Scarcely that, said Carling, contracting.
But you re for great Reforms?
Gradual.
Then its for Reformatories, mayhap.
They would hardly be a cure.
You re in search of a cure?
It would be a blessed discovery.
But whats to become of Society?
Its a puzzle to the cleverest.
All through History, my dear Mr. Carling, we see that.
Establishments must have their sacrifices. Beware of interfering: eh?
By degrees, we may hope....
Society prudently shuns the topic; and so ll we. For we might tell of one another, in a fit of distraction, that t other one talked of it, and we should be banished for an offence against propriety. You should read my friend Durances Essay on Society. Lawyers are a buttress of Society. But, come: I wager they dont know what they support until they read that Essay.
Carling had a pleasant sense of escape, in not being personally asked to read the Essay, and not hearing that a copy of it should be forwarded to him.
He said: Mr. Radnor is a very old friend?
Our fathers were friends; they served in the same regiment for years. I was in India when Victor Radnor took the fatal!
Followed by a second, not less?
In the interpretation of a rigid morality arming you legal gentlemen to make it so!
The Law must be vindicated.
The law is a clumsy bludgeon.
We think it the highest effort of human reasonthe practical instrument.
You may compare it to a rustics finger on a fiddlestring, for the murdered notes you get out of the practical instrument.
I am bound to defend it, clumsy bludgeon or not.
You are one of the giants to wield it, and feel humanly, when, by chance, down it comes on the foot an inch off the line.Heres a peep of Old London; if the habit of old was not to wash windows. I like these old streets!
Hum, Carling hesitated. I can remember when the dirt at the windows was appalling.
Appealing to the same kind of stuff in the passing youngsters green-scum eye: it was. And there your Law did good work.Youre for Bordeaux. What is your word on Burgundy?
Our Falernian!
Victor Radnor has the oldest in the kingdom. But he will have the best of everything. A Romanee! A Musigny! Sip, my friend, you embrace the Goddess of your choice above. You are up beside her at a sniff of that wine.And lo, venerable Drury! we duck through the court, reminded a bit by our feelings of our first love, who hadnt the cleanest of faces or nicest of manners, but she takes her station in memory because we were boys then, and the golden halo of youth is upon her.
Carling, as a man of the world, acquiesced in souvenirs he did not share. He said urgently: Understand me; you speak of Mr. Radnor; pray, believe I have the greatest respect for Mr. Radnors abilities. He is one of our foremost men proud of him. Mr. Radnor has genius; I have watched him; it is genius; he shows it in all he does; one of the memorable men of our times. I can admire him, independent ofwell, misfortune of that kind a mistaken early step. Misfortune, it is to be named. Between ourselveswe are men of the worldif one could see the way! She occasionally as I have told you. I have ventured suggestions. As I have mentioned, I have received an impression
But still, Mr. Carling, if the lady doesnt release him and will keep his name, she might stop her cowardly persecutions.
Can you trace them?
Undisguised!
Mrs. Burman Radnor is devout. I should not exactly say revengeful. We have to discriminate. I gather, that her animus is, in all honesty, directed at theI quotestate of sin. We are mixed, you know.
The Winegod in the blood of Fenellan gave a leap. But, fifty thousand times more mixed, she might any moment stop the state of sin, as she calls it, if it pleased her.
She might try. Our Judges look suspiciously on long delayed actions. And there are, too, women who regard the marriage-tie as indissoluble. She has had to combat that scruple.
Believer in the renewing of the engagement overhead!well. But put a by-word to Mother Nature about the state of sin. Where, do you imagine, she would lay it? Youll say, that Nature and Law never agreed. They ought.
The latter deferring to the former?
Moulding itself on her swelling proportions. My dear dear sir, the state of sin was the continuing to live in defiance of, in contempt of, in violation of, in the total degradation of, Nature.
He was under no enforcement to take the oath at the altar.
He was a small boy tempted by a varnished widow, with pounds of barley sugar in her pockets;and she already serving as a test-vessel or mortar for awful combinations in druggery! Gilt widows are equal to decrees of Fate to us young ones. Upon my word, the cleric who unites, and the Law that sanctions, theyre the criminals. Victor Radnor is the noblest of fellows, the very best friend a man can have. I will tell you: he saved me, after I left the army, from living on the produce of my penwhich means, if there is to be any produce, the prostrating of yourself to the level of the round middle of the public: saved me from that! Yes, Mr. Carling, I have trotted our thoroughfares a poor Polly of the pen; and it is owing to Victor Radnor that I can order my thoughts as an individual man again before I blacken paper. Owing to him, I have a tenderness for mercenaries; having been one of them and knowing how little we can help it. He is an Olympianwho thinks of them below. The lady also is an admirable woman at all points. The pair are a mated couple, such as you wont find in ten households over Christendom. Are you aware of the story?
Carling replied: A story under shadow of the Law, has generally two very distinct versions.
Hear mine.And, by Jove! a runaway cab. No, all right. But a crazy cab it is, and fit to do mischief in narrow Drury. Except that its sheer riff-raff here to knock over.
Hulloa?come! quoth the wary lawyer.
Theres the heart I wanted to rouse to hear me! One may be sure that the man for old Burgundy has it big and sound, in spite of his legal practices; a dear good spherical fellow! Some day, well hope, you will be sitting with us over a magnum of Victor Radnors Romance Conti aged thirty-one: a wine, youll say at the second glass, High Priest for the celebration of the uncommon nuptials between the body and the soul of man.
You hit me rightly, said Carting, tickled and touched; sensually excited by the bouquet of Victor Radnors hospitality and companionship, which added flavour to Fenellans compliments. These came home to him through his desire to be the good spherical fellow; for he, like modern diplomatists in the track of their eminent Berlinese New Type of the time, put on frankness as an armour over wariness, holding craft in reserve: his aim was at the refreshment of honest fellowship: by no means to discover that the coupling of his native bias with his professional duty was unprofitable nowadays. Wariness, however, was not somnolent, even when he said: You know, I am never the lawyer out of my office. Man of the world to men of the world; and I have not lost by it. I am Mrs. Barman Radnors legal adviser: you are Mr. Victor Radnors friend. They are, as we see them, not on the best of terms. I would ratherat its lowest, as a matter of businessbe known for having helped them to some kind of footing than send in a round bill to my clientor another. I gain more in the end. Frankly, I mean to prove, that its a lawyers interest to be human.
Because, now, see! said Fenellan, heres the case. Miss Natalia Dreighton, of a good Yorkshire familya large one, reads an advertisement for the post of companion to a lady, and answers it, and engages herself, previous to the appearance of the young husband. Miss Dreighton is one of the finest young women alive. She has a glorious contralto voice. Victor and she are encouraged by Mrs. Barman to sing duets together. Well?
Why, Euclid would have theoremd it out for you at a glance at the trio. You have only to look on them, you chatter out your three Acts of a Drama without a stop. If Mrs. Barman cares to practise charity, she has only to hold in her Fury-forked tongue, or her Jarniman I think s the name.
Carting shrugged.
Let her keep from striking, if shes Christian, pursued Fenetlan, and if kind let her resume the name of her first lord, who did a better thing for himself than for her, when he shook off his bars of bullion, to rise the lighter, and left a wretched female soul below, with the devils own testimony to her attractionsthousands in the Funds, houses in the City. She threw the young couple together. And my friend Victor Radnor is of a particularly inflammable nature. Imagine one of us in such a situation, Mr. Carting!
Trying! said the lawyer.
The dear fellow was as nigh death as a man can be and know the sweetness of a womans call to him to live. And heres Londons garden of pines, bananas, oranges; all the droppings of the Hesperides here! We dont reflect on it, Mr. Carling.
Not enough, not enough.
I feel such a spout of platitudes that I could out With a Leading Article on a sheet of paper on your back while youre bending over the baskets. I seem to have got circularly round again to Eden when I enter a garden. Only, here we have to pay for the fruits we pluck. Well, and just the same there; and no end to the payment either. Were always paying! By the way, Mrs. Victor Radnors dinner-tables a spectacle. Her taste in flowers equals her lords in wine. But age improves the wine and spoils the flowers, youll say. Maybe youre for arguing that lovely women show us more of the flower than the grape, in relation to the course of time. I pray you not to forget the terrible intoxicant she is. We reconcile it, Mr. Carling, with the notion that the grapes her spirit, the flower her body. Or is it the reverse? Perhaps an intertwining. But look upon bouquets and clusters, and the idea of woman springs up at once, proving shes composed of them. I was about to remark, that with deference to the influence of Mrs. Burmans legal adviser, an impenitent or penitent sinners pastor, the Reverend gentleman ministering to her spiritual needs, would presumptively exercise it, in this instance, in a superior degree.
Carling murmured: The Rev. Groseman Buttermore; and did so for something of a cover, to continue a run of internal reflections: as, that he was assuredly listening to vinous talk in the streets by day; which impression placed him on a decorous platform above the amusing gentleman; to whom, however, he grew cordial, in recognizing consequently, that his exuberant flow could hardly be a mask; and that an indication here and there of a trap in his talk, must have been due rather to excess of wariness, habitual in the mind of a long-headed man, whose incorrigibly impulsive fits had necessarily to be rectified by a vigilant dexterity.
Buttermore! ejaculated Fenellan: Groseman Buttermore! Mrs. Victors Father Confessor is the Rev. Septimus Barmby. Groseman ButtermoreSeptimus Barmby. Is there anything in names? Truly, unless these clerical gentlemen take them up at the crossing of the roads long after birth, the names would appear the active parts of them, and themselves mere marching supports, like the bearers of street placard-advertisements. Now, I know a Septimus Barmby, and you a Groseman Buttermore, and beyond the fact that Reverend starts up before their names without mention, I wager its about all we do know of them. Theyre Societys trusty rock-limpets, no doubt.
My respect for the cloth is extreme. Carlings short cough prepared the way for deductions. Between ourselves, they are men of the world.
Fenellan eyed benevolently the worthy attorney, whose innermost imp burst out periodically, like a Dutch clocksentry, to trot on his own small grounds for thinking himself of the community of the man of the world. You lawyers dress in another closet, he said. The Rev. Groseman has the ear of the lady?
He has:one ear.
Ah? She has the other open for a man of the world, perhaps.
Listens to him, listens to me, listens to Jarniman; and we neither of us guide her. Shes very curiousa study. You think you know hernext day she has eluded you. Shes emotional, shes hard; shes a woman, shes a stone. Anything you like; but dont count on her. And another thingIm bound to say it of myself, Carling claimed close hearing of Fenellan over a shelf of saladstuff, no one who comes near her has any real weight with her in this matter.
Probably you mix cream in your salad of the vinegar and oil, said Fenellan. Try jelly of mutton.You give me a new idea. Latterly, fond as I am of salads, Ive had rueful qualms. Well try it.
You should dine with Victor Radnor.
French cook, of course!
Cordon bleu.
I like to be sure of my cutlet.
I like to be sure of a tastiness in my vegetables.
And good sauces!
And pretty pastry. I said, Cordon bleu. The miracle is, it s a woman that Victor Radnor has trained: French, but a woman; devoted to him, as all who serve him are. Do I say but a woman? Theres not a Frenchman alive to match her. Vatel awaits her in Paradise with his arms extended; and may he wait long!
Carling indulged his passion for the genuine by letting a flutter of real envy be seen. My wife would like to meet such a Frenchwoman. It must be a privilege to dine with himto know him. I know what he has done for English Commerce, and to build a colossal fortune: genius, as I said: and his donations to Institutions. Odd, to read his name and Mrs. Burman Radnors at separate places in the lists! Well, well hope. Its a case for a compromise of sentiments and claims.
A friend of mine, spiced with cynic, declares that theres always an amicable way out of a dissension, if we get rid of Lupus and Vulpus.
Carling spied for a trap in the citation of Lupus and Vulpus; he saw none, and named the square of his residence on the great Russell property, and the number of the house, the hour of dinner next day. He then hung silent, breaking the pause with his hand out and a sharp Well? that rattled a whirligig sound in his head upward. His leave of people was taken in this laughing falsetto, as of one affected by the curious end things come to.
Fenellan thought of him for a moment or two, that he was a better than the common kind of lawyer; who doubtless knew as much of the wrong side of the world as lawyers do, and held his knowledge for the being a man of the world:as all do, that have not Alpine heights in the mind to mount for a look out over their own and the worlds pedestrian tracks. I could spot the lawyer in your composition, my friend, to the exclusion of the man he mused. But youre right in what you mean to say of yourself: youre a good fellow, for a lawyer, and together we may manage somehow to score a point of service to Victor Radnor.
CHAPTER VIII. SOME FAMILIAR GUESTS
Nesta read her mothers face when Mrs. Victor entered the drawing-room to receive the guests. She saw a smooth fair surface, of the kind as much required by her fathers eyes as innocuous air by his nostrils: and it was honest skin, not the deceptive feminine veiling, to make a dear man happy over his volcano. Mrs. Victor was to meet the friends with whom her feelings were at home, among whom her musical gifts gave her station: they liked her for herself; they helped her to feel at home with herself and be herself: a rarer condition with us all than is generally supposed. So she could determine to be cheerful in the anticipation of an evening that would at least be restful to the outworn sentinel nerve of her heart, which was perpetually alert and signalling to the great organ; often colouring the shows and seems of adverse things for an apeing of reality with too cruel a resemblance. One of the scraps of practical wisdom gained by hardened sufferers is, to keep from spying at horizons when they drop into a pleasant dingle. Such is the comfort of it, that we can dream, and lull our fears, and half think what we wish: and it is a heavenly truce with the fretful mind divided from our wishes.