile excitement toohigh. When cool, they're among the best. None of them had head forcommand of all the arms. "

"One might say the same of Seidlitz and Ziethen?"

"Of Ziethen. Seidlitz had a wider grasp, I suppose. " He pursed hismonth, pondering. "No; and in the Austrian service, too; generals ofcavalry are left to whistle for an independent command. There's ajealousy of our branch!" The injured warrior frowned and hummed. He spoke his thought mildly: "Jealousy of the name of soldier in thiscountry! Out of the service, is the place to recommend. I'd haveadvised a son of mine to train for a jockey rather than enter it. Wedeal with that to-morrow, in my papers. You come to me? Mr. Abner hasarranged the terms? So I see you at ten in the morning. I am glad tomeet a young man--Englishman--who takes an interest in the service. "

Weyburn fancied the hearing of a step; he heard the whispering dress. Itpassed him; a lady went to the armchair. She took her seat, as she hadmoved, with sedateness, the exchange of a toneless word with my lord. She was a brune. He saw that when he rose to do homage. 

Lord Ormont resumed: "Some are born to it, must be soldiers; and in peacethey are snubbed by the heads; in war they are abused by the country. They don't understand in England how to treat an army; how to make oneeither!

"The gentleman--Mr. Weyburn: Mr. Arthur Abner's recommendation, " he addedhurriedly, with a light wave of his hand and a murmur, that might be thelady's title; continuing: "A young man of military tastes should takeservice abroad. They're in earnest about it over there. Here they playat it; and an army's shipped to land without commissariat, ambulances, medical stores, and march against the odds, as usual--if it can march!

"Albuera, my lord?"

"Our men can spurt, for a flick o' the whip. They're expected to beconstantly ready for doing prodigies--to repair the country's omissions. All the country cares for is to hope Dick Turpin may get to York. Ourmen are good beasts; they give the best in 'em, and drop. More's thescandal to a country that has grand material and overtasks it. A blazingdisaster ends the chapter!"

This was talk of an injured veteran. It did not deepen the hue of hisruddied skin. He spoke in the tone of matter of fact. Weyburn had beenprepared for something of the sort by his friend, Arthur Abner. He notedthe speaker's heightened likeness under excitement to Lady Charlotte. Excitement came at an early call of their voices to both; and both hadhandsome, open features, bluntly cut, nothing of aquiline or thesupercilious; eyes bluish-grey, in arched recesses, horny between thethick lids, lively to shoot their meaning when the trap-mouth was active;effectively expressing promptitute for combat, pleasure in attack, wrestle, tag, whatever pertained to strife; an absolute sense of theirright. 

As there was a third person present at this dissuasion of militarytopics, the silence of the lady drew Weyburn to consult her opinion inher look. 

It was on him. Strange are the woman's eyes which can unoffendinglyassume the privilege to dwell on such a living object as a man withoutbecome gateways for his return look, and can seem in pursuit of thoughtswhile they enfold. They were large dark eyes, eyes of southern night. They sped no shot; they rolled forth an envelopment. A child among toys, caught to think of other toys, may gaze in that way. But these were awoman's eyes. 

He gave Lord Ormont his whole face, as an auditor should. He wasinterested besides, as he told a ruffled conscience. He fell upon thestudy of his old hero determinedly. 

The pain of a memory waking under pillows, unable to do more than strainfor breath, distracted his attention. There was a memory: that was allhe knew. Or else he would have lashed himself for hanging on thebeautiful eyes of a woman. To be seeing and hearing his old hero waswonder enough. 

Recollections of Lady Charlotte's plain hints regarding the lady presentresolved to the gross retort, that her eyes were beautiful. And be knewthem--there lay the strangeness. They were known beautiful eyes, in aforeign land of night and mist. 

Lord Ormont was discoursing with racy eloquence of our hold on India: hisviews in which respect were those of Cuper's boys. Weyburn ventured adot-running description of the famous ride, and out flew an Englishsoldier's grievance. But was not the unjustly-treated great soldierwell rewarded, whatever the snubs and the bitterness, with these largedark eyes in his house, for his own? Eyes like these are the beginningof a young man's world; they nerve, inspire, arm him, colour his life; hewould labour, fight, die for them. It seemed to Weyburn a blessednesseven to behold them. So it had been with him at the early stage; and hisheart went swifter, memory fetched a breath. Memory quivered eyelids, when the thought returned--of his having known eyes as lustrous. Firstlights of his world, they had more volume, warmth, mystery--were sweeter. Still, these in the room were sisters to them. They quickened throbs;they seemed a throb of the heart made visible. 

That was their endowment of light and lustre simply, and the mysticalcurve of the lids. For so they could look only because the heart wasdisengaged from them. They were but heavenly orbs. 

The lady's elbow was on an arm of her chair, her forefinger at her lefttemple. Her mind was away, one might guess; she could hardly beinterested in talk of soldiering and of foreign army systems, jealousEnglish authorities and officials, games, field-sports. She had personalmatters to think of. 

Adieu until to-morrow to the homes she inhabited! The street was abanishment and a relief when Weyburn's first interview with Lord Ormontwas over. 

He rejoiced to tell his previous anticipations that he had not beendisappointed; and he bade hero-worshippers expect no gilded figure. Wegather heroes as we go, if we are among the growing: our constancy isshown in the not discarding of our old ones. He held to his earlierhero, though he had seen him, and though he could fancy he saw round him. 

Another, too, had been a hero-lover. How did that lady of night's eyescome to fall into her subjection?

He put no question as to the name she bore; it hung in a black suspense--vividly at its blackest illuminated her possessor. A man is a hero tosome effect who wins a woman like this; and, if his glory bespells her, so that she flings all to the winds for him, burns the world; if, forsolely the desperate rapture of belonging to him, she consents of herfree will to be one of the nameless and discoloured, he shines in a wayto make the marrow of men thrill with a burning envy. For that must bethe idolatrous devotion desired by them all. 

Weyburn struck down upon his man's nature--the bad in us, when beauty ofwoman is viewed; or say, the old original revolutionary, best keptuntouched; for a touch or a meditative pause above him, fetches him up toroam the civilized world devouringly and lawlessly. It is the specialperil of the young lover of life, that an inflammability to beauty inwomen is in a breath intense with him. He is, in truth, a thinly-sealedvolcano of our imperishable ancient father; and has it in him to be themultitudinously-amorous of the mythologic Jove. Give him head, he can becivilization's devil. Is she fair and under a shade?--then is she doublyfair. The shadow about her secretes mystery, just as the forest breedsromance: and mystery is a measureless realm. If we conceive it, we havea mysterious claim on her who is the heart of it. 

He marched on that road to the music of sonorous brass for some drunkenminutes. 

The question came, What of the man who takes advantage of her self-sacrifice?

It soon righted him, and he did Lord Ormont justice, and argued the caseagainst Lady Charlotte's naked hints. 

This dark-eyed heroine's bearing was assured, beyond an air ofdependency. Her deliberate short nod to him at his leave-taking, and thetoneless few words she threw to my lord, signified sufficiently that shedid not stand defying the world or dreading it. 

She had by miracle the eyes which had once charmed him--could again--would always charm. She reminded him of Aminta Farrell's very eyes underthe couchant-dove brows--something of her mouth, the dimple running froma corner. She had, as Aminta had, the self-collected and self-cancelledlook, a realm in a look, that was neither depth nor fervour, nor abestowal, nor an allurement; nor was it an exposure, though there seemedno reserve. One would be near the meaning in declaring it to bewildermen with the riddle of openhandedness. We read it--all may read it--aswe read inexplicable plain life; in which let us have a confiding mind, despite the blows at our heart, and some understanding will enter us. 

He shut the door upon picture and speculations, returning to them byanother door. The lady had not Aminta's freshness: she might be takenfor an elder sister of Aminta. But Weyburn wanted to have her positiondefined before he set her beside Aminta. He writhed under LadyCharlotte's tolerating scorn of "the young woman. " It roused an uneasysentiment of semi-hostility in the direction of my lord; and he had nopersonal complaint to make. 

Lord Ormont was cordial on the day of the secretary's installation; asif--if one might dare to guess it--some one had helped him to a friendlyjudgement. 

The lady of Aminta's eyes was absent at the luncheon table. She cameinto the room a step, to speak to Lord Ormont, dressed for a drive to paya visit. 

The secretary was unnoticed. 

Lord Ormont put inquiries to him at table, for the why of his havingavoided the profession of arms; and apparently considered that thesecretary had made a mistake, and that he would have committed a greatererror in becoming a soldier--"in this country. " A man with a grievanceis illogical under his burden. He mentioned the name "Lady Ormont"distinctly during some remarks on travel. Lady Ormont preferred theContinent. 

Two days later she came to the armchair, as before, met Weyburn's eyeswhen he raised them; gave him no home in hers--not a temporary shelterfrom the pelting of interrogations. She hardly spoke. Why did she come?

But how was it that he was drawn to think of her? Absent or present, shewas round him, like the hills of a valley. She was round his thoughts--caged them; however high, however far they flew, they were conscious ofher. 

She took her place at the midday meal. She had Aminta's voice in sometones; a mellower than Aminta's--the voice of one of Aminta's family. She had the trick of Aminta's upper lip in speaking. Her look on him wasforeign; a civil smile as they conversed. She was very much at home withmy lord, whom she rallied for his addiction to his Club at a particularhour of the afternoon. She conversed readily. She reminded him, incidentally that her aunt would arrive early next day. He informed her, some time after, of an engagement "to tiffin with a brother officer, " andshe nodded. 

They drove away together while the secretary was at his labour of sortingthe heap of autobiographical scraps in a worn dispatch-box, pen andpencil jottings tossed to swell the mess when they had relieved an angryreminiscence. He noticed, heedlessly at the moment, feminine handwritingon some few clear sheets among them. 

Next day he was alone in the library. He sat before the box, opened itand searched, merely to quiet his annoyance for having left those sheetsof the fair amanuensis unexamined. They were not discoverable. They hadgone. 

He stood up at the stir of the door. It was she, and she acknowledgedhis bow; she took her steps to her chair. 

He was informed that Lord Ormont had an engagement, and he remarked, "I can do the work very well. " She sat quite silent. 

He read first lines of the scraps, laid them in various places, as in apreparation for conjurer's tricks at cards; refraining from a glance, lest he should disconcert the eyes he felt to be on him fitfully. 

At last she spoke, and he knew Aminta in his hearing and sight. 

"Is Emile Grenat still anglomane?"

An instant before her voice was heard he had been persuading himselfthat the points of unlikeness between his young Aminta and this tall andstately lady of the proud reserve in her bearing flouted the resemblance. 

CHAPTER V. 

IN WHICH THE SHADES OF BROWNY AND MATEY ADVANCE AND RETIRE

"Emile is as anglomane as ever, and not a bit less a Frenchman, " Weyburnsaid, in a tone of one who muffles a shock at the heart. 

"It would be the poorer compliment to us, " she rejoined. 

They looked at one another; she dropped her eyelids, he looked away. 

She had the grand manner by nature. She was the woman of the girl onceknown. 

"A soldier, is he?"

"Emile's profession and mine are much alike, or will be. "

"A secretary?"

Her deadness of accent was not designed to carry her opinion of the postof secretary. 

It brought the reply: "We hope to be schoolmasters. "

She drew in a breath; there was a thin short voice, hardly voice, as whenone of the unschooled minor feelings has been bruised. After a while shesaid--

"Does he think it a career?"

"Not brilliant. "

"He was formed for a soldier. "

"He had to go as the road led. "

"A young man renouncing ambition!"

"Considering what we can do best. "

"It signifies the taste for what he does. "

"Certainly that. "

Weyburn had senses to read the word "schoolmaster" in repetition behindher shut mouth. He was sharply sensible of a fall. 

The task with his papers occupied him. If he had a wish, it was to sinkso low in her esteem as to be spurned. A kick would have been arefreshment. Yet he was unashamed of the cause invoking it. We areinstruments to the touch of certain women, and made to play strangetunes. 

"Mr. Cuper flourishes?"

"The school exists. I have not been down there. I met Mr. Shaldersyesterday. He has left the school. "

"You come up from Olmer?"

"I was at Olmer last week, Lady Ormont. "

An involuntary beam from her eyes thanked him for her title at thatjuncture of the dialogue. She grew more spirited. 

"Mr. Shalders has joined the Dragoons, has he?"

"The worthy man has a happy imagination. He goes through a campaigndaily. "

"It seems to one to dignify his calling. "

"I like his enthusiasm. "

The lady withdrew into her thoughts; Weyburn fell upon his work. 

Mention of the military cloak of enthusiasm covering Shalders, broughtthe scarce credible old time to smite at his breast, in the presence ofthese eyes. A ringing of her title of Lady Ormont rendered the presenttime the incredible. 

"I can hardly understand a young Frenchman's not entering the army, " shesaid. 

"The Napoleonic legend is weaker now, " said he. 

"The son of an officer!"

"Grandson. "

"It was his choice to be, --he gave it up without reluctance?"

"Emile obeyed the command of his parents, " Weyburn answered; and he wasobedient to the veiled direction of her remark, in speaking of himself:"I had a reason, too. "

"One wonders!"

"It would have impoverished my mother's income to put aside a smallallowance for me for years. She would not have hesitated. I then set mymind on the profession of schoolmaster. "

"Emile Grenat was a brave boy. Has he no regrets?"

"Neither of us has a regret. "

"He began ambitiously. "

"It's the way at the beginning. "

"It is not usually abjured. "

"I'm afraid we neither of us 'dignify our calling' by discontent withit!"

A dusky flash, worth seeing, came on her cheeks. "I respectenthusiasms, " she said; and it was as good to him to hear as the beggingpardon, though clearly she could not understand enthusiasm for theschoolmaster's career. 

Light of evidence was before him, that she had a friendly curiosity toknow what things had led to their new meeting under these conditions. He sketched them cursorily; there was little to tell--little, that is;appealing to a romantic mind for interest. Aware of it, by sympathy, he degraded the narrative to a flatness about as cheering as a suburbanLondon Sunday's promenade. Sympathy caused the perverseness. He felther disillusionment; felt with it and spread a feast of it. She had tohear of studies at Caen and at a Paris Lycee; French fairly mastered;German, the same; Italian, the same; after studies at Heidelberg, Asti, and Florence; between four and five months at Athens (he was needlesslyprecise), in tutorship with a young nobleman: no events, nor a spot ofcolour. Thus did he wilfully, with pain to himself, put an extinguisheron the youth painted brilliant and eminent in a maiden's imagination. 

"So there can no longer be thought of the army, " she remarked; and theremark had a sort of sigh, though her breathing was equable. 

"Unless a big war knocks over all rules and the country comes praying usto serve, " he said. 

"You would not refuse then?"

"Not in case of need. One may imagine a crisis when they would givecommissions to men of my age or older for the cavalry--heavy losses ofofficers. "

She spoke, as if urged by a sting to revert to the distasteful: "Thatprofession--must you not take... Enter into orders if you aim at anydistinction?"

"And a member of the Anglican Church would not be allowed to exchange hisfrock for a cavalry sabre, " said he. "That is true. I do not propose tosettle as a schoolmaster in England. "

"Where?"

"On the Continent. "

"Would not America be better?"

"It would not so well suit the purpose in view for us. "

"There are others besides?"

"Besides Emile, there is a German and an Italian and a Swiss. "

"It is a Company?"

"A Company of schoolmasters! Companies of all kinds are forming. Colleges are Companies. And they have their collegians. Our aim is atpupils; we have no ambition for any title higher than School andSchoolmaster; it is not a Company. "

So, like Nature parading her skeleton to youthful adorers of her face, heinsisted on reducing to hideous material wreck the fair illusion, whichhad once arrayed him in alluring promise. 

She explained; "I said, America. You would be among Protestants inAmerica. "

"Catholics and Protestants are both welcome to us, according to ourscheme. And Germans, French, English, Americans, Italians, if they willcome; Spaniards and Portuguese, and Scandinavians, Russians as well. AndJews; Mahommedans too, if only they will come! The more mixed, the moreit hits our object. "

"You have not stated where on the Continent it is to be. "

"The spot fixed on is in Switzerland. "

"You will have scenery. "

"I hold to that, as an influence. "

A cool vision of the Bernese Alps encircled the young schoolmaster; andshe said, "It would influence girls; I dare say. "

"A harder matter with boys, of course--at first. We think we may make itserve. "

"And where is the spot? Is that fixed on?"

"Fifteen miles from Berne, on elevated land, neighbouring a water, notquite to be called a lake, unless in an auctioneer's advertisement. "

"I am glad of the lake. I could not look on a country home where therewas no swimming. You will be head of the school. "

"There must be a head. "

"Is the school likely to be established soon?"

He fell into her dead tone: "Money is required for establishments. I have a Reversion coming some day; I don't dabble in post obits. "

He waited for farther questions. They were at an end. 

"You have your work to do, Mr. Weyburn. "

Saying that, she bowed an implied apology for having kept him from it, and rose. She bowed again as she passed through the doorway, inacknowledgment of his politeness. 

Here; then, was the end of the story of Browny and Matey. Such was histhought under the truncheon-stroke of their colloquy. Lines of Browny'sletters were fiery waving ribands about him, while the coldly graciousbow of the Lady wrote Finis. 

The gulf between the two writings remained unsounded. It gave a heave tothe old passion; but stirred no new one; he had himself in hand now, andhe shut himself up when the questions bred of amazement buzzed andthreatened to storm. After all, what is not curious in this world? Thecurious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen. Men havebeen saying it since they began to count and turn corners. And let ushold off from speculating when there is or but seems a shadow ofunholiness over that mole-like business. There shall be no questions;and as to feelings, the same. They, if petted for a moment beneath theshadow, corrupt our blood. Weyburn was a man to have them by the throatat the birth. 

Still they thronged; heavy work of strangling had to be done. Her toneof disappointment with the schoolmaster bit him, and it flattered him. The feelings leapt alive, equally venomous from the wound and the caress. They pushed to see, had to be repelled from seeing, the girl Browny inthe splendid woman; they had lightning memories: not the pain of his gripcould check their voice on the theme touching her happiness or thereverse. And this was an infernal cunning. He paused perforce toinquire, giving them space for the breeding of their multitudes. Was shehappy? Did she not seem too meditative, enclosed, toneless, at her age?Vainly the persecuted fellow said to himself: "But what is it to menow?"--The Browny days were over. The passion for the younger Aminta wasover--buried; and a dream of power belonging to those days was not yetmore than visionary. It had moved her once, when it was a youngsoldier's. She treated the schoolmaster's dream as vapour, and the olddays as dead and ghostless. She did rightly. How could they or she orhe be other than they were!

With that sage exclamation, he headed into the Browny days and breastedthem; and he had about him the living foamy sparkle of the very time, until the Countess of Ormont breathed the word "Schoolmaster"; when, atonce, it was dusty land where buoyant waters had been, and the armies ofthe facts, in uniform drab, with some feathers and laces, and asignificant surpliced figure, decorously covering the wildest of Cupids, marched the standard of the winking gold-piece, which is their nourishingsun and eclipser of all suns that foster dreams. 

As you perceive, he was drawing swiftly to the vortex of the fools, andround and round he went, lucky to float. 

His view of the business of the schoolmaster plucked him from the whirl. She despised it; he upheld it. He stuck to his view, finding theirantagonism on the subject wholesome for him. All that she succeeded indoing was to rob it of the aurora colour clothing everything on whichMatey Weyburn set his aim. Her contempt of it, whether as a professionin itself or as one suitable to the former young enthusiast for arms, dwarfed it to appear like the starved plants under Greenland skies. Butthose are of a sturdy genus; they mean to live; they live, perforce, ofthe right to live; they will prove their right in a coming season, whensome one steps near and wonders at them, and from more closely observing;gets to understand, learning that the significance and the charm of earthwill be as well shown by them as by her tropical fair flaunters or thetenderly-nurtured exotics. 

An unopened coffer of things to be said in defence of--no, on behalf of--no, in honour of the Profession of Schoolmaster, perhaps to theconvincing of Aminta, Lady Ormont, was glanced at; a sentence or twoleapt out and stepped forward, and had to retire. He preferred to thefathering of tricky, windy phrases, the being undervalued--even by her. He was taught to see again how Rhetoric haunts, and Rhetoric bedevils, the vindication of the clouded, especially in the case of a disesteemedProfession requiring one to raise it and impose it upon the antagonisticsenses for the bewildering of the mind. One has to sound it loudly;there is no treating it, as in the advocacy of the cases of flesh andblood, with the masterly pathos of designed simplicity. And Weyburn wasCuper's Matey Weyburn still in his loathing of artifice to raise emotion, loathing of the affected, the stilted, the trumpet of speech--alwaysexcepting school-exercises in the tongues, the unmasking of a Catiline, the address of a General, Athenian or other, to troops. 

He kept his coffer shut; and, for a consequence, he saw the contents asan avenue of blossom leading to vistas of infinite harvest. 

She was Lady Ormont: Aminta shared the title of his old hero! He refusedto speculate upon how it had come to pass, and let the curtain hang, though dramas and romances, with the miracles involved in them, wereagitated by a transient glimpse at the curtain. 

Well! and he hoped to be a member of the Profession she despised: hopedit with all his heart. And one good effect of his giving his heart tothe hope was, that he could hold from speculating and from feeling, evenfrom pausing to wonder at the most wonderful turn of events. Blessedantagonism drove him to be braced by thoughts upon the hardest of theschoolmaster's tasks--bright winter thoughts, prescribing to himsatisfaction with a faith in the sowing, which may be his only reaping. Away fly the boys in sheaves. After his toil with them, to instruct, restrain, animate, point their minds, they leave him, they plunge intothe world and are gone. Will he see them again? It is a flickeringperhaps. To sustain his belief that he has done serviceable work, hemust be sore of his having charged them with good matter. How can theman do it, if, during his term of apprenticeship, he has allowed himselfto dally here and there, down to moony dreamings over inscrutablebeautiful eyes of a married lady; for the sole reason that he meets herunexpectedly, after an exchange of letters with her in long-past days atschool, when she was an inexperienced girl, who knew not what she vowed, and he a flighty-headed youngster, crying out to be the arrow of any bowthat was handy? Yea, she was once that girl, named Browny by the boys. 

Temptation threw warm light on the memory, and very artfully, byconjuring up the faces, cries, characters, all the fun of the boys. There was no possibility of forgetting her image in those days; he had, therefore, to live with it and to live near the grown woman--Time'spresent answer to the old riddle. It seemed to him, that instead ofsorting Lord Ormont's papers, he ought to be at sharp exercise. According to his prescript, sharp exercise of lungs and limbs is a man'smoral aid against temptation. He knew it as the one trusty antidote forhim, who was otherwise the vessel of a temperament pushing to mutiny. Certainly it is the best philosophy youth can pretend to practise; andLord Ormont kept him from it! Worse than that, the slips and sheets ofpaper in the dispatch-box were not an exercise of the mind even; therewas nothing to grapple with--no diversion; criticism passed by themindulgently, if not benevolently. 

Quite apart from the subject inscribed on them, Weyburn had now and againa blow at the breast, of untraceable origin. For he was well enoughaware that the old days when Browny imagined him a hero, in drinking hispraises of a brighter, were drowned. They were dead; but here was shethe bride of the proved hero. His praises might have helped in causingher willingness--devotional readiness, he could fancy--to yield her hand. Perhaps at the moment when the hero was penning some of the Indian slipshere, the boy at school was preparing Aminta; but he could not beresponsible for a sacrifice of the kind suggested by Lady Charlotte. Andno, there had been no such sacrifice, although Lord Ormont's inexplicabletreatment of his young countess, under cover of his notorious reputationwith women, conduced to the suspicion. 

While the vagrant in Weyburn was thus engaged, his criticism of thesoldier-lord's field-English on paper let the stuff go tolerantlyunexamined, but with a degree of literary contempt at heart for thewriter who had that woman-scented reputation and expressed himself sopoorly. The sentiment was outside of reason. We do, nevertheless, expect our Don Juans to deliver their minds a trifle elegantly; if not inclassic English, on paper; and when we find one of them inflictingcruelty, as it appears, and the victim is a young woman, a beautifulyoung woman, she pleads to us poetically against the bearish sentences ofhis composition. We acknowledge, however, that a mere sentiment, entertained possibly by us alone, should not be permitted to condemn himunheard. 

Lady Ormont was not seen again. After luncheon at a solitary table, thesecretary worked till winter's lamps were lit; and then shone freedom, with assurance to him that he would escape from the miry mental ditch hehad been floundering in since Aminta revealed herself. Sunday was theglorious day to follow, with a cleansing bath of a walk along thesouthern hills; homely English scenery to show to a German friend, one ofhis "Company. " Half a dozen good lads were pledged to the walk; bearingwhich in view, it could be felt that this nonsensical puzzlement over hisrelations to the moods and tenses of a married woman would be bounced outof recollection before nightfall. The landscape given off any of theairy hills of Surrey would suffice to do it. 

A lady stood among her boxes below, as he descended the stairs to crossthe hall. He knew her for the person Lady Charlotte called "the woman'saunt, " whom Lord Ormont could not endure--a forgiven old enemy, Mrs. Nargett Pagnell. 

He saluted. She stared, and corrected her incivility with "Ah, yes, " anda formal smile. 

If not accidentally delayed on her journey, she had been needlessly thecause why Lord Ormont hugged his Club during the morning and afternoon. Weyburn was pushed to think of the matter by remembrance of his foregoneresentment at her having withdrawn Aminta from Miss Vincent's three daysearlier than the holiday time. The resentment was over; but a germ of itmust have sprang from the dust to prompt the kindling leap his memorytook, out of all due connection; like a lightning among the crags. Itstruck Aminta smartly. He called to mind the conversation at tableyesterday. Had she played on Lord Ormont's dislike of the aunt to drivehim forth for some purpose of her own? If so, the little trick had beendone with deplorable spontaneity or adeptness of usage. What was thepurpose?--to converse with an old acquaintance, undisturbed by LordOrmont and her aunt? Neatly done, supposing the surmise correct. 

But what was there in the purpose? He sifted rapidly for the gist of theconversation; reviewed the manner of it, the words, the sound they had, the feelings they touched; then owned that the question could not beanswered. Owning, further, that the recurrence of these idioticspeculations, feelings, questions, wrote him down as both dull fellow andimpertinent, he was unabled to restore Aminta to the queenly place shetook above the schoolmaster, who was very soon laughing at his fever orflash of the afternoon. The day had brought a great surprise, nothingmore. Twenty minutes of fencing in the a salle d'armes of an Italiancaptain braced him to health, and shifted scenes of other loves, lighterloves, following the Browny days--not to be called loves; in fact; hardlybeyond inclinations. Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity. Tomeet a married woman, and be mooning over her because she gave him hereyes and her handwriting when a girl, was enough to rouse an honestfellow's laugh at himself, in the contemplation of his intermediateamorous vagabondage. Had he ever known the veritable passion afterBrowny sank from his ken? Let it be confessed, never. His first lovewas his only true love, despite one shuddering episode, oddly humiliatingto recollect, though he had not behaved badly. So, then, by right of hispassion, thus did eternal justice rule it: that Browny belonged, to MateyWeyburn, Aminta to Lord Ormont. Aminta was a lady blooming in the flesh, Browny was the past's pale phantom; for which reason he could call herhis own, without harm done to any one, and with his usual appetite fordinner, breakfast, lunch, whatever the meal supplied by the hour. 

It would somewhat alarmingly have got to Mr. Weyburn's conscience througha disturbance of his balance, telling him that he was on a perilous road, if his relish for food had been blunted. He had his axiom on thesubject, and he was wrong in the general instance, for the appetites ofrogues and ogres are not known to fail. As regarded himself, he waseminently right; and he could apply it to boys also, to all young people--the unlaunched, he called them. He counted himself among the launched, no doubt, and had breasted seas; but the boy was alive, a trenchermanlad, in the coming schoolmaster, and told him profitable facts concerninghis condition; besides throwing a luminous ray on the arcane of ourelusive youthful. If they have no stout zest for eating, put Queryagainst them. 

His customary enjoyment of dinner convinced Mr. Weyburn that he had notbrooded morbidly over his phantom Browny, and could meet Aminta, Countessof Ormont, on the next occasion with the sentiments proper to a commonofficial. Did she not set him a commendable example? He admired her fornot concealing her disdain of the aspirant schoolmaster, quitecomprehending, by sympathy, why the woman should reproach the girl whohad worshipped heroes, if this was a full-grown specimen; and the replyof the shamed girl, that in her ignorance she could not know better. Hespared the girl, but he laughed at the woman he commended, laughed athimself. 

Aminta's humour was being stirred about the same time. She and her auntwere at the dinner-table in the absence of my lord. The dinner hadpassed with the stiff dialogue peculiar to couples under supervision oftheir inferiors; and, as soon as the room was clear, she had asked heraunt, touching the secretary: "Have you seen him?"

Mrs. Nargett Pagnell's answer could have been amusing only to one whoseintimate knowledge of her found it characteristically salt; for she was alady of speech addressed ever directly or roundabout to the chief pointof business between herself and her hearer, and the more she was brief, oblique, far-shooting, the more comically intelligible she was to herniece. She bent her head to signify that she had seen the secretary, andstruck the table with both hands, exclaiming:

"Well, to be sure, Lord Ormont!"

Their discussion, before they descended the stairs to dinner, concernedhis lordship's extraordinary indifference to the thronging of handsomeyoung men around his young countess. 

Here, the implication ran, is one established in the house. 

Aminta's thoughts could be phrased: "Yes, that is true, for one part ofit. "

As for the other part, the ascent of a Phoebus Apollo, with his goldenbow and quiver off the fairest of Eastern horizon skies, followedsuddenly by the sight of him toppling over in Mr. Cuper's long-skirtedbrown coat, with spectacles and cane, is an image that hardly exceeds thedegradation she conceived. It was past ludicrous; yet admitted of nowoefulness, nothing soothingly pathetic. It smothered and barked at thedreams of her blooming spring of life, to which her mind had latterlybeen turning back, for an escape from sour, one may say cynical, reflections, the present issue of a beautiful young woman's first savourof battle with the world. 

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubinesA free-thinker startles him as a kind of demonAll that Matey and Browny were forbidden to write they lookedCajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at collegeCould not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's careerCurious thing would be if curious things should fail to happenFew men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friendsHe began ambitiously--It's the way at the beginningHe loathed a skulkerI'm for a rational DeityLoathing of artifice to raise emotionNevertheless, inclinations are an infidelityPublished Memoirs indicate the end of a man's activityThe despot is alert at every issue, to every chanceThings were lumpish and gloomy that day of the weekWe shall want a war to teach the country the value of courageYou'll have to guess at half of everything he tells youYou're going to be men, meaning something better than women

[The End]

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