Mrs. Verulam

“ This was a poser.
"It does not seem very likely," truth compelled him to reply.
"I knew your intellect would not desert you," she said kindly. "Now take me back to the Enclosure."
"But—but Lady Jane Clinch, Mrs. Brainton Gumm—they—they are——"
"They are endeavouring to be offensive," said Mrs. Verulam, with a slightly rising colour, but endeavouring to support herself with thoughts of her desire for the true life and Mr. James Bush. "But if they only knew how I long to be allowed to escape from this cage, they would try to shut the door which they are opening." ”

“ Mrs. Verulam was really surprised this time. For a moment she thought that Chloe's brain was turned by Huskinson's action and its results.
"Chloe dear, collect yourself," she said firmly. "Pull yourself together, darling. Don't deceive yourself even for a moment You have always been what you are now—a woman."
[Pg 34]
"No, no!" Chloe repeated doggedly; "I was a man. They all thought so."
Mrs. Verulam became seriously alarmed.
"I think, dear, you had better lie down quietly, and put on a cold compress. I shall send you up some strong tea in a few minutes, and——"
"Don't be foolish, Daisy. ”

“ Verulam. I think the world is full of misery."
"Gout, my beloved one, gout! Carlsbad would make you think very differently," replied the Duchess according to her rule. But she spoke without conviction; and the Lady Pearl did not think it necessary to protest, as usual, that her mental condition was governed by the soul rather than by the body.
Heavily the rainy evening wore on. The statement of the Lady Pearl had added to the Duchess's conviction that some deep-laid plot was brewing between Mrs. Verulam and Chloe. Her Grace's knowledge of the world taught her that Mrs. ”

“ And she shot a tender glance at Chloe.
"Good gracious!" exclaimed the Duchess. "Gracious heavens!"
"We ought to be kind to those whom the world has [Pg 247] treated cruelly," Mrs. Verulam continued, with high morality and a rather episcopal demeanour. "Poor dear Mr. Van Adam! Poor dear fellow!" And she breathed an effective, though quite gentle sigh.
To say that this sigh extracted a snort from the Duchess would be ridiculous. She expressed her feeling in a blast, suddenly heaved herself out of her chair, announced like a thunder-clap afflicted with the vibrato: "I'm very ill! I'm much upset!" ”

“ Verulam's eyes sprang up in them again.
"Yes," she said; "it is just beginning."
Mrs. Van Adam made an ecstatic gesture. There was in her manner something of the vivacity of a colt: a frolicsome readiness for bodily movement, a quickness of limb that goes with gaiety, and a sweeping appreciation of the luxury of joy. Her eyes danced and brimmed over with light, and expectation of pleasure turned her appearance almost to that of a child who sees a vision of sugar-plums.
"That's lucky!" she cried. "Daisy, you don't know how I feel about your society ”

“ I wonder what the Duchess is saying."
[Pg 315]
Her Grace was at the moment saying, "Oh, I shall be suffocated!" as she tried to compose herself upon a stack of dibble-holes filled with spawn that would have rejoiced the heart of Nicol.
"No doubt she is taking away your character," said Chloe.
"I hate those large, respectable women!" said Mrs. Verulam with sudden energy, and getting very red.
The special large, respectable woman to whom she alluded was furtively considering the chances of apoplexy, and marvelling at the heroic endurance displayed by the average mushroom. ”

“ Chloe was in bed, attended by the faithful Marriner, who had attained to that useful and beautiful age which permits a female to administer to a (supposed) suffering youth without the tongue of detraction being set instantly a-wagging. Nor could Mrs. Verulam's household, who laboured under the delusion that Chloe was her orange-growing husband, find much food for injurious gossip in the short and occasional visits—always chaperoned by Marriner—that the pretty hostess made to the chamber of her invalid guest. ”

“ If Chloe stayed on with her in Park Lane, she would—she could have no season at all. For even these dear friends who so clung to her, who rallied round her in her supposed poverty, who assumed pelerines and elastic-sided boots in her imitation, who even followed her into the wicked Wood, and there abode like disciples in the desert, even these would not be able to visit or to receive her when she had for close companion the now infamous, although so innocent, Mrs. Van Adam. Should she keep Chloe? That was the problem which Mrs. Verulam was now debating. ”

“ Verulam's attention to him.
"Francis, say 'not at home' this afternoon," she murmured, with a gesture of dismissal.
"Yes, ma'am."
And Francis took his smile below-stairs, leaving the two friends alone. They stood for a moment by the squirrel's cage, watching each other with kind eyes that were yet alight with sparks of criticism. For all sweet women are critics, just as all sweet babies are like their fathers. The laws of nature are so strangely immutable. Then Mrs. Van Adam said, in a low contralto voice that was almost manly:
[Pg 15]
"I believe you are sweeter here than you were in Paris. ”

“ He was Anthony Patch, brilliant, magnetic, the heir of many years and many men. This was his world now—and that last strong irony he craved lay in the offing.
With a stray boyishness he saw himself a power upon the earth; with his grandfather's money he might build his own pedestal and be a Talleyrand, a Lord Verulam. The clarity of his mind, its sophistication, its versatile intelligence, all at their maturity and dominated by some purpose yet to be born would find him work to do. ”

“ Can anything be more dreary than its arid Square, Sahara Desert of the law, with the ugly old tiled-topped tenements, the dirty windows, the bills To Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed like gravestones, the crazy gateway giving upon the filthy Lane, the scowling, iron-barred prison-like passage into Verulam-buildings, the mouldy red-nosed ticket-porters with little coffin plates, and why with aprons, the dry, hard, atomy-like appearance of the whole dust-heap? When my uncommercial travels tend to this dismal spot, my comfort is its rickety state. ”

“ Passing through the environs of the city, they gained the open country, and marched steadily along the causeway the Romans had so firmly laid, until they reached Verulam or St. Alban’s, where they passed the night. It excited great discontent amongst the inhabitants that Edwy did not visit the shrine of the saint, the glory of their town; and his departure again took place amidst gloomy silence. ”

“ Albans, [27b] an account of a search that had been made for Bacon’s remains, on the occasion of the interment of the last Lord Verulam. “A partition wall was pulled down, and the search extended into the part of the vault immediately under the monument, but no remains were found.” On the other hand, we have the record of his express wish to be buried there. I am afraid the doctor, who is said to have become the laughingstock of the living, has entirely faded out of men’s minds and memories. ”

“ And we give for what it is worth the opinion of Mr Roach Smith, an experienced antiquary, who gave special attention to Roman work, and who states in a letter written on January 6, 1883: "There are many examples of churches being built upon the remains of Roman buildings, no doubt often temples, and not unfrequently of a small size. Some instances are very remarkable, as that of Britford, near Salisbury, at old Verulam, etc. I have ever had a belief that St. Martin's Church is founded upon, or built upon, or built into, a Roman temple." ”

“ Verver considered. “Well, hasn’t he been away?”
“Yes, just long enough to see how he likes it. Besides,” said Charlotte, “he may not be able to join in the rosy view of our case that you impute to her. It can’t in the least have appeared to him hitherto a matter of course that you should give his wife a bouncing stepmother.”
Adam Verver, at this, looked grave. “I’m afraid then he’ll just have to accept from us whatever his wife accepts; and accept it—if he can imagine no better reason—just because she does. That,” he declared, “will have to do for him.” ”

“ Whether you like it or not, madame, you are Vorski's wife. And it is because of this undeniable fact that I am asking you, if you please, to consider yourself so today. Let us understand each other; if I do not aim at obtaining your love or even your friendship, I will not accept either that we should return to our former hostile relations. I do not want the scornful and distant wife that you have been. I want... I want a woman... a woman who will submit herself... who will be the devoted, attentive, faithful companion...”
“The slave,” murmured Veronique. ”

“ Veru herself was a delicate-looking, pretty woman of about six-and-twenty, with a broad forehead, and a thin-lipped, sensitive mouth--both of which characteristics were more blemishes than beauties in the opinion of her neighbours. Her chief defect, however, in the eyes of the stalwart, open-hearted, shrill-voiced, village women lay in a certain refined reserve, which they set down to conceit born of her pretensions to scholarship--though how any woman could be so wrong-minded as to usurp man's estate by learning to read and write passed their simple understanding. ”

“ It is as if the soft tread of these two women had given many of his verses their seraphic sheen and lent the mother-of-pearl opalescence to his softest poems, in which there is a secret rustling as of the folds of women's gowns. Even the Paul Verlaine of the later years, “the ruin insufficiently ruined,” who saw in woman the most ferocious enemy, and who fled to the wolves that they might protect him from “woman their sister,” even he still dreamed of the folded hands, of the forgiving innocent gesture of the earliest memories. This yearning for mild and pure women has found many incarnations. ”

“ On your knees, Véronique, and beseech my love! It alone can save you. Vorski knows neither pity nor fear. But he loves you; and his love will stop at nothing. Take advantage of it, Véronique. Appeal to the past. Become the child that you once were; and perhaps one day I shall drag myself at your feet. Véronique, do not repel me; a man like me is not to be repelled. One who loves as I love you, Véronique, as I love you, is not to be defied. ”

“ That, in all human probability, is all it will amount to. Very well, then. Until that day comes, let me at least have the manhood not to insult Veronique by thinking of Vera in any other light than as a friend. I cannot help what has happened. But I can let the past be past. Ah, Veronique! What other woman could be loved like you!"
The next letter that Vera received from her uncle contained the following passage:
"Do you remember that tenor you brought here a few weeks ago? Nice little man, rather. He's done well for himself. He's to marry the great Veronique. ”

“ The voice of Mrs Verloc rose subdued, pleading piteously: “Don’t let them hang me, Tom! Take me out of the country. I’ll work for you. I’ll slave for you. I’ll love you. I’ve no one in the world. . . . Who would look at me if you don’t!” She ceased for a moment; then in the depths of the loneliness made round her by an insignificant thread of blood trickling off the handle of a knife, she found a dreadful inspiration to her—who had been the respectable girl of the Belgravian mansion, the loyal, respectable wife of Mr Verloc. ”

“ Mrs Neale was the charwoman of Brett Street. Victim of her marriage with a debauched joiner, she was oppressed by the needs of many infant children. Red-armed, and aproned in coarse sacking up to the arm-pits, she exhaled the anguish of the poor in a breath of soap-suds and rum, in the uproar of scrubbing, in the clatter of tin pails.
Mrs Verloc, full of deep purpose, spoke in the tone of the shallowest indifference.
“There is no need to have the woman here all day. I shall do very well with Stevie.” ”

“ But Mrs Verloc’s lips, composed in their usual form, preserved a statuesque immobility like the rest of her face. And Mr Verloc was disappointed. Yet the occasion did not, he recognised, demand speech from her. She was a woman of very few words. For reasons involved in the very foundation of his psychology, Mr Verloc was inclined to put his trust in any woman who had given herself to him. Therefore he trusted his wife. Their accord was perfect, but it was not precise. It was a tacit accord, congenial to Mrs Verloc’s incuriosity and to Mr Verloc’s habits of mind, which were indolent and secret. ”

“ Mrs Verloc was a woman of singularly few words, either for public or private use. With the rage and dismay of a betrayed woman, she reviewed the tenor of her life in visions concerned mostly with Stevie’s difficult existence from its earliest days. It was a life of single purpose and of a noble unity of inspiration, like those rare lives that have left their mark on the thoughts and feelings of mankind. But the visions of Mrs Verloc lacked nobility and magnificence. ”

“ Veronica certainly deserved farther training and the teacher suggested that it would be well worth while for her to take lessons in embroidery of lame Sabina in Fohrensee. She would then be sure of a position as a teacher, as high as her utmost ambition could desire.
It had always been Gertrude's plan to have Veronica learn to work at the saddler's business, as there is a good deal of the fine work which is suitable for women, and which it needs a woman's hand to carry out. She hoped that in this way her children could always remain together and with her. ”

“ Veronica demanded. “You can feel my waistband if you don’t believe me.”
“You said just now you had had your lunch,” Dick argued.
“I know I did,” Veronica admitted. “One minute you are told that it is wicked to tell lies; the next—”
“Veronica!” Robina interrupted threateningly.
“It’s easy for you,” retorted Veronica. “You are not a growing child. You don’t feel it.”
“The least you can do,” said Robina, “is to keep silence.”
“What’s the good,” said Veronica—not without reason. “You’ll tell them when I’ve gone to bed, and can’t put in a word for myself. Everything is always my fault. ”