Touching the neighbours of Lakelands, they were principally enriched merchants, it appeared; a snippet or two of the fringe of aristocracy lay here and there among them; and one racy-of-the-soil old son of Thames, having the manners proper to last centurys yeoman. Mr. Pempton knew something of this quaint Squire of Hefferstone, Beaves Urmsing by name; a ruddy man, right heartily Saxon; a still glowing brand amid the ashes of the Heptarchy hearthstone; who had a song, The Marigolds, which he would troll out for you anywhere, on any occasion. To have so near to the metropolis one from the centre of the venerable rotundity of the country, was rare. Victor exclaimed Come! in ravishment over the picturesqueness of a neighbour carrying imagination away to the founts of England; and his look at Nataly proposed. Her countenance was inapprehensive. He perceived resistance, and said: I have met two or three of them in the train: agreeable men: Gladding, the banker; a General Fanning; that man Blathenoy, great billbroker. But the fact is, close on London, were independent of neighbours; we mean to be. Lakelands and London practically join.
The mother city becoming the suburb, murmured Colney, in report of the union.
You must expect to be invaded, sir, said Mr. Sowerby; and Victor shrugged: We are pretty safe.
The lock of a door seems a potent security until some one outside is heard fingering the handle nigh midnight, Fenellan threw out his airy nothing of a remark.
It struck on Natalys heart. So you will not let us be lonely here, she said to her guests.
The Rev. Septimus Barmby was mouthpiece for congregations. Sound of a subterranean roar, with a blast at the orifice, informed her of their very deep happiness in the privilege.
He comforted her. Nesta smiled on him thankfully.
Dont imagine, Mrs. Victor, that you can be shut off from neighbours, in a house like this; and they have a claim, said Lady Grace, quitting the table.
Fenellan and Colney thought so:
Like mice at a cupboard.
Beetles in a kitchen.
No, no-no, no! Victor shook head, pitiful over the good people likened to things unclean, and royally upraising them: in doing which, he scattered to vapour the leaden incubi they had been upon his flatter moods of late. No, but its a rapture to breathe the air here! His lifted chest and nostrils were for the encouragement of Nataly to soar beside him.
She summoned her smile and nodded.
He spoke aside to Lady Grace: The dear soul wants time to compose herself after a grand surprise.
She replied: I think I could soon be reconciled. How much land?
In treaty for some hundred and eighty or ninety acres in all at present three hundred and seventy, including plantations, lake, outhouses.
Large enough; land paying as it doesthat is, not paying. We shall be having to gamble in the City systematically for subsistence.
You will not so much as jest on the subject.
Coming from such a man, that was clear sky thunder. The lady played it off in a shadowy pout and shrug while taking a stamp of his masterfulness, not so volatile.
She said to Nataly: Our place in Worcestershire is about half the size, if as much. Large enough when were not crowded out with gout and can open to no one. Some day you will visit us, I hope.
You we count on here, Lady Grace.
It was an over-accentuated response; unusual with this well-bred woman; and a bit of speech that does not flow, causes us to speculate. The lady resumed: I value the favour. Were in a horsey-doggy-foxy circle down there. We want enlivening. If we had your set of musicians and talkers!
Nataly smiled in vacuous kindness, at a loss for the retort of a compliment to a person she measured. Lady Grace also was an amiable hostile reviewer. Each could see, to have cited in the other, defects common to the lower species of the race, admitting a superior personal quality or two; which might be pleaded in extenuation; and if the apology proved too effective, could be dispersed by insistence upon it, under an implied appeal to benevolence. When we have not a liking for the creature whom we have no plain cause to dislike, we are minutely just.
During the admiratory stroll along the ground-floor rooms, Colney Durance found himself beside Dr. Schlesien; the latter smoking, striding, emphasizing, but bearable, as the one of the party who was not perpetually at the gape in laudation. Colney was heard to say: No doubt: the German is the race the least mixed in Europe: it might challenge aboriginals for that. Oddly, it has invented the Cyclopaedia for knowledge, the sausage for nutrition! How would you explain it?
Dr. Schlesien replied with an Atlas shrug under fleabite to the insensately infantile interrogation.
He in turn was presently heard.
But, my good sir! you quote me your English Latin. I must beg of you you write it down. It is orally incomprehensible to Continentals.
We are Islanders! Colney shrugged in languishment.
Oh, you do great things Dr. Schlesien rejoined in kindness, making his voice a musical intimation of the smallness of the things.
We build great houses, to employ our bricks
No, Colney, to live in, said Victor.
Scarcely long enough to warm them.
What do you fiddle!
They are not Hohenzollerns!
It is true, Dr. Schlesien called. No, but you learn discipline; you build. I say wid you, not Hohenzollerns you build! But you shall look above: Eyes up. Ire necesse est. Good, but mount; you come to something. Have ideas.
Good, but when do we reach your level?
Sir, I do not say more than that we do not want instruction from foreigners.
Pupil to paedagogue indeed. You have the wreath in Music, in Jurisprudence, Chemistry, Scholarship, Beer, Arms, Manners.
Dr. Schlesien puffed a tempest of tobacco and strode.
He is chiselling for wit in the Teutonic block, Colney said, falling back to Fenellan.
Fenellan observed: You might have credited him with the finished sculpture.
Theyre ahead of us in sticking at the charge of wit.
Theyve a widening of their swallow since Versailles.
Manners?
Well, thats a tight cravat for the Teutonic thrapple! But hes off by himself to loosen it.
Victor came on the couple testily. What are you two concocting! I say, do keep the peace, please. An excellent good fellow; better up in politics than any man I know; understands music; means well, you can see. You two hate a man at all serious. And he doesnt bore with his knowledge. A scholar too.
If hell bring us the atmosphere of the groves of Academe, he may swing his ferule pickled in himself, and welcome, said Fenellan.
Yes! Victor nodded at a recognized antagonism in Fenellan; but Colneys always lifting the Germans high above us.
Its to exercise his muscles.
Victor headed to the other apartments, thinking that the Rev. Septimus and young Sowerby, Old England herself, were spared by the diversion of these light skirmishing shots from their accustomed victims to the masculine people of our time. His friends would want a drilling to be of aid to him in his campaign to come. For it was one, and a great one. He remembered his complete perception of the plan, all the elements of it, the forward whirling of it, just before the fall on London Bridge. The greatness of his enterprise laid such hold of him that the smallest of obstacles had a villanous aspect; and when, as anticipated, Colney and Fenellan were sultry flies for whomsoever they could fret, he was blind to the reading of absurdities which caused Fredis eyes to stream and Lady Grace beside him to stand awhile and laugh out her fit. Young Sowerby appeared forgiving enoughhe was a perfect gentleman: but Fredis appalling sense of fun must try him hard. And those young fellows are often more wounded by a girls thoughtless laughter than by a mans contempt. Nataly should have protected him. Her face had the air of a smiling general satisfaction; sign of a pleasure below the mark required; sign too of a sleepy partner for a battle. Even in the wonderful kitchen, arched and pillared (where the explanation came to Nesta of Madame Callets frequent leave of absence of late, when an inferior dinner troubled her father in no degree), even there his Nataly listened to the transports of the guests with benign indulgence.
Mama! said Nesta, ready to be entranced by kitchens in her bubbling animation: she meant the recalling of instances of the conspirator her father had been.
You none of you guessed Armandines business! Victor cried, in a glee that pushed to make the utmost of this matter and count against chagrin. She was off to Paris; went to test the last inventions:French brains are always alert:and in fact, those kitchen-ranges, gas and coal, and the apparatus for warming plates and dishes, the whole of the battery is on the model of the Duc dArianesfinest in Europe. Well, he agreed with Colney, to say France is enough.
Mr. Pempton spoke to Miss Graves of the task for a woman to conduct a command so extensive. And, as when an inoffensive wayfarer has chanced to set foot near a wasps nest, out on him came woman and her champions, the worthy and the sham, like a blast of powder.
Victor ejaculated: Armandine! Whoever doubted her capacity, knew not Armandine; or not knowing Armandine, knew not the capacity in women.
With that utterance of her name, he saw the orangey spot on London Bridge, and the sinking Tower and masts and funnels, and the rising of them, on his return to his legs; he recollected, that at the very edge of the fall he had Armandine strongly in his mind. She was to do her part: Fenellan and Colney on the surface, she below: and hospitality was to do its part, and music was impressedthe innocent Concerts; his wealth, all his inventiveness were to serve;and merely to attract and win the tastes of people, for a social support to Lakelands! Merely that? Much more:if Natalys coldness to the place would but allow him to form an estimate of how much. At the same time, being in the grasp of his present disappointment, he perceived a meanness in the result, that was astonishing and afflicting. He had not ever previously felt imagination starving at the vision of success. Victor had yet to learn, that the man with a material object in aim, is the man of his object; and the nearer to his mark, often the farther is he from a sober self; he is more the arrow of his bow than bow to his arrow. This we pay for scheming: and success is costly; we find we have pledged the better half of ourselves to clutch it; not to be redeemed with the whole handful of our prize! He was, however, learning after his leaping fashion. Natalys defective sympathy made him look at things through the feelings she depressed. A shadow of his missed Idea on London Bridge seemed to cross him from the close flapping of a wing within reach. He could say only, that it would, if caught, have been an answer to the thought disturbing him.
Nataly drew Colney Durance with her eyes to step beside her, on the descent to the terrace. Little Skepsey hove in sight, coming swift as the point of an outrigger over the flood.
CHAPTER X. SKEPSEY IN MOTION
The bearer of his masters midday letters from London shot beyond Nataly as soon as seen, with an apparent snap of his body in passing. He steamed to the end of the terrace and delivered the packet, returning at the same rate of speed, to do proper homage to the lady he so much respected. He had left the railway-station on foot instead of taking a fly, because of a calculation that he would save three minutes; which he had not lost for having to come through the raincloud. Perhaps the contrary, Skepsey said: it might be judged to have accelerated his course: and his hat dripped, and his coat shone, and he soaped his hands, cheerful as an ouzel-cock when the sun is out again.
Many cracked crowns lately, in the Manly Art? Colney inquired of him. And Skepsey answered with precision of statement: Crowns, no, sir; the nose, it may happen; but it cannot be said to be the rule.
You are of opinion, that the practice of Scientific Pugilism offers us compensation for the broken bridge of a nose?
In an increase of manly self-esteem: I do, sir, yes.
Skepsey was shy of this gentlemans bite; and he fancied his defence had been correct. Perceiving a crumple of the lips of Mr. Durance, he took the attitude of a watchful dubiety.
But, my goodness, you are wet through! cried Nataly, reproaching herself for the tardy compassion; and Nesta ran up to them and heaped a thousand pities on her poor dear Skip, and drove him in beneath the glass-dome to the fragments of pic-nic, and poured champagne for him, lest his wife should have to doctor him for a cold, and poured afresh, when he had obeyed her: for the toasting of Lakelands, dear Skepsey! impossible to resist: so he drank, and blinked; and was then told, that before using his knife and fork he must betake himself to some fire of shavings and chips, where coffee was being made, for the purpose of drying his clothes. But this he would not hear of: he was pledged to business, to convey his masters letters, and he might have to catch a train by the last quarter-minute, unless it was behind the time-tables; he must hold himself ready to start. Entreated, adjured, commanded, Skepsey commiseratingly observed to Colney Durance, The ladies do not understand, sir! For Turk of Constantinople had never a more haremed opinion of the unfitness of women in the brave world of action. The persistence of these ladies endeavouring to obstruct him in the course of his duty, must have succeeded save that for one word of theirs he had two, and twice the promptitude of motion. He explained to them, as to good children, that the loss of five minutes might be the loss of a Post, the loss of thousands of pounds, the loss of the character of a Firm; and he was away to the terrace. Nesta headed him and waved him back. She and her mother rebuked him: they called him unreasonable; wherein they resembled the chief example of the sex to him, in a wife he had at home, who levelled that charge against her husband when most she needed discipline: the woman laid hand on the very word legitimately his own for the justification of his process with her.
But, Skips! if you are ill and we have to nurse you! said Nesta.
She forgot the hospital, he told her cordially, and laughed at the notion of a ducking producing a cold or a cold a fever, or anything consumption, with him. So the ladies had to keep down their anxious minds and allow him to stand in wet clothing to eat his cold pie and salad.
Miss Priscilla Graves entering to them, became a witness that they were seductresses for inducing him to drink wineand a sparkling wine.
It is to warm him, they pleaded; and she said: He must be warm from his walk; and they said: But he is wet; and said she, without a show of feeling: Warm water, then; and Skepsey writhed, as if in the grasp of anatomists, at being the subject of female contention or humane consideration. Miss Graves caught signs of the possible proselyte in him; she remarked encouragingly:
I am sure he does not like it; he still has a natural taste.
She distressed his native politeness, for the glass was in his hand, and he was fully aware of her high-principled aversion; and he profoundly bowed to principles, believing his England to be pillared on them; and the lady looked like one who bore the standard of a principle; and if we slap and pinch and starve our appetites, the idea of a principle seems entering us to support. Subscribing to a principle, our energies are refreshed; we have a faith in the country that was not with us before the act; and of a real well-founded faith come the glowing thoughts which we have at times: thoughts of England heading the nations; when the smell of an English lane under showers challenges Eden, and the threading of a London crowd tunes discords to the swell of a cathedral organ. It may be, that by the renunciation of any description of alcohol, a man will stand clearer-headed to serve his country. He may expect to have a clearer memory, for certain: he will not be asking himself, unable to decide, whether his master named a Mr. Journeyman or a Mr. Jarniman, as the person he declined to receive. Either of the two is repulsed upon his application, owing to the guilty similarity of sounds but what we are to think of is, our own sad state of inefficiency in failing to remember; which accuses our physical condition, therefore our habits.Thus the little man debated, scarcely requiring more than to hear the right word, to be a convert and make him a garland of the proselytes fetters.