Complete Short Works of George Meredith Part 35

Moreover, Mr. Beamish calculated that Caseldy would be a serviceable ally in commanding a proper respect for her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess of Dewlap.

So he betook himself cheerfully to Caseldy's lodgings to deliver a message of welcome, meeting, on his way thither, Mr. Augustus Camwell, with whom he had a short conversation, greatly to his admiration of the enamoured young gentleman's goodness and self-compression in speaking of Caseldy and Chloe's better fortune. Mr. Camwell seemed hurried.

Caseldy was not at home, and Mr. Beamish proceeded to the lodgings of the d.u.c.h.ess. Chloe had found her absent. The two consulted. Mr. Beamish put on a serious air, until Chloe mentioned the pastrycook's shop, for d.u.c.h.ess Susan had a sweet tooth; she loved a visit to the pastrycook's, whose jam tarts were dearer to her than his more famous hot mutton pies.

The pastry cook informed Mr. Beamish that her Grace had been in his shop, earlier than usual, as it happened, and accompanied by a foreign-looking gentleman wearing moustachois. Her Grace, the pastrycook said, had partaken of several tarts, in common with the gentleman, who complimented him upon his excelling the Continental confectioner. Mr.

Beamish glanced at Chloe. He pursued his researches down at the Pump Room, while she looked round the ladies' coffee house. Encountering again, they walked back to the d.u.c.h.ess's lodgings, where a band stood playing in the road, by order of her Grace; but the d.u.c.h.ess was away, and had not been seen since her morning's departure.

'What sort of character would you give mistress Susan of Dewlap, from your personal acquaintance with it?' said Mr. Beamish to Chloe, as they stepped from the door.

Chloe mused and said, 'I would add "good" to the unkindest comparison you could find for her.'

'But accepting the comparison!' Mr. Beamish nodded, and revolved upon the circ.u.mstance of their being very much in nature's hands with d.u.c.h.ess Susan, of whom it might be said that her character was good, yet all the more alive to the temptations besetting the Spring season. He allied Chloe's adjective to a number of epithets equally applicable to nature and to women, according to current ideas, concluding: 'Count, they call your Caseldy at his lodgings. "The Count he is out for an airing." He is counted out. Ah! you will make him drop that "Count" when he takes you from here.'

'Do not speak of the time beyond the month,' said Chloe, so urgently on a rapid breath as to cause Mr. Beamish to cast an inquiring look at her.

She answered it, 'Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?'

The beau clapped his elbows complacently to his sides in philosophical concord with her sentiment.

In the afternoon, on the parade, they were joined by Mr. Camwell, among groups of fas.h.i.+onable ladies and their escorts, pacing serenely, by medical prescription, for an appet.i.te. As he did not comment on the absence of the d.u.c.h.ess, Mr. Beamish alluded to it; whereupon he was informed that she was about the meadows, and had been there for some hours.

'Not unguarded,' he replied to Mr. Beamish.

'Aha!' quoth the latter; 'we have an Argus!' and as the d.u.c.h.ess was not on the heights, and the sun's rays were mild in cloud, he agreed to his young friend's proposal that they should advance to meet her. Chloe walked with them, but her face was disdainful; at the stiles she gave her hand to Mr. Beamish; she did not address a word to Mr. Camwell, and he knew the reason. Nevertheless he maintained his air of soldierly resignation to the performance of duty, and held his head like a gentleman unable to conceive the ignominy of having played spy. Chloe shrank from him.

d.u.c.h.ess Susan was distinguished coming across a broad uncut meadow, tirra-lirraing beneath a lark, Caseldy in attendance on her. She stopped short and spoke to him; then came forward, crying ingenuously. 'Oh, Mr.

Beamish, isn't this just what you wanted me to do?'

'No, madam,' said he, 'you had my injunctions to the contrary.'

'La!' she exclaimed, 'I thought I was to run about in the fields now and then to preserve my simplicity. I know I was told so, and who told me!'

Mr. Beamish bowed effusively to the introduction of Caseldy, whose fingers he touched in sign of the renewal of acquaintance, and with a laugh addressed the d.u.c.h.ess:

'Madam, you remind me of a tale of my infancy. I had a juvenile comrade of the tenderest age, by name Tommy Plumston, and he enjoyed the privilege of intimacy with a component urchin yclept Jimmy Clungeon, with which adventurous roamer, in defiance of his mother's interdict against his leaving the house for a minute during her absence from home, he departed on a tour of the district, resulting, perhaps as a consequence of its completeness, in this, that at a distance computed at four miles from the maternal mansion, he perceived his beloved mama with sufficient clearness to feel sure that she likewise had seen him.

Tommy consulted with Jimmy, and then he sprang forward on a run to his frowning mama, and delivered himself in these artless words, which I repeat as they were uttered, to give you the flavour of the innocent babe: he said, "I frink I frought I hear you call me, ma! and Jimmy Clungeon, he frought he frink so too!" So, you see, the pair of them were under the impression that they were doing right. There is a delicate distinction in the tenses of each frinking where the other frought, enough in itself to stamp sincerity upon the statement.'

Caseldy said, 'The veracity of a boy possessing a friend named Clungeon is beyond contest.'

d.u.c.h.ess Susan opened her eyes. 'Four miles from home! And what did his mother do to him?'

'Tommy's mama,' said Mr. Beamish, and with the resplendent licence of the period which continued still upon tolerable terms with nature under the compromise of decorous 'Oh-fie!' flatly declared the thing she did.

'I fancy, sir, that I caught sight of your figure on the hill yonder about an hour or so earlier,' said Caseldy to Mr. Camwell.

'If it was at the time when you were issuing from that wood, sir, your surmise is correct,' said the young gentleman.

'You are long-sighted, sir!'

'I am, sir.'

'And so am I.'

'And I,' said Chloe.

'Our Chloe will distinguish you accurately at a mile, and has done it,'

observed Mr. Beamish.

'One guesses tiptoe on a suspicion, and if one is wrong it pa.s.ses, and if one is right it is a miracle,' she said, and raised her voice on a song to quit the subject.

'Ay, ay, Chloe; so then you had a suspicion, you rogue, the day we had the pleasure of meeting the d.u.c.h.ess, had you?' Mr. Beamish persisted.

d.u.c.h.ess Susan interposed. 'Such a pretty song! and you to stop her, sir!'

Caseldy took up the air.

'Oh, you two together!' she cried. 'I do love hearing music in the fields; it is heavenly. Bands in the town and voices in the green fields, I say! Couldn't you join Chloe, Mr.... Count, sir, before we come among the people, here where it 's all so nice and still. Music!

and my heart does begin so to pit-a-pat. Do you sing, Mr. Alonzo?'

'Poorly,' the young gentleman replied.

'But the Count can sing, and Chloe's a real angel when she sings; and won't you, dear?' she implored Chloe, to whom Caseldy addressed a prelude with a bow and a flourish of the hand.

Chloe's voice flew forth. Caseldy's rich masculine matched it. The song was gay; he snapped his finger at intervals in foreign style, singing big-chested, with full notes and a fine abandonment, and the quickest susceptibility to his fair companion's cunning modulations, and an eye for d.u.c.h.ess Susan's rapture.

Mr. Beamish and Mr. Camwell applauded them.

'I never can tell what to say when I'm br.i.m.m.i.n.g'; the d.u.c.h.ess let fall a sigh. 'And he can play the flute, Mr. Beamish. He promised me he would go into the orchestra and play a bit at one of your nice evening delicious concerts, and that will be nice--Oh!'

'He promised you, madam, did he so?' said the beau. 'Was it on your way to the Wells that he promised you?'

'On my way to the Wells!' she exclaimed softly. 'Why, how could anybody promise me a thing before ever he saw me? I call that a strange thing to ask a person. No, to-day, while we were promenading; and I should hear him sing, he said. He does admire his Chloe so. Why, no wonder, is it, now? She can do everything; knit, sew, sing, dance--and talk! She's never uneasy for a word. She makes whole scenes of things go round you, like a picture peep-show, I tell her. And always cheerful. She hasn't a minute of grumps; and I'm sometimes a dish of stale milk fit only for pigs.

With your late hours here, I'm sure I want tickling in the morning, and Chloe carols me one of her songs, and I say, "There's my bird!"'

Mr. Beamish added, 'And you will remember she has a heart.'

'I should think so!' said the d.u.c.h.ess.

'A heart, madam!'

'Why, what else?'

Nothing other, the beau, by his aspect, was constrained to admit.

He appeared puzzled by this daughter of nature in a coronet; and more on her remarking, 'You know about her heart, Mr. Beamish.'

He acquiesced, for of course he knew of her life-long devotion to Caseldy; but there was archness in her tone. However, he did not expect a woman of her education to have the tone perfectly concordant with the circ.u.mstances. Speaking tentatively of Caseldy's handsome face and figure, he was pleased to hear the d.u.c.h.ess say, 'So I tell Chloe.'

'Well,' said he, 'we must consider them united; they are one.'