MY BANKERS' BOOK
The squire again did honour to Janet's eulogy and good management of him.
'And where,' said she, 'would you find a Radical to behave so generously,
Harry, when it touches him so?'
He accorded me his permission to select my side in politics, merely
insisting that I was never to change it, and this he requested me to
swear to, for (he called the ghost of old Sewis to witness) he abhorred a
turncoat.
'If you're to be a Whig, or a sneaking half-and-half, I can't help you
much,' he remarked. 'I can pop a young Tory in for my borough, maybe;
but I can't insult a number of independent Englishmen by asking them to
vote for the opposite crew; that's reasonable, eh? And I can't promise
you plumpers for the county neither. You can date your Address from
Riversley. You'll have your house in town. Tell me this princess of
yours is ready with her hand, and,' he threw in roughly, 'is a
respectable young woman, I'll commence building. You'll have a house fit
for a prince in town and country, both.'
Temple had produced an effect on him by informing him that 'this princess
of mine' was entitled to be considered a fit and proper person, in rank
and blood, for an alliance with the proudest royal Houses of Europe, and
my grandfather was not quite destitute of consolation in the prospect I
presented to him. He was a curious study to me, of the Tory mind, in its
attachment to solidity, fixity, certainty, its unmatched generosity
within a limit, its devotion to the family, and its family eye for the
country. An immediate introduction to Ottilia would have won him to
enjoy the idea of his grandson's marriage; but not having seen her, he
could not realize her dignity, nor even the womanliness of a 'foreign
woman.'
'Thank God for one thing,' he said: 'we shan't have that fellow
bothering--shan't have the other half of your family messing the
business. You'll have to account for him to your wife as you best can.
I 've nothing to do with him, mind that. He came to my house, stole my
daughter, crazed her wits, dragged us all . . .'
The excuse to turn away from the hearing of abuse of my father was too
good to be neglected, though it was horribly humiliating that I should
have to take advantage of it--vexatious that I should seem chargeable
with tacit lying in allowing the squire to suppose the man he hated to be
a stranger to the princess. Not feeling sure whether it might be common
prudence to delude him even passively, I thought of asking Janet for her
opinion, but refrained. A stout deceiver has his merits, but a feeble
hypocrite applying to friends to fortify him in his shifts and
tergiversations must provoke contempt. I desired that Janet might
continue to think well of me. I was beginning to drop in my own esteem,
which was the mirror of my conception of Ottilia's view of her lover.
Now, had I consulted Janet, I believe the course of my history would have
been different, for she would not then, I may imagine, have been guilty
of her fatal slip of the tongue that threw us into heavy seas when we
thought ourselves floating on canal waters. A canal barge (an image to
me of the most perfect attainable peace), suddenly, on its passage
through our long fir-woods, with their scented reeds and flowing rushes,
wild balsam and silky cotton-grass beds, sluiced out to sea and storm,
would be somewhat in my likeness soon after a single luckless observation
had passed at our Riversley breakfast-table one Sunday morning.
My aunt Dorothy and Mr. Peterborough were conversing upon the varieties
of Christian sects, and particularly such as approached nearest to
Anglicanism, together with the strange, saddening fact that the Christian
religion appeared to be more divided than, Peterborough regretted to say,
the forms of idolatry established by the Buddha, Mahomet, and other
impostors. He claimed the audacious merit for us, that we did not
discard the reason of man we admitted man's finite reason to our school
of faith, and it was found refractory. Hence our many divisions.
'The Roman Catholics admit reason?' said Janet, who had too strong a turn
for showing her keenness in little encounters with Peterborough.
'No,' said he; 'the Protestants.' And, anxious to elude her, he pressed
on to enchain my aunt Dorothy's attention. Janet plagued him meanwhile;
and I helped her. We ran him and his schoolboy, the finite refractory,
up and down, until Peterborough was glad to abandon him, and Janet said,
'Did you preach to the Germans much?' He had officiated in Prince
Ernest's private chapel: not, he added in his egregious modesty, not that
he personally wished to officiate.
'It was Harry's wish?' Janet said, smiling.
'My post of tutor,' Peterborough hastened to explain, 'was almost
entirely supernumerary. The circumstances being so, I the more readily
acquiesced in the title of private chaplain, prepared to fulfil such
duties as devolved upon me in that capacity, and acting thereon I
proffered my occasional services. Lutheranism and Anglicanism are not,
doubtless you are aware, divided on the broader bases. We are common
Protestants. The Papacy, I can assure you, finds as little favour with
one as with the other. Yes, I held forth, as you would say, from time to
time. My assumption of the title of private chaplain, it was thought,
improved the family dignity--that is, on our side.'
'Thought by Harry?' said Janet; and my aunt Dorothy said, 'You and Harry
had a consultation about it?'
'Wanted to appear as grand as they could,' quoth the squire.
Peterborough signified an assent, designed to modify the implication.
'Not beyond due bounds, I trust, sir.'
'Oh! now I understand,' Janet broke out in the falsetto notes of a
puzzle solved in the mind. 'It was his father! Harry proclaiming his
private chaplain!'
'Mr. Harry's father did first suggest--' said Peterborough, but her
quickly-altered features caused him to draw in his breath, as she had
done after one short laugh.
My grandfather turned a round side-eye on me, hard as a cock's.
Janet immediately started topics to fill Peterborough's mouth: the
weather, the walk to church, the probable preacher. 'And, grandada,'
said she to the squire, who was muttering ominously with a grim under-
jaw, 'His private chaplain!' and for this once would not hear her,
'Grandada, I shall drive you over to see papa this afternoon.' She talked
as if nothing had gone wrong. Peterborough, criminal red, attacked a
jam-pot for a diversion. 'Such sweets are rare indeed on the Continent,'
he observed to my aunt Dorothy. 'Our homemade dainties are matchless.'
'Private chaplain!' the squire growled again.
'It's you that preach this afternoon,' Janet said to Peterborough. 'Do
you give us an extempore sermon?'
'You remind me, Miss Ilchester, I must look to it; I have a little
trimming to do.'
Peterborough thought he might escape, but the squire arrested him.
'You'll give me five minutes before you're out of the house, please.
D' ye smoke on Sundays?'
'Not on Sundays, sir,' said Peterborough, openly and cordially, as to
signify that they were of one mind regarding the perniciousness of Sunday
smoking.
'See you don't set fire to my ricks with your foreign chaplain's tricks.
I spied you puffing behind one t' other day. There,' the squire
dispersed Peterborough's unnecessary air of abstruse recollection, 'don't
look as though you were trying to hit on a pin's head in a bushel of
oats. Don't set my ricks on fire--that 's all.'
'Mr. Peterborough,' my aunt Dorothy interposed her voice to soften this
rough treatment of him with the offer of some hot-house flowers for his
sitting-room.
' Oh, I thank you!' I heard the garlanded victim lowing as I left him to
the squire's mercy.
Janet followed me out. 'It was my fault, Harry. You won't blame him, I
know. But will he fib? I don't think he's capable of it, and I'm sure
he can't run and double. Grandada will have him fast before a minute is
over.'
I told her to lose no time in going and extracting the squire's promise
that Peterborough should have his living,--so much it seemed possible to
save.
She flew back, and in Peterborough's momentary absence, did her work.
Nothing could save the unhappy gentleman from a distracting scene and
much archaic English. The squire's power of vituperation was notorious:
he could be more than a match for roadside navvies and predatory tramps
in cogency of epithet. Peterborough came to me drenched, and wailing
that he had never heard such language,--never dreamed of it. And to find
himself the object of it!--and, worse, to be unable to conscientiously
defend himself! The pain to him was in the conscience,--which is, like
the spleen, a function whose uses are only to be understood in its
derangement. He had eased his conscience to every question right out,
and he rejoiced to me at the immense relief it gave him. Conscientiously,
he could not deny that he knew the squire's objection to my being in my
father's society; and he had connived at it 'for reasons, my dearest
Harry, I can justify to God and man, but not--I had to confess as much--
not, I grieve to say, to your grandfather. I attempted to do justice to
the amiable qualities of the absent. In a moment I was assailed with
epithets that . . . and not a word is to be got in when he is so
violent. One has to make up one's mind to act Andromeda, and let him be
the sea-monster, as somebody has said; I forget the exact origin of the
remark.'
The squire certainly had a whole ocean at command. I strung myself to
pass through the same performance. To my astonishment I went
unchallenged. Janet vehemently asserted that she had mollified the angry
old man, who, however, was dark of visage, though his tongue kept
silence. He was gruff over his wine-glass the blandishments of his
favourite did not brighten him. From his point of view he had been
treated vilely, and he was apparently inclined to nurse his rancour and
keep my fortunes trembling in the balance. Under these circumstances it
was impossible for me to despatch a letter to Ottilia, though I found
that I could write one now, and I sat in my room writing all day,--most
eloquent stuff it was. The shadow of misfortune restored the sense of my
heroical situation, which my father had extinguished, and this unlocked
the powers of speech. I wrote so admirably that my wretchedness could
enjoy the fine millinery I decorated it in. Then to tear the noble
composition to pieces was a bitter gratification. Ottilia's station
repelled and attracted me mysteriously. I could not separate her from
it, nor keep my love of her from the contentions into which it threw me.
In vain I raved, 'What is rank?' There was a magnet in it that could at
least set me quivering and twisting, behaving like a man spellbound, as
madly as any hero of the ballads under a wizard's charm.
At last the squire relieved us. He fixed that side-cast cock's eye of
his on me, and said, 'Where 's your bankers' book, sir?'
I presumed that it was with my bankers, but did not suggest the
possibility that my father might have it in his custody; for he had a
cheque-book of his own, and regulated our accounts. Why not? I thought,
and flushed somewhat defiantly. The money was mine.
'Any objection to my seeing that book?' said the squire.
'None whatever, sir.'
He nodded. I made it a point of honour to write for the book to be sent
down to me immediately.
The book arrived, and the squire handed it to me to break the cover,
insisting, 'You're sure you wouldn't rather not have me look at it?'
'Quite,' I replied. The question of money was to me perfectly
unimportant. I did not see a glimpse of danger in his perusing the list
of my expenses.
''Cause I give you my word I know nothing about it now,' he said.
I complimented him on his frank method of dealing, and told him to look
at the book if he pleased, but with prudence sufficiently awake to check
the declaration that I had not once looked at it myself.
He opened it. We had just assembled in the hall, where breakfast was
laid during Winter, before a huge wood fire. Janet had her teeth on her
lower lip, watching the old man's face. I did not condescend to be
curious; but when I turned my head to him he was puffing through thin
lips, and then his mouth crumpled in a knob. He had seen sights.
'By George, I must have breakfast 'fore I go into this!' he exclaimed,
and stared as if he had come out of an oven.
Dorothy Beltham reminded him that Prayers had not been read.
'Prayers!' He was about to objurgate, but affirmatived her motion to ring
the bell for the servants, and addressed Peterborough: 'You read 'em
abroad every morning?'
Peterborough's conscience started off on its inevitable jog-trot at a
touch of the whip. 'A-yes; that is--oh, it was my office.' He had to
recollect with exactitude:
'I should specify exceptions; there were intervals . . .'
'Please, open your Bible,' the squire cut him short; 'I don't want a
damned fine edge on everything.'
Partly for an admonition to him, or in pure nervousness, Peterborough
blew his nose monstrously: an unlucky note; nothing went well after it.
'A slight cold,' he murmured and resumed the note, and threw himself
maniacally into it. The unexpected figure of Captain Bulsted on tiptoe,
wearing the ceremonial depressed air of intruders on these occasions,
distracted our attention for a moment.
'Fresh from ship, William?' the squire called out.
The captain ejaculated a big word, to judge of it from the aperture, but
it was mute as his footing on the carpet, and he sat and gazed devoutly
toward Peterborough, who had waited to see him take his seat, and must
now, in his hurry to perform his duty, sweep the peccant little redbound
book to the floor. 'Here, I'll have that,' said the squire. 'Allow me,
sir,' said Peterborough; and they sprang into a collision.
'Would you jump out of your pulpit to pick up an old woman's umbrella?'
the squire asked him in wrath, and muttered of requiring none of his
clerical legerdemain with books of business. Tears were in
Peterborough's eyes. My aunt Dorothy's eyes dwelt kindly on him to
encourage him, but the man's irritable nose was again his enemy.
Captain Bulsted chanced to say in the musical voice of inquiry: ' Prayers
are not yet over, are they?'
'No, nor never will be with a parson blowing his horn at this rate,' the
squire rejoined. 'And mind you,' he said to Peterborough, after
dismissing the servants, to whom my aunt Dorothy read the morning lessons
apart, 'I'd not have had this happen, sir, for money in lumps. I've
always known I should hang the day when my house wasn't blessed in the
morning by prayer. So did my father, and his before him. Fiddle! sir,
you can't expect young people to wear decent faces when the parson's
hopping over the floor like a flea, and trumpeting as if the organ-pipe
wouldn't have the sermon at any price. You tried to juggle me out of
this book here.'
'On my!--indeed, sir, no!' Peterborough proclaimed his innocence, and it
was unlikely that the squire should have suspected him.
Captain Bulsted had come to us for his wife, whom he had not found at
home on his arrival last midnight.
'God bless my soul,' said the squire, 'you don't mean to tell me she's
gone off, William?'
'Oh! dear, no, sir,' said the captain, 'she's only cruising.'
The squire recommended a draught of old ale. The captain accepted it.
His comportment was cheerful in a sober fashion, notwithstanding the
transparent perturbation of his spirit. He answered my aunt Dorothy's
questions relating to Julia simply and manfully, as became a gallant
seaman, cordially excusing his wife for not having been at home to
welcome him, with the singular plea, based on his knowledge of the sex,
that the nearer she knew him to be the less able was she to sit on her
chair waiting like Patience. He drank his ale from the hands of
Sillabin, our impassive new butler, who had succeeded Sewis, the squire
told him, like a Whig Ministry the Tory; proof that things were not
improving.
'I thought, sir, things were getting better,' said the captain.
'The damnedest mistake ever made, William. How about the Fall of Man,
then? eh? You talk like a heathen Radical. It's Scripture says we're
going from better to worse, and that's Tory doctrine. And stick to the
good as long as you can! Why, William, you were a jolly bachelor once.'
'Sir, and ma'am,' the captain bowed to Dorothy Beltham, 'I have, thanks
to you, never known happiness but in marriage, and all I want is my
wife.'
The squire fretted for Janet to depart. 'I 'm going, grandada,' she
said. 'You'll oblige me by not attending to any matter of business
to-day. Give me that book of Harry's to keep for you.'
'How d' ye mean, my dear?'
'It 's bad work done on a Sunday, you know.'
'So it is. I'll lock up the book.'
'I have your word for that, grandada,' said Janet.
The ladies retired, taking Peterborough with them.
'Good-bye to the frocks! and now, William, out with your troubles,' said
the squire.
The captain's eyes were turned to the door my aunt Dorothy had passed
through.
'You remember the old custom, sir!'
'Ay, do I, William. Sorry for you then; infernally sorry for you now,
that I am! But you've run your head into the halter.'
'I love her, sir; I love her to distraction. Let any man on earth say
she's not an angel, I flatten him dead as his lie. By the way, sir, I am
bound in duty to inform you I am speaking of my wife.'
'To be sure you are, William, and a trim schooner-yacht she is.'
'She 's off, sir; she's off!'
I thought it time to throw in a word. 'Captain Bulsted, I should hold
any man but you accountable to me for hinting such things of my friend.'
'Harry, your hand,' he cried, sparkling.
'Hum; his hand!' growled the squire. 'His hand's been pretty lively on
the Continent, William. Here, look at this book, William, and the bundle
o' cheques! No, I promised my girl. We'll go into it to-morrow, he and
I, early. The fellow has shot away thousands and thousands--been
gallivanting among his foreign duchesses and countesses. There 's a
petticoat in that bank-book of his; and more than one, I wager. Now he's
for marrying a foreign princess--got himself in a tangle there, it
seems.'
'Mightily well done, Harry!' Captain Bulsted struck a terrific encomium
on my shoulder, groaning, 'May she be true to you, my lad!'
The squire asked him if he was going to church that morning.
'I go to my post, sir, by my fireside,' the captain replied; nor could he
be induced to leave his post vacant by the squire's promise to him of a
sermon that would pickle his temper for a whole week's wear and tear.
He regretted extremely that he could not enjoy so excellent a trial of
his patience, but he felt himself bound to go to his post and wait.
I walked over to Bulsted with him, and heard on the way that it was
Heriot who had called for her and driven her off. 'The man had been,
I supposed,' Captain Bulsted said, 'deputed by some of you to fetch her
over to Riversley. My servants mentioned his name. I thought it
adviseable not to trouble the ladies with it to-day.' He meditated.
'I hoped I should find her at the Grange in the morning, Harry. I slept
on it, rather than startle the poor lamb in the night.'
I offered him to accompany him at once to Heriot's quarters.
'What! and let my wife know I doubted her fidelity. My girl shall never
accuse me of that.'
As it turned out, Julia had been taken by Heriot on a visit to Lady Maria
Higginson, the wife of the intrusive millionaire, who particularly
desired to know her more intimately. Thoughtless Julia, accepting the
impudent invitation without scruple, had allowed herself to be driven
away without stating the place of her destination. She and Heriot were
in the Higginsons' pew at church. Hearing from Janet of her husband's
arrival, she rushed home, and there, instead of having to beg
forgiveness, was summoned to grant pardon. Captain Bulsted had drawn
largely on Squire Gregory's cellar to assist him in keeping his post.
The pair appeared before us fondling ineffably next day, neither one
of them capable of seeing that our domestic peace at the Grange was
unseated. 'We 're the two wretchedest creatures alive; haven't any of
ye to spare a bit of sympathy for us?' Julia began. 'We 're like on a
pitchfork. There's William's duty to his country, and there 's his
affection for me, and they won't go together, because Government, which
is that horrid Admiralty, fears pitching and tossing for post-captains'
wives. And William away, I 'm distracted, and the Admiralty's hair's on
end if he stops. And, 'deed, Miss Beltham, I'm not more than married to
just half a husband.'
The captain echoed her, 'Half! but happy enough for twenty whole ones,
if you'll be satisfied, my duck.'
Julia piteously entreated me, for my future wife's sake, not to take
service under Government. As for the Admiralty, she said, it had no
characteristic but the abominable one, that it hated a woman. The squire
laid two or three moderately coarse traps for the voluble frank creature,
which she evaded with surprising neatness, showing herself more awake
than one would have imagined her. Janet and I fancied she must have come
with the intention to act uxorious husband and Irish wife for the
distinct purpose of diverting the squire's wrath from me, for he greatly
delighted in the sight of merry wedded pairs. But they were as simple as
possible in their display of happiness.
It chanced that they came opportunely. My bankers' book had been the
theme all the morning, and an astonishing one to me equally with my
grandfather: Since our arrival in England, my father had drawn nine
thousand pounds. The sums expended during our absence on the Continent
reached the perplexing figures of forty-eight thousand. I knew it too
likely, besides, that all debts were not paid. Self--self--self drew for
thousands at a time; sometimes, as the squire's convulsive forefinger
indicated, for many thousands within a week. It was incomprehensible to
him until I, driven at bay by questions and insults, and perceiving that
concealment could not long be practised, made a virtue of the situation
by telling him (what he in fact must have seen) that my father possessed
a cheque-book as well as I, and likewise drew upon the account. We had
required the money; it was mine, and I had sold out Bank Stock and
Consols,--which gave very poor interest, I remarked cursorily-and had
kept the money at my bankers', to draw upon according to our necessities.
I pitied the old man while speaking. His face was livid; language died
from his lips. He asked to have little things explained to him--the two
cheque-books, for instance,--and what I thought of doing when this money
was all gone: for he supposed I did not expect the same amount to hand
every two years; unless, he added, I had given him no more than a couple
of years' lease of life when I started for my tour. 'Then the money's
gone!' he summed up; and this was the signal for redemanding
explanations. Had he not treated me fairly and frankly in handing over
my own to me on the day of my majority? Yes.
'And like a fool, you think--eh?'
'I have no such thought in my head, sir.'
'You have been keeping that fellow in his profligacy, and you 're keeping
him now. Why, you 're all but a beggar! . . . Comes to my house,
talks of his birth, carries off my daughter, makes her mad, lets her
child grow up to lay hold of her money, and then grips him fast and pecks
him, fleeces him! . . . You 're beggared--d 'ye know that? He's had
the two years of you, and sucked you dry. What were you about? What
were you doing? Did you have your head on? You shared cheque-books?
good! . . . The devil in hell never found such a fool as you! You
had your house full of your foreign bonyrobers--eh? Out with it! How
did you pass your time? Drunk and dancing?'
By such degrees my grandfather worked himself up to the pitch for his
style of eloquence. I have given a faint specimen of it. When I took
the liberty to consider that I had heard enough, he followed me out of
the library into the hall, where Janet stood. In her presence, he
charged the princess and her family with being a pack of greedy
adventurers, conspirators with 'that fellow' to plunder me; and for a
proof of it, he quoted my words, that my father's time had been spent in
superintending the opening of a coal-mine on Prince Ernest's estate.
'That fellow pretending to manage a coal-mine!' Could not a girl see it
was a shuffle to hoodwink a greenhorn? And now he remembered it was
Colonel Goodwin and his daughter who had told him of having seen 'the
fellow' engaged in playing Court-buffoon to a petty German prince, and
performing his antics, cutting capers like a clown at a fair.
'Shame!' said Janet.
'Hear her!' The squire turned to me.
But she cried: 'Oh! grandada, hear yourself! or don't, be silent. If
Harry has offended you, speak like one gentleman to another. Don't rob
me of my love for you: I haven't much besides that.'
'No, because of a scoundrel and his young idiot!'
Janet frowned in earnest, and said: 'I don't permit you to change the
meaning of the words I speak.'
He muttered a proverb of the stables. Reduced to behave temperately, he
began the whole history of my bankers' book anew--the same queries, the
same explosions and imprecations.
'Come for a walk with me, dear Harry,' said Janet.
I declined to be protected in such a manner, absurdly on my dignity; and
the refusal, together possibly with some air of contemptuous independence
in the tone of it, brought the squire to a climax. 'You won't go out and
walk with her? You shall go down on your knees to her and beg her to
give you her arm for a walk. By God! you shall, now, here, on the spot,
or off you go to your German princess, with your butler's legacy, and
nothing more from me but good-bye and the door bolted. Now, down with
you!'
He expected me to descend.
'And if he did, he would never have my arm.' Janet's eyes glittered hard
on the squire.
'Before that rascal dies, my dear, he shall whine like a beggar out in
the cold for the tips of your fingers!'
'Not if he asks me first,' said Janet.
This set him off again. He realized her prospective generosity, and
contrasted it with my actual obtuseness. Janet changed her tactics. She
assumed indifference. But she wanted experience, and a Heriot to help
her in playing a part. She did it badly--overdid it; so that the old
man, now imagining both of us to be against his scheme for uniting us,
counted my iniquity as twofold. Her phrase, 'Harry and I will always be
friends,' roused the loudest of his denunciations upon me, as though
there never had been question of the princess, so inveterate was his
mind's grasp of its original designs. Friends! Would our being friends
give him heirs by law to his estate and name? And so forth. My aunt
Dorothy came to moderate his invectives. In her room the heavily-
burdened little book of figures was produced, and the items read aloud;
and her task was to hear them without astonishment, but with a business-
like desire to comprehend them accurately, a method that softened the
squire's outbursts by degrees. She threw out hasty running commentaries:
'Yes, that was for a yacht'; and 'They were living at the Court of a
prince'; such and such a sum was 'large, but Harry knew his grandfather
did not wish him to make a poor appearance.'
'Why, do you mean to swear to me, on your oath, Dorothy Beltham,' said
the squire, amazed at the small amazement he created 'you think these two
fellows have been spending within the right margin? What'll be women's
ideas next!'
'No,' she answered demurely. 'I think Harry has been extravagant, and
has had his lesson. And surely it is better now than later? But you
are, not making allowances for his situation as the betrothed of a
princess.'
'That 's what turns your head,' said he; and she allowed him to have the
notion, and sneer at herself and her sex.
'How about this money drawn since he came home?' the squire persisted.
My aunt Dorothy reddened. He struck his finger on the line marking the
sum, repeating his demand; and at this moment Captain Bulsted and Julia
arrived. The ladies manoeuvred so that the captain and the squire were
left alone together. Some time afterward the captain sent out word that
he begged his wife's permission to stay to dinner at the Grange, and
requested me to favour him by conducting his wife to Bulsted: proof, as
Julia said, that the two were engaged in a pretty hot tussle. She was
sure her William would not be the one to be beaten.
I led her away, rather depressed by the automaton performance assigned to
me; from which condition I awoke with a touch of horror to find myself
paying her very warm compliments; for she had been coquettish and
charming to cheer me, and her voice was sweet. We reached a point in our
conversation I know not where, but I must have spoken with some warmth.
'Then guess,' said she, 'what William is suffering for your sake now,
Harry'; that is, 'suffering in remaining away from me on your account';
and thus, in an instant, with a skill so intuitive as to be almost
unconscious, she twirled me round to a right sense of my position, and
set me reflecting, whether a love that clad me in such imperfect armour
as to leave me penetrable to these feminine graces--a plump figure,
swinging skirts, dewy dark eyelids, laughing red lips--could indeed be
absolute love. And if it was not love of the immortal kind, what was I?
I looked back on the thought like the ship on its furrow through the
waters, and saw every mortal perplexity, and death under. My love of
Ottilia delusion? Then life was delusion! I contemplated Julia in
alarm, somewhat in the light fair witches were looked on when the faggots
were piled for them. The sense of her unholy attractions abased and
mortified me: and it set me thinking on the strangeness of my disregard
of Mdlle. Jenny Chassediane when in Germany, who was far sprightlier,
if not prettier, and, as I remembered, had done me the favour to make
discreet play with her eyelids in our encounters, and long eyes in
passing. I caught myself regretting my coldness of that period; for
which regrets I could have swung the scourge upon my miserable flesh.
Ottilia's features seemed dying out of my mind. 'Poor darling Harry!'
Julia sighed. 'And d' ye know, the sight of a young man far gone in love
gives me the trembles?' I rallied her concerning the ladder scene in my
old schooldays, and the tender things she had uttered to Heriot. She
answered, 'Oh, I think I got them out of poets and chapters about
lovemaking, or I felt it very much. And that's what I miss in William;
he can't talk soft nice nonsense. I believe him, he would if he could,
but he 's like a lion of the desert--it 's a roar!'
I rejoiced when we heard the roar. Captain Bulsted returned to take
command of his ship, not sooner than I wanted him, and told us of a
fierce tussle with the squire. He had stuck to him all day, and up to 11
P.M. 'By George! Harry, he had to make humble excuses to dodge out of
eyeshot a minute. Conquered him over the fourth bottle! And now all's
right. He'll see your dad. "In a barn?" says the squire. "Here 's to
your better health, sir," I bowed to him; "gentlemen don't meet in barns;
none but mice and traps make appointments there." To shorten my story,
my lad, I have arranged for the squire and your excellent progenitor to
meet at Bulsted: we may end by bringing them over a bottle of old Greg's
best. "See the boy's father," I kept on insisting. The point is, that
this confounded book must be off your shoulders, my lad. A dirty dog may
wash in a duck-pond. You see, Harry, the dear old squire may set up your
account twenty times over, but he has a right to know how you twirl the
coin. He says you don't supply the information. I suggest to him that
your father can, and will. So we get them into a room together. I'll be
answerable for the rest. And now top your boom, and to bed here: off in
the morning and tug the big vessel into port here! And, Harry, three
cheers, and another bottle to crown the victory, if you 're the man for
it?'
Julia interposed a decided negative to the proposal; an ordinarily
unlucky thing to do with bibulous husbands, and the captain looked
uncomfortably checked; but when he seemed to be collecting to assert
himself, the humour of her remark, 'Now, no bravado, William,' disarmed
him.
'Bravado, my sweet chuck?'
'Won't another bottle be like flashing your sword after you've won the
day?' said she.
He slung his arm round her, and sent a tremendous whisper into my ear--
'A perfect angel!'
I started for London next day, more troubled aesthetically regarding the
effect produced on me by this order of perfect angels than practically
anxious about material affairs, though it is true that when I came into
proximity with my father, the thought of his all but purely mechanical
power of making money spin, fly, and vanish, like sparks from a fire-
engine, awakened a serious disposition in me to bring our monetary
partnership to some definite settlement. He was living in splendour,
next door but one to the grand establishment he had driven me to from
Dipwell in the old days, with Mrs. Waddy for his housekeeper once more,
Alphonse for his cook. Not living on the same scale, however, the
troubled woman said. She signified that it was now the whirlwind.
I could not help smiling to see how proud she was of him, nevertheless,
as a god-like charioteer--in pace, at least.
'Opera to-night,' she answered my inquiries for him, admonishing me by
her tone that I ought not to be behindhand in knowing his regal rules and
habits. Praising his generosity, she informed me that he had spent one
hundred pounds, and offered a reward of five times the sum, for the
discovery of Mabel Sweetwinter. 'Your papa never does things by halves,
Mr. Harry!' Soon after she was whimpering, 'Oh, will it last?' I was
shown into the room called 'The princess's room,' a miracle of furniture,
not likely to be occupied by her, I thought, the very magnificence of the
apartment striking down hope in my heart like cold on a nerve. Your papa
says the whole house is to be for you, Mr. Harry, when the happy day
comes.' Could it possibly be that he had talked of the princess? I took
a hasty meal and fortified myself with claret to have matters clear with
him before the night was over.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Decent insincerity
Discreet play with her eyelids in our encounters
Excellent is pride; but oh! be sure of its foundations
I do not defend myself ever
Nations at war are wild beasts
Only true race, properly so called, out of India--German
Some so-called laws of honour
They are little ironical laughter--Accidents
War is only an exaggerated form of duelling
Winter mornings are divine. They move on noiselessly