Lord Ormont and His Aminta. Complete. George Meredith
anglomane as ever, and not a bit less a Frenchman,” Weyburn said, in a tone of one who muffles a shock at the heart.
“It would be the poorer compliment to us,” she rejoined.
They looked at one another; she dropped her eyelids, he looked away.
She had the grand manner by nature. She was the woman of the girl once known.
“A soldier, is he?”
“Emile’s profession and mine are much alike, or will be.”
“A secretary?”
Her deadness of accent was not designed to carry her opinion of the post of secretary.
It brought the reply: “We hope to be schoolmasters.”
She drew in a breath; there was a thin short voice, hardly voice, as when one of the unschooled minor feelings has been bruised. After a while she said—
“Does he think it a career?”
“Not brilliant.”
“He was formed for a soldier.”
“He had to go as the road led.”
“A young man renouncing ambition!”
“Considering what we can do best.”
“It signifies the taste for what he does.”
“Certainly that.”
Weyburn had senses to read the word “schoolmaster” in repetition behind her shut mouth. He was sharply sensible of a fall.
The task with his papers occupied him. If he had a wish, it was to sink so low in her esteem as to be spurned. A kick would have been a refreshment. Yet he was unashamed of the cause invoking it. We are instruments to the touch of certain women, and made to play strange tunes.
“Mr. Cuper flourishes?”
“The school exists. I have not been down there. I met Mr. Shalders yesterday. He has left the school.”
“You come up from Olmer?”
“I was at Olmer last week, Lady Ormont.”
An involuntary beam from her eyes thanked him for her title at that juncture of the dialogue. She grew more spirited.
“Mr. Shalders has joined the Dragoons, has he?”
“The worthy man has a happy imagination. He goes through a campaign daily.”
“It seems to one to dignify his calling.”
“I like his enthusiasm.”
The lady withdrew into her thoughts; Weyburn fell upon his work.
Mention of the military cloak of enthusiasm covering Shalders, brought the scarce credible old time to smite at his breast, in the presence of these eyes. A ringing of her title of Lady Ormont rendered the present time the incredible.
“I can hardly understand a young Frenchman’s not entering the army,” she said.
“The Napoleonic legend is weaker now,” said he.
“The son of an officer!”
“Grandson.”
“It was his choice to be,—he gave it up without reluctance?”
“Emile obeyed the command of his parents,” Weyburn answered; and he was obedient to the veiled direction of her remark, in speaking of himself: “I had a reason, too.”
“One wonders!”
“It would have impoverished my mother’s income to put aside a small allowance for me for years. She would not have hesitated. I then set my mind on the profession of schoolmaster.”
“Emile Grenat was a brave boy. Has he no regrets?”
“Neither of us has a regret.”
“He began ambitiously.”
“It’s the way at the beginning.”
“It is not usually abjured.”
“I’m afraid we neither of us ‘dignify our calling’ by discontent with it!”
A dusky flash, worth seeing, came on her cheeks. “I respect enthusiasms,” she said; and it was as good to him to hear as the begging pardon, though clearly she could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster’s career.
Light of evidence was before him, that she had a friendly curiosity to know what things had led to their new meeting under these conditions. He sketched them cursorily; there was little to tell—little, that is; appealing to a romantic mind for interest. Aware of it, by sympathy, he degraded the narrative to a flatness about as cheering as a suburban London Sunday’s promenade. Sympathy caused the perverseness. He felt her disillusionment; felt with it and spread a feast of it. She had to hear of studies at Caen and at a Paris Lycee; French fairly mastered; German, the same; Italian, the same; after studies at Heidelberg, Asti, and Florence; between four and five months at Athens (he was needlessly precise), in tutorship with a young nobleman: no events, nor a spot of colour. Thus did he wilfully, with pain to himself, put an extinguisher on the youth painted brilliant and eminent in a maiden’s imagination.
“So there can no longer be thought of the army,” she remarked; and the remark had a sort of sigh, though her breathing was equable.
“Unless a big war knocks over all rules and the country comes praying us to serve,” he said.
“You would not refuse then?”
“Not in case of need. One may imagine a crisis when they would give commissions to men of my age or older for the cavalry—heavy losses of officers.”
She spoke, as if urged by a sting to revert to the distasteful: “That profession—must you not take… enter into orders if you aim at any distinction?”
“And a member of the Anglican Church would not be allowed to exchange his frock for a cavalry sabre,” said he. “That is true. I do not propose to settle as a schoolmaster in England.”
“Where?”
“On the Continent.”
“Would not America be better?”
“It would not so well suit the purpose in view for us.”
“There are others besides?”
“Besides Emile, there is a German and an Italian and a Swiss.”
“It is a Company?”
“A Company of schoolmasters! Companies of all kinds are forming. Colleges are Companies. And they have their collegians. Our aim is at pupils; we have no ambition for any title higher than School and Schoolmaster; it is not a Company.”
So, like Nature parading her skeleton to youthful adorers of her face, he insisted on reducing to hideous material wreck the fair illusion, which had once arrayed him in alluring promise.
She explained; “I said, America. You would be among Protestants in America.”
“Catholics and Protestants are both welcome to us, according to our scheme. And Germans, French, English, Americans, Italians, if they will come; Spaniards and Portuguese, and Scandinavians, Russians as well. And Jews; Mahommedans too, if only they will come! The more mixed, the more it hits our object.”
“You have not stated where on the Continent it is to be.”
“The spot fixed on is in Switzerland.”
“You will have scenery.”
“I hold to that, as an influence.”
A cool vision of the Bernese Alps encircled the young schoolmaster; and she said, “It would influence girls; I dare say.”
“A harder matter with boys, of course—at first. We think we may make it serve.”
“And where is the spot? Is that fixed on?”
“Fifteen miles from Berne, on elevated land, neighbouring a water, not quite