CHAPTER XX
AN AGED AND A GREAT WINE
THE leisurely promenade up and down the lawn with ladies anddeferential gentlemen, in anticipation of the dinner-bell, was Dr.Middleton's evening pleasure. He walked as one who had formerly danced(in Apollo's time and the young god Cupid's), elastic on the muscles ofthe calf and foot, bearing his broad iron-grey head in grand elevation.The hard labour of the day approved the cooling exercise and thecrowning refreshments of French cookery and wines of known vintages. Hewas happy at that hour in dispensing wisdom or nugae to his hearers,like the Western sun whose habit it is, when he is fairly treated, tobreak out in quiet splendours, which by no means exhaust his treasury.Blessed indeed above his fellows, by the height of the bow-winged birdin a fair weather sunset sky above the pecking sparrow, is he that everin the recurrent evening of his day sees the best of it ahead and soonto come. He has the rich reward of a youth and manhood of virtuousliving. Dr. Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of theman who did not, in becoming gravity, exult to dine. That man hedeemed unfit for this world and the next.
An example of the good fruit of temperance, he had a comfortable pridein his digestion, and his political sentiments were attuned by hisveneration of the Powers rewarding virtue. We must have a stable worldwhere this is to be done.
The Rev. Doctor was a fine old picture; a specimen of art peculiarlyEnglish; combining in himself piety and epicurism, learning andgentlemanliness, with good room for each and a seat at one another'stable: for the rest, a strong man, an athlete in his youth, a keenreader of facts and no reader of persons, genial, a giant at a task, asteady worker besides, but easily discomposed. He loved his daughterand he feared her. However much he liked her character, the dread ofher sex and age was constantly present to warn him that he was not tiedto perfect sanity while the damsel Clara remained unmarried. Her motherhad been an amiable woman, of the poetical temperament nevertheless,too enthusiastic, imaginative, impulsive, for the repose of a soberscholar; an admirable woman, still, as you see, a woman, a fire-work.The girl resembled her. Why should she wish to run away from PatterneHall for a single hour? Simply because she was of the sex born mutableand explosive. A husband was her proper custodian, justly relieving afather. With demagogues abroad and daughters at home, philosophy isneeded for us to keep erect. Let the girl be Cicero's Tullia: well, shedies! The choicest of them will furnish us examples of a strangeperversity.
Miss Dale was beside Dr. Middleton. Clara came to them and took theother side.
"I was telling Miss Dale that the signal for your subjection is myenfranchisement," he said to her, sighing and smiling. "We know thedate. The date of an event to come certifies to it as a fact to becounted on."
"Are you anxious to lose me?" Clara faltered.
"My dear, you have planted me on a field where I am to expect thetrumpet, and when it blows I shall be quit of my nerves, no more."
Clara found nothing to seize on for a reply in these words. She thoughtupon the silence of Laetitia.
Sir Willoughby advanced, appearing in a cordial mood.
"I need not ask you whether you are better," he said to Clara, sparkledto Laetitia, and raised a key to the level of Dr. Middleton's breast,remarking, "I am going down to my inner cellar."
"An inner cellar!" exclaimed the doctor.
"Sacred from the butler. It is interdicted to Stoneman. Shall I offermyself as guide to you? My cellars are worth a visit."
"Cellars are not catacombs. They are, if rightly constructed, rightlyconsidered, cloisters, where the bottle meditates on joys to bestow,not on dust misused! Have you anything great?"
"A wine aged ninety."
"Is it associated with your pedigree that you pronounce the age withsuch assurance?"
"My grandfather inherited it."
"Your grandfather, Sir Willoughby, had meritorious offspring, not tospeak of generous progenitors. What would have happened had it falleninto the female line! I shall be glad to accompany you. Port?Hermitage?"
"Port."
"Ah! We are in England!"
"There will just be time," said Sir Willoughby, inducing Dr. Middletonto step out.
A chirrup was in the reverend doctor's tone: "Hocks, too, havecompassed age. I have tasted senior Hocks. Their flavours are as abrook of many voices; they have depth also. Senatorial Port! we say. Wecannot say that of any other wine. Port is deep-sea deep. It is in itsflavour deep; mark the difference. It is like a classic tragedy,organic in conception. An ancient Hermitage has the light of theantique; the merit that it can grow to an extreme old age; a merit.Neither of Hermitage nor of Hock can you say that it is the blood ofthose long years, retaining the strength of youth with the wisdom ofage. To Port for that! Port is our noblest legacy! Observe, I do notcompare the wines; I distinguish the qualities. Let them live togetherfor our enrichment; they are not rivals like the Idaean Three. Werethey rivals, a fourth would challenge them. Burgundy has great genius.It does wonders within its period; it does all except to keep up in therace; it is short-lived. An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. Icherish the fancy that Port speaks the sentences of wisdom, Burgundysings the inspired Ode. Or put it, that Port is the Homeric hexameter,Burgundy the pindaric dithyramb. What do you say?"
"The comparison is excellent, sir."
"The distinction, you would remark. Pindar astounds. But his elderbrings us the more sustaining cup. One is a fountain of prodigiousascent. One is the unsounded purple sea of marching billows."
"A very fine distinction."
"I conceive you to be now commending the similes. They pertain to thetime of the first critics of those poets. Touch the Greeks, and you cannothing new; all has been said: 'Graiis . . . praeter, laudem nulliusavaris.' Genius dedicated to Fame is immortal. We, sir, dedicate geniusto the cloacaline floods. We do not address the unforgetting gods, butthe popular stomach."
Sir Willoughby was patient. He was about as accordantly coupled withDr. Middleton in discourse as a drum duetting with a bass-viol; andwhen he struck in he received correction from thepaedagogue-instrument. If he thumped affirmative or negative, he waswrong. However, he knew scholars to be an unmannered species; and thedoctor's learnedness would be a subject to dilate on.
In the cellar, it was the turn for the drum. Dr. Middleton wastongue-tied there. Sir Willoughby gave the history of his wine in headsof chapters; whence it came to the family originally, and how it hadcome down to him in the quantity to be seen. "Curiously, mygrandfather, who inherited it, was a water-drinker. My father diedearly."
"Indeed! Dear me!" the doctor ejaculated in astonishment andcondolence. The former glanced at the contrariety of man, the latterembraced his melancholy destiny.
He was impressed with respect for the family. This cool vaulted cellar,and the central square block, or enceinte, where the thick darkness wasnot penetrated by the intruding lamp, but rather took it as an eye,bore witness to forethoughtful practical solidity in the man who hadbuilt the house on such foundations. A house having a great wine storedbelow lives in our imaginations as a joyful house, fast and splendidlyrooted in the soil. And imagination has a place for the heir of thehouse. His grandfather a water-drinker, his father dying early, presentcircumstances to us arguing predestination to an illustrious heirshipand career. Dr Middleton's musings were coloured by the friendlyvision of glasses of the great wine; his mind was festive; it pleasedhim, and he chose to indulge in his whimsical, robustious,grandiose-airy style of thinking: from which the festive mind willsometimes take a certain print that we cannot obliterate immediately.Expectation is grateful, you know; in the mood of gratitude we arewaxen. And he was a self-humouring gentleman.
He liked Sir Willoughby's tone in ordering the servant at his heels totake up "those two bottles": it prescribed, without overdoing it, aproper amount of caution, and it named an agreeable number.
Watching the man's hand keenly, he said:
"But here is the misfortune of a thing super-excellent:--not more thanone in twen
ty will do it justice."
Sir Willoughby replied: "Very true, sir; and I think we may pass overthe nineteen."
"Women, for example; and most men."
"This wine would be a scaled book to them."
"I believe it would. It would be a grievous waste."
"Vernon is a claret man; and so is Horace De Craye. They are both belowthe mark of this wine. They will join the ladies. Perhaps you and I,sir, might remain together."
"With the utmost good-will on my part."
"I am anxious for your verdict, sir."
"You shall have it, sir, and not out of harmony with the choruspreceding me, I can predict. Cool, not frigid." Dr. Middleton summedthe attributes of the cellar on quitting it. "North side and South. Nomusty damp. A pure air. Everything requisite. One might lie down one'sself and keep sweet here."
Of all our venerable British of the two Isles professing a sucklingattachment to an ancient port-wine, lawyer, doctor, squire, rosyadmiral, city merchant, the classic scholar is he whose blood is mostnuptial to the webbed bottle. The reason must be, that he is full ofthe old poets. He has their spirit to sing with, and the best that Timehas done on earth to feed it. He may also perceive a resemblance in thewine to the studious mind, which is the obverse of our mortality, andthrows off acids and crusty particles in the piling of the years, untilit is fulgent by clarity. Port hymns to his conservatism. It ismagical: at one sip he is off swimming in the purple flood of theever-youthful antique.
By comparison, then, the enjoyment of others is brutish; they have notthe soul for it; but he is worthy of the wine, as are poets of Beauty.In truth, these should be severally apportioned to them, scholar andpoet, as his own good thing. Let it be so.
Meanwhile Dr. Middleton sipped.
After the departure of the ladies, Sir Willoughby had practised astudied curtness upon Vernon and Horace.
"You drink claret," he remarked to them, passing it round. "Port, Ithink, Doctor Middleton? The wine before you may serve for a preface.We shall have your wine in five minutes."
The claret jug empty, Sir Willoughby offered to send for more. De Crayewas languid over the question. Vernon rose from the table.
"We have a bottle of Doctor Middleton's port coming in," Willoughbysaid to him.
"Mine, you call it?" cried the doctor.
"It's a royal wine, that won't suffer sharing," said Vernon.
"We'll be with you, if you go into the billiard-room, Vernon."
"I shall hurry my drinking of good wine for no man," said the Rev.Doctor.
"Horace?"
"I'm beneath it, ephemeral, Willoughby. I am going to the ladies."
Vernon and De Craye retired upon the arrival of the wine; and Dr.Middleton sipped. He sipped and looked at the owner of it.
"Some thirty dozen?" he said.
"Fifty."
The doctor nodded humbly.
"I shall remember, sir," his host addressed him, "whenever I have thehonour of entertaining you, I am cellarer of that wine."
The Rev. Doctor set down his glass. "You have, sir, in some sense, anenviable post. It is a responsible one, if that be a blessing. On youit devolves to retard the day of the last dozen."
"Your opinion of the wine is favourable, sir?"
"I will say this:--shallow souls run to rhapsody:--I will say, that Iam consoled for not having lived ninety years back, or at any periodbut the present, by this one glass of your ancestral wine."
"I am careful of it," Sir Willoughby said, modestly; "still its naturaldestination is to those who can appreciate it. You do, sir."
"Still my good friend, still! It is a charge; it is a possession, butpart in trusteeship. Though we cannot declare it an entailed estate,our consciences are in some sort pledged that it shall be a successionnot too considerably diminished."
"You will not object to drink it, sir, to the health of yourgrandchildren. And may you live to toast them in it on theirmarriage-day!"
"You colour the idea of a prolonged existence in seductive hues. Ha!It is a wine for Tithonus. This wine would speed him to the rosyMorning--aha!"
"I will undertake to sit you through it up to morning," said SirWilloughby, innocent of the Bacchic nuptiality of the allusion.
Dr Middleton eyed the decanter. There is a grief in gladness, for apremonition of our mortal state. The amount of wine in the decanter didnot promise to sustain the starry roof of night and greet the dawn."Old wine, my friend, denies us the full bottle!"
"Another bottle is to follow."
"No!"
"It is ordered."
"I protest."
"It is uncorked."
"I entreat."
"It is decanted."
"I submit. But, mark, it must be honest partnership. You are my worthyhost, sir, on that stipulation. Note the superiority of wine overVenus!--I may say, the magnanimity of wine; our jealousy turns on himthat will not share! But the corks, Willoughby. The corks excite myamazement."
"The corking is examined at regular intervals. I remember theoccurrence in my father's time. I have seen to it once."
"It must be perilous as an operation for tracheotomy; which I shouldassume it to resemble in surgical skill and firmness of hand, not tomention the imminent gasp of the patient."
A fresh decanter was placed before the doctor.
He said: "I have but a girl to give!" He was melted.
Sir Willoughby replied: "I take her for the highest prize this worldaffords."
"I have beaten some small stock of Latin into her head, and a note ofGreek. She contains a savour of the classics. I hoped once . . . Butshe is a girl. The nymph of the woods is in her. Still she will bringyou her flower-cup of Hippocrene. She has that aristocracy--thenoblest. She is fair; a Beauty, some have said, who judge not by lines.Fair to me, Willoughby! She is my sky. There were applicants. In Italyshe was besought of me. She has no history. You are the first headingof the chapter. With you she will have her one tale, as it should be.'Mulier tum bene olet', you know. Most fragrant she that smells ofnaught. She goes to you from me, from me alone, from her father to herhusband. 'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis.'" He murmured onthe lines to, "'Sic virgo, dum . . .' I shall feel the parting. Shegoes to one who will have my pride in her, and more. I will add, whowill be envied. Mr. Whitford must write you a Carmen Nuptiale."
The heart of the unfortunate gentleman listening to Dr. Middleton setin for irregular leaps. His offended temper broke away from the imageof Clara, revealing her as he had seen her in the morning beside HoraceDe Craye, distressingly sweet; sweet with the breezy radiance of anEnglish soft-breathing day; sweet with sharpness of young sap. Hereyes, her lips, her fluttering dress that played happy mother acrossher bosom, giving peeps of the veiled twins; and her laughter, her slimfigure, peerless carriage, all her terrible sweetness touched his woundto the smarting quick.
Her wish to be free of him was his anguish. In his pain he thoughtsincerely. When the pain was easier he muffled himself in the idea ofher jealousy of Laetitia Dale, and deemed the wish a fiction. But shehad expressed it. That was the wound he sought to comfort; for thedouble reason, that he could love her better after punishing her, andthat to meditate on doing so masked the fear of losing her--the dreadabyss she had succeeded in forcing his nature to shudder at as a giddyedge possibly near, in spite of his arts of self-defence.
"What I shall do to-morrow evening!" he exclaimed. "I do not care tofling a bottle to Colonel De Craye and Vernon. I cannot open one formyself. To sit with the ladies will be sitting in the cold for me. Whendo you bring me back my bride, sir?"
"My dear Willoughby!" The Rev. Doctor puffed, composed himself, andsipped. "The expedition is an absurdity. I am unable to see the aim ofit. She had a headache, vapours. They are over, and she will show areturn of good sense. I have ever maintained that nonsense is not to beencouraged in girls. I can put my foot on it. My arrangements are forstaying here a further ten days, in the terms of your hospitableinvitation. And I stay."
; "I applaud your resolution, sir. Will you prove firm?"
"I am never false to my engagement, Willoughby."
"Not under pressure?"
"Under no pressure."
"Persuasion, I should have said."
"Certainly not. The weakness is in the yielding, either to persuasionor to pressure. The latter brings weight to bear on us; the formerblows at our want of it."
"You gratify me, Doctor Middleton, and relieve me."
"I cordially dislike a breach in good habits, Willoughby. But I doremember--was I wrong?--informing Clara that you appeared light-heartedin regard to a departure, or gap in a visit, that was not, I mustconfess, to my liking."
"Simply, my dear doctor, your pleasure was my pleasure; but make mypleasure yours, and you remain to crack many a bottle with yourson-in-law."
"Excellently said. You have a courtly speech, Willoughby. I can imagineyou to conduct a lovers' quarrel with a politeness to read a lesson towell-bred damsels. Aha?"
"Spare me the futility of the quarrel."
"All's well?"
"Clara," replied Sir Willoughby, in dramatic epigram, "is perfection."
"I rejoice," the Rev. Doctor responded; taught thus to understand thatthe lovers' quarrel between his daughter and his host was at an end.
He left the table a little after eleven o'clock. A short dialogueensued upon the subject of the ladies. They must have gone to bed?Why, yes; of course they must. It is good that they should go to bedearly to preserve their complexions for us. Ladies are creation'sglory, but they are anti-climax, following a wine of a century old.They are anti-climax, recoil, cross-current; morally, they arerepentance, penance; imagerially, the frozen North on the young brownbuds bursting to green. What know they of a critic in the palate, and aframe all revelry! And mark you, revelry in sobriety, containment inexultation; classic revelry. Can they, dear though they be to us, lightup candelabras in the brain, to illuminate all history and solve thesecret of the destiny of man? They cannot; they cannot sympathize withthem that can. So therefore this division is between us; yet are we notturbaned Orientals, nor are they inmates of the harem. We are notMoslem. Be assured of it in the contemplation of the table's decanter.
Dr Middleton said: "Then I go straight to bed."
"I will conduct you to your door, sir," said his host.
The piano was heard. Dr. Middleton laid his hand on the banisters, andremarked: "The ladies must have gone to bed?"
Vernon came out of the library and was hailed, "Fellow-student!"
He waved a good-night to the Doctor, and said to Willoughby: "Theladies are in the drawing-room."
"I am on my way upstairs," was the reply.
"Solitude and sleep, after such a wine as that; and forefend us humansociety!" the Doctor shouted. "But, Willoughby!"
"Sir."
"One to-morrow."
"You dispose of the cellar, sir."
"I am fitter to drive the horses of the sun. I would rigidly counsel,one, and no more. We have made a breach in the fiftieth dozen. Dailyone will preserve us from having to name the fortieth quite sounseasonably. The couple of bottles per diem prognosticatesdisintegration, with its accompanying recklessness. Constitutionally,let me add, I bear three. I speak for posterity."
During Dr. Middleton's allocution the ladies issued from thedrawing-room, Clara foremost, for she had heard her father's voice, anddesired to ask him this in reference to their departure: "Papa, willyou tell me the hour to-morrow?"
She ran up the stairs to kiss him, saying again: "When will you beready to-morrow morning?"
Dr Middleton announced a stoutly deliberative mind in the bugle-notesof a repeated ahem. He bethought him of replying in his doctorialtongue. Clara's eager face admonished him to brevity: it began to lookstarved. Intruding on his vision of the houris couched in the innercellar to be the reward of valiant men, it annoyed him. His browsjoined. He said: "I shall not be ready to-morrow morning."
"In the afternoon?"
"Nor in the afternoon."
"When?"
"My dear, I am ready for bed at this moment, and know of no otherreadiness. Ladies," he bowed to the group in the hall below him, "mayfair dreams pay court to you this night!"
Sir Willoughby had hastily descended and shaken the hands of theladies, directed Horace De Craye to the laboratory for a smoking-room,and returned to Dr. Middleton. Vexed by the scene, uncertain of histemper if he stayed with Clara, for whom he had arranged that herdisappointment should take place on the morrow, in his absence, hesaid: "Good-night, good-night," to her, with due fervour, bending overher flaccid finger-tips; then offered his arm to the Rev. Doctor.
"Ay, son Willoughby, in friendliness, if you will, though I am a man tobear my load," the father of the stupefied girl addressed him."Candles, I believe, are on the first landing. Good-night, my love.Clara!"
"Papa!"
"Good-night."
"Oh!" she lifted her breast with the interjection, standing in shame ofthe curtained conspiracy and herself, "good night".
Her father wound up the stairs. She stepped down.
"There was an understanding that papa and I should go to Londonto-morrow early," she said, unconcernedly, to the ladies, and her voicewas clear, but her face too legible. De Craye was heartily unhappy atthe sight.