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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Gentleman of Fifty
+by George Meredith
+#102 in our series by George Meredith
+
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+Title: The Gentleman of Fifty and The Damsel of Nineteen
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4496]
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+[This file was first posted on March 5, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Gentleman of Fifty by George Meredith
+*********This file should be named 4496.txt or 4496.zip********
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+
+
+
+THE GENTLEMAN OF FIFTY AND THE DAMSEL OF NINETEEN
+
+(An early uncompleted fragment.)
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Passing over Ickleworth Bridge and rounding up the heavily-shadowed river
+of our narrow valley, I perceived a commotion as of bathers in a certain
+bright space immediately underneath the vicar's terrace-garden steps.  My
+astonishment was considerable when it became evident to me that the vicar
+himself was disporting in the water, which, reaching no higher than his
+waist, disclosed him in the ordinary habiliments of his cloth.  I knew my
+friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men, and my first effort to
+explain the phenomenon of his appearance there, suggested that he might
+have walked in, the victim of a fit of abstraction, and that he had not
+yet fully comprehended his plight; but this idea was dispersed when I
+beheld the very portly lady, his partner in joy and adversity, standing
+immersed, and perfectly attired, some short distance nearer to the bank.
+As I advanced along the bank opposed to them, I was further amazed to
+hear them discoursing quite equably together, so that it was impossible
+to say on the face of it whether a catastrophe had occurred, or the great
+heat of a cloudless summer day had tempted an eccentric couple to seek
+for coolness in the directest fashion, without absolute disregard to
+propriety.  I made a point of listening for the accentuation of the
+'my dear' which was being interchanged, but the key-note to the harmony
+existing between husband and wife was neither excessively unctuous, nor
+shrewd, and the connubial shuttlecock was so well kept up on both sides
+that I chose to await the issue rather than speculate on the origin of
+this strange exhibition.  I therefore, as I could not be accused of an
+outrage to modesty, permitted myself to maintain what might be
+invidiously termed a satyr-like watch from behind a forward flinging
+willow, whose business in life was to look at its image in a brown depth,
+branches, trunk, and roots.  The sole indication of discomfort displayed
+by the pair was that the lady's hand worked somewhat fretfully to keep
+her dress from ballooning and puffing out of all proportion round about
+her person, while the vicar, who stood without his hat, employed a spongy
+handkerchief from time to time in tempering the ardours of a vertical
+sun.  If you will consent to imagine a bald blackbird, his neck being
+shrunk in apprehensively, as you may see him in the first rolling of the
+thunder, you will gather an image of my friend's appearance.
+
+He performed his capital ablutions with many loud 'poofs,' and a casting
+up of dazzled eyes, an action that gave point to his recital of the
+invocation of Chryses to Smintheus which brought upon the Greeks disaster
+and much woe.  Between the lines he replied to his wife, whose remarks
+increased in quantity, and also, as I thought, in emphasis, under the
+river of verse which he poured forth unbaffled, broadening his chest to
+the sonorous Greek music in a singular rapture of obliviousness.
+
+A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it, but will
+keep the agitation of it down as long as he may.  The simmering of humour
+sends a lively spirit into the mind, whereas the boiling over is but a
+prodigal expenditure and the disturbance of a clear current: for the
+comic element is visible to you in all things, if you do but keep your
+mind charged with the perception of it, as I have heard a great expounder
+deliver himself on another subject; and he spoke very truly.  So, I
+continued to look on with the gravity of Nature herself, and I could not
+but fancy, and with less than our usual wilfulness when we fancy things
+about Nature's moods, that the Mother of men beheld this scene with half
+a smile, differently from the simple observation of those cows whisking
+the flies from their flanks at the edge of the shorn meadow and its
+aspens, seen beneath the curved roof of a broad oak-branch.  Save for
+this happy upward curve of the branch, we are encompassed by breathless
+foliage; even the gloom was hot; the little insects that are food for
+fish tried a flight and fell on the water's surface, as if panting.  Here
+and there, a sullen fish consented to take them, and a circle spread,
+telling of past excitement.
+
+I had listened to the vicar's Homeric lowing for the space of a minute or
+so--what some one has called, the great beast-like, bellow-like, roar and
+roll of the Iliad hexameter: it stopped like a cut cord.  One of the
+numerous daughters of his house appeared in the arch of white cluster-
+roses on the lower garden-terrace, and with an exclamation, stood
+petrified at the extraordinary spectacle, and then she laughed outright.
+I had hitherto resisted, but the young lady's frank and boisterous
+laughter carried me along, and I too let loose a peal, and discovered
+myself.  The vicar, seeing me, acknowledged a consciousness of his absurd
+position with a laugh as loud.  As for the scapegrace girl, she went off
+into a run of high-pitched shriekings like twenty woodpeckers, crying: I
+Mama, mama, you look as if you were in Jordan!'
+
+The vicar cleared his throat admonishingly, for it was apparent that Miss
+Alice was giving offence to her mother, and I presume he thought it was
+enough for one of the family to have done so.
+
+'Wilt thou come out of Jordan?' I cried.
+
+'I am sufficiently baptized with the water,' said the helpless man. . .
+
+'Indeed, Mr. Amble,' observed his spouse, 'you can lecture a woman for
+not making the best of circumstances; I hope you'll bear in mind that
+it's you who are irreverent.  I can endure this no longer.  You deserve
+Mr. Pollingray's ridicule.'
+
+Upon this, I interposed: 'Pray, ma'am, don't imagine that you have
+anything but sympathy from me.'--but as I was protesting, having my mouth
+open, the terrible Miss Alice dragged the laughter remorselessly out of
+me.
+
+They have been trying Frank's new boat, Mr. Pollingray, and they've upset
+it.  Oh! oh' and again there was the woodpeckers' chorus.
+
+'Alice, I desire you instantly to go and fetch John the gardener,' said
+the angry mother.
+
+'Mama, I can't move; wait a minute, only a minute.  John's gone about the
+geraniums.  Oh!  don't look so resigned, papa; you'll kill me!  Mama,
+come and take my hand.  Oh! oh!'
+
+The young lady put her hands in against her waist and rolled her body
+like a possessed one.
+
+'Why don't you come in through the boat-house?' she asked when she had
+mastered her fit.
+
+'Ah!' said the vicar.  I beheld him struck by this new thought.
+
+'How utterly absurd you are, Mr. Amble!' exclaimed his wife, 'when you
+know that the boat-house is locked, and that the boat was lying under the
+camshot when you persuaded me to step into it.'
+
+Hearing this explanation of the accident, Alice gave way to an
+ungovernable emotion.
+
+'You see, my dear,' the vicar addressed his wife, she can do nothing;
+it's useless.  If ever patience is counselled to us, it is when accidents
+befall us, for then, as we are not responsible, we know we are in other
+hands, and it is our duty to be comparatively passive.  Perhaps I may say
+that in every difficulty, patience is a life-belt.  I beg of you to be
+patient still.'
+
+'Mr. Amble, I shall think you foolish,' said the spouse, with a nod of
+more than emphasis.
+
+My dear, you have only to decide,' was the meek reply.
+
+By this time, Miss Alice had so far conquered the fiend of laughter that
+she could venture to summon her mother close up to the bank and extend a
+rescuing hand.  Mrs. Amble waded to within reach, her husband following.
+Arrangements were made for Alice to pull, and the vicar to push; both in
+accordance with Mrs. Amble's stipulations, for even in her extremity of
+helplessness she affected rule and sovereignty.  Unhappily, at the
+decisive moment, I chanced (and I admit it was more than an inadvertence
+on my part, it was a most ill-considered thing to do) I chanced, I say,
+to call out--and that I refrained from quoting Voltaire is something in
+my favour:
+
+'How on earth did you manage to tumble in?'
+
+There can be no contest of opinion that I might have kept my curiosity
+waiting, and possibly it may be said with some justification that I was
+the direct cause of my friend's unparalleled behaviour; but could a
+mortal man guess that in the very act of assisting his wife's return to
+dry land, and while she was--if I may put it so--modestly in his hands,
+he would turn about with a quotation that compared him to old Palinurus,
+all the while allowing his worthy and admirable burden to sink lower and
+dispread in excess upon the surface of the water, until the vantage of
+her daughter's help was lost to her; I beheld the consequences of my
+indiscretion, dismayed.  I would have checked the preposterous Virgilian,
+but in contempt of my uplifted hand and averted head, and regardless of
+the fact that his wife was then literally dependent upon him, the vicar
+declaimed (and the drenching effect produced by Latin upon a lady at such
+a season, may be thought on):
+
+               Vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus,
+               Et super incumbens, cum puppis parte revulsa
+               Cumque gubernaclo liquidas projecit in undas.'
+
+It is not easy when you are unacquainted with the language, to retort
+upon Latin, even when the attempt to do so is made in English.  Very few
+even of the uneducated ears can tolerate such anti-climax vituperative as
+English after sounding Latin.  Mrs. Amble kept down those sentiments
+which her vernacular might have expressed.  I heard but one groan that
+came from her as she lay huddled indistinguishably in the, arms of her
+husband.
+
+'Not--praecipitem!  I am happy to say,' my senseless friend remarked
+further, and laughed cheerfully as he fortified his statement with a run
+of negatives.  'No, no'; in a way peculiar to him.  'No, no.  If I plant
+my grey hairs anywhere, it will be on dry land: no.  But, now, my dear;
+he returned to his duty; why, you're down again.  Come: one, two, and
+up.'
+
+He was raising a dead weight.  The passion for sarcastic speech was
+manifestly at war with common prudence in the bosom of Mrs. Amble;
+prudence, however, overcame it.  She cast on him a look of a kind that
+makes matrimony terrific in the dreams of bachelors, and then wedding her
+energy to the assistance given she made one of those senseless springs of
+the upper half of the body, which strike the philosophic eye with the
+futility of an effort that does not arise from a solid basis.  Owing to
+the want of concert between them, the vicar's impulsive strength was
+expended when his wife's came into play.  Alice clutched her mother
+bravely.  The vicar had force enough to stay his wife's descent; but
+Alice (she boasts of her muscle) had not the force in the other
+direction--and no wonder.  There are few young ladies who could pull
+fourteen stone sheer up a camshot.
+
+Mrs. Amble remained in suspense between the two.
+
+Oh, Mr. Pollingray, if you were only on this side to help us,' Miss Alice
+exclaimed very piteously, though I could see that she was half mad with
+the internal struggle of laughter at the parents and concern for them.
+
+'Now, pull, Alice,' shouted the vicar.
+
+'No, not yet,' screamed Mrs. Amble; I'm sinking.'
+
+'Pull, Alice.'
+
+'Now, Mama.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Push, Papa.'
+
+'I'm down.'
+
+'Up, Ma'am; Jane; woman, up.'
+
+'Gently, Papa: Abraham, I will not.'
+
+'My dear, but you must.'
+
+'And that man opposite.'
+
+'What, Pollingray?  He's fifty.'
+
+I found myself walking indignantly down the path.  Even now I protest my
+friend was guilty of bad manners, though I make every allowance for him;
+I excuse, I pass the order; but why--what justifies one man's bawling out
+another man's age?  What purpose does it serve?  I suppose the vicar
+wished to reassure his wife, on the principle (I have heard him enunciate
+it) that the sexes are merged at fifty--by which he means, I must
+presume, that something which may be good or bad, and is generally silly
+--of course, I admire and respect modesty and pudeur as much as any man--
+something has gone: a recognition of the bounds of division.  There is,
+if that is a lamentable matter, a loss of certain of our young tricks at
+fifty. We have ceased to blush readily: and let me ask you to define a
+blush.  Is it an involuntary truth or an ingenuous lie?  I know that this
+will sound like the language of a man not a little jealous of his
+youthful compeers.  I can but leave it to rightly judging persons to
+consider whether a healthy man in his prime, who has enough, and is not
+cursed by ambition, need be jealous of any living soul.
+
+A shriek from Miss Alice checked my retreating steps.  The vicar was
+staggering to support the breathing half of his partner while she
+regained her footing in the bed of the river.  Their effort to scale the
+camshot had failed.  Happily at this moment I caught sight of Master
+Frank's boat, which had floated, bottom upwards, against a projecting
+mud-bank of forget-me-nots.  I contrived to reach it and right it, and
+having secured one of the sculls, I pulled up to the rescue; though not
+before I had plucked a flower, actuated by a motive that I cannot account
+for.  The vicar held the boat firmly against the camshot, while I, at the
+imminent risk of joining them (I shall not forget the combined expression
+of Miss Alice's retreating eyes and the malicious corners of her mouth)
+hoisted the lady in, and the river with her.  From the seat of the boat
+she stood sufficiently high to project the step towards land without
+peril.  When she had set her foot there, we all assumed an attitude of
+respectful attention, and the vicar, who could soar over calamity like a
+fairweather swallow, acknowledged the return of his wife to the element
+with a series of apologetic yesses and short coughings.
+
+'That would furnish a good concert for the poets,' he remarked.
+'A parting, a separation of lovers; "even as a body from the watertorn,"
+or "from the water plucked"; eh?  do you think--"so I weep round her,
+tearful in her track," an excellent--'
+
+But the outraged woman, dripping in grievous discomfort above him, made a
+peremptory gesture.
+
+'Mr. Amble, will you come on shore instantly, I have borne with your
+stupidity long enough.  I insist upon your remembering, sir, that you
+have a family dependent upon you.  Other men may commit these follies.'
+
+This was a blow at myself, a bachelor whom the lady had never persuaded
+to dream of relinquishing his freedom.
+
+'My dear, I am coming,' said the vicar.
+
+'Then, come at once, or I shall think you idiotic,' the wife retorted.
+
+'I have been endeavouring,' the vicar now addressed me, 'to prove by a
+practical demonstration that women are capable of as much philosophy as
+men, under any sudden and afflicting revolution of circumstances.'
+
+'And if you get a sunstroke, you will be rightly punished, and I shall
+not be sorry, Mr. Amble.'
+
+'I am coming, my dear Jane.  Pray run into the house and change your
+things.'
+
+'Not till I see you out of the water, sir.'
+
+'You are losing your temper, my love.'
+
+'You would make a saint lose his temper, Mr. Amble.'
+
+'There were female saints, my dear,' the vicar mildly responded; and
+addressed me further: 'Up to this point, I assure you, Pollingray, no
+conduct could have been more exemplary than Mrs. Amble's.  I had got her
+into the boat--a good boat, a capital boat--but getting in myself, we
+overturned.  The first impulse of an ordinary woman would have been to
+reproach and scold; but Mrs. Amble succumbed only to the first impulse.
+Discovering that all effort unaided to climb the bank was fruitless, she
+agreed to wait patiently and make the best of circumstances; and she did;
+and she learnt to enjoy it.  There is marrow in every bone.  My dear.
+Jane, I have never admired you so much.  I tried her, Pollingray, in
+metaphysics.  I talked to her of the opera we last heard, I think fifty
+years ago.  And as it is less endurable for a woman to be patient in
+tribulation--the honour is greater, when she overcomes the fleshy trial.
+Insomuch,' the vicar put on a bland air of abnegation of honour, 'that I
+am disposed to consider any male philosopher our superior; when you've
+found one, ha, ha--when you've found one.  O sol pulcher!  I am ready to
+sing that the day has been glorious, so far.  Pulcher ille dies.'
+
+Mrs. Amble appealed to me.  'Would anybody not swear that he is mad to
+see him standing waist-deep in the water and the sun on his bald head,
+I am reduced to entreat you not to--though you have no family of your
+own--not to encourage him.  It is amusing to you.  Pray, reflect that
+such folly is too often fatal.  Compel him to come on shore.'
+
+The logic of the appeal was no doubt distinctly visible in the lady's
+mind, though it was not accurately worded.  I saw that I stood marked to
+be the scape goat of the day, and humbly continued to deserve well,
+notwithstanding.  By dint of simple signs and nods of affirmative,
+and a constant propulsion of my friend's arm, I drew him into the boat,
+and thence projected him up to the level with his wife, who had perhaps
+deigned to understand that it was best to avoid the arresting of his
+divergent mind by any remark during the passage, and remained silent.
+No sooner was he established on his feet, than she plucked him away.
+
+'Your papa's hat,' she called, flashing to her daughter, and streamed up
+the lawn into the rose-trellised pathways leading on aloft to the
+vicarage house.  Behind roses the weeping couple disappeared.  The last I
+saw of my friend was a smiting of his hand upon his head in a vain effort
+to catch at one of the fleeting ideas sowed in him by the quick passage
+of objects before his vision, and shaken out of him by abnormal hurry.
+The Rev. Abraham Amble had been lord of his wife in the water, but his
+innings was over.  He had evidently enjoyed it vastly, and I now
+understood why he had chosen to prolong it as much as possible.  Your
+eccentric characters are not uncommonly amateurs of petty artifice.
+There are hours of vengeance even for henpecked men.
+
+I found myself sighing over the enslaved condition of every Benedict of
+my acquaintance, when the thought came like a surprise that I was alone
+with Alice.  The fair and pleasant damsel made a clever descent into the
+boat, and having seated herself, she began to twirl the scull in the
+rowlock, and said: 'Do you feel disposed to join me in looking after the
+other scull and papa's hat, Mr. Pollingray?' I suggested 'Will you not
+get your feet wet?  I couldn't manage to empty all the water in the
+boat.'
+
+'Oh' cried she, with a toss of her head; I wet feet never hurt young
+people.'
+
+There was matter for an admonitory lecture in this.  Let me confess I was
+about to give it, when she added: But Mr. Pollingray, I am really afraid
+that your feet are wet!  You had to step into the water when you righted
+the boat:
+
+My reply was to jump down by her side with as much agility as I could
+combine with a proper discretion.  The amateur craft rocked
+threateningly, and I found myself grasped by and grasping the pretty
+damsel, until by great good luck we were steadied and preserved from the
+same misfortune which had befallen her parents.  She laughed and blushed,
+and we tottered asunder.
+
+'Would you have talked metaphysics to me in the water, Mr. Pollingray?'
+
+Alice was here guilty of one of those naughty sort of innocent speeches
+smacking of Eve most strongly; though, of course, of Eve in her best
+days.
+
+I took the rudder lines to steer against the sculling of her single
+scull, and was Adam enough to respond to temptation: 'I should perhaps
+have been grateful to your charitable construction of it as being
+metaphysics.'
+
+She laughed colloquially, to fill a pause.  It had not been coquetry:
+merely the woman unconsciously at play.  A man is bound to remember the
+seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a
+worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not
+shun the society of the sex.  My long robust health and perfect self-
+reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me open to
+fitful impressions.  Indeed there are times when I fear I have the heart
+of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived,
+supposing that it should ever for one instant get complete mastery of my
+head.  This is the peril of a man who has lived soberly.  Do we never
+know when we are safe?  I am, in reflecting thereupon, positively
+prepared to say that if there is no fool like what they call an old fool
+(and a man in his prime, who can be laughed at, is the world's old fool)
+there is wisdom in the wild oats theory, and I shall come round to my
+nephew's way of thinking: that is, as far as Master Charles by his acting
+represents his thinking.  I shall at all events be more lenient in my
+judgement of him, and less stern in my allocutions, for I shall have no
+text to preach from.
+
+We picked up the hat and the scull in one of the little muddy bays of our
+brown river, forming an amphitheatre for water-rats and draped with great
+dockleaves, nettle-flowers, ragged robins, and other weeds for which the
+learned young lady gave the botanical names.  It was pleasant to hear her
+speak with the full authority of absolute knowledge of her subject.  She
+has intelligence.  She is decidedly too good for Charles, unless he
+changes his method of living.
+
+'Shall we row on?' she asked, settling her arms to work the pair of
+sculls.
+
+'You have me in your power,' said I, and she struck out.  Her shape is
+exceedingly graceful; I was charmed by the occasional tightening in of
+her lips as she exerted her muscle, while at intervals telling me of her
+race with one of her boastful younger brothers, whom she had beaten.
+I believe it is only when they are using physical exertion that the eyes
+of young girls have entire simplicity--the simplicity of nature as
+opposed to that other artificial simplicity which they learn from their
+governesses, their mothers, and the admiration of witlings.  Attractive
+purity, or the nice glaze of no comprehension of anything which is
+considered to be improper in a wicked world, and is no doubt very useful,
+is not to my taste.  French girls, as a rule, cannot compete with our
+English in the purer graces.  They are only incomparable when as women
+they have resort to art.
+
+Alice could look at me as she rowed, without thinking it necessary to
+force a smile, or to speak, or to snigger and be foolish.  I felt towards
+the girl like a comrade.
+
+We went no further than Hatchard's mile, where the water plumps the poor
+sleepy river from a sidestream, and, as it turned the boat's head quite
+round, I let the boat go.  These studies of young women are very well as
+a pastime; but they soon cease to be a recreation.  She forms an
+agreeable picture when she is rowing, and possesses a musical laugh.  Now
+and then she gives way to the bad trick of laughing without caring or
+daring to explain the cause for it.  She is moderately well-bred.  I hope
+that she has principle.  Certain things a man of my time of life learns
+by associating with very young people which are serviceable to him.  What
+a different matter this earth must be to that girl from what it is to me!
+I knew it before.  And--mark the difference--I feel it now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHE
+
+Papa never will cease to meet with accidents and adventures.  If he only
+walks out to sit for half an hour with one of his old dames, as he calls
+them, something is sure to happen to him, and it is almost as sure that
+Mr. Pollingray will be passing at the time and mixed up in it.
+
+Since Mr. Pollingray's return from his last residence on the Continent,
+I have learnt to know him and like him.  Charles is unjust to his uncle.
+He is not at all the grave kind of man I expected from Charles's
+description.  He is extremely entertaining, and then he understands the
+world, and I like to hear him talk, he is so unpretentious and uses just
+the right words.  No one would imagine his age, from his appearance, and
+he has more fun than any young man I have listened to.
+
+But, I am convinced I have discovered his weakness.  It is my fatal.
+peculiarity that I cannot be with people ten minutes without seeing some
+point about them where they are tenderest.  Mr. Pollingray wants to be
+thought quite youthful.  He can bear any amount of fatigue; he is always
+fresh and a delightful companion; but you cannot get him to show even a
+shadow of exhaustion or to admit that he ever knew what it was to lie
+down beaten.  This is really to pretend that he is superhuman.  I like
+him so much that I could wish him superior to such--it is nothing other
+than--vanity.  Which is worse?  A young man giving himself the air of a
+sage, or--but no one can call Mr. Pollingray an old man.  He is a
+confirmed bachelor.  That puts the case.  Charles, when he says of him
+that he is a 'gentleman in a good state of preservation,' means to be
+ironical.  I doubt whether Charles at fifty would object to have the same
+said of Mr. Charles Everett.  Mr. Pollingray has always looked to his
+health.  He has not been disappointed.  I am sure he was always very
+good.  But, whatever he was, he is now very pleasant, and he does not
+talk to women as if he thought them singular, and feel timid, I mean,
+confused, as some men show that they feel--the good ones.  Perhaps he
+felt so once, and that is why he is still free.  Charles's dread that his
+uncle will marry is most unworthy.  He never will, but why should he not?
+Mama declares that he is waiting for a woman of intellect, I can hear
+her: 'Depend upon it, a woman of intellect will marry Dayton Manor.'
+Should that mighty event not come to pass, poor Charles will have to sink
+the name of Everett in that of Pollingray.  Mr. Pollingray's name is the
+worst thing about him.  When I think of his name I see him ten times
+older than he is.  My feelings are in harmony with his pedigree
+concerning the age of the name.  One would have to be a woman of
+profound intellect to see the advantage of sharing it.
+
+'Mrs. Pollingray!' She must be a lady with a wig.
+
+It was when we were rowing up by Hatchard's mill that I first perceived
+his weakness, he was looking at me so kindly, and speaking of his
+friendship for papa, and how glad he was to be fixed at last, near to us
+at Dayton.  I wished to use some term of endearment in reply, and said,
+I remember, 'Yes, and we are also glad, Godpapa.'  I was astonished that
+he should look so disconcerted, and went on: 'Have you forgotten that you
+are my godpapa?'
+
+He answered: 'Am I?  Oh!  yes--the name of Alice.'
+
+Still he looked uncertain, uncomfortable, and I said, 'Do you want to
+cancel the past, and cast me off?'
+
+'No, certainly not'; he, I suppose, thought he was assuring me.
+
+I saw his lips move at the words I cancel the past,' though he did not
+speak them out.  He positively blushed.  I know the sort of young man he
+must have been.  Exactly the sort of young man mama would like for a son-
+in-law, and her daughters would accept in pure obedience when reduced to
+be capable of the virtue by rigorous diet, or consumption.
+
+He let the boat go round instantly.  This was enough for me.  It struck
+me then that when papa had said to mama (as he did in that absurd
+situation) 'He is fifty,' Mr. Pollingray must have heard it across the
+river, for he walked away hurriedly.  He came back, it is true, with the
+boat, but I have my own ideas.  He is always ready to do a service, but
+on this occasion I think it was an afterthought.  I shall not venture to
+call him 'Godpapa' again.
+
+Indeed, if I have a desire, it is that I may be blind to people's
+weakness.  My insight is inveterate.  Papa says he has heard Mr.
+Pollingray boast of his age.  If so, there has come a change over him.
+I cannot be deceived.  I see it constantly.  After my unfortunate speech,
+Mr. Pollingray shunned our house for two whole weeks, and scarcely bowed
+to us when coming out of church.  Miss Pollingray idolises him--spoils
+him.  She says that he is worth twenty of Charles.  Nous savons ce que
+nous savons, nous autres.  Charles is wild, but Charles would be above
+these littlenesses.  How could Miss Pollingray comprehend the romance of
+Charles's nature?
+
+My sister Evelina is now Mr. Pollingray's favourite.  She could not say
+Godpapa to him, if she would.  Persons who are very much petted at home,
+are always establishing favourites abroad.  For my part, let them praise
+me or not, I know that I can do any thing I set my mind upon.  At present
+I choose to be frivolous.  I know I am frivolous.  What then?  If there
+is fun in the world am I not to laugh at it?  I shall astonish them by
+and by.  But, I will laugh while I can.  I am sure, there is so much
+misery in the world, it is a mercy to be able to laugh.  Mr. Pollingray
+may think what he likes of me.  When Charles tells me that I must do my
+utmost to propitiate his uncle, he cannot mean that I am to refrain from
+laughing, because that is being a hypocrite, which I may become when I
+have gone through all the potential moods and not before.
+
+It is preposterous to suppose that I am to be tied down to the views of
+life of elderly people.
+
+I dare say I did laugh a little too much the other night, but could I
+help it?  We had a dinner party.  Present were Mr. Pollingray, Mrs.
+Kershaw, the Wilbury people (three), Charles, my brother Duncan, Evelina,
+mama, papa, myself, and Mr. and Mrs. (put them last for emphasis) Romer
+Pattlecombe, Mrs. Pattlecombe (the same number of syllables as
+Pollingray, and a 'P' to begin with) is thirty-one years her husband's
+junior, and she is twenty-six; full of fun, and always making fun of him,
+the mildest, kindest, goody old thing, who has never distressed himself
+for anything and never will.  Mrs. Romer not only makes fun, but is fun.
+When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her.  She is the
+salt of society in these parts.  Some one, as we were sitting on the lawn
+after dinner, alluded to the mishap to papa and mama, and mama, who has
+never forgiven Mr. Pollingray for having seen her in her ridiculous
+plight, said that men were in her opinion greater gossips than women.
+'That is indisputable, ma'am,' said Mr. Pollingray, he loves to bewilder
+her; 'only, we never mention it.'
+
+'There is an excuse for us,' said Mrs. Romer; 'our trials are so great,
+we require a diversion, and so we talk of others.'
+
+'Now really,' said Charles, 'I don't think your trials are equal to
+ours.'
+
+For which remark papa bantered him, and his uncle was sharp on him; and
+Charles, I know, spoke half seriously, though he was seeking to draw Mrs.
+Romer out: he has troubles.
+
+From this, we fell upon a comparison of sufferings, and Mrs. Romer took
+up the word.  She is a fair, smallish, nervous woman, with delicate hands
+and outlines, exceedingly sympathetic; so much so that while you are
+telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation, and is ready
+to shriek with laughter or shake her head with uttermost grief; and
+sometimes, if you let her go too far in one direction, she does both.
+All her narrations are with ups and downs of her hands, her eyes, her
+chin, and her voice.  Taking poor, good old Mr. Romer by the roll of his
+coat, she made as if posing him, and said: 'There!  Now, it's all very
+well for you to say that there is anything equal to a woman's sufferings
+in this world.  I do declare you know nothing of what we unhappy women
+have to endure.  It's dreadful!  No male creature can possibly know what
+tortures I have to undergo.'
+
+Mama neatly contrived, after interrupting her, to divert the subject.
+I think that all the ladies imagined they were in jeopardy, but I knew
+Mrs. Romer was perfectly to be trusted.  She has wit which pleases,
+jusqu'aux ongles, and her sense of humour never overrides her discretion
+with more than a glance--never with preparation.
+
+'Now,' she pursued, 'let me tell you what excruciating trials I have to
+go through.  This man,' she rocked the patient old gentleman to and fro,
+'this man will be the death of me.  He is utterly devoid of a sense of
+propriety.  Again and again I say to him--cannot the tailor cut down
+these trowsers of yours?  Yes, Mr. Amble, you preach patience to women,
+but this is too much for any woman's endurance.  Now, do attempt to
+picture to yourself what an agony it must be to me:--he will shave, and
+he will wear those enormously high trowsers that, when they are braced,
+reach up behind to the nape of his neck!  Only yesterday morning, as I
+was lying in bed, I could see him in his dressing-room.  I tell you: he
+will shave, and he will choose the time for shaving early after he has
+braced these immensely high trowsers that make such a placard of him.
+Oh, my goodness!  My dear Romer, I have said to him fifty times if I have
+said it once, my goodness me! why can you not get decent trowsers such as
+other men wear?  He has but one answer--he has been accustomed to wear
+those trowsers, and he would not feel at home in another pair.  And what
+does he say if I continue to complain? and I cannot but continue to
+complain, for it is not only moral, it is physical torment to see the
+sight he makes of himself; he says: "My dear, you should not have married
+an old man."  What!  I say to him, must an old man wear antiquated
+trowsers?  No! nothing will turn him; those are his habits.  But, you
+have not heard the worst.  The sight of those hideous trowsers totally
+destroying all shape in the man, is horrible enough; but it is absolutely
+more than a woman can bear to see him--for he will shave--first cover his
+face with white soap with that ridiculous centre-piece to his trowsers
+reaching quite up to his poll, and then, you can fancy a woman's rage and
+anguish!  the figure lifts its nose by the extremist tip.  Oh! it's
+degradation!  What respect can a woman have for her husband after that
+sight?  Imagine it!  And I have implored him to spare me.  It's useless.
+You sneer at our hbops and say that you are inconvenienced by them but
+you gentlemen are not degraded,--Oh! unutterably!--as I am every morning
+of my life by that cruel spectacle of a husband.'
+
+I have but faintly sketched Mrs. Romer's style. Evelina, who is prudish
+and thinks her vulgar, refused to laugh, but it came upon me, as the
+picture of 'your own old husband,' with so irresistibly comic an effect
+that I was overcome by convulsions of laughter.  I do not defend myself.
+It was as much a fit as any other attack.  I did all I could to arrest
+it.  At last, I ran indoors and upstairs to my bedroom and tried hard to
+become dispossessed.  I am sure I was an example of the sufferings of my
+sex.  It could hardly have been worse for Mrs. Romer than it was for me.
+I was drowned in internal laughter long after I had got a grave face.
+Early in the evening Mr. Pollingray left us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HE
+
+I am carried by the fascination of a musical laugh.  Apparently I am
+doomed to hear it at my own expense.  We are secure from nothing in this
+life.
+
+I have determined to stand for the county.  An unoccupied man is a prey
+to every hook of folly.  Be dilettante all your days, and you might as
+fairly hope to reap a moral harvest as if you had chased butterflies.
+The activities created by a profession or determined pursuit are
+necessary to the growth of the mind.
+
+Heavens!  I find myself writing like an illegitimate son of La
+Rochefoucauld, or of Vauvenargues.  But, it is true that I am fifty years
+old, and I am not mature.  I am undeveloped somewhere.
+
+The question for me to consider is, whether this development is to be
+accomplished by my being guilty of an act of egregious folly.
+
+Dans la cinquantaine!  The reflection should produce a gravity in men.
+Such a number of years will not ring like bridal bells in a man's ears.
+I have my books about me, my horses, my dogs, a contented household.
+I move in the centre of a perfect machine, and I am dissatisfied.  I rise
+early.  I do not digest badly.  What is wrong?
+
+The calamity of my case is that I am in danger of betraying what is wrong
+with me to others, without knowing it myself.  Some woman will be
+suspecting and tattling, because she has nothing else to do.  Girls have
+wonderfully shrewd eyes for a weakness in the sex which they are
+instructed to look upon as superior.  But I am on my guard.
+
+The fact is manifest: I feel I have been living more or less uselessly.
+It is a fat time.  There are a certain set of men in every prosperous
+country who, having wherewithal, and not being compelled to toil, become
+subjected to the moral ideal.  Most of them in the end sit down with our
+sixth Henry or second Richard and philosophise on shepherds.  To be no
+better than a simple hind!  Am I better?  Prime bacon and an occasional
+draft of shrewd beer content him, and they do not me.  Yet I am sound,
+and can sit through the night and be ready, and on the morrow I shall
+stand for the county.
+
+I made the announcement that I had thoughts of entering Parliament,
+before I had half formed the determination, at my sister's lawn party
+yesterday.
+
+'Gilbert!' she cried, and raised her hands.  A woman is hurt if you do
+not confide to her your plans as soon as you can conceive them.  She must
+be present to assist at the birth, or your plans are unblessed plans.
+
+I had been speaking aside in a casual manner to my friend Amble, whose
+idea is that the Church is not represented with sufficient strength in
+the Commons, and who at once, as I perceived, grasped the notion of
+getting me to promote sundry measures connected with schools and clerical
+stipends, for his eyes dilated; he said: 'Well, if you do, I can put you
+up to several things,' and imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his
+own mind, he continued absently: 'Pollingray might be made strong on
+church rates.  There is much to do.  He has lived abroad and requires
+schooling in these things.  We want a man.  Yes, yes, yes.  It's a good
+idea; a notion.'
+
+My sister, however, was of another opinion.  She did me the honour to
+take me aside.
+
+'Gilbert, were you serious just now?'
+
+'Quite serious.  Is it not my characteristic?'
+
+'Not on these occasions.  I saw the idea come suddenly upon you.  You
+were looking at Charles.'
+
+'Continue: and at what was he looking?'
+
+'He was looking at Alice Amble.'
+
+'And the young lady?'
+
+'She looked at you.'
+
+I was here attacked by a singularly pertinacious fly, and came out of the
+contest with a laugh.
+
+'Did she have that condescension towards me?  And from the glance,
+my resolution to enter Parliament was born?  It is the French
+vaudevilliste's doctrine of great events from little causes.  The slipper
+of a soubrette trips the heart of a king and changes the destiny of a
+nation-the history of mankind.  It may be true.  If I were but shot into
+the House from a little girl's eye!'
+
+With this I took her arm gaily, walked with her, and had nearly
+overreached myself with excess of cunning.  I suppose we are reduced to
+see more plainly that which we systematically endeavour to veil from
+others.  It is best to flutter a handkerchief, instead of nailing up a
+curtain.  The principal advantage is that you may thereby go on deceiving
+yourself, for this reason: few sentiments are wholly matter of fact; but
+when they are half so, you make them concrete by deliberately seeking
+either to crush or conceal them, and you are doubly betrayed--betrayed
+to the besieging eye and to yourself.  When a sentiment has grown to be
+a passion (mercifully may I be spared!) different tactics are required.
+By that time, you will have already betrayed yourself too deeply to dare
+to be flippant: the investigating eye is aware that it has been purposely
+diverted: knowing some things, it makes sure of the rest from which you
+turn it away.  If you want to hide a very grave case, you must speak
+gravely about it.--At which season, be but sure of your voice, and
+simulate a certain depth of sentimental philosophy, and you may once
+more, and for a long period, bewilder the investigator of the secrets of
+your bosom.  To sum up: in the preliminary stages of a weakness, be
+careful that you do not show your own alarm, or all will be suspected.
+Should the weakness turn to fever, let a little of it be seen, like a
+careless man, and nothing will really be thought.
+
+I can say this, I can do this; and is it still possible that a pin's
+point has got through the joints of the armour of a man like me?
+
+Elizabeth quitted my side with the conviction that I am as considerate an
+uncle as I am an affectionate brother.
+
+I said to her, apropos, 'I have been observing those two.  It seems to me
+they are deciding things for themselves.'
+
+'I have been going to speak to you about them Gilbert,' said she.
+
+And I: 'The girl must be studied.  The family is good.  While Charles is
+in Wales, you must have her at Dayton.  She laughs rather vacantly, don't
+you think?  but the sound of it has the proper wholesome ring.  I will
+give her what attention I can while she is here, but in the meantime I
+must have a bride of my own and commence courting.'
+
+'Parliament, you mean,' said Elizabeth with a frank and tender smile.
+The hostess was summoned to welcome a new guest, and she left me, pleased
+with her successful effort to reach my meaning, and absorbed by it.
+
+I would not have challenged Machiavelli; but I should not have
+encountered the Florentine ruefully.  I feel the same keen delight in
+intellectual dexterity.  On some points my sister is not a bad match for
+me.  She can beat me seven games out of twelve at chess; but the five I
+win sequently, for then I am awake.  There is natural art and artificial
+art, and the last beats the first.  Fortunately for us, women are
+strangers to the last.  They have had to throw off a mask before they
+have, got the schooling; so, when they are thus armed we know what we
+meet, and what are the weapons to be used.
+
+Alice, if she is a fine fencer at all, will expect to meet the ordinary
+English squire in me.  I have seen her at the baptismal font!  It is
+inconceivable.  She will fancy that at least she is ten times more subtle
+than I.  When I get the mastery--it is unlikely to make me the master.
+What may happen is, that the nature of the girl will declare itself,
+under the hard light of intimacy, vulgar.  Charles I cause to be absent
+for six weeks; so there will be time enough for the probation.  I do not
+see him till he returns.  If by chance I had come earlier to see him and
+he to allude to her, he would have had my conscience on his side, and
+that is what a scrupulous man takes care to prevent.
+
+I wonder whether my friends imagine me to be the same man whom they knew
+as Gilbert Pollingray a month back?  I see the change, I feel the change;
+but I have no retrospection, no remorse, no looking forward, no feeling:
+none for others, very little, for myself.  I am told that I am losing
+fluency as a dinner-table talker.  There is now more savour to me in a
+silvery laugh than in a spiced wit.  And this is the man who knows women,
+and is far too modest to give a decided opinion upon any of their merits.
+Search myself through as I may, I cannot tell when the change began, or
+what the change consists of, or what is the matter with me, or what charm
+there is in the person who does the mischief.  She is the counterpart of
+dozens of girls; lively, brown-eyed, brown-haired, underbred--it is not
+too harsh to say so--underbred slightly; half-educated, whether
+quickwitted I dare not opine.  She is undoubtedly the last whom I or
+another person would have fixed upon as one to work me this unmitigated
+evil.  I do not know her, and I believe I do not care to know her, and I
+am thirsting for the hour to come when I shall study her.  Is not this to
+have the poison of a bite in one's blood?  The wrath of Venus is not a
+fable.  I was a hard reader and I despised the sex in my youth, before
+the family estates fell to me; since when I have playfully admired the
+sex; I have dallied with a passion, and not read at all, save for
+diversion: her anger is not a fable.  You may interpret many a mythic
+tale by the facts which lie in your own blood.  My emotions have lain
+altogether dormant in sentimental attachment.  I have, I suppose, boasted
+of, Python slain, and Cupid has touched me up with an arrow.  I trust to
+my own skill rather than to his mercy for avoiding a second from his
+quiver.  I will understand this girl if I have to submit to a close
+intimacy with her for six months.  There is no doubt of the elegance of
+her movements.  Charles might as well take his tour, and let us see him
+again next year.  Yes, her movements are (or will be) gracious.  In a
+year's time she will have acquired the fuller tones and poetry of
+womanliness.  Perhaps then, too, her smile will linger instead of
+flashing.  I have known infinitely lovelier women than she.  One I have
+known! but let her be.  Louise and I have long since said adieu.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SHE
+
+Behold me installed in Dayton Manor House, and brought here for the
+express purpose (so Charles has written me word) of my being studied,
+that it may be seen whether I am worthy to be, on some august future
+occasion--possibly--a member (Oh, so much to mumble!) of this great
+family.  Had I known it when I was leaving home, I should have
+countermanded the cording of my boxes.  If you please, I do the packing,
+and not the cording.  I must practise being polite, or I shall be
+horrifying these good people.
+
+I am mortally offended.  I am very very angry.  I shall show temper.
+Indeed, I have shown it.  Mr. Pollingray must and does think me a goose.
+Dear sir, and I think you are justified.  If any one pretends to guess
+how, I have names to suit that person.  I am a ninny, an ape, and mind
+I call myself these bad things because I deserve worse.  I am flighty,
+I believe I am heartless.  Charles is away, and I suffer no pangs.
+The truth is, I fancied myself so exceedingly penetrating, and it was my
+vanity looking in a glass.  I saw something that answered to my nods and
+howd'ye-do's and--but I am ashamed, and so penitent I might begin making
+a collection of beetles.  I cannot lift up my head.
+
+Mr. Pollingray is such a different man from the one I had imagined!
+What that one was, I have now quite forgotten.  I remember too clearly
+what the wretched guesser was.  I have been three weeks at Dayton, and if
+my sisters know me when I return to the vicarage, they are not foolish
+virgins.  For my part, I know that I shall always hate Mrs. Romer
+Pattlecombe, and that I am unjust to the good woman, but I do hate her,
+and I think the stories shocking, and wonder intensely what it was that I
+could have found in them to laugh at.  I shall never laugh again for many
+years.  Perhaps, when I am an old woman, I may.  I wish the time had
+come.  All young people seem to me so helplessly silly.  I am one of them
+for the present, and have no hope that I can appear to be anything else.
+The young are a crowd--a shoal of small fry.  Their elders are the select
+of the world.
+
+On the morning of the day when I was to leave home for Dayton, a distance
+of eight miles, I looked out of my window while dressing--as early as
+halfpast seven--and I saw Mr. Pollingray's groom on horseback, leading up
+and down the walk a darling little, round, plump, black cob that made my
+heart leap with an immense bound of longing to be on it and away across
+the downs.  And then the maid came to my door with a letter:
+
+'Mr. Pollingray, in return for her considerate good behaviour and saving
+of trouble to him officially, begs his goddaughter to accept the
+accompanying little animal: height 14 h., age 31 years; hunts, is sure-
+footed, and likely to be the best jumper in the county.'
+
+I flew downstairs.  I rushed out of the house and up to my treasure, and
+kissed his nose and stroked his mane.  I could not get my fingers away
+from him.  Horses are so like the very best and beautifullest of women
+when you caress them.  They show their pleasure so at being petted.  They
+curve their necks, and paw, and look proud.  They take your flattery like
+sunshine and are lovely in it.  I kissed my beauty, peering at his black-
+mottled skin, which is like Allingborough Heath in the twilight.  The
+smell of his new saddle and bridle-leather was sweeter than a garden to
+me.  The man handed me a large riding-whip mounted with silver.  I longed
+to jump up and ride till midnight.
+
+Then mama and papa came out and read the note and looked, at my darling
+little cob, and my sisters saw him and kissed me, for they are not
+envious girls.  The most distressing thing was that we had not a riding-
+habit in the family.  I was ready to wear any sort.  I would have ridden
+as a guy rather than not ride at all.  But mama gave me a promise that in
+two days a riding-habit should be sent on to Dayton, and I had to let my
+pet be led back from where he came.  I had no life till I was following
+him.  I could have believed him to be a fairy prince who had charmed me.
+I called him Prince Leboo, because he was black and good.  I forgive
+anybody who talks about first love after what my experience has been with
+Prince Leboo.
+
+What papa thought of the present I do not know, but I know very well what
+mama thought: and for my part I thought everything, not distinctly
+including that, for I could not suppose such selfishness in one so
+generous as Mr. Pollingray.  But I came to Dayton in a state of arrogant
+pride, that gave assurance if not ease to my manners.  I thanked Mr.
+Pollingray warmly, but in a way to let him see it was the matter of a
+horse between us.  'You give, I register thanks, and there's an end.'
+
+'He thinks me a fool! a fool!
+
+'My habit,' I said, 'comes after me.  I hope we shall have some rides
+together.'
+
+'Many,' replied Mr. Pollingray, and his bow inflated me with ideas of my
+condescension.
+
+And because Miss Pollingray (Queen Elizabeth he calls her) looked half
+sad, I read it--!  I do not write what I read it to be.
+
+Behold the uttermost fool of all female creation led over the house by
+Mr. Pollingray.  He showed me the family pictures.
+
+'I am no judge of pictures, Mr. Pollingray.'
+
+'You will learn to see the merits of these.'
+
+'I'm afraid not, though I were to study them for years.'
+
+'You may have that opportunity.'
+
+'Oh!  that is more than I can expect.'
+
+'You will develop intelligence on such subjects by and by.'
+
+A dull sort of distant blow struck me in this remark; but I paid no heed
+to it.
+
+He led me over the gardens and the grounds.  The Great John Methlyn
+Pollingray planted those trees, and designed the house, and the flower-
+garden still speaks of his task; but he is not my master, and
+consequently I could not share his three great-grandsons' veneration for
+him.  There are high fir-woods and beech woods, and a long ascending
+narrow meadow between them, through which a brook falls in continual
+cascades.  It is the sort of scene I love, for it has a woodland grandeur
+and seclusion that leads, me to think, and makes a better girl of me.
+But what I said was: 'Yes, it is the place of all others to come and
+settle in for the evening of one's days.'
+
+'You could not take to it now?' said Mr. Pollingray.
+
+'Now?' my expression of face must have been a picture.
+
+'You feel called upon to decline such a residence in the morning of your
+days?'
+
+He persisted in looking at me as he spoke, and I felt like something
+withering scarlet.
+
+I am convinced he saw through me, while his face was polished brass.  My
+self-possession returned, for my pride was not to be dispersed
+immediately.
+
+'Please, take me to the stables,' I entreated; and there I was at home.
+There I saw my Prince Leboo, and gave him a thousand caresses.'
+
+'He knows me already,' I said.
+
+Then he is some degrees in advance of me,' said Mr. Pollingray.
+
+Is not cold dissection of one's character a cruel proceeding?  And I
+think, too, that a form of hospitality like this by which I am invited to
+be analysed at leisure, is both mean and base.  I have been kindly
+treated and I am grateful, but I do still say (even though I may have
+improved under it) it is unfair.
+
+To proceed: the dinner hour arrived.  The atmosphere of his own house
+seems to favour Mr. Pollingray as certain soils and sites favour others.
+He walked into the dining-room between us with his hands behind him,
+talking to us both so easily and smoothly cheerfully--naturally and
+pleasantly--inimitable by any young man!  You hardly feel the change of
+room.  We were but three at table, but there was no lack of
+entertainment.  Mr. Pollingray is an admirable host; he talks just enough
+himself and helps you to talk.  What does comfort me is that it gives him
+real pleasure to see a hearty appetite.  Young men, I know it for a
+certainty, never quite like us to be so human.  Ah! which is right?
+I would not miss the faith in our nobler essence which Charles has.
+But, if it nobler?  One who has lived longer in the world ought to know
+better, and Mr. Pollingray approves of naturalness in everything.  I have
+now seen through Charles's eyes for several months; so implicitly that I
+am timid when I dream of trusting to another's judgement.  It is,
+however, a fact that I am not quite natural with Charles.
+
+Every day Mr. Pollingray puts on evening dress out of deference to his
+sister.  If young men had these good habits they would gain our respect,
+and lose their own self-esteem less early.
+
+After dinner I sang.  Then Mr. Pollingray read an amusing essay to us,
+and retired to his library.  Miss Pollingray sat and talked to me of
+her brother, and of her nephew--for whom it is that Mr. Pollingray is
+beginning to receive company, and is going into society.  Charles's
+subsequently received letter explained the 'receive company.' I could
+not comprehend it at the time.
+
+'The house has been shut up for years, or rarely inhabited by us for more
+than a month in the year.  Mr. Pollingray prefers France.  All his
+asociations, I may say his sympathies, are in France.  Latterly he seems
+to have changed a little; but from Normandy to Touraine and Dauphiny--we
+had a triangular home over there.  Indeed, we have it still.  I am never
+certain of my brother.'
+
+While Miss Pollingray was speaking, my eyes were fixed on a Vidal crayon
+drawing, faintly coloured with chalks, of a foreign lady--I could have
+sworn to her being French--young, quite girlish, I doubt if her age was
+more than mine.
+
+She is pretty, is she not?' said Miss Pollingray.
+
+She is almost beautiful,' I exclaimed, and Miss Pollingray, seeing my
+curiosity, was kind enough not to keep me in suspense.
+
+'That is the Marquise de Mazardouin--nee Louise de Riverolles.  You will
+see other portraits of her in the house.  This is the most youthful of
+them, if I except one representing a baby, and bearing her initials.'
+
+I remembered having noticed a similarity of feature in some of the
+portraits in the different rooms.  My longing to look at them again was
+like a sudden jet of flame within me.  There was no chance of seeing them
+till morning; so, promising myself to dream of the face before me,
+I dozed through a conversation with my hostess, until I had got the
+French lady's eyes and hair and general outline stamped accurately, as I
+hoped, on my mind.  I was no sooner on my way to bed than all had faded.
+The torment of trying to conjure up that face was inconceivable.  I lay,
+and tossed, and turned to right and to left, and scattered my sleep;
+but by and by my thoughts reverted to Mr. Pollingray, and then like
+sympathetic ink held to the heat, I beheld her again; but vividly,
+as she must have been when she was sitting to the artist.  The hair was
+naturally crisped, waving thrice over the forehead and brushed clean from
+the temples, showing the small ears, and tied in a knot loosely behind.
+Her eyebrows were thick and dark, but soft; flowing eyebrows; far
+lovelier, to my thinking, than any pencilled arch.  Dark eyes, and full,
+not prominent.  I find little expression of inward sentiment in very
+prominent eyes.  On the contrary they seem to have a fish-like dependency
+of gaze on what is without, and show fishy depths, if any.  For instance,
+my eyes are rather prominent, and I am just the little fool--but the
+French lady is my theme.  Madame la Marquise, your eyes are sweeter to me
+than celestial.  I never saw such candour and unaffected innocence in
+eyes before.  Accept the compliment of the pauvre Anglaise.  Did you do
+mischief with them?  Did Vidal's delicate sketch do justice to you?  Your
+lips and chin and your throat all repose in such girlish grace, that if
+ever it is my good fortune to see you, you will not be aged to me!
+
+I slept and dreamed of her.
+
+In the morning, I felt certain that she had often said: 'Mon cher
+Gilbert,' to Mr. Pollingray.  Had he ever said: 'Ma chere Louise?' He
+might have said: 'Ma bien aimee!' for it was a face to be loved.
+
+My change of feeling towards him dates from that morning.  He had
+previously seemed to me a man so much older.  I perceived in him now a
+youthfulness beyond mere vigour of frame.  I could not detach him from my
+dreams of the night.  He insists upon addressing me by the terms of our
+'official' relationship, as if he made it a principle of our intercourse.
+
+'Well, and is your godpapa to congratulate you on your having had a quiet
+rest?' was his greeting.
+
+I answered stupidly: 'Oh, yes, thank you,' and would have given worlds
+for the courage to reply in French, but I distrusted my accent.  At
+breakfast, the opportunity or rather the excuse for an attempt, was
+offered.  His French valet, Francois, waits on him at breakfast.  Mr.
+Pollingray and his sister asked for things in the French tongue, and,
+as if fearing some breach of civility, Mr. Pollingray asked me if I knew
+French.
+
+Yes, I know it; that is, I understand it,' I stuttered.  Allons, nous
+parlerons francais,' said he.  But I shook my head, and remained like a
+silly mute.
+
+I was induced towards the close of the meal to come out with a few French
+words.  I was utterly shamefaced.  Mr. Pollingray has got the French
+manner of protesting that one is all but perfect in one's speaking.  I
+know how absurd it must have sounded.  But I felt his kindness, and in my
+heart I thanked him humbly.  I believe now that a residence in France
+does not deteriorate an Englishman.  Mr. Pollingray, when in his own
+house, has the best qualities of the two countries.  He is gay, and, yes,
+while he makes a study of me, I am making a study of him.  Which of us
+two will know the other first?  He was papa's college friend--papa's
+junior, of course, and infinitely more papa's junior now.  I observe that
+weakness in him, I mean, his clinging to youthfulness, less and less; but
+I do see it, I cannot be quite in error.  The truth is, I begin to feel
+that I cannot venture to mistrust my infallible judgement, or I shall
+have no confidence in myself at all.
+
+After breakfast, I was handed over to Miss Pollingray, with the
+intimation that I should not see him till dinner.
+
+'Gilbert is anxious to cultivate the society of his English neighbours,
+now that he has, as he supposes, really settled among them,' she remarked
+to me.  'At his time of life, the desire to be useful is almost a malady.
+But, he cherishes the poor, and that is more than an occupation, it is a
+virtue.'
+
+Her speech has become occasionally French in the construction of the
+sentences.
+
+'Mais oui,' I said shyly, and being alone with her, I was not rebuffed by
+her smile, especially as she encouraged me on.
+
+I am, she told me, to see a monde of French people here in September.
+So, the story of me is to be completer, or continued in September.
+I could not get Miss Pollingray to tell me distinctly whether Madame la
+Marquise will be one of the guests.  But I know that she is not a widow.
+In that case, she has a husband.  In that case, what is the story of her
+relations towards Mr. Pollingray?  There must be some story.  He would
+not surely have so many portraits of her about the house (and they travel
+with him wherever he goes) if she were but a lovely face to him.
+I cannot understand it.  They were frequent, constant visitors to one
+another's estates in France; always together.  Perhaps a man of Mr.
+Pollingray's age, or perhaps M. le Marquis--and here I lose myself.
+French habits are so different from ours.  One thing I am certain of:
+no charge can be brought against my Englishman.  I read perfect rectitude
+in his face.  I would cast anchor by him.  He must have had a dreadful
+unhappiness.
+
+
+Mama kept her promise by sending my riding habit and hat punctually, but
+I had run far ahead of all the wishes I had formed when I left home, and
+I half feared my ride out with Mr. Pollingray.  That was before I had
+received Charles's letter, letting me know the object of my invitation
+here.  I require at times a morbid pride to keep me up to the work.  I
+suppose I rode befittingly, for Mr. Pollingray praised my seat on
+horseback.  I know I can ride, or feel the 'blast of a horse like my own'
+--as he calls it.  Yet he never could have had a duller companion.  My
+conversation was all yes and no, as if it went on a pair of crutches like
+a miserable cripple.  I was humiliated and vexed.  All the while I was
+trying to lead up to the French lady, and I could not commence with a
+single question.  He appears to, have really cancelled the past in every
+respect save his calling me his goddaughter.  His talk was of the English
+poor, and vegetation, and papa's goodness to his old dames in Ickleworth
+parish, and defects in my education acknowledged by me, but not likely to
+restore me in my depressed state.  The ride was beautiful.  We went the
+length of a twelve-mile ridge between Ickleworth and Hillford, over high
+commons, with immense views on both sides, and through beech-woods,
+oakwoods, and furzy dells and downs spotted with juniper and yewtrees--
+old picnic haunts of mine, but Mr. Pollingray's fresh delight in the
+landscape made them seem new and strange.  Home through the valley.
+
+The next day Miss Pollingray joined us, wearing a feutre gris and green
+plume, which looked exceedingly odd until you became accustomed to it.
+Her hair has decided gray streaks, and that, and the Queen Elizabeth
+nose, and the feutre gris!--but she is so kind, I could not even smile in
+my heart.  It is singular that Mr. Pollingray, who's but three years her
+junior, should look at least twenty years younger--at the very least.
+His moustache and beard are of the colour of a corn sheaf, and his blue
+eyes shining over them remind me of summer.  That describes him.  He is
+summer, and has not fallen into his autumn yet.  Miss Pollingray helped
+me to talk a little.  She tried to check her brother's enthusiasm for our
+scenery, and extolled the French paysage.  He laughed at her, for when
+they were in France it was she who used to say, 'There is nothing here
+like England!'  Miss Fool rode between them attentive to the jingling of
+the bells in her cap: 'Yes' and 'No' at anybody's command, in and out of
+season.
+
+Thank you, Charles, for your letter!  I was beginning to think my
+invitation to Dayton inexplicable, when that letter arrived.  I cannot
+but deem it an unworthy baseness to entrap a girl to study her without a
+warning to her.  I went up to my room after I had read it, and wrote in
+reply till the breakfast-bell rang.  I resumed my occupation an hour
+later, and wrote till one o'clock.  In all, fifteen pages of writing,
+which I carefully folded and addressed to Charles; sealed the envelope,
+stamped it, and destroyed it.  I went to bed.  'No, I won't ride out to-
+day, I have a headache!'  I repeated this about half-a-dozen times to
+nobody's knocking on the door, and when at last somebody knocked I tried
+to repeat it once, but having the message that Mr. Pollingray
+particularly wished to have my company in a ride, I rose submissively
+and cried.  This humiliation made my temper ferocious.  Mr. Pollingray
+observed my face, and put it down in his notebook.  'A savage
+disposition,' or, no, 'An untamed little rebel'; for he has hopes of me.
+He had the cruelty to say so.
+
+'What I am, I shall remain,' said I.
+
+He informed me that it was perfectly natural for me to think it; and on
+my replying that persons ought to know themselves best: 'At my age,
+perhaps,' he said, and added, 'I cannot speak very confidently of my
+knowledge of myself.'
+
+'Then you make us out to be nothing better than puppets, Mr. Pollingray.'
+
+'If we have missed an early apprenticeship to the habit of self-command,
+ma filleule.'
+
+'Merci, mon parrain.'
+
+He laughed.  My French, I suppose.
+
+I determined that, if he wanted to study me, I would help him.
+
+'I can command myself when I choose, but it is only when I choose.'
+
+This seemed to me quite a reasonable speech, until I found him looking
+for something to follow, in explanation, and on coming to sift my
+meaning, I saw that it was temper, and getting more angry, continued:
+
+'The sort of young people who have such wonderful command of themselves
+are not the pleasantest.'
+
+'No,' he said; 'they disappoint us.  We expect folly from the young.'
+
+I shut my lips.  Prince Leboo knew that he must go, and a good gallop
+reconciled me to circumstances.  Then I was put to jumping little furzes
+and ditches, which one cannot pretend to do without a fair appearance of
+gaiety; for, while you are running the risk of a tumble, you are
+compelled to look cheerful and gay, at least, I am.  To fall frowning
+will never do.  I had no fall.  My gallant Leboo made my heart leap with
+love of him, though mill-stones were tied to it.  I may be vexed when I
+begin, but I soon ride out a bad temper.  And he is mine!  I am certainly
+inconstant to Charles, for I think of Leboo fifty times more.  Besides,
+there is no engagement as yet between Charles and me.  I have first to be
+approved worthy by Mr. and Miss Pollingray: two pairs of eyes and ears,
+over which I see a solemnly downy owl sitting, conning their reports of
+me.  It is a very unkind ordeal to subject any inexperienced young woman
+to.  It was harshly conceived and it is being remorselessly executed.
+I would complain more loudly--in shrieks--if I could say I was unhappy;
+but every night I look out of my window before going to bed and see the
+long falls of the infant river through the meadow, and the dark woods
+seeming to enclose the house from harm: I dream of the old inhabitant,
+his ancestors, and the numbers and numbers of springs when the
+wildflowers have flourished in those woods and the nightingales have sung
+there.  And I feel there will never be a home to me like Dayton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HE
+
+For twenty years of my life I have embraced the phantom of the fairest
+woman that ever drew breath. I have submitted to her whims, I have
+worshipped her feet, I have, I believe, strengthened her principle.
+I have done all in my devotion but adopt her religious faith.  And I
+have, as I trusted some time since, awakened to perceive that those
+twenty years were a period of mere sentimental pastime, perfectly
+useless, fruitless, unless, as is possible, it has saved me from other
+follies.  But it was a folly in itself.  Can one's nature be too
+stedfast?  The question whether a spice of frivolousness may not be a
+safeguard has often risen before me.  The truth, I must learn to think,
+is, that my mental power is not the match for my ideal or sentimental
+apprehension and native tenacity of attachment.  I have fallen into one
+of the pits of a well-meaning but idle man.  The world discredits the
+existence of pure platonism in love.  I myself can barely look back on
+those twenty years of amatory servility with a full comprehension of the
+part I have been playing in them.  And yet I would not willingly forfeit
+the exalted admiration of Louise for my constancy: as little willingly as
+I would have imperilled her purity.  I cling to the past as to something
+in which I have deserved well, though I am scarcely satisfied with it.
+According to our English notions I know my name.  English notions,
+however, are not to be accepted in all matters, any more than the flat
+declaration of a fact will develop it in alt its bearings.  When our
+English society shall have advanced to a high civilization, it will be
+less expansive in denouncing the higher stupidities.  Among us, much of
+the social judgement of Bodge upon the relations of men to women is the
+stereotyped opinion of the land.  There is the dictum here for a man who
+adores a woman who is possessed by a husband.  If he has long adored her,
+and known himself to be preferred by her in innocency of heart; if he has
+solved the problem of being her bosom's lord, without basely seeking to
+degrade her to being his mistress; the epithets to characterise him in
+our vernacular will probably be all the less flattering.  Politically we
+are the most self-conscious people upon earth, and socially the frankest
+animals.  The terrorism of our social laws is eminently serviceable,
+for without it such frank animals as we are might run into bad excesses.
+I judge rather by the abstract evidence than by the examples our fair
+matrons give to astounded foreigners when abroad.
+
+Louise writes that her husband is paralysed.  The Marquis de Mazardouin
+is at last tasting of his mortality.  I bear in mind the day when he
+married her.  She says that he has taken to priestly counsel, and, like
+a woman, she praises him for that.  It is the one thing which I have not
+done to please her.  She anticipates his decease.  Should she be free--
+what then?  My heart does not beat the faster for the thought.  There are
+twenty years upon it, and they make a great load.  But I have a desire
+that she should come over to us.  The old folly might rescue me from the
+new one.  Not that I am any further persecuted by the dread that I am in
+imminent danger here.  I have established a proper mastery over my young
+lady.  'Nous avons change de role'.  Alice is subdued; she laughs feebly,
+is becoming conscious--a fact to be regretted, if I desired to check the
+creature's growth.  There is vast capacity in the girl.  She has plainly
+not centred her affections upon Charles, so that a man's conscience might
+be at ease if--if he chose to disregard what is due to decency.  But,
+why, when I contest it, do I bow to the world's opinion concerning
+disparity of years between husband and wife?  I know innumerable cases of
+an old husband making a young wife happy.  My friend, Dr. Galliot,
+married his ward, and he had the best wife of any man of my acquaintance.
+She has been publishing his learned manuscripts ever since his death.
+That is an extreme case, for he was forty-five years her senior, and
+stood bald at the altar.  Old General Althorpe married Julia Dahoop, and,
+but for his preposterous jealousy of her, might be cited in proof that
+the ordinary reckonings are not to be a yoke on the neck of one who
+earnestly seeks to spouse a fitting mate, though late in life.  But,
+what are fifty years?  They mark the prime of a healthy man's existence.
+He has by that time seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is
+virtually more eligible--to use the cant phrase of gossips--than a young
+man, even for a young girl.  And may not some fair and fresh reward be
+justly claimed as the crown of a virtuous career?
+
+I say all this, yet my real feeling is as if I were bald as Dr. Galliot
+and jealous as General Althorpe.  For, with my thorough knowledge of
+myself, I, were I like either one of them, should not have offered myself
+to the mercy of a young woman, or of the world.  Nor, as I am and know
+myself to be, would I offer myself to the mercy of Alice Amble.  When my
+filleule first drove into Dayton she had some singularly audacious ideas
+of her own.  Those vivid young feminine perceptions and untamed
+imaginations are desperate things to encounter.  There is nothing beyond
+their reach.  Our safety from them lies in the fact that they are always
+seeing too much, and imagining too wildly; so that, with a little help
+from us, they may be taught to distrust themselves; and when they have
+once distrusted themselves, we need not afterwards fear them: their
+supernatural vitality has vanished.  I fancy my pretty Alice to be in
+this state now.  She leaves us to-morrow.  In the autumn we shall have
+her with us again, and Louise will scan her compassionately.  I desire
+that they should meet.  It will be hardly fair to the English girl, but,
+if I stand in the gap between them, I shall summon up no small quantity
+of dormant compatriotic feeling.  The contemplation of the contrast, too,
+may save me from both: like the logic ass with the two trusses of hay on
+either side of him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHE
+
+I am at home.  There was never anybody who felt so strange in her home.
+It is not a month since I left my sisters, and I hardly remember that I
+know them.  They all, and even papa, appear to be thinking about such
+petty things.  They complain that I tell them nothing.  What have I to
+tell?  My Prince!  my own Leboo, if I might lie in the stall with you,
+then I should feel thoroughly happy!  That is, if I could fall asleep.
+Evelina declares we are not eight miles from Dayton.  It seems to me I
+am eight millions of miles distant, and shall be all my life travelling
+along a weary road to get there again just for one long sunny day.  And
+it might rain when I got there after all!  My trouble nobody knows.
+Nobody knows a thing!
+
+The night before my departure, Miss Pollingray did me the honour to
+accompany me up to my bedroom.  She spoke to me searchingly about
+Charles; but she did not demand compromising answers.  She is not in
+favour of early marriages, so she merely wishes to know the footing upon
+which we stand: that of friends.  I assured her we were simply friends.
+'It is the firmest basis of an attachment,' she said; and I did not look
+hurried.
+
+But I gained my end.  I led her to talk of the beautiful Marquise.  This
+is the tale.  Mr. Pollingray, when a very young man, and comparatively
+poor, went over to France with good introductions, and there saw and fell
+in love with Louise de Riverolles.  She reciprocated his passion.  If he
+would have consented to abjure his religion and worship with her, Madame
+de Riverolles, her mother, would have listened to her entreaties.  But
+Gilbert was firm.  Mr. Pollingray, I mean, refused to abandon his faith.
+Her mother, consequently, did not interfere, and Monsieur de Riverolles,
+her father, gave her to the Marquis de Marzardouin, a roue young
+nobleman, immensely rich, and shockingly dissipated.  And she married
+him.  No, I cannot understand French girls.  Do as I will, it is quite
+incomprehensible to me how Louise, loving another, could suffer herself
+to be decked out in bridal finery and go to the altar and take the
+marriage oaths.  Not if perdition had threatened would I have submitted.
+I have a feeling that Mr. Pollingray should have shown at least one
+year's resentment at such conduct; and yet I admire him for his immediate
+generous forgiveness of her.  It was fatherly.  She was married at
+sixteen.  His forgiveness was the fruit of his few years' seniority,
+said Miss Pollingray, whose opinion of the Marquise I cannot arrive at.
+At any rate, they have been true and warm friends ever since, constantly
+together interchangeing visits.  That is why Mr. Pollingray has been more
+French than English for those long years.
+
+Miss Pollingray concluded by asking me what I thought of the story.  I
+said: 'It is very strange French habits are so different from ours.  I
+dare say .  .  .  I hope .  .  , perhaps .  .  .  indeed, Mr. Pollingray
+seems happy now.'  Her idea of my wits must be that they are of the
+schoolgirl order--a perfect receptacle for indefinite impressions.
+
+'Ah!' said she.  'Gilbert has burnt his heart to ashes by this time.'
+
+I slept with that sentence in my brain.  In the morning, I rose and
+dressed, dreaming.  As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to
+breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears.  It was so piteous
+to think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow
+anguish, his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint.  I saw
+him, I still see him, like a martyr.
+
+'Some people,' Miss Pollingray said, I permitted themselves to think evil
+of my brother's assiduous devotion to a married woman.  There is not a
+spot on his character, or on that of the person whom Gilbert loved.'
+
+I would believe it in the teeth of calumny.  I would cling to my, belief
+in him if I were drowning.
+
+I consider that those twenty years are just nothing, if he chooses to
+have them so.  He has lived embalmed in a saintly affection.  No wonder
+he considers himself still youthful.  He is entitled to feel that his
+future is before him.
+
+No amount of sponging would get the stains away from my horrid red
+eyelids.  I slunk into my seat at the breakfast-table, not knowing that
+one of the maids had dropped a letter from Charles into my hand, and that
+I had opened it and was holding it open.  The letter, as I found
+afterwards, told me that Charles has received an order from his uncle to
+go over to Mr. Pollingray's estate in Dauphiny on business.  I am not
+sorry that they should have supposed I was silly enough to cry at the
+thought of Charles's crossing the Channel.  They did imagine it, I know;
+for by and by Miss Pollingray whispered: 'Les absents n'auront pas tort,
+cette fois, n'est-ce-pas?  'And Mr. Pollingray was cruelly gentle: an air
+of 'I would not intrude on such emotions'; and I heightened their
+delusions as much as I could: there was no other way of accounting for my
+pantomime face.  Why should he fancy I suffered so terribly?  He talked
+with an excited cheerfulness meant to relieve me, of course, but there
+was no justification for his deeming me a love-sick kind of woe-begone
+ballad girl.  It caused him likewise to adopt a manner--what to call it,
+I cannot think: tender respect, frigid regard, anything that accompanies
+and belongs to the pressure of your hand with the finger-tips.  He said
+goodbye so tenderly that I would have kissed his sleeve.  The effort to
+restrain myself made me like an icicle.  Oh! adieu, mon parrain!
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it
+A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans
+Gentleman in a good state of preservation
+Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind
+In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt
+Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men
+Rapture of obliviousness
+Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation
+When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her
+
+
+[The End]
+
+
+
+
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