THE COUNTESS MAKES HERSELF FELT
There is a peculiar reptile whose stroke is said to deprive men of
motion. On the day after the great Mel had stalked the dinner-table of
Beckley Court, several of the guests were sensible of the effect of
this creature’s mysterious touch, without knowing what it was that
paralyzed them. Drummond Forth had fully planned to go to Lymport. He
had special reasons for making investigations with regard to the great
Mel. Harry, who was fond of Drummond, offered to accompany him, and
Laxley, for the sake of a diversion, fell into the scheme. Mr. George
Uplift was also to be of the party, and promised them fun. But when the
time came to start, not one could be induced to move: Laxley was
pressingly engaged by Rose: Harry showed the rope the Countess held him
by; Mr. George made a singular face, and seriously advised Drummond to
give up the project.
“Don’t rub that woman the wrong way,” he said, in a private colloquy
they had. “By Jingo, she’s a Tartar. She was as a gal, and she isn’t
changed, Lou Harrington. Fancy now: she knew me, and she faced me out,
and made me think her a stranger! ’Gad, I’m glad I didn’t speak to the
others. Lord’s sake, keep it quiet. Don’t rouse that woman, now, if you
want to keep a whole skin.”
Drummond laughed at his extreme earnestness in cautioning him, and
appeared to enjoy his dread of the Countess. Mr. George would not tell
how he had been induced to change his mind. He repeated his advice with
a very emphatic shrug of the shoulder.
“You seem afraid of her,” said Drummond.
“I am. I ain’t ashamed to confess it. She’s a regular viper, my boy!”
said Mr. George. “She and I once were pretty thick—least said soonest
mended, you know. I offended her. Wasn’t quite up to her mark—a
tailor’s daughter, you know. ’Gad, if she didn’t set an Irish Dragoon
Captain on me!—I went about in danger of my life. The fellow began to
twist his damned black moustaches the moment he clapped eyes on
me—bullied me till, upon my soul, I was almost ready to fight him! Oh,
she was a little tripping Tartar of a bantam hen then. She’s grown
since she’s been countessed, and does it peacocky. Now, I give you fair
warning, you know. She’s more than any man’s match.”
“I dare say I shall think the same when she has beaten me,” quoth
cynical Drummond, and immediately went and gave orders for his horse to
be saddled, thinking that he would tread on the head of the viper.
But shortly before the hour of his departure, Mrs. Evremonde summoned
him to her, and showed him a slip of paper, on which was written, in an
uncouth small hand:
“Madam: a friend warns you that your husband is coming here. Deep
interest in your welfare is the cause of an anonymous communication.
The writer wishes only to warn you in time.”
Mrs. Evremonde told Drummond that she had received it from one of the
servants when leaving the breakfast-room. Beyond the fact that a man on
horseback had handed it to a little boy, who had delivered it over to
the footman, Drummond could learn nothing. Of course, all thought of
the journey to Lymport was abandoned. If but to excogitate a motive for
the origin of the document, Drummond was forced to remain; and now he
had it, and now he lost it again; and as he was wandering about in his
maze, the Countess met him with a “Good morning, Mr., Forth. Have I
impeded your expedition by taking my friend Mr. Harry to cavalier me
to-day?”
Drummond smilingly assured her that she had not in any way disarranged
his projects, and passed with so absorbed a brow that the Countess
could afford to turn her head and inspect him, without fear that he
would surprise her in the act. Knocking the pearly edge of her fan on
her teeth, she eyed him under her joined black lashes, and deliberately
read his thoughts in the mere shape of his back and shoulders. She read
him through and through, and was unconscious of the effective attitude
she stood in for the space of two full minutes, and even then it
required one of our unhappy sex to recall her. This was Harry Jocelyn.
“My friend,” she said to him, with a melancholy smile, “my one friend
here!”
Harry went through the form of kissing her hand, which he had been
taught, and practised cunningly as the first step of the ladder.
“I say, you looked so handsome, standing as you did just now,” he
remarked; and she could see how far beneath her that effective attitude
had precipitated the youth.
“Ah!” she sighed, walking on, with the step of majesty in exile.
“What the deuce is the matter with everybody to-day?” cried Harry. “I’m
hanged if I can make it out. There’s the Carrington, as you call her, I
met her with such a pair of eyes, and old George looking as if he’d
been licked, at her heels; and there’s Drummond and his lady fair
moping about the lawn, and my mother positively getting excited—there’s
a miracle! and Juley’s sharpening her nails for somebody, and if
Ferdinand don’t look out, your brother’ll be walking off with
Rosey—that’s my opinion.”
“Indeed,” said the Countess. “You really think so?”
“Well, they come it pretty strong together.”
“And what constitutes the ‘come it strong,’ Mr. Harry?”
“Hold of hands; you know,” the young gentleman indicated.
“Alas, then! must not we be more discreet?”
“Oh! but it’s different. With young people one knows what that means.”
“Deus!” exclaimed the Countess, tossing her head weariedly, and Harry
perceived his slip, and down he went again.
What wonder that a youth in such training should consent to fetch and
carry, to listen and relate, to play the spy and know no more of his
office than that it gave him astonishing thrills of satisfaction, and
now and then a secret sweet reward?
The Countess had sealed Miss Carrington’s mouth by one of her most
dexterous strokes. On leaving the dinner-table over-night, and seeing
that Caroline’s attack would preclude their instant retreat, the
gallant Countess turned at bay. A word aside to Mr. George Uplift, and
then the Countess took a chair by Miss Carrington. She did all the
conversation, and supplied all the smiles to it, and when a lady has to
do that she is justified in striking, and striking hard, for to abandon
the pretence of sweetness is a gross insult from one woman to another.
The Countess then led circuitously, but with all the ease in the world,
to the story of a Portuguese lady, of a marvellous beauty, and who was
deeply enamoured of the Chevalier Miguel de Rasadio, and engaged to be
married to him: but, alas for her! in the insolence of her happiness
she wantonly made an enemy in the person of a most unoffending lady,
and she repented it. While sketching the admirable Chevalier, the
Countess drew a telling portrait of Mr. George Uplift, and gratified
her humour and her wrath at once by strong truth to nature in the
description and animated encomiums on the individual. The Portuguese
lady, too, a little resembled Miss Carrington, in spite of her
marvellous beauty. And it was odd that Miss Carrington should give a
sudden start and a horrified glance at the Countess just when the
Countess was pathetically relating the proceeding taken by the
revengeful lady on the beautiful betrothed of the Chevalier Miguel de
Rasadio: which proceeding was nothing other than to bring to the
Chevalier’s knowledge that his beauty had a defect concealed by her
apparel, and that the specks in his fruit were not one, or two, but,
Oh! And the dreadful sequel to the story the Countess could not tell:
preferring ingeniously to throw a tragic veil over it. Miss Carrington
went early to bed that night.
The courage that mounteth with occasion was eminently the attribute of
the Countess de Saldar. After that dreadful dinner she (since the
weaknesses of great generals should not be altogether ignored), did
pray for flight and total obscurity, but Caroline could not be left in
her hysteric state, and now that she really perceived that Evan was
progressing and on the point of sealing his chance, the devoted lady
resolved to hold her ground. Besides, there was the pic-nic. The
Countess had one dress she had not yet appeared in, and it was for the
picnic she kept it. That small motives are at the bottom of many
illustrious actions is a modern discovery; but I shall not adopt the
modern principle of magnifying the small motive till it overshadows my
noble heroine. I remember that the small motive is only to be seen by
being borne into the range of my vision by a powerful microscope; and
if I do more than see—if I carry on my reflections by the aid of the
glass, I arrive at conclusions that must be false. Men who dwarf human
nature do this. The gods are juster. The Countess, though she wished to
remain for the pic-nic, and felt warm in anticipation of the homage to
her new dress, was still a gallant general and a devoted sister, and if
she said to herself, “Come what may, I will stay for that pic-nic, and
they shall not brow-beat me out of it,” it is that trifling pleasures
are noisiest about the heart of human nature: not that they govern us
absolutely. There is mob-rule in minds as in communities, but the
Countess had her appetites in excellent drill. This pic-nic
surrendered, represented to her defeat in all its ignominy. The largest
longest-headed of schemes ask occasionally for something substantial
and immediate. So the Countess stipulated with Providence for the
pic-nic. It was a point to be passed: “Thorough flood, thorough fire.”
In vain poor Andrew Cogglesby, to whom the dinner had been torture, and
who was beginning to see the position they stood in at Beckley, begged
to be allowed to take them away, or to go alone. The Countess laughed
him into submission. As a consequence of her audacious spirits she grew
more charming and more natural, and the humour that she possessed, but
which, like her other faculties, was usually subordinate to her plans,
gave spontaneous bursts throughout the day, and delighted her
courtiers. Nor did the men at all dislike the difference of her manner
with them, and with the ladies. I may observe that a woman who shows a
marked depression in the presence of her own sex will be thought very
superior by ours; that is, supposing she is clever and agreeable.
Manhood distinguishes what flatters it. A lady approaches. “We must be
proper,” says the Countess, and her hearty laugh dies with suddenness
and is succeeded by the maturest gravity. And the Countess can look a
profound merriment with perfect sedateness when there appears to be an
equivoque in company. Finely secret are her glances, as if under every
eye-lash there lurked the shade of a meaning. What she meant was not so
clear. All this was going on, and Lady Jocelyn was simply amused, and
sat as at a play.
“She seems to have stepped out of a book of French memoirs,” said her
ladyship. “La vie galante et devote—voila la Comtesse.”
In contradistinction to the other ladies, she did not detest the
Countess because she could not like her.
“Where’s the harm in her?” she asked. “She doesn’t damage the men, that
I can see. And a person you can laugh at and with, is inexhaustible.”
“And how long is she to stay here?” Mrs. Shorne inquired. Mrs. Melville
remarking: “Her visit appears to be inexhaustible.”
“I suppose she’ll stay till the Election business is over,” said Lady
Jocelyn.
The Countess had just driven with Melville to Fallowfield in Caroline’s
black lace shawl.
“Upwards of four weeks longer!” Mrs. Melville interjected.
Lady Jocelyn chuckled.
Miss Carrington was present. She had been formerly sharp in her
condemnation of the Countess—her affectedness, her euphuism, and her
vulgarity. Now she did not say a word, though she might have done it
with impunity.
“I suppose, Emily, you see what Rose is about?” said Mrs. Melville. “I
should not have thought it adviseable to have that young man here,
myself. I think I let you know that.”
“One young man’s as good as another,” responded her ladyship. “I’ve my
doubts of the one that’s much better. I fancy Rose is as good a judge
by this time as you or I.”
Mrs. Melville made an effort or two to open Lady Jocelyn’s eyes, and
then relapsed into the confident serenity inspired by evil
prognostications.
“But there really does seem some infatuation about these people!”
exclaimed Mrs. Shorne, turning to Miss Current. “Can you understand it?
The Duke, my dear! Things seem to be going on in the house, that
really—and so openly.”
“That’s one virtue,” said Miss Current, with her imperturbable metallic
voice, and face like a cold clear northern sky. “Things done in secret
throw on the outsiders the onus of raising a scandal.”
“You don’t believe, then?” suggested Mrs. Shorne.
Miss Current replied: “I always wait for a thing to happen first.”
“But haven’t you seen, my dear?”
“I never see anything, my dear.”
“Then you must be blind, my dear.”
“On the contrary, that’s how I keep my sight, my dear.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Mrs. Shorne.
“It’s a part of the science of optics, and requires study,” said Miss
Current.
Neither with the worldly nor the unworldly woman could the ladies do
anything. But they were soon to have their triumph.
A delicious morning had followed the lovely night. The stream flowed
under Evan’s eyes, like something in a lower sphere, now. His passion
took him up, as if a genie had lifted him into mid-air, and showed him
the world on a palm of a hand; and yet, as he dressed by the window,
little chinks in the garden wall, and nectarines under their shiny
leaves, and the white walks of the garden, were stamped on his hot
brain accurately and lastingly. Ruth upon the lips of Rose: that voice
of living constancy made music to him everywhere. “Thy God shall be my
God.” He had heard it all through the night. He had not yet broken the
tender charm sufficiently to think that he must tell her the sacrifice
she would have to make. When partly he did, the first excuse he
clutched at was, that he had not even kissed her on the forehead.
Surely he had been splendidly chivalrous? Just as surely he would have
brought on himself the scorn of the chivalrous or of the commonly
balanced if he had been otherwise. The grandeur of this or of any of
his proceedings, then, was forfeited, as it must needs be when we are
in the false position: we can have no glory though martyred. The youth
felt it, even to the seeing of why it was; and he resolved, in justice
to the dear girl, that he would break loose from his fetters, as we
call our weakness. Behold, Rose met him descending the stairs, and,
taking his hand, sang, unabashed, by the tell-tale colour coming over
her face, a stave of a little Portuguese air that they had both been
fond of in Portugal; and he, listening to it, and looking in her eyes,
saw that his feelings in the old time had been hers. Instantly the old
time gave him its breath, the present drew back.
Rose, now that she had given her heart out, had no idea of concealment.
She would have denied nothing to her aunts: she was ready to confide it
to her mother. Was she not proud of the man she loved? When Evan’s hand
touched hers she retained it, and smiled up at him frankly, as it were
to make him glad in her gladness. If before others his eyes brought the
blood to her cheeks, she would perhaps drop her eye-lids an instant,
and then glance quickly level again to reassure him. And who would have
thought that this boisterous, boyish creature had such depths of eye!
Cold, did they call her? Let others think her cold. The tender
knowledge of her—the throbbing secret they held in common sang at his
heart. Rose made no confidante, but she attempted no mystery. Evan
should have risen to the height of the noble girl. But the dearer and
sweeter her bearing became, the more conscious he was of the dead
weight he was dragging: in truth her behaviour stamped his false
position to hard print the more he admired her for it, and he had
shrinkings from the feminine part it imposed on him to play.