The Marchesa regained her house, which was in Curzon Street, and
withdrew to her own room, to readjust her dress, and remove from her
countenance all trace of the tears she had shed.
Half-an-hour afterwards she was seated in her drawing-room, composed
and calm; nor, seeing her then, could you have guessed that she was
capable of so much emotion and so much weakness. In that stately
exterior, in that quiet attitude, in that elaborate and finished
elegance which comes alike from the arts of the toilet and the
conventional repose of rank, you could see but the woman of the world
and the great lady.
A knock at the door was heard, and in a few moments there entered a
visitor, with the easy familiarity of intimate acquaintance--a young
man, but with none of the bloom of youth. His hair, fine as a woman's,
was thin and scanty, but it fell low over the forehead, and concealed
that noblest of our human features. " A gentleman," says Apuleius,
"ought, if he can, to wear his whole mind on his forehead."[5] The
young visitor would never have committed so frank an imprudence. His
cheek was pale, and in his step and his movements there was a langour
that spoke of fatigued nerves or delicate health. But the light of
the eye and the tone of the voice were those of a mental temperament
controlling the bodily--vigorous and energetic. For the rest, his
general appearance was distinguished by a refinement alike intellectual
and social. Once seen, you would not easily forget him. And the reader
no doubt already recognises Randal Leslie. His salutation, as I before
said, was that of intimate familiarity; yet it was given and replied
to with that unreserved openness which denotes the absence of a more
tender sentiment.
[5] I must be pardoned for annexing the original, since it loses much
by translation:--"Hominem liberum et magnificum debere, si queat, in
primori fronte, animum gestare."
Seating himself by the Marchesa's side, Randal began first to converse
on the fashionable topics and gossip of the day; but it was observable,
that, while he extracted from her the current anecdote and scandal
of the great world, neither anecdote nor scandal did he communicate
in return. Randal Leslie had already learned the art not to commit
himself, nor to have quoted against him one ill-natured remark upon the
eminent. Nothing more injures the man who would rise beyond the fame
of the _salons_, than to be considered backbiter and gossip; 'yet it
is always useful,' thought Randal Leslie, 'to know the foibles--the
small social and private springs by which the great are moved. Critical
occasions may arise in which such knowledge may be power.' And hence,
perhaps, (besides a more private motive, soon to be perceived,) Randal
did not consider his time thrown away in cultivating Madame di Negra's
friendship. For despite much that was whispered against her, she had
succeeded in dispelling the coldness with which she had at first been
received in the London circles. Her beauty, her grace, and her high
birth, had raised her into fashion, and the homage of men of the first
station, while it perhaps injured her reputation as woman, added to her
celebrity as fine lady. So much do we cold English, prudes though we
be, forgive to the foreigner what we avenge on the native.
Sliding at last from these general topics into very well-bred and
elegant personal compliment, and reciting various eulogies, which Lord
this and the Duke of that had passed on the Marchesa's charms, Randal
laid his hand on hers, with the license of admitted friendship, and
said--
"But since you have deigned to confide in me, since when (happily
for me, and with a generosity of which no coquette could have been
capable) you, in good time, repressed into friendship feelings that
might else have ripened into those you are formed to inspire and
disdain to return, you told me with your charming smile, 'Let no one
speak to me of love who does not offer me his hand, and with it the
means to supply tastes that I fear are terribly extravagant;'--since
thus you allowed me to divine your natural objects, and upon that
understanding our intimacy has been founded, you will pardon me for
saying that the admiration you excite amongst these _grands seigneurs_
I have named, only serves to defeat your own purpose, and scare away
admirers less brilliant, but more in earnest. Most of these gentlemen
are unfortunately married; and they who are not belong to those
members of our aristocracy who, in marriage, seek more than beauty and
wit--namely, connections to strengthen their political station, or
wealth to redeem a mortgage and sustain a title."
"My dear Mr Leslie," replied the Marchesa--and a certain sadness might
be detected in the tone of the voice and the droop of the eye--"I have
lived long enough in the real world to appreciate the baseness and the
falsehood of most of those sentiments which take the noblest names. I
see through the hearts of the admirers you parade before me, and know
that not one of them would shelter with his ermine the woman to whom he
talks of his heart. Ah," continued Beatrice, with a softness of which
she was unconscious, but which might have been extremely dangerous to
youth less steeled and self-guarded than was Randal Leslie's--"ah,
I am less ambitious than you suppose. I have dreamed of a friend, a
companion, a protector, with feelings still fresh, undebased by the
low round of vulgar dissipation and mean pleasures--of a heart so new,
that it might restore my own to what it was in its happy spring. I have
seen in your country some marriages, the mere contemplation of which
has filled my eyes with delicious tears. I have learned in England to
know the value of home. And with such a heart as I describe, and such
a home, I could forget that I ever knew a less pure ambition."
"This language does not surprise me," said Randal; "yet it does not
harmonise with your former answer to me."
"To you," repeated Beatrice smiling, and regaining her lighter manner;
"to you--true. But I never had the vanity to think that your affection
for me could bear the sacrifices it would cost you in marriage; that
you, with your ambition, could bound your dreams of happiness to home.
And then, too," said she, raising her head, and with a certain grave
pride in her air--"and _then_, I could not have consented to share my
fate with one whom my poverty would cripple. I could not listen to my
heart, if it had beat for a lover without fortune, for to him I could
then have brought but a burden, and betrayed him into a union with
poverty and debt. _Now_, it may be different. Now I may have the dowry
that befits my birth. And now I may be free to choose according to my
heart as woman, not according to my necessities, as one poor, harassed,
and despairing."
"Ah," said Randal, interested, and drawing still closer towards his
fair companion--"ah, I congratulate you sincerely; you have cause,
then, to think that you shall be--rich?"
The Marchesa paused before she answered, and during that pause Randal
relaxed the web of the scheme which he had been secretly weaving, and
rapidly considered whether, if Beatrice di Negra would indeed be rich,
she might answer to himself as a wife; and in what way, if so, he had
best change his tone from that of friendship into that of love. While
thus reflecting, Beatrice answered--
"Not rich for an Englishwoman; for an Italian, yes. My fortune should
be half a million--"
"Half a million!" cried Randal, and with difficulty he restrained
himself from falling at her feet in adoration.
"Of francs!" continued the Marchesa.
"Francs! Ah," said Randal, with a long-drawn breath, and recovering
from his sudden enthusiasm, "about twenty thousand pounds!--eight
hundred a-year at four per cent. A very handsome portion,
certainly--(Genteel poverty! he murmured to himself. What an escape
I have had! but I see--I see. This will smooth all difficulties in
the way of my better and earlier project. I see)--a very handsome
portion," he repeated aloud--"not for a _grand seigneur_, indeed, but
still for a gentleman of birth and expectations worthy of your choice,
if ambition be not your first object. Ah, while you spoke with such
endearing eloquence of feelings that were fresh, of a heart that was
new, of the happy English home, you might guess that my thoughts ran to
my friend who loves you so devotedly, and who so realises your ideal.
Proverbially, with us, happy marriages and happy homes are found not
in the gay circles of London fashion, but at the hearths of our rural
nobility--our untitled country gentlemen. And who, amongst all your
adorers, can offer you a lot so really enviable as the one whom, I see
by your blush, you already guess that I refer to?"
"Did I blush?" said the Marchesa, with a silvery laugh. "Nay, I think
that your zeal for your friend misled you. But I will own frankly, I
have been touched by his honest ingenuous love--so evident, yet rather
looked than spoken. I have contrasted the love that honours me with the
suitors that seek to degrade; more I cannot say. For though I grant
that your friend is handsome, high-spirited, and generous, still he is
not what--"
"You mistake, believe me," interrupted Randal. "You shall not finish
your sentence. He _is_ all that you do not yet suppose him; for his
shyness, and his very love, his very respect for your superiority, do
not allow his mind and his nature to appear to advantage. You, it is
true, have a taste for letters and poetry rare among your countrywomen.
He has not at present--few men have. But what Cimon would not be
refined by so fair an Iphigenia? Such frivolities as he now shows
belong but to youth and inexperience of life. Happy the brother who
could see his sister the wife of Frank Hazeldean."
The Marchesa leant her cheek on her hand in silence. To her, marriage
was more than it usually seems to dreaming maiden or to disconsolate
widow. So had the strong desire to escape from the control of her
unprincipled and remorseless brother grown a part of her very soul--so
had whatever was best and highest in her very mixed and complex
character been galled and outraged by her friendless and exposed
position, the equivocal worship rendered to her beauty, the various
debasements to which pecuniary embarrassments had subjected her--(not
without design on the part of the Count, who, though grasping, was not
miserly, and who by precarious and seemingly capricious gifts at one
time, and refusals of all aid at another, had involved her in debt in
order to retain his hold on her)--so utterly painful and humiliating to
a woman of her pride and her birth was the station that she held in the
world--that in marriage she saw liberty, life, honour, self-redemption;
and these thoughts, while they compelled her to co-operate with the
schemes, by which the Count, on securing to himself a bride, was to
bestow on herself a dower, also disposed her now to receive with favour
Randal Leslie's pleadings on behalf of his friend.
The advocate saw that he had made an impression, and with the
marvellous skill which his knowledge of those natures that engaged
his study bestowed on his intelligence, he continued to improve his
cause by such representations as were likely to be most effective.
With what admirable tact he avoided panegyric of Frank as the mere
individual, and drew him rather as the type, the ideal of what a woman
in Beatrice's position might desire, in the safety, peace, and honour
of a home, in the trust, and constancy, and honest confiding love of
its partner! He did not paint an elysium; he described a haven; he did
not glowingly delineate a hero of romance--he soberly portrayed that
Representative of the Respectable and the Real which a woman turns to
when romance begins to seem to her but delusion. Verily, if you could
have looked into the heart of the person he addressed, and heard him
speak, you would have cried admiringly, "Knowledge _is_ power; and this
man, if as able on a larger field of action, should play no mean part
in the history of his time."
Slowly Beatrice roused herself from the reveries which crept over her
as he spoke--slowly, and with a deep sigh, and said--
"Well, well, grant all you say; at least before I can listen to so
honourable a love, I must be relieved from the base and sordid pressure
that weighs on me. I cannot say to the man who wooes me, 'Will you pay
the debts of the daughter of Franzini, and the widow of di Negra?'"
"Nay, your debts, surely, make so slight a portion of your dowry."
"But the dowry has to be secured;" and here, turning the tables upon
her companion, as the apt proverb expresses it, Madame di Negra
extended her hand to Randal, and said in her most winning accents, "You
are, then, truly and sincerely my friend?"
"Can you doubt it?"
"I prove that I do not, for I ask your assistance."
"Mine? How?"
"Listen; my brother has arrived in London--"
"I see that arrival announced in the papers."
"And he comes, empowered by the consent of the Emperor, to ask the hand
of a relation and countrywoman of his; an alliance that will heal long
family dissensions, and add to his own fortunes those of an heiress.
My brother, like myself, has been extravagant. The dowry which by law
he still owes me it would distress him to pay till this marriage be
assured."
"I understand," said Randal. "But how can I aid this marriage?"
"By assisting us to discover the bride. She, with her father, sought
refuge and concealment in England."
"The father had, then, taken part in some political disaffections, and
was proscribed?"
"Exactly so; and so well has he concealed himself that he has baffled
all our efforts to discover his retreat. My brother can obtain him his
pardon in cementing this alliance--"
"Proceed."
"Ah Randal, Randal, is this the frankness of friendship? You know
that I have before sought to obtain the secret of our relation's
retreat--sought in vain to obtain it from Mr Egerton, who assuredly
knows it--"
"But who communicates no secrets to living man," said Randal, almost
bitterly; "who, close and compact as iron, is as little malleable to me
as to you."
"Pardon me. I know you so well that I believe you could attain to any
secret you sought earnestly to acquire. Nay, more, I believe that you
know already that secret which I ask you to share with me."
"What on earth makes you think so?"
"When, some weeks ago, you asked me to describe the personal appearance
and manners of the exile, which I did partly from the recollections
of my childhood, partly from the description given to me by others,
I could not but notice your countenance, and remark its change; in
spite," said the Marchesa, smiling, and watching Randal while she
spoke--"in spite of your habitual self-command. And when I pressed
you to own that you had actually seen some one who tallied with that
description, your denial did not deceive me. Still more, when returning
recently, of your own accord, to the subject, you questioned me so
shrewdly as to my motives in seeking the clue to our refugees, and I
did not then answer you satisfactorily, I could detect--"
"Ha, ha," interrupted Randal, with the low soft laugh by which
occasionally he infringed upon Lord Chesterfield's recommendations to
shun a merriment so natural as to be ill-bred,--"ha, ha, you have the
fault of all observers too minute and refined. But even granting that
I may have seen some Italian exiles, (which is likely enough,) what
could be more simple than my seeking to compare your description with
their appearance; and granting that I might suspect some one amongst
them to be the man you search for, what more simple, also, than that
I should desire to know if you meant him harm or good in discovering
his 'whereabout?' For ill," added Randal, with an air of prudery,
"ill would it become me to betray, even to friendship, the retreat of
one who would hide from persecution; and even if I did so--for honour
itself is a weak safeguard against your fascinations--such indiscretion
might be fatal to my future career."
"How?"
"Do you not say that Egerton knows the secret, yet will not
communicate?--and is he a man who would ever forgive in me an
imprudence that committed himself? My dear friend, I will tell you
more. When Audley Egerton first noticed my growing intimacy with you,
he said, with his usual dryness of counsel, 'Randal, I do not ask you
to discontinue acquaintance with Madame di Negra--for an acquaintance
with women like her forms the manners and refines the intellect; but
charming women are dangerous, and Madame di Negra is--a charming
woman.'"
The Marchesa's face flushed. Randal resumed: "'Your fair acquaintance'
(I am still quoting Egerton) 'seeks to discover the home of a
countryman of hers. She suspects that I know it. She may try to learn
it through you. Accident may possibly give you the information she
requires. Beware how you betray it. By one such weakness I should judge
of your general character. He from whom a woman can extract a secret
will never be fit for public life.' Therefore, my dear Marchesa, even
supposing I possess this secret, you would be no true friend of mine
to ask me to reveal what would emperil all my prospects. For as yet,"
added Randal, with a gloomy shade on his brow,--"as yet I do not stand
alone and erect--I _lean_;--I am dependent."
"There may be a way," replied Madame di Negra, persisting, "to
communicate this intelligence, without the possibility of Mr Egerton's
tracing our discovery to yourself; and, though I will not press you
farther, I add this--You urge me to accept your friend's hand; you seem
interested in the success of his suit, and you plead it with a warmth
that shows how much you regard what you suppose is his happiness;
I will never accept his hand till I can do so without blush for my
penury--till my dowry is secured, and that can only be by my brother's
union with the exile's daughter. For your friend's sake, therefore,
think well how you can aid me in the first step to that alliance. The
young lady once discovered, and my brother has no fear for the success
of his suit."
"And you would marry Frank if the dower was secured?"
"Your arguments in his favour seem irresistible," replied Beatrice,
looking down.
A flash went from Randal's eyes, and he mused a few moments.
Then slowly rising, and drawing on his gloves, he said--
"Well, at least you so far reconcile my honour towards aiding your
research, that you now inform me you mean no ill to the exile."
"Ill!--the restoration to fortune, honours, his native land."
"And you so far enlist my heart on your side, that you inspire me with
the hope to contribute to the happiness of two friends whom I dearly
love. I will, therefore, diligently seek to ascertain if, among the
refugees I have met with, lurk those whom you seek; and if so, I will
thoughtfully consider how to give you the clue. Meanwhile, not one
incautious word to Egerton."
"Trust me--I am a woman of the world."
Randal now had gained the door. He paused, and renewed carelessly--
"This young lady must be heiress to great wealth, to induce a man of
your brother's rank to take so much pains to discover her."
"Her wealth _will_ be vast," replied the Marchesa; "and if anything
from wealth or influence in a foreign state could be permitted to prove
my brother's gratitude--"
"Ah, fie," interrupted Randal, and approaching Madame di Negra, he
lifted her hand to his lips, and said gallantly,
"This is reward enough to your _preux chevalier_."
With those words he took his leave.