IN WHICH THE COUNTESS STILL SCENTS GAME
Mr. Raikes and his friend Frank Remand, surnamed Franko, to suit the
requirements of metre, in which they habitually conversed, were walking
arm-in-arm along the drive in Society’s Park on a fine frosty Sunday
afternoon of midwinter. The quips and jokes of Franko were lively, and
he looked into the carriages passing, as if he knew that a cheerful
countenance is not without charms for their inmates. Raikes’ face, on
the contrary, was barren and bleak. Being of that nature that when a
pun was made he must perforce outstrip it, he fell into Franko’s humour
from time to time, but albeit aware that what he uttered was good, and
by comparison transcendent, he refused to enjoy it. Nor when Franko
started from his arm to declaim a passage, did he do other than make
limp efforts to unite himself to Franko again. A further sign of
immense depression in him was that instead of the creative, it was the
critical faculty he exercised, and rather than reply to Franko in his
form of speech, he scanned occasional lines and objected to particular
phrases. He had clearly exchanged the sanguine for the bilious
temperament, and was fast stranding on the rocky shores of prose.
Franko bore this very well, for he, like Raikes in happier days,
claimed all the glances of lovely woman as his own, and on his right
there flowed a stream of Beauties. At last he was compelled to observe:
“This change is sudden: wherefore so downcast? With tigrine claw thou
mangiest my speech, thy cheeks are like December’s pippin, and thy
tongue most sour!”
“Then of it make a farce!” said Raikes, for the making of farces was
Franko’s profession. “Wherefore so downcast! What a line! There! let’s
walk on. Let us the left foot forward stout advance. I care not for the
herd.”
“’Tis love!” cried Franko.
“Ay, an’ it be!” Jack gloomily returned.
“For ever cruel is the sweet Saldar?”
Raikes winced at this name.
“A truce to banter, Franko!” he said sternly: but the subject was
opened, and the wound.
“Love!” he pursued, mildly groaning. “Suppose you adored a fascinating
woman, and she knew—positively knew—your manly weakness, and you saw
her smiling upon everybody, and she told you to be happy, and egad,
when you came to reflect, you found that after three months’ suit you
were nothing better than her errand-boy? A thing to boast of, is it
not, quotha?”
“Love’s yellow-fever, jealousy, methinks,” Franko commenced in reply;
but Raikes spat at the emphasized word.
“Jealousy!—who’s jealous of clergymen and that crew? Not I, by Pluto! I
carried five messages to one fellow with a coat-tail straight to his
heels, last week. She thought I should drive my curricle—I couldn’t
afford an omnibus! I had to run. When I returned to her I was dirty.
She made remarks!”
“Thy sufferings are severe—but such is woman!” said Franko. “’Gad, it’s
a good idea, though.” He took out a note-book and pencilled down a
point or two. Raikes watched the process sardonically.
“My tragedy is, then, thy farce!” he exclaimed. “Well, be it so! I
believe I shall come to song-writing again myself shortly—beneath the
shield of Catnach I’ll a nation’s ballads frame. I’ve spent my income
in four months, and now I’m living on my curricle. I underlet it. It’s
like trade—it’s as bad as poor old Harrington, by Jove! But that isn’t
the worst, Franko!” Jack dropped his voice: “I believe I’m furiously
loved by a poor country wench.”
“Morals!” was Franko’s most encouraging reproof.
“Oh, I don’t think I’ve even kissed her,” rejoined Raikes, who doubted
because his imagination was vivid. “It’s my intellect that dazzles her.
I’ve got letters—she calls me clever. By Jove! since I gave up driving
I’ve had thoughts of rushing down to her and making her mine in spite
of home, family, fortune, friends, name, position—everything! I have,
indeed.”
Franko looked naturally astonished at this amount of self-sacrifice.
“The Countess?” he shrewdly suggested.
“I’d rather be my Polly’s prince,
Than yon great lady’s errand-boy!”
Raikes burst into song.
He stretched out his hand, as if to discard all the great ladies who
were passing. By the strangest misfortune ever known, the direction
taken by his fingers was toward a carriage wherein, beautifully smiling
opposite an elaborately reverend gentleman of middle age, the Countess
de Saldar was sitting. This great lady is not to be blamed for deeming
that her errand-boy was pointing her out vulgarly on a public
promenade. Ineffable disdain curled off her sweet olive visage. She
turned her head.
“I’ll go down to that girl to-night,” said Raikes, with compressed
passion. And then he hurried Franko along to the bridge, where, behold,
the Countess alighted with the gentleman, and walked beside him into
the gardens.
“Follow her,” said Raikes, in agitation. “Do you see her? by yon
long-tailed raven’s side? Follow her, Franko! See if he kisses her
hand—anything! and meet me here in half an hour. I’ll have evidence!”
Franko did not altogether like the office, but Raikes’ dinners,
singular luck, and superiority in the encounter of puns, gave him the
upper hand with his friend, and so Franko went.
Turning away from the last glimpse of his Countess, Raikes crossed the
bridge, and had not strolled far beneath the bare branches of one of
the long green walks, when he perceived a gentleman with two ladies
leaning on him.
“Now, there,” moralized this youth; “now, what do you say to that? Do
you call that fair? He can’t be happy, and it’s not in nature for them
to be satisfied. And yet, if I went up and attempted to please them all
by taking one away, the probabilities are that he would knock me down.
Such is life! We won’t be made comfortable!”
Nevertheless, he passed them with indifference, for it was merely the
principle he objected to; and, indeed, he was so wrapped in his own
conceptions, that his name had to be called behind him twice before he
recognized Evan Harrington, Mrs. Strike, and Miss Bonner. The
arrangement he had previously thought good, was then spontaneously
adopted. Mrs. Strike reposed her fair hand upon his arm, and Juliana,
with a timid glance of pleasure, walked ahead in Evan’s charge. Close
neighbourhood between the couples was not kept. The genius of Mr.
Raikes was wasted in manoeuvres to lead his beautiful companion into
places where he could be seen with her, and envied. It was, perhaps,
more flattering that she should betray a marked disposition to prefer
solitude in his society. But this idea illumined him only near the
moment of parting. Then he saw it; then he groaned in soul, and
besought Evan to have one more promenade, saying, with characteristic
cleverness in the masking of his real thoughts: “It gives us an
appetite, you know.”
In Evan’s face and Juliana’s there was not much sign that any
protraction of their walk together would aid this beneficent process of
nature. He took her hand gently, and when he quitted it, it dropped.
“The Rose, the Rose of Beckley Court!” Raikes sang aloud. “Why, this is
a day of meetings. Behold John Thomas in the rear—a tower of plush and
powder! Shall I rush—shall I pluck her from the aged stem?”
On the gravel-walk above them Rose passed with her aristocratic
grandmother, muffled in furs. She marched deliberately, looking coldly
before her. Evan’s face was white, and Juliana, whose eyes were fixed
on him, shuddered.
“I’m chilled,” she murmured to Caroline. “Let us go.” Caroline eyed
Evan with a meaning sadness.
“We will hurry to our carriage,” she said.
They were seen to make a little circuit so as not to approach Rose;
after whom, thoughtless of his cruelty, Evan bent his steps slowly,
halting when she reached her carriage. He believed—rather, he knew that
she had seen him. There was a consciousness in the composed outlines of
her face as she passed: the indifference was too perfect. Let her hate
him if she pleased. It recompensed him that the air she wore should
make her appearance more womanly; and that black dress and
crape-bonnet, in some way, touched him to mournful thoughts of her that
helped a partial forgetfulness of wounded self.
Rose had driven off. He was looking at the same spot, where Caroline’s
hand waved from her carriage. Juliana was not seen. Caroline requested
her to nod to him once, but she would not. She leaned back hiding her
eyes, and moving a petulant shoulder at Caroline’s hand.
“Has he offended you, my child?”
Juliana answered harshly:
“No-no.”
The wheels rolled on, and Caroline tried other subjects, knowing
possibly that they would lead Juliana back to this of her own accord.
“You saw how she treated him?” the latter presently said, without
moving her hand from before her eyes.
“Yes, dear. He forgives her, and will forget it.”
“Oh!” she clenched her long thin hand, “I pray that I may not die
before I have made her repent it. She shall!”
Juliana looked glitteringly in Caroline’s face, and then fell
a-weeping, and suffered herself to be folded and caressed. The storm
was long subsiding.
“Dearest! you are better now?” said Caroline.
She whispered: “Yes.”
“My brother has only to know you, dear—”
“Hush! That’s past.” Juliana stopped her; and, on a deep breath that
threatened to break to sobs, she added in a sweeter voice than was
common to her, “Ah, why—why did you tell him about the Beckley
property?”
Caroline vainly strove to deny that she had told him. Juliana’s head
shook mournfully at her; and now Caroline knew what Juliana meant when
she begged so earnestly that Evan should be kept ignorant of her change
of fortune.
Some days after this the cold struck Juliana’s chest, and she sickened.
The three sisters held a sitting to consider what it was best to do
with her. Caroline proposed to take her to Beckley without delay.
Harriet was of opinion that the least they could do was to write to her
relatives and make them instantly aware of her condition.
But the Countess said “No,” to both. Her argument was, that Juliana
being independent, they were by no means bound to “bundle” her, in her
state, back to a place where she had been so shamefully maltreated:
that here she would live, while there she would certainly die: that
absence of excitement was her medicine, and that here she had it. Mrs.
Andrew, feeling herself responsible as the young lady’s hostess, did
not acquiesce in the Countess’s views till she had consulted Juliana;
and then apologies for giving trouble were breathed on the one hand;
sympathy, condolences, and professions of esteem, on the other. Juliana
said, she was but slightly ill, would soon recover. Entreated not to
leave them before she was thoroughly re-established, and to consent to
be looked on as one of the family, she sighed, and said it was the
utmost she could hope. Of course the ladies took this compliment to
themselves, but Evan began to wax in importance. The Countess thought
it nearly time to acknowledge him, and supported the idea by a citation
of the doctrine, that to forgive is Christian. It happened, however,
that Harriet, who had less art and more will than her sisters, was
inflexible. She, living in a society but a few steps above Tailordom,
however magnificent in expenditure and resources, abhorred it solemnly.
From motives of prudence, as well as personal disgust, she continued
firm in declining to receive her brother. She would not relent when the
Countess pointed out a dim, a dazzling prospect, growing out of Evan’s
proximity to the heiress of Beckley Court; she was not to be moved when
Caroline suggested that the specific for the frail invalid was Evan’s
presence. As to this, Juliana was sufficiently open, though, as she
conceived, her art was extreme.
“Do you know why I stay to vex and trouble you?” she asked Caroline.
“Well, then, it is that I may see your brother united to you all: and
then I shall go, happy.”
The pretext served also to make him the subject of many conversations.
Twice a week a bunch of the best flowers that could be got were sorted
and arranged by her, and sent namelessly to brighten Evan’s chamber.
“I may do such a thing as this, you know, without incurring blame,” she
said.
The sight of a love so humble in its strength and affluence, sent
Caroline to Evan on a fruitless errand. What availed it, that accused
of giving lead to his pride in refusing the heiress, Evan should
declare that he did not love her? He did not, Caroline admitted as
possible, but he might. He might learn to love her, and therefore he
was wrong in wounding her heart. She related flattering anecdotes. She
drew tearful pictures of Juliana’s love for him: and noticing how he
seemed to prize his bouquet of flowers, said:
“Do you love them for themselves, or the hand that sent them?”
Evan blushed, for it had been a struggle for him to receive them, as he
thought, from Rose in secret. The flowers lost their value; the song
that had arisen out of them, “Thou livest in my memory,” ceased. But
they came still. How many degrees from love gratitude may be, I have
not reckoned. I rather fear it lies on the opposite shore. From a youth
to a girl, it may yet be very tender; the more so, because their ages
commonly exclude such a sentiment, and nature seems willing to make a
transition stage of it. Evan wrote to Juliana. Incidentally he
expressed a wish to see her. Juliana was under doctor’s interdict: but
she was not to be prevented from going when Evan wished her to go. They
met in the park, as before, and he talked to her five minutes through
the carriage window.
“Was it worth the risk, my poor child?” said Caroline, pityingly.
Juliana cried: “Oh! I would give anything to live!”
A man might have thought that she made no direct answer.
“Don’t you think I am patient? Don’t you think I am very patient?” she
asked Caroline, winningly, on their way home.
Caroline could scarcely forbear from smiling at the feverish anxiety
she showed for a reply that should confirm her words and hopes.
“So we must all be!” she said, and that common-place remark caused
Juliana to exclaim: “Prisoners have lived in a dungeon, on bread and
water, for years!”
Whereat Caroline kissed her so tenderly that Juliana tried to look
surprised, and failing, her thin lips quivered; she breathed a soft
“hush,” and fell on Caroline’s bosom.
She was transparent enough in one thing; but the flame which burned
within her did not light her through.
Others, on other matters, were quite as transparent to her.
Caroline never knew that she had as much as told her the moral suicide
Evan had committed at Beckley; so cunningly had she been probed at
intervals with little casual questions; random interjections, that one
who loved him could not fail to meet; petty doubts requiring
elucidations. And the Countess, kind as her sentiments had grown toward
the afflicted creature, was compelled to proclaim her densely stupid in
material affairs. For the Countess had an itch of the simplest feminine
curiosity to know whether the dear child had any notion of
accomplishing a certain holy duty of the perishable on this earth, who
might possess worldly goods; and no hints—not even plain speaking,
would do. Juliana did not understand her at all.
The Countess exhibited a mourning-ring on her finger, Mrs. Bonner’s
bequest to her.
“How fervent is my gratitude to my excellent departed friend for this!
A legacy, however trifling, embalms our dear lost ones in the memory!”
It was of no avail. Juliana continued densely stupid. Was she not
worse? The Countess could not, “in decency,” as she observed, reveal to
her who had prompted Mrs. Bonner so to bequeath the Beckley estates as
to “ensure sweet Juliana’s future”; but ought not Juliana to divine
it?—Juliana at least had hints sufficient.
Cold Spring winds were now blowing. Juliana had resided no less than
two months with the Cogglesbys. She was entreated still to remain, and
she did. From Lady Jocelyn she heard not a word of remonstrance; but
from Miss Carrington and Mrs. Shorne she received admonishing letters.
Finally, Mr. Harry Jocelyn presented himself. In London, and without
any of that needful subsistence which a young gentleman feels the want
of in London more than elsewhere, Harry began to have thoughts of his
own, without any instigation from his aunts, about devoting himself to
business. So he sent his card up to his cousin, and was graciously met
in the drawing-room by the Countess, who ruffled him and smoothed him,
and would possibly have distracted his soul from business had his
circumstances been less straitened. Juliana was declared to be too
unwell to see him that day. He called a second time, and enjoyed a
similar greeting. His third visit procured him an audience alone with
Juliana, when, at once, despite the warnings of his aunts, the frank
fellow plunged, “medias res”. Mrs. Bonner had left him totally
dependent on his parents and his chances.
“A desperate state of things, isn’t it, Juley? I think I shall go for a
soldier—common, you know.”
Instead of shrieking out against such a debasement of his worth and
gentility, as was to be expected, Juliana said:
“That’s what Mr. Harrington thought of doing.”
“He! If he’d had the pluck he would.”
“His duty forbade it, and he did not.”
“Duty! a confounded tailor! What fools we were to have him at Beckley!”
“Has the Countess been unkind to you Harry?”
“I haven’t seen her to-day, and don’t want to. It’s my little dear old
Juley I came for.”
“Dear Harry!” she thanked him with eyes and hands. “Come often, won’t
you?”
“Why, ain’t you coming back to us, Juley?”
“Not yet. They are very kind to me here. How is Rose?”
“Oh, quite jolly. She and Ferdinand are thick again. Balls every night.
She dances like the deuce. They want me to go; but I ain’t the sort of
figure for those places, and besides, I shan’t dance till I can lead
you out.”
A spur of laughter at Harry’s generous nod brought on Juliana’s cough.
Harry watched her little body shaken and her reddened eyes. Some real
emotion—perhaps the fear which healthy young people experience at the
sight of deadly disease—made Harry touch her arm with the softness of a
child’s touch.
“Don’t be alarmed, Harry,” she said. “It’s nothing—only Winter. I’m
determined to get well.”
“That’s right,” quoth he, recovering. “I know you’ve got pluck, or you
wouldn’t have stood that operation.”
“Let me see: when was that?” she asked slyly.
Harry coloured, for it related to a time when he had not behaved
prettily to her.
“There, Juley, that’s all forgotten. I was a fool—a scoundrel, if you
like. I’m sorry for it now.”
“Do you want money, Harry?”
“Oh, money!”
“Have you repaid Mr. Harrington yet?”
“There—no, I haven’t. Bother it! that fellow’s name’s always on your
tongue. I’ll tell you what, Juley—but it’s no use. He’s a low, vulgar
adventurer.”
“Dear Harry,” said Juliana, softly; “don’t bring your aunts with you
when you come to see me.”
“Well, then I’ll tell you, Juley. It’s enough that he’s a beastly
tailor.”
“Quite enough,” she responded; “and he is neither a fool nor a
scoundrel.”
Harry’s memory for his own speech was not quick. When Juliana’s calm
glance at him called it up, he jumped from his chair, crying: “Upon my
honour, I’ll tell you what, Juley! If I had money to pay him to-morrow,
I’d insult him on the spot.”
Juliana meditated, and said: “Then all your friends must wish you to
continue poor.”
This girl had once been on her knees to him. She had looked up to him
with admiring love, and he had given her a crumb or so occasionally,
thinking her something of a fool, and more of a pest; but now he could
not say a word to her without being baffled in an elderly-sisterly tone
exasperating him so far that he positively wished to marry her, and
coming to the point, offered himself with downright sincerity, and was
rejected. Harry left in a passion. Juliana confided the secret to
Caroline, who suggested interested motives, which Juliana would not
hear of.
“Ah,” said the Countess, when Caroline mentioned the case to her, “of
course the poor thing cherishes her first offer. She would believe a
curate to be disinterested! But mind that Evan has due warning when she
is to meet him. Mind that he is dressed becomingly.”
Caroline asked why.
“Because, my dear, she is enamoured of his person. These little
unhealthy creatures are always attracted by the person. She thinks it
to be Evan’s qualities. I know better: it is his person. Beckley Court
may be lost by a shabby coat!”
The Countess had recovered from certain spiritual languors into which
she had fallen after her retreat. Ultimate victory hung still in the
balance. Oh! if Evan would only marry this little sufferer, who was so
sure to die within a year! or, if she lived (for marriage has often
been as a resurrection to some poor female invalids), there was Beckley
Court, a splendid basis for future achievements. Reflecting in this
fashion, the Countess pardoned her brother. Glowing hopes hung fresh
lamps in her charitable breast. She stepped across the threshold of
Tailordom, won Mr. Goren’s heart by her condescension, and worked Evan
into a sorrowful mood concerning the invalid. Was not Juliana his only
active friend? In return, he said things which only required a little
colouring to be very acceptable to her.
The game waxed exciting again. The enemy (the Jocelyn party) was alert,
but powerless. The three sisters were almost wrought to perform a
sacrifice far exceeding Evan’s. They nearly decided to summon him to
the house: but the matter being broached at table one evening, Major
Strike objected to it so angrily that they abandoned it, with the
satisfactory conclusion that if they did wrong it was the Major’s
fault.
Meantime Juliana had much on her conscience. She knew Evan to be
innocent, and she allowed Rose to think him guilty. Could she bring her
heart to join them? That was not in her power: but desiring to be
lulled by a compromise, she devoted herself to make his relatives
receive him; and on days of bitter winds she would drive out to meet
him, answering all expostulations with—“I should not go if he were
here.”
The game waxed hot. It became a question whether Evan should be
admitted to the house in spite of the Major. Juliana now made an
extraordinary move. Having the Count with her in the carriage one day,
she stopped in front of Mr. Goren’s shop, and Evan had to come out. The
Count returned home extremely mystified. Once more the unhappy Countess
was obliged to draw bills on the fabulous; and as she had recommenced
the system, which was not without its fascinations to her, Juliana, who
had touched the spring, had the full benefit of it. The Countess had
deceived her before—what of that? She spoke things sweet to hear. Who
could be false that gave her heart food on which it lived?
One night Juliana returned from her drive alarmingly ill. She was
watched through the night by Caroline and the Countess alternately. In
the morning the sisters met.
“She has consented to let us send for a doctor,” said Caroline.
“Her chief desire seems to be a lawyer,” said the Countess.
“Yes, but the doctor must be sent for first.”
“Yes, indeed! But it behoves us to previse that the doctor does not
kill her before the lawyer comes.”
Caroline looked at Louisa, and said: “Are you ignorant?”
“No—what?” cried the Countess eagerly.
“Evan has written to tell Lady Jocelyn the state of her health, and—”
“And that naturally has aggravated her malady!” The Countess cramped
her long fingers. “The child heard it from him yesterday! Oh, I could
swear at that brother!”
She dropped into a chair and sat rigid and square-jawed, a sculpture of
unutterable rage.
In the afternoon Lady Jocelyn arrived. The doctor was there—the lawyer
had gone. Without a word of protest Juliana accompanied her ladyship to
Beckley Court. Here was a blow!
But Andrew was preparing one more mighty still. What if the Cogglesby
Brewery proved a basis most unsound? Where must they fall then? Alas!
on that point whence they sprang. If not to Perdition—Tailordom!