Boyne's bank was of the order of those old and firmly fixed
establishments which have taken root with the fortunes of the
country--are honourable as England's name, solid as her prosperity, and
even as the flourishing green tree to shareholders: a granite house.
Boyne himself had been disembodied for more than a century: Burt and
Hamble were still of the flesh; but a greater than Burt or Hamble
was Blancove--the Sir William Blancove, Baronet, of city feasts and
charities, who, besides being a wealthy merchant, possessed of a very
acute head for banking, was a scholarly gentleman, worthy of riches.
His brother was Squire Blancove, of Wrexby; but between these two close
relatives there existed no stronger feeling than what was expressed by
open contempt of a mind dedicated to business on the one side, and quiet
contempt of a life devoted to indolence on the other. Nevertheless,
Squire Blancove, though everybody knew how deeply he despised his junior
for his city-gained title and commercial occupation, sent him his son
Algernon, to get the youth into sound discipline, if possible. This
was after the elastic Algernon had, on the paternal intimation of his
colonel, relinquished his cornetcy and military service. Sir William
received the hopeful young fellow much in the spirit with which he
listened to the tales of his brother's comments on his own line of
conduct; that is to say, as homage to his intellectual superiority. Mr.
Algernon was installed in the Bank, and sat down for a long career of
groaning at the desk, with more complacency than was expected from him.
Sir William forwarded excellent accounts to his brother of the behaviour
of the heir to his estates. It was his way of rebuking the squire, and
in return for it the squire, though somewhat comforted, despised
his clerkly son, and lived to learn how very unjustly he did so.
Adolescents, who have the taste for running into excesses, enjoy the
breath of change as another form of excitement: change is a sort of
debauch to them. They will delight infinitely in a simple country round
of existence, in propriety and church-going, in the sensation of feeling
innocent. There is little that does not enrapture them, if you tie them
down to nothing, and let them try all. Sir William was deceived by his
nephew. He would have taken him into his town-house; but his own son,
Edward, who was studying for the Law, had chambers in the Temple,
and Algernon, receiving an invitation from Edward, declared a gentle
preference for the abode of his cousin. His allowance from his father
was properly contracted to keep him from excesses, as the genius of his
senior devised, and Sir William saw no objection to the scheme, and made
none. The two dined with him about twice in the month.
Edward Blancove was three-and-twenty years old, a student by fits, and
a young man given to be moody. He had powers of gaiety far eclipsing
Algernon's, but he was not the same easy tripping sinner and flippant
soul. He was in that yeasty condition of his years when action and
reflection alternately usurp the mind; remorse succeeded dissipation,
and indulgences offered the soporific to remorse. The friends of the
two imagined that Algernon was, or would become, his evil genius. In
reality, Edward was the perilous companion. He was composed of better
stuff. Algernon was but an airy animal nature, the soul within him being
an effervescence lightly let loose. Edward had a fatally serious spirit,
and one of some strength. What he gave himself up to, he could believe
to be correct, in the teeth of an opposing world, until he tired of
it, when he sided as heartily with the world against his quondam self.
Algernon might mislead, or point his cousin's passions for a time; yet
if they continued their courses together, there was danger that Algernon
would degenerate into a reckless subordinate--a minister, a valet, and
be tempted unknowingly to do things in earnest, which is nothing less
than perdition to this sort of creature.
But the key to young men is the ambition, or, in the place of it,
the romantic sentiment nourished by them. Edward aspired to become
Attorney-General of these realms, not a judge, you observe; for a judge
is to the imagination of youthful minds a stationary being, venerable,
but not active; whereas, your Attorney-General is always in the fray,
and fights commonly on the winning side,--a point that renders his
position attractive to sagacious youth. Algernon had other views.
Civilization had tried him, and found him wanting; so he condemned it.
Moreover, sitting now all day at a desk, he was civilization's drudge.
No wonder, then, that his dream was of prairies, and primeval forests,
and Australian wilds. He believed in his heart that he would be a man
new made over there, and always looked forward to savage life as to a
bath that would cleanse him, so that it did not much matter his being
unclean for the present.
The young men had a fair cousin by marriage, a Mrs. Margaret Lovell, a
widow. At seventeen she had gone with her husband to India, where Harry
Lovell encountered the sword of a Sikh Sirdar, and tried the last of his
much-vaunted swordsmanship, which, with his skill at the pistols, had
served him better in two antecedent duels, for the vindication of his
lovely and terrible young wife. He perished on the field, critically
admiring the stroke to which he owed his death. A week after Harry's
burial his widow was asked in marriage by his colonel. Captains, and a
giddy subaltern likewise, disputed claims to possess her. She, however,
decided to arrest further bloodshed by quitting the regiment. She always
said that she left India to save her complexion; “and people don't know
how very candid I am,” she added, for the colonel above-mentioned was
wealthy,--a man expectant of a title, and a good match, and she
was laughed at when she thus assigned trivial reasons for momentous
resolutions. It is a luxury to be candid; and perfect candour can do
more for us than a dark disguise.
Mrs. Lovell's complexion was worth saving from the ravages of an Indian
climate, and the persecution of claimants to her hand. She was golden
and white, like an autumnal birch-tree--yellow hair, with warm-toned
streaks in it, shading a fabulously fair skin. Then, too, she was tall,
of a nervous build, supple and proud in motion, a brilliant horsewoman,
and a most distinguished sitter in an easy drawing-room chair, which
is, let me impress upon you, no mean quality. After riding out for hours
with a sweet comrade, who has thrown the mantle of dignity half-way off
her shoulders, it is perplexing, and mixed strangely of humiliation and
ecstasy, to come upon her clouded majesty where she reclines as upon
rose-hued clouds, in a mystic circle of restriction (she who laughed at
your jokes, and capped them, two hours ago) a queen.
Between Margaret Lovell and Edward there was a misunderstanding, of
which no one knew the nature, for they spoke in public very respectfully
one of the other. It had been supposed that they were lovers once; but
when lovers quarrel, they snarl, they bite, they worry; their eyes
are indeed unveiled, and their mouths unmuzzled. Now Margaret said of
Edward: “He is sure to rise; he has such good principles.” Edward said
of Margaret: “She only wants a husband who will keep her well in hand.”
These sentences scarcely carried actual compliments when you knew the
speakers; but outraged lovers cannot talk in that style after they have
broken apart. It is possible that Margaret and Edward conveyed to one
another as sharp a sting as envenomed lovers attempt. Gossip had once
betrothed them, but was now at fault. The lady had a small jointure, and
lived partly with her uncle, Lord Elling, partly with Squire Blancove,
her aunt's husband, and a little by herself, which was when she counted
money in her purse, and chose to assert her independence. She had a name
in the world. There is a fate attached to some women, from Helen of Troy
downward, that blood is to be shed for them. One duel on behalf of a
woman is a reputation to her for life; two are notoriety. If she is very
young, can they be attributable to her? We charge them naturally to her
overpowering beauty. It happened that Mrs. Lovell was beautiful. Under
the light of the two duels her beauty shone as from an illumination of
black flame. Boys adored Mrs. Lovell. These are moths. But more, the
birds of air, nay, grave owls (who stand in this metaphor for whiskered
experience) thronged, dashing at the apparition of terrible splendour.
Was it her fault that she had a name in the world?
Mrs. Margaret Lovell's portrait hung in Edward's room. It was a
photograph exquisitely coloured, and was on the left of a dark Judith,
dark with a serenity of sternness. On the right hung another coloured
photograph of a young lady, also fair; and it was a point of taste to
choose between them. Do you like the hollowed lily's cheeks, or the
plump rose's? Do you like a thinnish fall of golden hair, or an abundant
cluster of nut-brown? Do you like your blonde with limpid blue eyes, or
prefer an endowment of sunny hazel? Finally, are you taken by an air of
artistic innocence winding serpentine about your heart's fibres; or
is blushing simplicity sweeter to you? Mrs. Lovell's eyebrows were the
faintly-marked trace of a perfect arch. The other young person's were
thickish, more level; a full brown colour. She looked as if she had not
yet attained to any sense of her being a professed beauty: but the
fair widow was clearly bent upon winning you, and had a shy, playful
intentness of aspect. Her pure white skin was flat on the bone; the
lips came forward in a soft curve, and, if they were not artistically
stained, were triumphantly fresh. Here, in any case, she beat her rival,
whose mouth had the plebeian beauty's fault of being too straight in a
line, and was not trained, apparently, to tricks of dainty pouting.
It was morning, and the cousins having sponged in pleasant cold water,
arranged themselves for exercise, and came out simultaneously into the
sitting-room, slippered, and in flannels. They nodded and went through
certain curt greetings, and then Algernon stepped to a cupboard and
tossed out the leather gloves. The room was large and they had a
tolerable space for the work, when the breakfast-table had been drawn
a little on one side. You saw at a glance which was the likelier man of
the two, when they stood opposed. Algernon's rounded features, full lips
and falling chin, were not a match, though he was quick on his feet, for
the wary, prompt eyes, set mouth, and hardness of Edward. Both had stout
muscle, but in Edward there was vigour of brain as well, which seemed
to knit and inform his shape without which, in fact, a man is as a ship
under no command. Both looked their best; as, when sparring, men always
do look.
“Now, then,” said Algernon, squaring up to his cousin in good style,
“now's the time for that unwholesome old boy underneath to commence
groaning.”
“Step as light as you can,” replied Edward, meeting him with the pretty
motion of the gloves.
“I'll step as light as a French dancing-master. Let's go to Paris and
learn the savate, Ned. It must be a new sensation to stand on one leg
and knock a fellow's hat off with the other.”
“Stick to your fists.”
“Hang it! I wish your fists wouldn't stick to me so.”
“You talk too much.”
“Gad, I don't get puffy half so soon as you.”
“I want country air.”
“You said you were going out, old Ned.”
“I changed my mind.”
Saying which, Edward shut his teeth, and talked for two or three hot
minutes wholly with his fists. The room shook under Algernon's boundings
to right and left till a blow sent him back on the breakfast-table,
shattered a cup on the floor, and bespattered his close flannel shirt
with a funereal coffee-tinge.
“What the deuce I said to bring that on myself, I don't know,” Algernon
remarked as he rose. “Anything connected with the country disagreeable
to you, Ned? Come! a bout of quiet scientific boxing, and none of these
beastly rushes, as if you were singling me out of a crowd of magsmen.
Did you go to church yesterday, Ned? Confound it, you're on me again,
are you?”
And Algernon went on spouting unintelligible talk under a torrent of
blows. He lost his temper and fought out at them; but as it speedily
became evident to him that the loss laid him open to punishment, he
prudently recovered it, sparred, danced about, and contrived to
shake the room in a manner that caused Edward to drop his arms, in
consideration for the distracted occupant of the chambers below.
Algernon accepted the truce, and made it peace by casting off one glove.
“There! that's a pleasant morning breather,” he said, and sauntered to
the window to look at the river. “I always feel the want of it when
I don't get it. I could take a thrashing rather than not on with the
gloves to begin the day. Look at those boats! Fancy my having to go down
to the city. It makes me feel like my blood circulating the wrong way.
My father'll suffer some day, for keeping me at this low ebb of cash, by
jingo!”
He uttered this with a prophetic fierceness.
“I cannot even scrape together enough for entrance money to a Club.
It's sickening! I wonder whether I shall ever get used to banking work?
There's an old clerk in our office who says he should feel ill if he
missed a day. And the old porter beats him--bangs him to fits. I believe
he'd die off if he didn't see the house open to the minute. They say
that old boy's got a pretty niece; but he don't bring her to the office
now. Reward of merit!--Mr. Anthony Hackbut is going to receive ten
pounds a year extra. That's for his honesty. I wonder whether I could
earn a reputation for the sake of a prospect of ten extra pounds to my
salary. I've got a salary! hurrah! But if they keep me to my hundred
and fifty per annum, don't let them trust me every day with the bags,
as they do that old fellow. Some of the men say he's good to lend fifty
pounds at a pinch.--Are the chops coming, Ned?”
“The chops are coming,” said Edward, who had thrown on a boating-coat
and plunged into a book, and spoke echoing.
“Here's little Peggy Lovell.” Algernon faced this portrait. “It don't do
her justice. She's got more life, more change in her, more fire. She's
starting for town, I hear.”
“She is starting for town,” said Edward.
“How do you know that?” Algernon swung about to ask.
Edward looked round to him. “By the fact of your not having fished for a
holiday this week. How did you leave her yesterday, Algy? Quite well, I
hope.”
The ingenuous face of the young gentleman crimsoned.
“Oh, she was well,” he said. “Ha! I see there can be some attraction in
your dark women.”
“You mean that Judith? Yes, she's a good diversion.” Edward gave a
two-edged response. “What train did you come up by last night?”
“The last from Wrexby. That reminds me: I saw a young Judith just as
I got out. She wanted a cab. I called it for her. She belongs to old
Hackbut of the Bank--the old porter, you know. If it wasn't that there's
always something about dark women which makes me think they're going to
have a moustache, I should take to that girl's face.”
Edward launched forth an invective against fair women.
“What have they done to you-what have they done?” said Algernon.
“My good fellow, they're nothing but colour. They've no conscience. If
they swear a thing to you one moment, they break it the next. They
can't help doing it. You don't ask a gilt weathercock to keep faith with
anything but the wind, do you? It's an ass that trusts a fair woman at
all, or has anything to do with the confounded set. Cleopatra was fair;
so was Delilah; so is the Devil's wife. Reach me that book of Reports.”
“By jingo!” cried Algernon, “my stomach reports that if provision
doesn't soon approach----why don't you keep a French cook here, Ned?
Let's give up the women, and take to a French cook.”
Edward yawned horribly. “All in good time. It's what we come to. It's
philosophy--your French cook! I wish I had it, or him. I'm afraid a
fellow can't anticipate his years--not so lucky!”
“By Jove! we shall have to be philosophers before we breakfast!”
Algernon exclaimed. “It's nine. I've to be tied to the stake at ten,
chained and muzzled--a leetle-a dawg! I wish I hadn't had to leave
the service. It was a vile conspiracy against me there, Ned. Hang all
tradesmen! I sit on a stool, and add up figures. I work harder than a
nigger in the office. That's my life: but I must feed. It's no use going
to the office in a rage.”
“Will you try on the gloves again?” was Edward's mild suggestion.
Algernon thanked him, and replied that he knew him. Edward hit hard when
he was empty.
They now affected patience, as far as silence went to make up an element
of that sublime quality. The chops arriving, they disdained the mask.
Algernon fired his glove just over the waiter's head, and Edward put
the ease to the man's conscience; after which they sat and ate, talking
little. The difference between them was, that Edward knew the state of
Algernon's mind and what was working within it, while the latter stared
at a blank wall as regarded Edward's.
“Going out after breakfast, Ned?” said Algernon. “We'll walk to the city
together, if you like.”
Edward fixed one of his intent looks upon his cousin. “You're not going
to the city to-day?”
“The deuce, I'm not!”
“You're going to dance attendance on Mrs. Lovell, whom it's your
pleasure to call Peggy, when you're some leagues out of her hearing.”
Algernon failed to command his countenance. He glanced at one of the
portraits, and said, “Who is that girl up there? Tell us her name.
Talking of Mrs. Lovell, has she ever seen it?”
“If you'll put on your coat, my dear Algy, I will talk to you about Mrs.
Lovell.” Edward kept his penetrative eyes on Algernon. “Listen to me:
you'll get into a mess there.”
“If I must listen, Ned, I'll listen in my shirt-sleeves, with all
respect to the lady.”
“Very well. The shirt-sleeves help the air of bravado. Now, you know
that I've what they call 'knelt at her feet.' She's handsome. Don't cry
out. She's dashing, and as near being a devil as any woman I ever met.
Do you know why we broke? I'll tell you. Plainly, because I refused to
believe that one of her men had insulted her. You understand what that
means. I declined to be a chief party in a scandal.”
“Declined to fight the fellow?” interposed Algernon. “More shame to
you!”
“I think you're a year younger than I am, Algy. You have the privilege
of speaking with that year's simplicity. Mrs. Lovell will play you as
she played me. I acknowledge her power, and I keep out of her way. I
don't bet; I don't care to waltz; I can't keep horses; so I don't lose
much by the privation to which I subject myself.”
“I bet, I waltz, and I ride. So,” said Algernon, “I should lose
tremendously.”
“You will lose, mark my words.”
“Is the lecture of my year's senior concluded?” said Algernon.
“Yes; I've done,” Edward answered.
“Then I'll put on my coat, Ned, and I'll smoke in it. That'll give you
assurance I'm not going near Mrs. Lovell, if anything will.”
“That gives me assurance that Mrs. Lovell tolerates in you what she
detests,” said Edward, relentless in his insight; “and, consequently,
gives me assurance that she finds you of particular service to her at
present.”
Algernon had a lighted match in his hand. He flung it into the fire.
“I'm hanged if I don't think you have the confounded vanity to suppose
she sets me as a spy upon you!”
A smile ran along Edward's lips. “I don't think you'd know it, if she
did.”
“Oh, you're ten years older; you're twenty,” bawled Algernon, in an
extremity of disgust. “Don't I know what game you're following up? Isn't
it clear as day you've got another woman in your eye?”
“It's as clear as day, my good Algy, that you see a portrait hanging in
my chambers, and you have heard Mrs. Lovell's opinion of the fact. So
much is perfectly clear. There's my hand. I don't blame you. She's a
clever woman, and like many of the sort, shrewd at guessing the worst.
Come, take my hand. I tell you, I don't blame you. I've been little
dog to her myself, and fetched and carried, and wagged my tail. It's
charming while it lasts. Will you shake it?”
“Your tail, man?” Algernon roared in pretended amazement.
Edward eased him back to friendliness by laughing. “No; my hand.”
They shook hands.
“All right,” said Algernon. “You mean well. It's very well for you to
preach virtue to a poor devil; you've got loose, or you're regularly in
love.”
“Virtue! by heaven!” Edward cried; “I wish I were entitled to preach it
to any man on earth.”
His face flushed. “There, good-bye, old fellow,” he added.
“Go to the city. I'll dine with you to-night, if you like; come and dine
with me at my Club. I shall be disengaged.”
Algernon mumbled a flexible assent to an appointment at Edward's Club,
dressed himself with care, borrowed a sovereign, for which he nodded his
acceptance, and left him.
Edward set his brain upon a book of law.
It may have been two hours after he had sat thus in his Cistercian
stillness, when a letter was delivered to him by one of the Inn porters.
Edward read the superscription, and asked the porter who it was that
brought it. Two young ladies, the porter said.
These were the contents:--
“I am not sure that you will ever forgive me. I cannot forgive myself
when I think of that one word I was obliged to speak to you in the cold
street, and nothing to explain why, and how much I love, you. Oh! how
I love you! I cry while I write. I cannot help it. I was a sop of tears
all night long, and oh! if you had seen my face in the morning. I am
thankful you did not. Mother's Bible brought me home. It must have been
guidance, for in my bed there lay my sister, and I could not leave her,
I love her so. I could not have got down stairs again after seeing her
there; and I had to say that cold word and shut the window on you. May I
call you Edward still? Oh, dear Edward, do make allowance for me. Write
kindly to me. Say you forgive me. I feel like a ghost to-day. My life
seems quite behind me somewhere, and I hardly feel anything I touch.
I declare to you, dearest one, I had no idea my sister was here. I was
surprised when I heard her name mentioned by my landlady, and looked on
the bed; suddenly my strength was gone, and it changed all that I was
thinking. I never knew before that women were so weak, but now I see
they are, and I only know I am at my Edward's mercy, and am stupid! Oh,
so wretched and stupid. I shall not touch food till I hear from you. Oh,
if, you are angry, write so; but do write. My suspense would make you
pity me. I know I deserve your anger. It was not that I do not trust
you, Edward. My mother in heaven sees my heart and that I trust, I trust
my heart and everything I am and have to you. I would almost wish and
wait to see you to-day in the Gardens, but my crying has made me such
a streaked thing to look at. If I had rubbed my face with a
scrubbing-brush, I could not look worse, and I cannot risk your seeing
me. It would excuse you for hating me. Do you? Does he hate her? She
loves you. She would die for you, dear Edward. Oh! I feel that if I was
told to-day that I should die for you to-morrow, it would be happiness.
I am dying--yes, I am dying till I hear from you.
“Believe me,
“Your tender, loving, broken-hearted,
“Dahlia.”
There was a postscript:--
“May I still go to lessons?”
Edward finished the letter with a calmly perusing eye. He had winced
triflingly at one or two expressions contained in it; forcible, perhaps,
but not such as Mrs. Lovell smiling from the wall yonder would have
used.
“The poor child threatens to eat no dinner, if I don't write to her,” he
said; and replied in a kind and magnanimous spirit, concluding--“Go to
lessons, by all means.”
Having accomplished this, he stood up, and by hazard fell to comparing
the rival portraits; a melancholy and a comic thing to do, as you will
find if you put two painted heads side by side, and set their merits
contesting, and reflect on the contest, and to what advantages,
personal, or of the artist's, the winner owes the victory. Dahlia had
been admirably dealt with by the artist; the charm of pure ingenuousness
without rusticity was visible in her face and figure. Hanging there on
the wall, she was a match for Mrs. Lovell.