XIX
In the Matter of Blinkhampton
Pity for the commander who, while engaging the enemy on his front with valor and success, breaking his line and driving him from his position, finds himself assailed in the rear by an unexpected or despised foe and the prize of victory suddenly wrenched from him! His fate is more bitter than if he had failed in his main encounter, his self-reproaches more keen.
Major Duplay was awakening to the fact that this was his situation. Triumph was not his although Harry Tristram had fled from the battle. Iver's carefully guarded friendliness and the touch of motherly compassion in his wife's manner, Mrs Trumbler's tacit request (conveyed by a meek and Christian sympathy) that he should bow to the will of Providence, Miss S.'s malicious questions as to where he meant to spend the winter after leaving Merrion, told him the opinion of the world. Janie Iver had begun to think flirtation wrong; and there was an altogether new and remarkable self-assertion about Bob Broadley. The last thing annoyed Duplay most. It is indeed absurd that a young man, formerly of a commendable humility, should think a change of demeanor justified merely because one young woman, herself insignificant, chooses for reasons good or bad to favor him. Duplay assumed to despise Bob; it is often better policy to despise people than to enter into competition with them, and it is always rash to do both. These and other truths—as, for example, that for some purposes it is
better not to be forty-four—the Major was learning. Was there any grain of comfort? It lay in the fact that he was forty-four. A hypothetical, now impossible, yet subtly soothing Major of thirty routed Bob Broadley and carried all before him. In other words Duplay was driven back to the Last Ditch of Consolation. What we could have done is the latest-tried plaster for the wound of what we cannot do; it would be wise to try it sometimes a little earlier.
From the orthodox sentimentalist he could claim no compassion. He had lost not his heart's love but a very comfortable settlement; he was wounded more in his vanity than in his affections; he had wasted not his life, only one of his few remaining effective summers. But the more lax, who base their views on what men generally are, may spare him one of those less bitter tears which they appropriate to the misfortunes of others. If the tear as it falls meets a smile,—why not? Such encounters are hardly unexpected and may well prove agreeable.
There was another disconsolate person in the valley of the Blent—little Mr Gainsborough, left alone in the big house with a note from his daughter commanding him to stay there and to say nothing to anybody. He was lonely, and nervous with the servants; the curios gave him small pleasure since he had not bought them, and, if he had, they would not have been cheap. For reasons before indicated, Blentmouth and the curiosity-shop there had become too dangerous. Besides, he had no money; Cecily had forgotten that detail in her hurried flight. A man cannot spend more than a portion of his waking hours in a library or over pedigrees. Gainsborough found himself regretting London and the little house. If we divide humanity into those who do things and those who have to get out of the way while they are being done (just as reasonable a division
as many adopted by statisticians) Gainsborough belonged to the latter class; like most of us perhaps, but in a particularly unmistakable degree. And he knew he did—not perhaps like most of us in that. He never thought even of appealing to posterity.
Meanwhile Janie Iver was behaving as a pattern daughter, cherishing her mother and father and making home sweet, exercising, in fact, that prudent economy of wilfulness which preserves it for one great decisive struggle, and scorns to fritter it away on the details of daily life. Girls have adopted these tactics from the earliest days (so it is recorded or may be presumed), and wary are the parents who are not hoodwinked by them or, even if they perceive, are altogether unsoftened. Janie was very saintly at Fairholme; the only sins which she could have found to confess (not that Mr Trumbler favored confession—quite the contrary) were certain suppressions of truth touching the direction in which she drove her dog-cart—and even these were calculated to avoid the giving of pain. As for the Tristrams—where were they? They seemed to have dropped out of Janie's story.
Iver needed comfort. There is no disguising it, however much the admission may damage him in the eyes of that same orthodox sentimentalist. He had once expounded his views to Mr Jenkinson Neeld (or rather one of his expositions of them has been recorded, there having been more than one)—and the present situation did not satisfy them. Among other rehabilitations and whitewashings, that of the cruel father might well be undertaken by an ingenious writer; if Nero had had a grown-up daughter there would have been the chance! Anyhow the attempt would have met with some sympathy from Iver. Of course a man desires his daughter's happiness (the remark is a platitude), but he may be allowed to feel annoyance at the precise