Seven days Kaiser Heinrich remained camped outside Cologne. Six times in six successive days the Kaiser attempted to enter the city, and was foiled.
'Beard of Barbarossa!' said the Kaiser, 'this is the first stronghold that ever resisted me.'
The warrior bishops, electors, pfalzgrafs, and knights of the Empire, all swore it was no shame not to be a match for the Demon.
'If,' said the reflective Kaiser, 'we are to suffer below what poor Cologne is doomed to undergo now, let us, by all that is savoury, reform and do penance.'
The wind just then setting on them dead from Cologne made the courtiers serious. Many thought of their souls for the first time.
This is recorded to the honour of Monk Gregory.
On the seventh morning, the Kaiser announced his determination to make a last trial.
It was dawn, and a youth stood before the Kaiser's tent, praying an audience.
Conducted into the presence of the Kaiser, the youth, they say, succeeded in arousing him from his depression, for, brave as he was, Kaiser Heinrich dreaded the issue. Forthwith order was given for the cavalcade to set out according to the rescript, Kaiser Heinrich retaining the youth at his right hand. But the youth had found occasion to visit Gottlieb and Margarita, each of whom he furnished with a flash, [flask?] curiously shaped, and charged with a distillation.
As the head of the procession reached the gates of Cologne, symptoms of wavering were manifest.
Kaiser Heinrich commanded an advance, at all cost.
Pfalzgraf Nase, as the old chronicles call him in their humour, but assuredly a great noble, led the van, and pushed across the draw-bridge.
Hesitation and signs of horror were manifest in the assemblage round theKaiser's person. The Kaiser and the youth at his right hand were cheery.Not a whit drooped they! Several of the heroic knights begged theKaiser's permission to fall back.
'Follow Pfalzgraf Nase!' the Kaiser is reported to have said.
Great was the wonderment of the people of Cologne to behold KaiserHeinrich riding in perfect stateliness up the main street toward theCathedral, while right and left of him bishops and electors were droppingincapable.
The Kaiser advanced till by his side the youth rode sole.
'Thy name?' said the Kaiser.
He answered: 'A poor youth, unconquerable Kaiser! Farina I am called.'
'Thy recompense?' said the Kaiser.
He answered: 'The hand of a maiden of Cologne, most gracious Kaiser and master!'
'She is thine!' said the Kaiser.
Kaiser Heinrich looked behind him, and among a host grasping the pommels of their saddles, and reeling vanquished, were but two erect, a maiden and an old man.
'That is she, unconquerable Kaiser!' Farina continued, bowing low.
'It shall be arranged on the spot,' said the Kaiser.
A word from Kaiser Heinrich sealed Gottlieb's compliance.
Said he: 'Gracious Kaiser and master! though such a youth could of himself never have aspired to the possession of a Groschen, yet when the Kaiser pleads for him, objection is as the rock of Moses, and streams consent. Truly he has done Cologne good service, and if Margarita, my daughter, can be persuaded—'
The Kaiser addressed her with his blazing brows.
Margarita blushed a ready autumn of rosy-ripe acquiescence.
'A marriage registered yonder!' said the Kaiser, pointing upward.
'I am thine, murmured Margarita, as Farina drew near her.
'Seal it! seal it!' quoth the Kaiser, in hearty good humour; 'take no consent from man or maid without a seal.'
Farina tossed the contents of a flask in air, and saluted his beloved on the lips.
This scene took place near the charred round of earth where the Foulest descended to his kingdom below.
Men now pervaded Cologne with flasks, purifying the atmosphere. It became possible to breathe freely.
'We Germans,' said Kaiser Heinrich, when he was again surrounded by his courtiers, 'may go wrong if we always follow Pfalzgraf Nase; but this time we have been well led.' Whereat there was obsequious laughter.
The Pfalzgraf pleaded a susceptible nostril.
'Thou art, I fear, but a timid mortal,' said the Kaiser.
'Never have I been found so on the German Field, Imperial Majesty!' returned the Pfalzgraf. 'I take glory to myself that this Nether reek overcomes me.'
'Even that we must combat, you see!' exclaimed Kaiser Heinrich; 'but come all to a marriage this night, and take brides as soon as you will, all of you. Increase, and give us loyal subjects in plenty. I count prosperity by the number of marriages in my empire!'
The White Rose Club were invited by Gottlieb to the wedding, and took it in vast wrath until they saw the, Kaiser, and such excellent stout German fare present, when immediately a battle raged as to who should do the event most honour, and was in dispute till dawn: Dietrich Schill being the man, he having consumed wurst the length of his arm, and wine sufficient to have floated a St. Goar salmon; which was long proudly chronicled in his family, and is now unearthed from among the ancient honourable records of Cologne.
The Goshawk was Farina's bridesman, and a very spiriting bridesman was he! Aunt Lisbeth sat in a corner, faintly smiling.
'Child!' said the little lady to Margarita when they kissed at parting, 'your courage amazes me. Do you think? Do you know? Poor, sweet bird, delivered over hand and foot!'
'I love him! I love him, aunty! that's all I know,' said Margarita: 'love, love, love him!'
'Heaven help you!' ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth.
'Pray with me,' said Margarita.
The two knelt at the foot of the bride-bed, and prayed very different prayers, but to the same end. That done, Aunt Lisbeth helped undress the White Rose, and trembled, and told a sad nuptial anecdote of the Castle, and put her little shrivelled hand on Margarita's heart, and shrieked.
'Child! it gallops!' she cried.
''Tis happiness,' said Margarita, standing in her hair.
'May it last only!' exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.
'It will, aunty! I am humble: I am true'; and the fair girl gathered the frill of her nightgown.
'Look not in the glass,' said Lisbeth; 'not to-night! Look, if you can, to-morrow.'
She smoothed the White Rose in her bed, tucked her up, and kissed her, leaving her as a bud that waits for sunshine.
The shadow of Monk Gregory was seen no more in Cologne. He entered theCalendar, and ranks next St. Anthony. For three successive centuries thetowns of Rhineland boasted his visits in the flesh, and the conqueror ofDarkness caused dire Rhenish feuds.
The Tailed Infernal repeated his famous Back-blow on Farina. The youth awoke one morning and beheld warehouses the exact pattern of his own, displaying flasks shaped even as his own, and a Farina to right and left of him. In a week, they were doubled. A month quadrupled them. They increased.
'Fame and Fortune,' mused Farina, 'come from man and the world: Love is from heaven. We may be worthy, and lose the first. We lose not love unless unworthy. Would ye know the true Farina? Look for him who walks under the seal of bliss; whose darling is for ever his young sweet bride, leading him from snares, priming his soul with celestial freshness. There is no hypocrisy can ape that aspect. Least of all, the creatures of the Damned! By this I may be known.'
Seven years after, when the Goshawk came into Cologne to see old friends, and drink some of Gottlieb's oldest Rudesheimer, he was waylaid by false Farinas; and only discovered the true one at last, by chance, in the music-gardens near the Rhine, where Farina sat, having on one hand Margarita, and at his feet three boys and one girl, over whom both bent lovingly, like the parent vine fondling its grape bunches in summer light.
A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong sideAll are friends who sit at tableBe what you seem, my little oneBed was a rock of refuge and fortified defenceCivil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wineDangerous things are uttered after the third glassEverywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomachFace betokening the perpetual smack of lemonGratitude never was a woman's giftIt was harder to be near and not closeLoving in this land: they all go mad, straight offNever reckon on womankind for a wise actSelf-incenseSign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokesSo are great deeds judged when the danger's past (as easy)Soft slumber of a strength never yet called forthSuspicion was her best witnessSweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleepingWe like well whatso we have done good work forWeak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcomeWeak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full oneWins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness
By George Meredith
An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since his retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous common, with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along the borders of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and so gradually within a stone's-throw or so of the river-side, where he determined not solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life. It may be seen that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had thought fit to loosen his sword-belt. The pony-carriage, however, had been hired for the very special purpose of helping him to pass in review the lines of what he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for building, not too remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes forth intending to pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing home a wife, the circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an airy situation, at a certain distance in hail of the metropolis he worshipped, was enough to kindle the General's enthusiasm. He would have taken the first he saw, had it not been for his daughter, who accompanied him, and at the age of eighteen was about to undertake the management of his house. Fortune, under Elizabeth Ople's guiding restraint, directed him to an epitome of the comforts. The place he fell upon is only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers, and for the first week after taking it he modestly followed them by terming it bijou. In time, when his own imagination, instigated by a state of something more than mere contentment, had been at work on it, he chose the happy phrase, 'a gentlemanly residence.' For it was, he declared, a small estate. There was a lodge to it, resembling two sentry-boxes forced into union, where in one half an old couple sat bent, in the other half lay compressed; there was a backdrive to discoverable stables; there was a bit of grass that would have appeared a meadow if magnified; and there was a wall round the kitchen-garden and a strip of wood round the flower-garden. The prying of the outside world was impossible. Comfort, fortification; and gentlemanliness made the place, as the General said, an ideal English home.
The compass of the estate was half an acre, and perhaps a perch or two, just the size for the hugging love General Ople was happiest in giving. He wisely decided to retain the old couple at the lodge, whose members were used to restriction, and also not to purchase a cow, that would have wanted pasture. With the old man, while the old woman attended to the bell at the handsome front entrance with its gilt-spiked gates, he undertook to do the gardening; a business he delighted in, so long as he could perform it in a gentlemanly manner, that is to say, so long as he was not overlooked. He was perfectly concealed from the road. Only one house, and curiously indeed, only one window of the house, and further to show the protection extended to Douro Lodge, that window an attic, overlooked him. And the house was empty.
The house (for who can hope, and who should desire a commodious house, with conservatories, aviaries, pond and boat-shed, and other joys of wealth, to remain unoccupied) was taken two seasons later by a lady, of whom Fame, rolling like a dust-cloud from the place she had left, reported that she was eccentric. The word is uninstructive: it does not frighten. In a lady of a certain age, it is rather a characteristic of aristocracy in retirement. And at least it implies wealth.
General Ople was very anxious to see her. He had the sentiment of humble respectfulness toward aristocracy, and there was that in riches which aroused his admiration. London, for instance, he was not afraid to say he thought the wonder of the world. He remarked, in addition, that the sacking of London would suffice to make every common soldier of the foreign army of occupation an independent gentleman for the term of his natural days. But this is a nightmare! said he, startling himself with an abhorrent dream of envy of those enriched invading officers: for Booty is the one lovely thing which the military mind can contemplate in the abstract. His habit was to go off in an explosion of heavy sighs when he had delivered himself so far, like a man at war with himself.
The lady arrived in time: she received the cards of the neighbourhood, and signalized her eccentricity by paying no attention to them, excepting the card of a Mrs. Baerens, who had audience of her at once. By express arrangement, the card of General Wilson Ople, as her nearest neighbour, followed the card of the rector, the social head of the district; and the rector was granted an interview, but Lady Camper was not at home to General Ople. She is of superior station to me, and may not wish to associate with me, the General modestly said. Nevertheless he was wounded: for in spite of himself, and without the slightest wish to obtrude his own person, as he explained the meaning that he had in him, his rank in the British army forced him to be the representative of it, in the absence of any one of a superior rank. So that he was professionally hurt, and his heart being in his profession, it may be honestly stated that he was wounded in his feelings, though he said no, and insisted on the distinction. Once a day his walk for constitutional exercise compelled him to pass before Lady Camper's windows, which were not bashfully withdrawn, as he said humorously of Douro Lodge, in the seclusion of half-pay, but bowed out imperiously, militarily, like a generalissimo on horseback, and had full command of the road and levels up to the swelling park-foliage. He went by at a smart stride, with a delicate depression of his upright bearing, as though hastening to greet a friend in view, whose hand was getting ready for the shake. This much would have been observed by a housemaid; and considering his fine figure and the peculiar shining silveriness of his hair, the acceleration of his gait was noticeable. When he drove by, the pony's right ear was flicked, to the extreme indignation of a mettlesome little animal. It ensued in consequence that the General was borne flying under the eyes of Lady Camper, and such pace displeasing him, he reduced it invariably at a step or two beyond the corner of her grounds.
But neither he nor his daughter Elizabeth attached importance to so trivial a circumstance. The General punctiliously avoided glancing at the windows during the passage past them, whether in his wild career or on foot. Elizabeth took a side-shot, as one looks at a wayside tree. Their speech concerning Lady Camper was an exchange of commonplaces over her loneliness: and this condition of hers was the more perplexing to General Ople on his hearing from his daughter that the lady was very fine-looking, and not so very old, as he had fancied eccentric ladies must be. The rector's account of her, too, excited the mind. She had informed him bluntly, that she now and then went to church to save appearances, but was not a church-goer, finding it impossible to support the length of the service; might, however, be reckoned in subscriptions for all the charities, and left her pew open to poor people, and none but the poor. She had travelled over Europe, and knew the East. Sketches in watercolours of the scenes she had visited adorned her walls, and a pair of pistols, that she had found useful, she affirmed, lay on the writing-desk in her drawing-room. General Ople gathered from the rector that she had a great contempt for men: yet it was curiously varied with lamentations over the weakness of women. 'Really she cannot possibly be an example of that,' said the General, thinking of the pistols.
Now, we learn from those who have studied women on the chess-board, and know what ebony or ivory will do along particular lines, or hopping, that men much talked about will take possession of their thoughts; and certainly the fact may be accepted for one of their moves. But the whole fabric of our knowledge of them, which we are taught to build on this originally acute perception, is shattered when we hear, that it is exactly the same, in the same degree, in proportion to the amount of work they have to do, exactly the same with men and their thoughts in the case of women much talked about. So it was with General Ople, and nothing is left for me to say except, that there is broader ground than the chessboard. I am earnest in protesting the similarity of the singular couples on common earth, because otherwise the General is in peril of the accusation that he is a feminine character; and not simply was he a gallant officer, and a veteran in gunpowder strife, he was also (and it is an extraordinary thing that a genuine humility did not prevent it, and did survive it) a lord and conqueror of the sex. He had done his pretty bit of mischief, all in the way of honour, of course, but hearts had knocked. And now, with his bright white hair, his close-brushed white whiskers on a face burnt brown, his clear-cut features, and a winning droop of his eyelids, there was powder in him still, if not shot.
There was a lamentable susceptibility to ladies' charms. On the other hand, for the protection of the sex, a remainder of shyness kept him from active enterprise and in the state of suffering, so long as indications of encouragement were wanting. He had killed the soft ones, who came to him, attracted by the softness in him, to be killed: but clever women alarmed and paralyzed him. Their aptness to question and require immediate sparkling answers; their demand for fresh wit, of a kind that is not furnished by publications which strike it into heads with a hammer, and supply it wholesale; their various reading; their power of ridicule too; made them awful in his contemplation.
Supposing (for the inflammable officer was now thinking, and deeply thinking, of a clever woman), supposing that Lady Camper's pistols were needed in her defence one night: at the first report proclaiming her extremity, valour might gain an introduction to her upon easy terms, and would not be expected to be witty. She would, perhaps, after the excitement, admit his masculine superiority, in the beautiful old fashion, by fainting in his arms. Such was the reverie he passingly indulged, and only so could he venture to hope for an acquaintance with the formidable lady who was his next neighbour. But the proud society of the burglarious denied him opportunity.
Meanwhile, he learnt that Lady Camper had a nephew, and the young gentleman was in a cavalry regiment. General Ople met him outside his gates, received and returned a polite salute, liked his appearance and manners and talked of him to Elizabeth, asking her if by chance she had seen him. She replied that she believed she had, and praised his horsemanship. The General discovered that he was an excellent sculler. His daughter was rowing him up the river when the young gentleman shot by, with a splendid stroke, in an outrigger, backed, and floating alongside presumed to enter into conversation, during which he managed to express regrets at his aunt's turn for solitariness. As they belonged to sister branches of the same Service, the General and Mr. Reginald Roller had a theme in common, and a passion. Elizabeth told her father that nothing afforded her so much pleasure as to hear him talk with Mr. Roller on military matters. General Ople assured her that it pleased him likewise. He began to spy about for Mr. Roller, and it sometimes occurred that they conversed across the wall; it could hardly be avoided. A hint or two, an undefinable flying allusion, gave the General to understand that Lady Camper had not been happy in her marriage. He was pained to think of her misfortune; but as she was not over forty, the disaster was, perhaps, not irremediable; that is to say, if she could be taught to extend her forgiveness to men, and abandon her solitude. 'If,' he said to his daughter, 'Lady Camper should by any chance be induced to contract a second alliance, she would, one might expect, be humanized, and we should have highly agreeable neighbours.' Elizabeth artlessly hoped for such an event to take place.
She rarely differed with her father, up to whom, taking example from the world around him, she looked as the pattern of a man of wise conduct.
And he was one; and though modest, he was in good humour with himself, approved himself, and could say, that without boasting of success, he was a satisfied man, until he met his touchstone in Lady Camper.
This is the pathetic matter of my story, and it requires pointing out, because he never could explain what it was that seemed to him so cruel in it, for he was no brilliant son of fortune, he was no great pretender, none of those who are logically displaced from the heights they have been raised to, manifestly created to show the moral in Providence. He was modest, retiring, humbly contented; a gentlemanly residence appeased his ambition. Popular, he could own that he was, but not meteorically; rather by reason of his willingness to receive light than his desire to shed it. Why, then, was the terrible test brought to bear upon him, of all men? He was one of us; no worse, and not strikingly or perilously better; and he could not but feel, in the bitterness of his reflections upon an inexplicable destiny, that the punishment befalling him, unmerited as it was, looked like absence of Design in the scheme of things, Above. It looked as if the blow had been dealt him by reckless chance. And to believe that, was for the mind of General Ople the having to return to his alphabet and recommence the ascent of the laborious mountain of understanding.
To proceed, the General's introduction to Lady Camper was owing to a message she sent him by her gardener, with a request that he would cut down a branch of a wychelm, obscuring her view across his grounds toward the river. The General consulted with his daughter, and came to the conclusion, that as he could hardly despatch a written reply to a verbal message, yet greatly wished to subscribe to the wishes of Lady Camper, the best thing for him to do was to apply for an interview. He sent word that he would wait on Lady Camper immediately, and betook himself forthwith to his toilette. She was the niece of an earl.
Elizabeth commended his appearance, 'passed him,' as he would have said; and well she might, for his hat, surtout, trousers and boots, were worthy of an introduction to Royalty. A touch of scarlet silk round the neck gave him bloom, and better than that, the blooming consciousness of it.
'You are not to be nervous, papa,' Elizabeth said.
'Not at all,' replied the General. 'I say, not at all, my dear,' he repeated, and so betrayed that he had fallen into the nervous mood. 'I was saying, I have known worse mornings than this.' He turned to her and smiled brightly, nodded, and set his face to meet the future.
He was absent an hour and a half.
He came back with his radiance a little subdued, by no means eclipsed; as, when experience has afforded us matter for thought, we cease to shine dazzlingly, yet are not clouded; the rays have merely grown serener. The sum of his impressions was conveyed in the reflective utterance—'It only shows, my dear, how different the reality is from our anticipation of it!'
Lady Camper had been charming; full of condescension, neighbourly, friendly, willing to be satisfied with the sacrifice of the smallest branch of the wych-elm, and only requiring that much for complimentary reasons.
Elizabeth wished to hear what they were, and she thought the request rather singular; but the General begged her to bear in mind, that they were dealing with a very extraordinary woman; 'highly accomplished, really exceedingly handsome,' he said to himself, aloud.
The reasons were, her liking for air and view, and desire to see into her neighbour's grounds without having to mount to the attic.
Elizabeth gave a slight exclamation, and blushed.
'So, my dear, we are objects of interest to her ladyship,' said theGeneral.
He assured her that Lady Camper's manners were delightful. Strange to tell, she knew a great deal of his antecedent history, things he had not supposed were known; 'little matters,' he remarked, by which his daughter faintly conceived a reference to the conquests of his dashing days. Lady Camper had deigned to impart some of her own, incidentally; that she was of Welsh blood, and born among the mountains. 'She has a romantic look,' was the General's comment; and that her husband had been an insatiable traveller before he became an invalid, and had never cared for Art. 'Quite an extraordinary circumstance, with such a wife!' the General said.
He fell upon the wych-elm with his own hands, under cover of the leafage, and the next day he paid his respects to Lady Camper, to inquire if her ladyship saw any further obstruction to the view.
'None,' she replied. 'And now we shall see what the two birds will do.'
Apparently, then, she entertained an animosity to a pair of birds in the tree.
'Yes, yes; I say they chirp early in the morning,' said General Ople.
'At all hours.'
'The song of birds . . . ?' he pleaded softly for nature.
'If the nest is provided for them; but I don't like vagabond chirping.'
The General perfectly acquiesced. This, in an engagement with a clever woman, is what you should do, or else you are likely to find yourself planted unawares in a high wind, your hat blown off, and your coat-tails anywhere; in other words, you will stand ridiculous in your bewilderment; and General Ople ever footed with the utmost caution to avoid that quagmire of the ridiculous. The extremer quags he had hitherto escaped; the smaller, into which he fell in his agile evasions of the big, he had hitherto been blest in finding none to notice.
He requested her ladyship's permission to present his daughter. LadyCamper sent in her card.
Elizabeth Ople beheld a tall, handsomely-mannered lady, with good features and penetrating dark eyes, an easy carriage of her person and an agreeable voice, but (the vision of her age flashed out under the compelling eyes of youth) fifty if a day. The rich colouring confessed to it. But she was very pleasing, and Elizabeth's perception dwelt on it only because her father's manly chivalry had defended the lady against one year more than forty.
The richness of the colouring, Elizabeth feared, was artificial, and it caused her ingenuous young blood a shudder. For we are so devoted to nature when the dame is flattering us with her gifts, that we loathe the substitute omitting to think how much less it is an imposition than a form of practical adoration of the genuine.
Our young detective, however, concealed her emotion of childish horror.
Lady Camper remarked of her, 'She seems honest, and that is the most we can hope of girls.'
'She is a jewel for an honest man,' the General sighed, 'some day!'
'Let us hope it will be a distant day.'
'Yet,' said the General, 'girls expect to marry.'
Lady Camper fixed her black eyes on him, but did not speak.
He told Elizabeth that her ladyship's eyes were exceedingly searching: 'Only,' said he, 'as I have nothing to hide, I am able to submit to inspection'; and he laughed slightly up to an arresting cough, and made the mantelpiece ornaments pass muster.
General Ople was the hero to champion a lady whose airs of haughtiness caused her to be somewhat backbitten. He assured everybody, that Lady Camper was much misunderstood; she was a most remarkable woman; she was a most affable and highly intelligent lady. Building up her attributes on a splendid climax, he declared she was pious, charitable, witty, and really an extraordinary artist. He laid particular stress on her artistic qualities, describing her power with the brush, her water-colour sketches, and also some immensely clever caricatures. As he talked of no one else, his friends heard enough of Lady Camper, who was anything but a favourite. The Pollingtons, the Wilders, the Wardens, the Baerens, the Goslings, and others of his acquaintance, talked of Lady Camper and General Ople rather maliciously. They were all City people, and they admired the General, but mourned that he should so abjectly have fallen at the feet of a lady as red with rouge as a railway bill. His not seeing it showed the state he was in. The sister of Mrs. Pollington, an amiable widow, relict of a large City warehouse, named Barcop, was chilled by a falling off in his attentions. His apology for not appearing at garden parties was, that he was engaged to wait on Lady Camper.
And at one time, her not condescending to exchange visits with the obsequious General was a topic fertile in irony. But she did condescend. Lady Camper came to his gate unexpectedly, rang the bell, and was let in like an ordinary visitor. It happened that the General was gardening—not the pretty occupation of pruning—he was digging—and of necessity his coat was off, and he was hot, dusty, unpresentable. From adoring earth as the mother of roses, you may pass into a lady's presence without purification; you cannot (or so the General thought) when you are caught in the act of adoring the mother of cabbages. And though he himself loved the cabbage equally with the rose, in his heart respected the vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower, for he gloried in his kitchen garden, this was not a secret for the world to know, and he almost heeled over on his beam ends when word was brought of the extreme honour Lady Camper had done him. He worked his arms hurriedly into his fatigue jacket, trusting to get away to the house and spend a couple of minutes on his adornment; and with any other visitor it might have been accomplished, but Lady Camper disliked sitting alone in a room. She was on the square of lawn as the General stole along the walk. Had she kept her back to him, he might have rounded her like the shadow of a dial, undetected. She was frightfully acute of hearing. She turned while he was in the agony of hesitation, in a queer attitude, one leg on the march, projected by a frenzied tip-toe of the hinder leg, the very fatallest moment she could possibly have selected for unveiling him.
Of course there was no choice but to surrender on the spot.
He began to squander his dizzy wits in profuse apologies. Lady Camper simply spoke of the nice little nest of a garden, smelt the flowers, accepted a Niel rose and a Rohan, a Cline, a Falcot, and La France.
'A beautiful rose indeed,' she said of the latter, 'only it smells of macassar oil.'
'Really, it never struck me, I say it never struck me before,' rejoined the General, smelling it as at a pinch of snuff. 'I was saying, I always . . . .' And he tacitly, with the absurdest of smiles, begged permission to leave unterminated a sentence not in itself particularly difficult
'I have a nose,' observed Lady Camper.
Like the nobly-bred person she was, according to General Ople's version of the interview on his estate, when he stood before her in his gardening costume, she put him at his ease, or she exerted herself to do so; and if he underwent considerable anguish, it was the fault of his excessive scrupulousness regarding dress, propriety, appearance.
He conducted her at her request to the kitchen garden and the handful of paddock, the stables and coach-house, then back to the lawn.
'It is the home for a young couple,' she said.
'I am no longer young,' the General bowed, with the sigh peculiar to this confession. 'I say, I am no longer young, but I call the place a gentlemanly residence. I was saying, I . . .'
'Yes, yes!' Lady Camper tossed her head, half closing her eyes, with a contraction of the brows, as if in pain.
He perceived a similar expression whenever he spoke of his residence.
Perhaps it recalled happier days to enter such a nest. Perhaps it had been such a home for a young couple that she had entered on her marriage with Sir Scrope Camper, before he inherited his title and estates.
The General was at a loss to conceive what it was.
It recurred at another mention of his idea of the nature of the residence. It was almost a paroxysm. He determined not to vex her reminiscences again; and as this resolution directed his mind to his residence, thinking it pre-eminently gentlemanly, his tongue committed the error of repeating it, with 'gentleman-like' for a variation.
Elizabeth was out—he knew not where. The housemaid informed him, thatMiss Elizabeth was out rowing on the water.
'Is she alone?' Lady Camper inquired of him.
'I fancy so,' the General replied.
'The poor child has no mother.'
'It has been a sad loss to us both, Lady Camper.'
'No doubt. She is too pretty to go out alone.'
'I can trust her.'
'Girls!'
'She has the spirit of a man.'
'That is well. She has a spirit; it will be tried.'
The General modestly furnished an instance or two of her spiritedness.
Lady Camper seemed to like this theme; she looked graciously interested.
'Still, you should not suffer her to go out alone,' she said.
'I place implicit confidence in her,' said the General; and Lady Camper gave it up.
She proposed to walk down the lanes to the river-side, to meet Elizabeth returning.
The General manifested alacrity checked by reluctance. Lady Camper had told him she objected to sit in a strange room by herself; after that, he could hardly leave her to dash upstairs to change his clothes; yet how, attired as he was, in a fatigue jacket, that warned him not to imagine his back view, and held him constantly a little to the rear of Lady Camper, lest she should be troubled by it;—and he knew the habit of the second rank to criticise the front—how consent to face the outer world in such style side by side with the lady he admired?
'Come,' said she; and he shot forward a step, looking as if he had missed fire.
'Are you not coming, General?'
He advanced mechanically.
Not a soul met them down the lanes, except a little one, to whom LadyCamper gave a small silver-piece, because she was a picture.
The act of charity sank into the General's heart, as any pretty performance will do upon a warm waxen bed.
Lady Camper surprised him by answering his thoughts. 'No; it's for my own pleasure.'
Presently she said, 'Here they are.'
General Ople beheld his daughter by the river-side at the end of the lane, under escort of Mr. Reginald Rolles.
It was another picture, and a pleasing one. The young lady and the young gentleman wore boating hats, and were both dressed in white, and standing by or just turning from the outrigger and light skiff they were about to leave in charge of a waterman. Elizabeth stretched a finger at arm's-length, issuing directions, which Mr. Rolles took up and worded further to the man, for the sake of emphasis; and he, rather than Elizabeth, was guilty of the half-start at sight of the persons who were approaching.
'My nephew, you should know, is intended for a working soldier,' saidLady Camper; 'I like that sort of soldier best.'
General Ople drooped his shoulders at the personal compliment.
She resumed. 'His pay is a matter of importance to him. You are aware of the smallness of a subaltern's pay.
'I,' said the General, 'I say I feel my poor half-pay, having always been a working soldier myself, very important, I was saying, very important to me!'
'Why did you retire?'
Her interest in him seemed promising. He replied conscientiously, 'Beyond the duties of General of Brigade, I could not, I say I could not, dare to aspire; I can accept and execute orders; I shrink from responsibility!'
'It is a pity,' said she, 'that you were not, like my nephew Reginald, entirely dependent on your profession.'
She laid such stress on her remark, that the General, who had just expressed a very modest estimate of his abilities, was unable to reject the flattery of her assuming him to be a man of some fortune. He coughed, and said, 'Very little.' The thought came to him that he might have to make a statement to her in time, and he emphasized, 'Very little indeed. Sufficient,' he assured her, 'for a gentlemanly appearance.'
'I have given you your warning,' was her inscrutable rejoinder, uttered within earshot of the young people, to whom, especially to Elizabeth, she was gracious. The damsel's boating uniform was praised, and her sunny flush of exercise and exposure.
Lady Camper regretted that she could not abandon her parasol: 'I freckle so easily.'
The General, puzzling over her strange words about a warning, gazed at the red rose of art on her cheek with an air of profound abstraction.
'I freckle so easily,' she repeated, dropping her parasol to defend her face from the calculating scrutiny.
'I burn brown,' said Elizabeth.
Lady Camper laid the bud of a Falcot rose against the young girl's cheek, but fetched streams of colour, that overwhelmed the momentary comparison of the sunswarthed skin with the rich dusky yellow of the rose in its deepening inward to soft brown.
Reginald stretched his hand for the privileged flower, and she let him take it; then she looked at the General; but the General was looking, with his usual air of satisfaction, nowhere.
'Lady Camper is no common enigma,' General Ople observed to his daughter.
Elizabeth inclined to be pleased with her, for at her suggestion the General had bought a couple of horses, that she might ride in the park, accompanied by her father or the little groom. Still, the great lady was hard to read. She tested the resources of his income by all sorts of instigation to expenditure, which his gallantry could not withstand; she encouraged him to talk of his deeds in arms; she was friendly, almost affectionate, and most bountiful in the presents of fruit, peaches, nectarines, grapes, and hot-house wonders, that she showered on his table; but she was an enigma in her evident dissatisfaction with him for something he seemed to have left unsaid. And what could that be?
At their last interview she had asked him, 'Are you sure, General, you have nothing more to tell me?'
And as he remarked, when relating it to Elizabeth, 'One might really be tempted to misapprehend her ladyship's . . . I say one might commit oneself beyond recovery. Now, my dear, what do you think she intended?'
Elizabeth was 'burning brown,' or darkly blushing, as her manner was.
She answered, 'I am certain you know of nothing that would interest her; nothing, unless . . .'
'Well?' the General urged her.
'How can I speak it, papa?'
'You really can't mean . . .'
'Papa, what could I mean?'
'If I were fool enough!' he murmured. 'No, no, I am an old man. I was saying, I am past the age of folly.'
One day Elizabeth came home from her ride in a thoughtful mood. She had not, further than has been mentioned, incited her father to think of the age of folly; but voluntarily or not, Lady Camper had, by an excess of graciousness amounting to downright invitation; as thus, 'Will you persist in withholding your confidence from me, General?' She added, 'I am not so difficult a person.' These prompting speeches occurred on the morning of the day when Elizabeth sat at his table, after a long ride into the country, profoundly meditative.
A note was handed to General Ople, with the request that he would step in to speak with Lady Camper in the course of the evening, or next morning. Elizabeth waited till his hat was on, then said, 'Papa, on my ride to-day, I met Mr. Rolles.'
'I am glad you had an agreeable escort, my dear.'
'I could not refuse his company.'
'Certainly not. And where did you ride?'
'To a beautiful valley; and there we met. . . . '
'Her ladyship?'
'Yes.'
'She always admires you on horseback.'
'So you know it, papa, if she should speak of it.'
'And I am bound to tell you, my child,' said the General, 'that this morning Lady Camper's manner to me was . . . if I were a fool . . . I say, this morning I beat a retreat, but apparently she . . . I see no way out of it, supposing she . . .'
'I am sure she esteems you, dear papa,' said Elizabeth. 'You take to her, my dear?' the General inquired anxiously; 'a little?—a little afraid of her?'
'A little,' Elizabeth replied, 'only a little.'
'Don't be agitated about me.'
'No, papa; you are sure to do right.'
'But you are trembling.'
'Oh! no. I wish you success.'
General Ople was overjoyed to be reinforced by his daughter's good wishes. He kissed her to thank her. He turned back to her to kiss her again. She had greatly lightened the difficulty at least of a delicate position.
It was just like the imperious nature of Lady Camper to summon him in the evening to terminate the conversation of the morning, from the visible pitfall of which he had beaten a rather precipitate retreat. But if his daughter cordially wished him success, and Lady Camper offered him the crown of it, why then he had only to pluck up spirit, like a good commander who has to pass a fordable river in the enemy's presence; a dash, a splash, a rattling volley or two, and you are over, established on the opposite bank. But you must be positive of victory, otherwise, with the river behind you, your new position is likely to be ticklish. So the General entered Lady Camper's drawing-room warily, watching the fair enemy. He knew he was captivating, his old conquests whispered in his ears, and her reception of him all but pointed to a footstool at her feet. He might have fallen there at once, had he not remembered a hint that Mr. Reginald Rolles had dropped concerning Lady Camper's amazing variability.
Lady Camper began.
'General, you ran away from me this morning. Let me speak. And, by the way, I must reproach you; you should not have left it to me. Things have now gone so far that I cannot pretend to be blind. I know your feelings as a father. Your daughter's happiness . . .'
'My lady,' the General interposed, 'I have her distinct assurance that it is, I say it is wrapt up in mine.'
'Let me speak. Young people will say anything. Well, they have a certain excuse for selfishness; we have not. I am in some degree bound to my nephew; he is my sister's son.'
'Assuredly, my lady. I would not stand in his light, be quite assured. If I am, I was saying if I am not mistaken, I . . . and he is, or has the making of an excellent soldier in him, and is likely to be a distinguished cavalry officer.'
'He has to carve his own way in the world, General.'
'All good soldiers have, my lady. And if my position is not, after a considerable term of service, I say if . . .'
'To continue,' said Lady Camper: 'I never have liked early marriages. I was married in my teens before I knew men. Now I do know them, and now . . . .'
The General plunged forward: 'The honour you do us now:—a mature experience is worth:—my dear Lady Camper, I have admired you:—and your objection to early marriages cannot apply to . . . indeed, madam, vigour, they say . . . though youth, of course . . . yet young people, as you observe . . . and I have, though perhaps my reputation is against it, I was saying I have a natural timidity with your sex, and I am grey-headed, white-headed, but happily without a single malady.'
Lady Camper's brows showed a trifling bewilderment. 'I am speaking of these young people, General Ople.'
'I consent to everything beforehand, my dear lady. He should be, I sayMr. Rolles should be provided for.'
'So should she, General, so should Elizabeth.'
'She shall be, she will, dear madam. What I have, with your permission, if—good heaven! Lady Camper, I scarcely know where I am. She would . . . . I shall not like to lose her: you would not wish it. In time she will . . . . she has every quality of a good wife.'
'There, stay there, and be intelligible,' said Lady Camper. 'She has every quality. Money should be one of them. Has she money?'
'Oh! my lady,' the General exclaimed, 'we shall not come upon your purse when her time comes.'
'Has she ten thousand pounds?'
'Elizabeth? She will have, at her father's death . . . but as for my income, it is moderate, and only sufficient to maintain a gentlemanly appearance in proper self-respect. I make no show. I say I make no show. A wealthy marriage is the last thing on earth I should have aimed at. I prefer quiet and retirement. Personally, I mean. That is my personal taste. But if the lady . . . . I say if it should happen that the lady . . . . and indeed I am not one to press a suit: but if she who distinguishes and honours me should chance to be wealthy, all I can do is to leave her wealth at her disposal, and that I do: I do that unreservedly. I feel I am very confused, alarmingly confused. Your ladyship merits a superior . . . I trust I have not . . . I am entirely at your ladyship's mercy.'
'Are you prepared, if your daughter is asked in marriage, to settle ten thousand pounds on her, General Ople?'
The General collected himself. In his heart he thoroughly appreciated the moral beauty of Lady Camper's extreme solicitude on behalf of his daughter's provision; but he would have desired a postponement of that and other material questions belonging to a distant future until his own fate was decided.
So he said: 'Your ladyship's generosity is very marked. I say it is very marked.'
'How, my good General Ople! how is it marked in any degree?' cried Lady Camper. 'I am not generous. I don't pretend to be; and certainly I don't want the young people to think me so. I want to be just. I have assumed that you intend to be the same. Then will you do me the favour to reply to me?'
The General smiled winningly and intently, to show her that he prized her, and would not let her escape his eulogies.
'Marked, in this way, dear madam, that you think of my daughter's future more than I. I say, more than her father himself does. I know I ought to speak more warmly, I feel warmly. I was never an eloquent man, and if you take me as a soldier, I am, as, I have ever been in the service, I was saying I am Wilson Ople, of the grade of General, to be relied on for executing orders; and, madam, you are Lady Camper, and you command me. I cannot be more precise. In fact, it is the feeling of the necessity for keeping close to the business that destroys what I would say. I am in fact lamentably incompetent to conduct my own case.'
Lady Camper left her chair.
'Dear me, this is very strange, unless I am singularly in error,' she said.
The General now faintly guessed that he might be in error, for his part.
But he had burned his ships, blown up his bridges; retreat could not be thought of.
He stood, his head bent and appealing to her sideface, like one pleadingly in pursuit, and very deferentially, with a courteous vehemence, he entreated first her ladyship's pardon for his presumption, and then the gift of her ladyship's hand.
As for his language, it was the tongue of General Ople. But his bearing was fine. If his clipped white silken hair spoke of age, his figure breathed manliness. He was a picture, and she loved pictures.
For his own sake, she begged him to cease. She dreaded to hear of something 'gentlemanly.'
'This is a new idea to me, my dear General,' she said. 'You must give me time. People at our age have to think of fitness. Of course, in a sense, we are both free to do as we like. Perhaps I may be of some aid to you. My preference is for absolute independence. And I wished to talk of a different affair. Come to me tomorrow. Do not be hurt if I decide that we had better remain as we are.'
The General bowed. His efforts, and the wavering of the fair enemy's flag, had inspired him with a positive re-awakening of masculine passion to gain this fortress. He said well: 'I have, then, the happiness, madam, of being allowed to hope until to-morrrow?'
She replied, 'I would not deprive you of a moment of happiness. Bring good sense with you when you do come.'
The General asked eagerly, 'I have your ladyship's permission to come early?'
'Consult your happiness,' she answered; and if to his mind she seemed returning to the state of enigma, it was on the whole deliciously. She restored him his youth. He told Elizabeth that night; he really must begin to think of marrying her to some worthy young fellow. 'Though,' said he, with an air of frank intoxication, 'my opinion is, the young ones are not so lively as the old in these days, or I should have been besieged before now.'
The exact substance of the interview he forbore to relate to his inquisitive daughter, with a very honourable discretion.
Elizabeth came riding home to breakfast from a gallop round the park, and passing Lady Camper's gates, received the salutation of her parasol. Lady Camper talked with her through the bars. There was not a sign to tell of a change or twist in her neighbourly affability. She remarked simply enough, that it was her nephew's habit to take early gallops, and possibly Elizabeth might have seen him, for his quarters were proximate; but she did not demand an answer. She had passed a rather restless night, she said. 'How is the General?'
'Papa must have slept soundly, for he usually calls to me through his door when he hears I am up,' said Elizabeth.
Lady Camper nodded kindly and walked on.
Early in the morning General Ople was ready for battle. His forces were, the anticipation of victory, a carefully arranged toilet, and an unaccustomed spirit of enterprise in the realms of speech; for he was no longer in such awe of Lady Camper.
'You have slept well?' she inquired.
'Excellently, my lady:
'Yes, your daughter tells me she heard you, as she went by your door in the morning for a ride to meet my nephew. You are, I shall assume, prepared for business.'
'Elizabeth? . . . to meet . . .?' General Ople's impression of anything extraneous to his emotion was feeble and passed instantly. 'Prepared! Oh, certainly'; and he struck in a compliment on her ladyship's fresh morning bloom.
'It can hardly be visible,' she responded; 'I have not painted yet.'
'Does your ladyship proceed to your painting in the very early morning?'
'Rouge. I rouge.'
'Dear me! I should not have supposed it.'
'You have speculated on it very openly, General. I remember your trying to see a freckle through the rouge; but the truth is, I am of a supernatural paleness if I do not rouge, so I do. You understand, therefore, I have a false complexion. Now to business.'
'If your ladyship insists on calling it business. I have little to offer—myself!'
'You have a gentlemanly residence.'
'It is, my lady, it is. It is a bijou.'
'Ah!' Lady Camper sighed dejectedly.
'It is a perfect bijou!'
'Oblige me, General, by not pronouncing the French word as if you were swearing by something in English, like a trooper.'
General Ople started, admitted that the word was French, and apologized for his pronunciation. Her variability was now visible over a corner of the battlefield like a thunder-cloud.
'The business we have to discuss concerns the young people, General.'
'Yes,' brightened by this, he assented: 'Yes, dear Lady Camper; it is a part of the business; it is a secondary part; it has to be discussed; I say I subscribe beforehand. I may say, that honouring, esteeming you as I do, and hoping ardently for your consent . . . .
'They must have a home and an income, General.'
'I presume, dearest lady, that Elizabeth will be welcome in your home. I certainly shall never chase Reginald out of mine.'
Lady Camper threw back her head. 'Then you are not yet awake, or you practice the art of sleeping with open eyes! Now listen to me. I rouge, I have told you. I like colour, and I do not like to see wrinkles or have them seen. Therefore I rouge. I do not expect to deceive the world so flagrantly as to my age, and you I would not deceive for a moment. I am seventy.'
The effect of this noble frankness on the General, was to raise him from his chair in a sitting posture as if he had been blown up.
Her countenance was inexorably imperturbable under his alternate blinking and gazing that drew her close and shot her distant, like a mysterious toy.
'But,' said she, 'I am an artist; I dislike the look of extreme age, so I conceal it as well as I can. You are very kind to fall in with the deception: an innocent and, I think, a proper one, before the world, though not to the gentleman who does me the honour to propose to me for my hand. You desire to settle our business first. You esteem me; I suppose you mean as much as young people mean when they say they love. Do you? Let us come to an understanding.'
'I can,' the melancholy General gasped, 'I say I can—I cannot—I cannot credit your ladyship's . . .'
'You are at liberty to call me Angela.'
'Ange . . .' he tried it, and in shame relapsed. 'Madam, yes. Thanks.'
'Ah,' cried Lady Camper, 'do not use these vulgar contractions of decent speech in my presence. I abhor the word "thanks." It is fit for fribbles.'
'Dear me, I have used it all my life,' groaned the General.
'Then, for the remainder, be it understood that you renounce it. To continue, my age is . . .'
'Oh, impossible, impossible,' the General almost wailed; there was really a crack in his voice.
'Advancing to seventy. But, like you, I am happy to say I have not a malady. I bring no invalid frame to a union that necessitates the leaving of the front door open day and night to the doctor. My belief is, I could follow my husband still on a campaign, if he were a warrior instead of a pensioner.'
General Ople winced.
He was about to say humbly, 'As General of Brigade . . .'
'Yes, yes, you want a commanding officer, and that I have seen, and that has caused me to meditate on your proposal,' she interrupted him; while he, studying her countenance hard, with the painful aspect of a youth who lashes a donkey memory in an examination by word of mouth, attempted to marshal her signs of younger years against her awful confession of the extremely ancient, the witheringly ancient. But for the manifest rouge, manifest in spite of her declaration that she had not yet that morning proceeded to her paintbrush, he would have thrown down his glove to challenge her on the subject of her age. She had actually charms. Her mouth had a charm; her eyes were lively; her figure, mature if you like, was at least full and good; she stood upright, she had a queenly seat. His mental ejaculation was, 'What a wonderful constitution!'
By a lapse of politeness, he repeated it to himself half aloud; he was shockingly nervous.
'Yes, I have finer health than many a younger woman,' she said. 'An ordinary calculation would give me twenty good years to come. I am a widow, as you know. And, by the way, you have a leaning for widows. Have you not? I thought I had heard of a widow Barcop in this parish. Do not protest. I assure you I am a stranger to jealousy. My income . . .'
The General raised his hands.
'Well, then,' said the cool and self-contained lady, 'before I go farther, I may ask you, knowing what you have forced me to confess, are you still of the same mind as to marriage? And one moment, General. I promise you most sincerely that your withdrawing a step shall not, as far as it touches me, affect my neighbourly and friendly sentiments; not in any degree. Shall we be as we were?'
Lady Camper extended her delicate hand to him.
He took it respectfully, inspected the aristocratic and unshrunken fingers, and kissing them, said, 'I never withdraw from a position, unless I am beaten back. Lady Camper, I . . .'
'My name is Angela.'
The General tried again: he could not utter the name.
To call a lady of seventy Angela is difficult in itself. It is, it seems, thrice difficult in the way of courtship.
'Angela!' said she.
'Yes. I say, there is not a more beautiful female name, dear LadyCamper.'
'Spare me that word "female" as long as you live. Address me by that name, if you please.'
The General smiled. The smile was meant for propitiation and sweetness.It became a brazen smile.
'Unless you wish to step back,' said she.
'Indeed, no. I am happy, Lady Camper. My life is yours. I say, my life is devoted to you, dear madam.'
'Angela!'
General Ople was blushingly delivered of the name.
'That will do,' said she. 'And as I think it possible one may be admired too much as an artist, I must request you to keep my number of years a secret.'
'To the death, madam,' said the General.
'And now we will take a turn in the garden, Wilson Ople. And beware of one thing, for a commencement, for you are full of weeds, and I mean to pluck out a few: never call any place a gentlemanly residence in my hearing, nor let it come to my ears that you have been using the phrase elsewhere. Don't express astonishment. At present it is enough that I dislike it. But this only,' Lady Camper added, 'this only if it is not your intention to withdraw from your position.'
'Madam, my lady, I was saying—hem!—Angela, I could not wish to withdraw.'
Lady Camper leaned with some pressure on his arm, observing, 'You have a curious attachment to antiquities.'
'My dear lady, it is your mind; I say, it is your mind: I was saying, I am in love with your mind,' the General endeavoured to assure her, and himself too.
'Or is it my powers as an artist?'
'Your mind, your extraordinary powers of mind.'
'Well,' said Lady Camper, 'a veteran General of Brigade is as good a crutch as a childless old grannam can have.'
And as a crutch, General Ople, parading her grounds with the aged woman, found himself used and treated.
The accuracy of his perceptions might be questioned. He was like a man stunned by some great tropical fruit, which responds to the longing of his eyes by falling on his head; but it appeared to him, that she increased in bitterness at every step they took, as if determined to make him realize her wrinkles.
He was even so inconsequent, or so little recognized his position, as to object in his heart to hear himself called Wilson.
It is true that she uttered Wilsonople as if the names formed one word. And on a second occasion (when he inclined to feel hurt) she remarked, 'I fear me, Wilsonople, if we are to speak plainly, thou art but a fool.' He, perhaps, naturally objected to that. He was, however, giddy, and barely knew.
Yet once more the magical woman changed. All semblance of harshness, and harridan-like spike-tonguedness vanished when she said adieu.
The astronomer, looking at the crusty jag and scoria of the magnified moon through his telescope, and again with naked eyes at the soft-beaming moon, when the crater-ridges are faint as eyebrow-pencillings, has a similar sharp alternation of prospect to that which mystified General Ople.
But between watching an orb that is only variable at our caprice, and contemplating a woman who shifts and quivers ever with her own, how vast the difference!
And consider that this woman is about to be one's wife! He could have believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he was in the hands of a witch.
Lady Camper's 'adieu' was perfectly beautiful—a kind, cordial, intimate, above all, to satisfy his present craving, it was a lady-like adieu—the adieu of a delicate and elegant woman, who had hardly left her anchorage by forty to sail into the fifties.
Alas! he had her word for it, that she was not less than seventy. And, worse, she had betrayed most melancholy signs of sourness and agedness as soon as he had sworn himself to her fast and fixed.
'The road is open to you to retreat,' were her last words.
'My road,' he answered gallantly, 'is forward.'
He was drawing backward as he said it, and something provoked her to smile.