The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
He drew one of his hands from her relaxed hold.
"You ought to be in bed, Emmeline."
"I cannot sleep."
"Go, and talk to me another time."
"No, it must be now. You have helped me when I struggled to rise into a clearer world, and I think, humble as I am, I can help you now. I have had a thought this night that if you do not pray for him and bless him...it will end miserably. My friend, have you done so?"
He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing it in spite of his mask.
"Have you done so, Austin?"
"This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to the follies of their sons, Emmeline!"
"No, not that. But will you pray for your boy, and bless him, before the day comes?"
He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly:--"And I must do this, or it will end in misery? How else can it end? Can I save him from the seed he has sown? Consider, Emmeline, what you say. He has repeated his cousin's sin. You see the end of that."
"Oh, so different! This young person is not, is not of the class poor Austin Wentworth allied himself to. Indeed it is different. And he--be just and admit his nobleness. I fancied you did. This young person has great beauty, she has the elements of good breeding, she--indeed I think, had she been in another position, you would not have looked upon her unfavourably."
"She may be too good for my son!" The baronet spoke with sublime bitterness.
"No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it."
"Pass her."
"Yes, I will speak only of him. He met her by a fatal accident. We thought his love dead, and so did he till he saw her again. He met her, he thought we were plotting against him, he thought he should lose her for ever, and is the madness of an hour he did this...."
"My Emmeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches."
"Ah! do not trifle, my friend. Say: would you have had him act as young men in his position generally do to young women beneath them?"
Sir Austin did not like the question. It probed him very severely.
"You mean," he said, "that fathers must fold their arms, and either submit to infamous marriages, or have these creatures ruined."
"I do not mean that," exclaimed the lady, striving for what she did mean, and how to express it. "I mean that he loved her. Is it not a madness at his age? But what I chiefly mean is--save him from the consequences. No, you shall not withdraw your hand. Think of his pride, his sensitiveness, his great wild nature--wild when he is set wrong: think how intense it is, set upon love; think, my friend, do not forget his love for you."
Sir Austin smiled an admirable smile of pity.
"That I should save him, or any one, from consequences, is asking more than the order of things will allow to you, Emmeline, and is not in the disposition of this world. I cannot. Consequences are the natural offspring of acts. My child, you are talking sentiment, which is the distraction of our modern age in everything--a phantasmal vapour distorting the image of the life we live. You ask me to give him a golden age in spite of himself. All that could be done, by keeping him in the paths of virtue and truth, I did. He is become a man, and as a man he must reap his own sowing."
The baffled lady sighed. He sat so rigid: he spoke so securely, as if wisdom were to him more than the love of his son. And yet he did love his son. Feeling sure that he loved his son while he spoke so loftily, she reverenced him still, baffled as she was, and sensible that she had been quibbled with.
"All I ask of you is to open your heart to him," she said.
He kept silent.
"Call him a man,--he is, and must ever be the child of your education, my friend."
"You would console me, Emmeline, with the prospect that, if he ruins himself, he spares the world of young women. Yes, that is something!"
Closely she scanned the mask. It was impenetrable. He could meet her eyes, and respond to the pressure of her hand, and smile, and not show what he felt. Nor did he deem it hypocritical to seek to maintain his elevation in her soft soul, by simulating supreme philosophy over offended love. Nor did he know that he had an angel with him then: a blind angel, and a weak one, but one who struck upon his chance.
"Am I pardoned for coming to you?" she said, after a pause.
"Surely I can read my Emmeline's intentions," he gently replied.
"Very poor ones. I feel my weakness. I cannot utter half I have been thinking. Oh, if I could!"
"You speak very well, Emmeline."
"At least, I am pardoned!"
"Surely so."
"And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven?--may I beg it?--will you bless him?"
He was again silent.
"Pray for him, Austin! pray for him ere the night is over."
As she spoke she slid down to his feet and pressed his hand to her bosom.
The baronet was startled. In very dread of the soft fit that wooed him, he pushed back his chair, and rose, and went to the window.
"It's day already!" he said with assumed vivacity, throwing open the shutters, and displaying the young light on the lawn.
Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt, and then joined him, and glanced up silently at Richard's moon standing in wane toward the West. She hoped it was because of her having been premature in pleading so earnestly, that she had failed to move him, and she accused herself more than the baronet. But in acting as she had done, she had treated him as no common man, and she was compelled to perceive that his heart was at present hardly superior to the hearts of ordinary men, however composed his face might be, and apparently serene his wisdom. From that moment she grew critical of him, and began to study her idol--a process dangerous to idols. He, now that she seemed to have relinquished the painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to smooth a foregone roughness, murmured: "God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman! My Emmeline bears her sleepless night well. She does not shame the day." He gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness.
"I could bear many, many!" she replied, meeting his eyes, "and you would see me look better and better, if...if only..." but she had no encouragement to end the sentence.
Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps the handsome placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched him: at any rate their Platonism was advanced by his putting an arm about her. She felt the arm and talked of the morning.
Thus proximate, they by and by both heard something very like a groan behind them, and looking round, beheld the Saurian eye. Lady Blandish smiled, but the baronet's discomposure was not to be concealed. By a strange fatality every stage of their innocent loves was certain to have a human beholder.
"Oh, I'm sure I beg pardon," Benson mumbled, arresting his head in a melancholy pendulosity. He was ordered out of the room.
"And I think I shall follow him, and try to get forty winks," said Lady Blandish. They parted with a quiet squeeze of hands.
The baronet then called in Benson.
"Get me my breakfast as soon as you can," he said, regardless of the aspect of injured conscience Benson sombrely presented to him. "I am going to town early. And, Benson," he added, "you will also go to town this afternoon, or to-morrow, if it suits you, and take your book with you to Mr. Thompson. You will not return here. A provision will be made