Lord Ormont and His Aminta. Volume 5

Weyburn's name was announced to him at an early hour on Thursday morning. My lord nodded to the footman; he nodded to himself over a suggestion started in a tactical intelligence by the name.

'Ah! you 're off?' he accosted the young man.

'I have come to take my leave, my lord.'

'Nothing new in the morning papers?'

'A report that Captain May intends to return and surrender.'

'Not before a month has passed, if he follows my counsel.'

'To defend his character.'

'He has none.'

'His reputation.'

'He has too much.'

'These charges against him must be intolerable.'

'Was he not a bit of a pupil of yours?'

'We practised two or three times-nothing more.'

'Morsfield was a wasp at a feast. Somebody had to crush him. I 've seen the kind of man twice in my life and exactly the kind of man. If their law puts down duelling, he rules the kingdom!'

'My lord, I should venture to say the kind of man can be a common annoyance because the breach of the law is countenanced.'

'Bad laws are best broken. A society that can't get a scouring now and then will be a dirty set.'

With a bend of the head, in apology for speaking of himself, Weyburn said: 'I have acted on my view. I declined a challenge from a sort of henchman of his.'

'Oh! a poacher's lurcher? You did right. Fight such fellows with constables. You have seen Lady Charlotte?'

'I am on my way to her ladyship.'

'Do me this favour. Fourteen doors up the street of her residence, my physician lives. I have to consult him at once. Dr. Rewkes.'

Weyburn bowed. Lady Charlotte could not receive him later than half-past ten of the morning, he said. 'This morning she can,' said my lord. 'You will tell Dr. Rewkes that it is immediate. I rather regret your going. I shall be in a controversy with the Horse Guards about our cavalry saddles. It would be regiments of raw backs the first fortnight of a campaign.'

The earl discoursed on saddles; and passed to high eulogy of our Hanoverian auxiliary troopers in the Peninsula; 'good husbands,' he named them quaintly, speaking of their management of their beasts. Thence he diverged to Frederic's cavalry, rarely matched for shrewdness and endurance; to the deeds of the Liechtenstein Hussars; to the great things Blucher did with his horsemen.

The subject was interesting; but Weyburn saw the clock at past the half after ten. He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go when the earl had finished his pro and con upon Arab horses and Mameluke saddles. Lord Ormont nicked his head, just as at their first interview: he was known to have an objection to the English shaking of hands. 'Good-morning,' he said; adding a remark or two, of which et cetera may stand for an explicit rendering. It concerned the young man's prosperity: my lord's conservative plain sense was in doubt of the prospering of a giddy pate, however good a worker. His last look at the young man, who had not served him badly, held an anticipation of possibly some day seeing a tatterdemalion of shipwreck, a rueful exhibition of ideas put to the business of life.

Weyburn left the message with Dr. Rewkes in person. It had not seemed to him that Lord Ormont was one requiring the immediate attendance of a physician. By way of accounting to Lady Charlotte for the lateness of his call, he mentioned the summons he had delivered.

'Oh, that's why he hasn't come yet,' said she. 'We'll sit and talk till he does come. I don't wonder if his bile has been stirred. He can't oil me to credit what he pumps into others. His Lady Ormont! I believe in it less than ever I did. Morsfield or no Morsfield—and now the poor wretch has got himself pinned to the plank, like my grandson Bobby's dragonflies, I don't want to say anything further of him—she doesn't have much of a welcome at Steignton! If I were a woman to wager as men do, I 'd stake a thousand pounds to five on her never stepping across the threshold of Steignton. All very well in London, and that place he hires up at Marlow. He respects our home. That 's how I know my brother Rowsley still keeps a sane man. A fortune on it!—and so says Mr. Eglett. Any reasonable person must think it. He made a fool of some Hampton-Evey at Madrid, if he went through any ceremony—and that I doubt. But she and old (what do they call her?) may have insisted upon the title, as much as they could. He sixty; she under twenty, I'm told. Pagnell 's the name. That aunt of a good-looking young woman sees a noble man of sixty admiring her five feet seven or so—she's tall—of marketable merchandise, and she doesn't need telling that at sixty he'll give the world to possess the girl. But not his family honour! He stops at that. Why? Lord Ormont 's made of pride! He'll be kind to her, he'll be generous, he won't forsake her; she'll have her portion in his will, and by the course of things in nature, she'll outlive him and marry, and be happy, I hope. Only she won't enter Steignton. You remember what I say. You 'll live when I 'm gone. It 's the thirst of her life to be mistress of Steignton. Not she!—though Lord Ormont would have us all open our doors to her; mine too, now he 's about it. He sets his mind on his plan, and he forgets rights and dues—everything; he must have it as his will dictates. That 's how he made such a capital soldier. You know the cavalry leader he was. If they'd given him a field in Europe! His enemies admit that. Twelve! and my clock's five minutes or more slow. What can Rowsley be doing?'

She rattled backward on the scene at Steignton, and her brother's handsome preservation of his dignity 'stood it like the king he is!' and to the Morsfield-May encounter, which had prevented another; and Mrs. May was rolled along in the tide, with a hint of her good reason for liking Lord Ormont; also the change of opinion shown by the Press as to Lord Ormont's grand exploit. Referring to it, she flushed and jigged on her chair for a saddle beneath her. And that glorious Indian adventure warmed her to the man who had celebrated it among his comrades when a boy at school.

'You 're to teach Latin and Greek, you said. For you 're right: we English can't understand the words we 're speaking, if we don't know a good deal of Latin and some Greek. "Conversing in tokens, not standard coin," you said, I remember; and there'll be a "general rabble tongue," unless we English are drilled in the languages we filched from. Lots of lords and ladies want the drilling, then! I'll send some over to you for Swiss air and roots of the English tongue. Oh, and you told me you supported Lord Ormont on his pet argument for corps d'elite; and you quoted Virgil to back it. Let me have that line again—in case of his condescending to write to the papers on the subject.'

Weyburn repeated the half-line.

'Good: I won't forget now. And you said the French act on that because they follow human nature, and the English don't. We "bully it," you said. That was on our drive down to Steignton. I hope you 'll succeed. You 'll be visiting England. Call on me in London or at Olmer—only mind and give me warning. I shall be glad to see you. I 've got some ideas from you. If I meet a man who helps me to read the world and men as they are, I 'm grateful to him; and most people are not, you 'll find. They want you to show them what they 'd like the world to be. We don't agree about a lady. You 're in the lists, lance in rest, all for chivalry. You 're a man, and a young man. Have you taken your leave of her yet? She'll expect it, as a proper compliment.'

'I propose running down to take my leave of Lady Ormont to-morrow,' replied Weyburn.

'She is handsome?'

She is very handsome.'

'Beautiful, do you mean?'

'Oh, my lady, it would only be a man's notion!'

'Now, that 's as good an answer as could be made! You 're sure to succeed. I 'm not the woman's enemy. But let her keep her place. Why, Rowsley can't be coming to-day! Did Lord Ormont look ill?'

'It did not strike me so.'

'He 's between two fires. A man gets fretted. But I shan't move a step. I dare say she won't. Especially with that Morsfield out of the way. You do mean you think her a beauty. Well, then, there'll soon be a successor to Morsfield. Beauties will have their weapons, and they can hit on plenty; and it 's nothing to me, as long as I save my brother from their arts.'

Weyburn felt he had done his penance in return for kindness. He bowed and rose, Lady Charlotte stretched out her hand.

'We shall be sending you a pupil some day,' she said, and smiled.

'Forward your address as soon as you 're settled.' Her face gave a glimpse of its youth in a cordial farewell smile.

Lord Ormont had no capacity to do the like, although they were strictly brother and sister in appearance. The smallest difference in character rendered her complex and kept him simple. She had a thirsting mind.

Weyburn fancied that a close intimacy of a few months would have enabled him to lift her out of her smirching and depraving mean jealousies. He speculated, as he trod the street, on little plots and surprises, which would bring Lady Charlotte and Lady Ormont into presence, and end by making friends of them. Supposing that could be done, Lady Ormont might be righted by the intervention of Lady Charlotte after all.

Weyburn sent his dream flying with as dreamy an after-thought: 'Funny it will be then for Lady Charlotte to revert to the stuff she has been droning in my ear half an hour ago!—Look well behind, and we see spots where we buzzed, lowed, bit and tore; and not until we have cast that look and seen the brute are we human creatures.'

A crumb of reflection such as this could brace him, adding its modest maravedi to his prized storehouse of gain, fortifying with assurances of his having a concrete basis for his business in life. His great youthful ambition had descended to it, but had sunk to climb on a firmer footing.

Arthur Abner had his next adieu. They talked of Lady Ormont, as to whose position of rightful Countess of Ormont Mr. Abner had no doubt. He said of Lady Charlotte: 'She has a clear head; but she loves her "brother Rowsley" excessively; and any excess pushes to craziness.'

He spoke to Weyburn of his prospects in the usually, perhaps necessarily, cheerless tone of men who recognize by contrast the one mouse's nibbling at a mountain of evil. 'To harmonize the nationalities, my dear boy! teach Christians to look fraternally on Jews! David was a harper, but the setting of him down to roll off a fugue on one of your cathedral organs would not impose a heavier task than you are undertaking. You have my best wishes, whatever aid I can supply. But we 're nearer to King John's time than to your ideal, as far as the Jews go.'

'Not in England.'

'Less in England,' Abner shrugged.

'You have beaten the Christians on the field they challenged you to enter for a try. They feel the pinch in their interests and their vanity. That will pass. I 'm for the two sides, under the name of Justice; and I give the palm to whichever of the two first gets hold of the idea of Justice. My old schoolmate's well?'

'Always asking after Matey Weyburn !'