This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By George Meredith
1897
The foggy February night refreshed his head, and the business of fetchingthe luggage from the hotel—a commission that necessitated the deliveryof his card and some very commanding language—kept his mind in order.Subsequently he drove to his cousin Baskelett's Club, where he left ashort note to say the house was engaged for the night and perhaps a weekfurther. Concise, but sufficient: and he stated a hope to his cousinthat he would not be inconvenienced. This was courteous.
He had taken a bed at Renee's hotel, after wresting her boxes from thevanquished hotel proprietor, and lay there, hearing the clear sound ofevery little sentence of hers during the absence of Rosamund: her'Adieu,' and the strange 'Do you think so?' and 'I know where I am; Iscarcely know more.' Her eyes and their darker lashes, and the fitfullittle sensitive dimples of a smile without joy, came with her voice, buthardened to an aspect unlike her. Not a word could he recover of whatshe had spoken before Rosamund's intervention. He fancied she must haverelated details of her journey. Especially there must have been mention,he thought, of her drive to the station from Tourdestelle; and thisflashed on him the scene of his ride to the chateau, and the meeting heron the road, and the white light on the branching river, and all that wasRenee in the spirit of the place she had abandoned for him, believing inhim. She had proved that she believed in him. What in the name ofsanity had been the meaning of his language? and what was it betweenthem that arrested him and caused him to mumble absurdly of 'doing best,'when in fact he was her bondman, rejoiced to be so, by his pledged word?and when she, for some reason that he was sure she had stated, though hecould recollect no more than the formless hideousness of it, was debarredfrom returning to Tourdestelle?
He tossed in his bed as over a furnace, in the extremity of perplexity ofone accustomed to think himself ever demonstrably in the right, and nowwith his whole nature in insurrection against that legitimate claim. Itled him to accuse her of a want of passionate warmth, in her not havingsupplicated and upbraided him—not behaving theatrically, in fine, as theranting pen has made us expect of emergent ladies that they willnaturally do. Concerning himself, he thought commendingly, a tear wouldhave overcome him. She had not wept. The kaleidoscope was shaken in hisfragmentary mind, and she appeared thrice adorable for this noblecomposure, he brutish.
Conscience and reason had resolved to a dead weight in him, like aninanimate force, governing his acts despite the man, while he was withRenee. Now his wishes and waverings conjured up a semblance of aconscience and much reason to assure him that he had done foolishly aswell as unkindly, m