Celt and Saxon. Complete

CHAPTER XIX. MARS CONVALESCENT

Jane’s face was clear as the sky when she handed the letter back to Philip. In doing so, it struck her that the prolonged directness of his look was peculiar: she attributed it to some effect of the fresh Spring atmosphere on a weakened frame. She was guessing at his reasons for showing her the letter, and they appeared possibly serious.

‘An election to Parliament! Perhaps Mrs. Adister should have a hint of it, to soften the shock I fear it may be: but we must wait till her headache has passed,’ she said.

‘You read to the end?’ said Philip.

‘Yes, Captain Con always amuses me, and I am bound to confess I have no positive disrelish of his compliments. But this may prove a desperate step. The secret of his happiness is in extreme jeopardy. Nothing would stop him, I suppose?’

Philip signified that it was too late. He was moreover of opinion, and stated it in his briefest, that it would be advisable to leave the unfolding of the present secret to the captain.

Jane wondered why the letter had been shown. Her patient might be annoyed and needing sympathy?

‘After all,’ she said, ‘Captain Con may turn out to be a very good sort of member of Parliament in his way.’

Philip’s eyebrows lifted, and he let fall a breath, eloquent of his thoughts.

‘My brother says he is a serviceable director of the Company they are associated in.’

‘He finds himself among reasonable men, and he is a chameleon.’

‘Parliament may steady him.’

‘It is too much of a platform for Con’s head.’

‘Yes, there is more of poet than politician,’ said she. ‘That is a danger. But he calls himself our friend; I think he really has a liking for John and me.’

‘For you he has a real love,’ said Philip.

‘Well, then, he may listen to us at times; he may be trusted not to wound us. I am unmitigatedly for the one country—no divisions. We want all our strength in these days of monstrous armies directed by banditti Councils. England is the nation of the Christian example to nations. Oh! surely it is her aim. At least she strives to be that. I think it, and I see the many faults we have.’

Her patient’s eyelids were down.

She proposed to send her name up to Mrs. Adister.

On her return from the poor lady racked with headache and lying little conscious of her husband’s powder-barrel under the bed, Jane found her patient being worried by his official nurse, a farm-labourer’s wife, a bundle of a woman, whose lumbering assiduities he fenced with reiterated humourous negatives to every one of her propositions, until she prefaced the last two or three of the list with a ‘Deary me!’ addressed consolatorily to herself. She went through the same forms each day, at the usual hours of the day, and Jane, though she would have felt the apathetic doltishness of the woman less, felt how hard it must be for him to bear.

‘Your sister will be with you soon,’ she said. ‘I am glad, and yet I hope you will not allow her to put me aside altogether?’

‘You shall do as you wish,’ said Philip.

‘Is she like Patrick? Her name is Kathleen, I know.’

‘She is a raw Irish girl, of good Irish training, but Irish.’

‘I hope she will be pleased with England. Like Patrick in face, I mean.’

‘We think her a good-looking girl.’

‘Does she play? sing?’

‘Some of our ballads.’

‘She will delight my brother. John loves Irish ballads.’

A silence of long duration fell between them. She fancied he would like to sleep, and gently rose to slip away, that she might consult with Mrs. Lappett about putting up some tentcover. He asked her if she was going. ‘Not home,’ she said. His hand moved, but stopped. It seemed to have meant to detain her. She looked at a white fleece that came across the sun, desiring to conjure it to stay and shadow him. It sailed by. She raised her parasol.

His eyelids were shut, and she thought him asleep. Meditating on her unanswered question of Miss Kathleen’s likeness to Patrick, Jane imagined a possibly greater likeness to her patient, and that he did not speak of his family’s exclamations on the subject because of Kathleen’s being so good-looking a girl. For if good-looking, a sister must resemble these handsome features here, quiescent to inspection in their marble outlines as a corse. So might he lie on the battle-field, with no one to watch over him!

While she watched, sitting close beside him to shield his head from the sunbeams, her heart began to throb before she well knew the secret of it. She had sight of a tear that grew big under the lashes of each of his eyelids, and rolled heavily. Her own eyes overflowed.

The fit of weeping was momentary, April’s, a novelty with her. She accused her silly visions of having softened her. A hasty smoothing to right and left removed the traces; they were unseen; and when she ventured to look at him again there was no sign of fresh drops falling. His eyelids kept shut.

The arrival of her diurnal basket of provisions offered a refreshing intervention of the commonplace. Bright air had sharpened his appetite: he said he had been sure it would, and anticipated cheating the doctor of a part of the sentence which condemned him to lie on his back up to the middle of June, a log. Jane was hungry too, and they feasted together gaily, talking of Kathleen on her journey, her strange impressions and her way of proclaiming them, and of Patrick and where he might be now; ultimately of Captain Con and Mrs. Adister.

‘He has broken faith with her,’ Philip said sternly. ‘She will have the right to tell him so. He never can be anything but a comic politician. Still he was bound to consult his wife previous to stepping before the public. He knows that he married a fortune.’

‘A good fortune,’ said Jane.

Philip acquiesced. ‘She is an excellent woman, a model of uprightness; she has done him all the good in the world, and here is he deceiving her, lying—there is no other word: and one lie leads to another. When he married a fortune he was a successful adventurer. The compact was understood. His duty as a man of honour is to be true to his bond and serve the lady. Falseness to his position won’t wash him clean of the title.’

Jane pleaded for Captain Con. ‘He is chivalrously attentive to her.’

‘You have read his letter,’ Philip replied.

He crushed her charitable apologies with references to the letter.

‘We are not certain that Mrs. Adister will object,’ said she.

‘Do you see her reading a speech of her husband’s?’ he remarked. Presently with something like a moan:

‘And I am her guest!’

‘Oh! pray, do not think Mrs. Adister will ever allow you to feel the lightest shadow…’ said Jane.

‘No; that makes it worse.’

Had this been the burden of his thoughts when those two solitary tears forced their passage?

Hardly: not even in his physical weakness would he consent to weep for such a cause.

‘I forgot to mention that Mrs. Adister has a letter from her husband telling her he has been called over to Ireland on urgent business,’ she said.

Philip answered: ‘He is punctilious.’

‘I wish indeed he had been more candid,’ Jane assented to the sarcasm.

‘In Ireland he is agreeably surprised by the flattering proposal of a vacant seat, and not having an instant to debate on it, assumes the consent of the heavenliest wife in Christendom.’

Philip delivered the speech with a partial imitation of Captain Con addressing his wife on his return as the elected among the pure Irish party. The effort wearied him.

She supposed he was regretting his cousin’s public prominence in the ranks of the malcontents. ‘He will listen to you,’ she said, while she smiled at his unwonted display of mimicry.

‘A bad mentor for him. Antics are harmless, though they get us laughed at,’ said Philip.

‘You may restrain him from excesses.’

‘Were I in that position, you would consider me guilty of greater than any poor Con is likely to commit.’

‘Surely you are not for disunion?’

‘The reverse. I am for union on juster terms, that will hold it fast.’

‘But what are the terms?’

He must have desired to paint himself as black to her as possible. He stated the terms, which were hardly less than the affrighting ones blown across the Irish sea by that fierce party. He held them to be just, simply sensible terms. True, he spoke of the granting them as a sure method to rally all Ireland to an ardent love of the British flag. But he praised names of Irish leaders whom she had heard Mr. Rockney denounce for disloyal insolence: he could find excuses for them and their dupes—poor creatures, verily! And his utterances had a shocking emphasis. Then she was not wrong in her idea of the conspirator’s head, her first impression of him!

She could not quit the theme: doing that would have been to be indifferent: something urged her to it.

‘Are they really your opinions?’

He seemed relieved by declaring that they were.

‘Patrick is quite free of them,’ said she.

‘We will hope that the Irish fever will spare Patrick. He was at a Jesuit college in France when he was wax. Now he’s taking the world.’

‘With so little of the Jesuit in him!’

‘Little of the worst: a good deal of the best.’

‘What is the best?’

‘Their training to study. They train you to concentrate the brain upon the object of study. And they train you to accept service: they fit you for absolute service: they shape you for your duties in the world; and so long as they don’t smelt a man’s private conscience, they are model masters. Happily Patrick has held his own. Not the Jesuits would have a chance of keeping a grasp on Patrick! He’ll always be a natural boy and a thoughtful man.’

Jane’s features implied a gentle shudder.

‘I shake a scarlet cloak to you?’ said Philip.

She was directed by his words to think of the scarlet coat. ‘I reflect a little on the substance of things as well,’ she said. ‘Would not Patrick’s counsels have an influence?’

‘Hitherto our Patrick has never presumed to counsel his elder brother.’

‘But an officer wearing…’

‘The uniform! That would have to be stripped off. There’d be an end to any professional career.’

‘You would not regret it?’

‘No sorrow is like a soldier’s bidding farewell to flag and comrades. Happily politics and I have no business together. If the country favours me with active service I’m satisfied for myself. You asked me for my opinions: I was bound to give them. Generally I let them rest.’

Could she have had the temerity? Jane marvelled at herself.

She doubted that the weighty pair of tears had dropped for the country. Captain Con would have shed them over Erin, and many of them. Captain Philip’s tone was too plain and positive: he would be a most practical unhistrionic rebel.

‘You would countenance a revolt?’ she said, striking at that extreme to elicit the favourable answer her tones angled for. And it was instantly:

‘Not in arms.’ He tried an explanation by likening the dissension to a wrangle in a civilised family over an unjust division of property.

And here, as he was marking the case with some nicety and difficulty, an itinerant barrel-organ crashed its tragic tale of music put to torture at the gate. It yelled of London to Jane, throttled the spirits of the woods, threw a smoke over the country sky, befouled the pure air she loved.

The instrument was one of the number which are packed to suit all English tastes and may be taken for a rough sample of the jumble of them, where a danceless quadrille-tune succeeds a suicidal Operatic melody and is followed by the weariful hymn, whose last drawl pert polka kicks aside. Thus does the poor Savoyard compel a rich people to pay for their wealth. Not without pathos in the abstract perhaps do the wretched machines pursue their revolutions of their factory life, as incapable of conceiving as of bestowing pleasure: a bald cry for pennies through the barest pretence to be agreeable but Jane found it hard to be tolerant of them out of London, and this one affecting her invalid and Mrs. Adister must be dismissed. Wayland was growling; he had to be held by the collar. He spied an objectionable animal. A jerky monkey was attached to the organ; and his coat was red, his kepi was blue; his tailor had rigged him as a military gentleman. Jane called to the farm-wife. Philip assured her he was not annoyed. Jane observed him listening, and by degrees she distinguished a maundering of the Italian song she had one day sung to Patrick in his brother’s presence.

‘I remember your singing that the week before I went to India,’ said Philip, and her scarlet blush flooded her face.

‘Can you endure the noise?’ she asked him.

‘Con would say it shrieks “murder.” But I used to like it once.’

Mrs. Lappett came answering to the call. Her children were seen up the garden setting to one another with squared aprons, responsive to a livelier measure.

‘Bless me, miss, we think it so cheerful!’ cried Mrs. Lappett, and glanced at her young ones harmonious and out of mischief.

‘Very well,’ said Jane, always considerate for children. She had forgotten the racked Mrs. Adister.

Now the hymn of Puritanical gloom-the peacemaker with Providence performing devotional exercises in black bile. The leaps of the children were dashed. A sallow two or three minutes composed their motions, and then they jumped again to the step for lively legs. The similarity to the regimental band heading soldiers on the march from Church might have struck Philip.

‘I wonder when I shall see Patrick!’ he said, quickened in spite of himself by the sham sounds of music to desire changes and surprises.

Jane was wondering whether he could be a man still to brood tearfully over his old love.

She echoed him. ‘And I! Soon, I hope.’

The appearance of Mrs. Adister with features which were the acutest critical summary of the discord caused toll to be paid instantly, and they beheld a flashing of white teeth and heard Italian accents. The monkey saluted militarily, but with painful suggestions of his foregone drilling in the ceremony.

‘We are safe nowhere from these intrusions,’ Mrs. Adister said; ‘not on these hills!—and it must be a trial for the wretched men to climb them, that thing on their backs.’

‘They are as accustomed to it as mountain smugglers bearing packs of contraband,’ said Philip.

‘Con would have argued him out of hearing before he ground a second note,’ she resumed. ‘I have no idea when Con returns from his unexpected visit to Ireland.’

‘Within a fortnight, madam.’

‘Let me believe it! You have heard from him? But you are in the air! exposed! My head makes me stupid. It is now five o’clock. The air begins to chill. Con will never forgive me if you catch a cold, and I would not incur his blame.’

The eyes of Jane and Philip shot an exchange.

‘Anything you command, madam,’ said Philip.

He looked up and breathed his heaven of fresh air. Jane pitied, she could not interpose to thwart his act of resignation. The farmer, home for tea, and a footman, took him between them, crutched, while Mrs. Adister said to Jane: ‘The doctor’s orders are positive:—if he is to be a man once more, he must rest his back and not use his legs for months. He was near to being a permanent cripple from that fall. My brother Edward had one like it in his youth. Soldiers are desperate creatures.’

‘I think Mr. Adister had his fall when hunting, was it not?’ said Jane.

‘Hunting, my dear.’

That was rather different from a fall on duty before the enemy, incurred by severe exhaustion after sunstroke!…

Jane took her leave of Philip beside his couch of imprisonment in his room, promising to return in the early morning. He embraced her old dog Wayland tenderly. Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs.

Walking homeward she likewise gave Wayland a hug. She called him ‘dear old fellow,’ and questioned him of his fondness for her, warning him not to be faithless ever to the mistress who loved him. Was not her old Wayland as good a protector as the footman Mrs. Adister pressed her to have at her heels? That he was!

Captain Con’s behaviour grieved her. And it certainly revived an ancient accusation against his countrymen. If he cared for her so much, why had he not placed confidence in her and commissioned her to speak of his election to his wife? Irishmen will never be quite sincere!—But why had his cousin exposed him to one whom he greatly esteemed? However angry he might be with Con O’Donnell in his disapproval of the captain’s conduct, it was not very considerate to show the poor man to her in his natural colours. Those words: ‘The consolidation of the Union:’ sprang up. She had a dim remembrance of words ensuing: ‘ceremonies going at a funeral pace… on the highway to the solidest kind of union:’—Yes, he wrote: ‘I leave you to…’ And Captain Philip showed her the letter:

She perceived motives beginning to stir. He must have had his intention: and now as to his character!—Jane was of the order of young women possessing active minds instead of figured paste-board fronts, who see what there is to be seen about them and know what may be known instead of decorously waiting for the astonishment of revelations. As soon as she had asked herself the nature of the design of so honourable a man as Captain Philip in showing her his cousin’s letter, her blood spun round and round, waving the reply as a torch; and the question of his character confirmed it.

But could he be imagined seeking to put her on her guard? There may be modesty in men well aware of their personal attractions: they can credit individual women with powers of resistance. He was not vain to the degree which stupefies the sense of there being weight or wisdom in others. And he was honour’s own. By these lights of his character she read the act. His intention was… and even while she saw it accurately, the moment of keen perception was overclouded by her innate distrust of her claim to feminine charms. For why should he wish her to understand that he was no fortune-hunter and treated heiresses with greater reserve than ordinary women! How could it matter to him?

She saw the tears roll. Tears of men sink plummet-deep; they find their level. The tears of such a man have more of blood than of water in them.—What was she doing when they fell? She was shading his head from the sun. What, then, if those tears came of the repressed desire to thank her with some little warmth? He was honour’s own, and warmhearted Patrick talked of him as a friend whose heart was, his friend’s. Thrilling to kindness, and, poor soul! helpless to escape it, he felt perhaps that he had never thanked her, and could not. He lay there, weak and tongue-tied: hence those two bright volumes of his condition of weakness.

So the pursuit of the mystery ended, as it had commenced, in confusion, but of a milder sort and partially transparent at one or two of the gates she had touched. A mind capable of seeing was twisted by a nature that would not allow of open eyes; yet the laden emotions of her nature brought her round by another channel to the stage neighbouring sight, where facts, dimly recognised for such—as they may be in truth, are accepted under their disguises, because disguise of them is needed by the bashful spirit which accuses itself of audaciousness in presuming to speculate. Had she asked herself the reason of her extended speculation, her foot would not have stopped more abruptly on the edge of a torrent than she on that strange road of vapours and flying lights. She did not; she sang, she sent her voice through the woods and took the splendid ring of it for an assurance of her peculiarly unshackled state. She loved this liberty. Of the men who had ‘done her the honour,’ not one had moved her to regret the refusal. She lived in the hope of simply doing good, and could only give her hand to a man able to direct and help her; one who would bear to be matched with her brother. Who was he? Not discoverable; not likely to be.

Therefore she had her freedom, an absolutely unflushed freedom, happier than poor Grace Barrow’s. Rumour spoke of Emma Colesworth having a wing clipped. How is it that sensible women can be so susceptible? For, thought Jane, the moment a woman is what is called in love, she can give her heart no longer to the innocent things about her; she is cut away from Nature: that pure well-water is tasteless to her. To me it is wine!

The drinking of the pure well-water as wine is among the fatal signs of fire in the cup, showing Nature at work rather to enchain the victim than bid her daughter go. Jane of course meant the poet’s ‘Nature.’ She did not reflect that the strong glow of poetic imagination is wanted to hallow a passionate devotion to the inanimate for this evokes the spiritual; and passionateness of any kind in narrower brains should be a proclamation to us of sanguine freshets not coming from a spiritual source. But the heart betraying deluded her. She fancied she had not ever been so wedded to Nature as on that walk through the bursting beechwoods, that sweet lonely walk, perfect in loneliness, where even a thought of a presence was thrust away as a desecration and images of souls in thought were shadowy.

Her lust of freedom gave her the towering holiday. She took the delirium in her own pure fashion, in a love of the bankside flowers and the downy edges of the young beech-buds fresh on the sprays. And it was no unreal love, though too intent and forcible to win the spirit from the object. She paid for this indulgence of her mood by losing the spirit entirely. At night she was a spent rocket. What had gone she could not tell: her very soul she almost feared. Her glorious walk through the wood seemed burnt out. She struck a light to try her poet on the shelf of the elect of earth by her bed, and she read, and read flatness. Not his the fault! She revered him too deeply to lay it on him. Whose was it? She had a vision of the gulfs of bondage.

Could it be possible that human persons were subject to the spells of persons with tastes, aims, practices, pursuits alien to theirs? It was a riddle taxing her to solve it for the resistance to a monstrous iniquity of injustice, degrading her conception of our humanity. She attacked it in the abstract, as a volunteer champion of our offended race. And Oh! it could not be. The battle was won without a blow.

Thereupon came glimpses of the gulfs of bondage, delicious, rose-enfolded, foreign; they were chapters of soft romance, appearing interminable, an endless mystery, an insatiable thirst for the mystery. She heard crashes of the opera-melody, and despising it even more than the wretched engine of the harshness, she was led by it, tyrannically led a captive, like the organ-monkey, until perforce she usurped the note, sounded the cloying tune through her frame, passed into the vulgar sugariness, lost herself.

And saying to herself: This is what moves them! she was moved. One thrill of appreciation drew her on the tide, and once drawn from shore she became submerged. Why am I not beautiful, was her thought. Those voluptuous modulations of melting airs are the natural clothing of beautiful women. Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved. They are privileged to believe, they are born with the faith.