"Shy she was, and I thought her cold;
Thought her proud, and fled over the sea;
Filled I was with folly and spite,
When Ellen Adair was dying for me."
When I came to Livingstone's chambers on the following morning, I found
him alone. His head was resting listlessly against the back of the vast
easy-chair in which he was reclining, and his face, thrown out in relief
against the crimson velvet, looked haggard and drawn. The calumet--not
of peace--was between his lips, and the dense blue clouds were wreathing
round him like a Scotch mist. On a table near lay a heap of gold and
notes. He had finished the night at his club, where lansquenet had been
raging till long after sunrise. Fortune had been more kind than usual,
and the fruits of "passing" eight times lay before me. An open
liqueur-case close at his elbow showed that play was not the only
counter-excitement to which he had resorted.
I hoped to have found him in a repentant mood, but his first words
undeceived me: "I start for Paris by this evening's train;" and then I
remarked all about me the signs of immediate departure.
I only had a confused idea of what had happened, and was anxious to know
the truth, but he was very brief in his answers: the particulars of what
had passed I learned long afterward.
"Can nothing be done?" I asked, when he had finished all he chose to
tell me.
"Nothing!" replied Livingstone, decisively. "If excuse or explanation
had been of any use, I think I should have tried them last night. You
would not advise me to humiliate myself to no purpose, I suppose?"
There is a certain scene in Æschylus which came into my mind just then.
A group of elderly men, with grave, rather vacuous faces, and grizzled
beards, stand in the court-yard of an ancient palace. On one side is the
peristyle, with its square stunted pillars, looking as if the weight
above crushed them, though it wearies them no more than the heavens do
Atlas; on the other, a gateway, vast, low-browed, shadowy with Cyclopean
stones. Somewhat apart is a strange weird figure, ever and anon starting
up and tossing her arms wildly as she utters some new denunciation, and
then cowering down again in a despairing weariness. There are traces yet
in the thin, wan face of the beauty which enslaved Loxian Apollo, and of
the pride which turned his great love into a greater hate: round it hang
the black elf-locks, disheveled, that have never been braided since the
gripe of Telamonian Ajax ruffled them so rudely. In her great, troubled
eyes you read terrible memories, and a prescience of coming
death--death, most grateful to the dishonored princess, but before which
the frail womanhood can not but shudder and quail. No wonder that the
reverend men glance at her uneasily, scarcely mustering courage enough
sometimes to answer her with a pious platitude. Alas! alas! Cassandra.
While we gaze, forth from the recesses of the gynæceum there breaks a
cry, expressing rather wrath and surprise than mere pain. Then there
comes another, more plaintive--the moan of a strong man in the
death-throe.
We know that voice very well; we have heard it many times, calm and
regal, above the wrangle of councils and the roar of battle; often it
prayed for victory or for the people's weal, but it never yet called on
earth or heaven to help Agamemnon. The Chorus hear it too; but they
linger and palter, while each gives his grave sentence deliberately in
his proper turn. One or two advise action and interference, and stand
perfectly still. At last we hear a heavy, choking groan, and a great
stillness follows. We know that all is over--we know that there is a
stir already down there in Hades--we seem to catch a far-off murmur
raised by a thousand weak, tremulous voices--the very ghost of a
wail--as the shadows of those who died gallantly in their harness before
Troy gather to meet their old leader, the mightiest Atride.
In the background of all we fancy a hideous Eidolon, from whose side
even the damned recoil in loathing. There is a grin on the lips yet red
and wet with the traces of the unholy banquet. Thyestes exalts over the
fulfillment of another chapter in the inevitable curse.
Who has not grown savage over that scene? We hate the old drivelers less
when, a few minutes later, they truckle and temporize with the awful
shape, who comes forth with a splash of blood on her slender wrist, and
a speck or two on her white, lofty forehead.
Just so helpless and useless I felt at that moment. I was standing by
while a foul wrong was being wrought. I saw nothing but ruin for Guy,
and desolate misery for Constance, in the black future. Yet I could
think of no argument or counsel that would in the least avail. I felt
sick at heart. It was some minutes before I answered his last question.
At last the words broke from me almost unconsciously: "Ah! how will you
answer to God and man for last night's work?"
I forgot that I was quoting the cry of the Covenanter's widow when she
knelt by her husband's corpse, and looked up into Claverhouse's face
with those sad eyes that were ever dim and cloudy after the carbines
flashed across them. But Guy remembered it, and answered instantly in
the words of his favorite hero,
"I can answer it to man well enough, and I will take God in my own
hand."
Years afterward we both recalled that fatal defiance, when the speaker
lay helpless, at the mercy of the Omnipotence whose might he challenged.
Just then his servant, who was busily preparing for departure, entered
the room.
Willis was a slight, under-sized man, of about fifty; his complexion was
muddy and indefinite; his small whiskers, of a grayish red, were trimmed
and pruned as accurately as a box border-edging, and the partial absence
of eyebrows and eyelashes gave his face a sort of unfinished look. The
expression natural to it was, I think, a low, vicious cunning; but his
features and little green eyes were so rigidly disciplined that, as a
rule, neither had any characteristic save utter vacuity. In his own line
he was perfect. No commission that could be intrusted to him would draw
from him a remark or a look of surprise. He executed precisely what he
was told, and fulfilled the minutest duties of his station
irreproachably, with a noiseless, feline activity. He was like the
war-horse of the Douglas:
"Though somewhat old,
Swift in his paces, cool, and bold."
He held a miniature-case in his hand as he entered. "Am I to put this
in, sir?" he asked, in the slow, measured voice that was habitual to
him.
His master gazed sharply at him, as if trying to detect a covert
sneer--it would have been safer to have stroked a rattlesnake's crest
than to have trifled with Livingstone just then--but Willis's face was
as innocent of any expression as a dead wall.
"Put it down, and go on with your packing; you have no time to spare."
The man laid the case on a marble table near, and went out.
Guy took the miniature and regarded it steadfastly for some moments,
then he looked up and caught my eye. Perhaps there was an eager appeal
there (for I knew well whose likeness lay before him) which displeased
and provoked his sullen temper; for he frowned darkly, and then his
clenched hand fell with the crashing weight of a steam-hammer. Nothing
but a heap of shivered wood, glass, and ivory remained of what had been
the life-like image of Constance Brandon.
A thrill of horror shot through me icily, and a low cry burst from my
lips. I felt at that moment as if the blow had fallen, not on the
portrait, but on the original.
But I kept silence. The dark hour was on Saul, and I knew no spell to
chase the evil spirit away.
Guy spoke at last. His manner was unusually chill and constrained.
"I expect to meet Mohun in Paris, and we shall probably go on to Vienna.
I hardly like troubling you with commissions, but I must. Listen. I
leave my own name--and another person's--in your keeping. I wish it to
be clearly understood that the engagement was broken off by Miss
Brandon, not by me. If you hear any man speak disparagingly of her in
connection with what has passed, you can insult him on my behalf as
grossly as you please. I will be here, as fast as steam can bring me, to
back what you may have said or done. This is the only point in which I
hope you will guard my honor. As for blaming _me_, they may say what
they please. Do you quite understand? And will you promise?"
I did promise; and so, after a few more last words, we parted, more
coldly than we had ever done in all the years through which we had been
intimate.
Guy left England the same evening, and descended like a thunder-clap on
the joyous little _ménage_ in the Rue de la Madeleine, where Forrester
and his bride were still fluttering their wings in the honeymoon-shine
of post-nuptial spring.
They were miraculously happy, those two. Indeed, they seemed to have
only one taste between them, and that was Charley's. If he felt
inclined, which was not seldom, to utter inaction, his wife encouraged
him in his laziness, sitting contentedly for hours on her footstool,
with her silky hair just within reach of his indolent hand. If, after
dinner, he suggested the "Italiens," or the "Bouffes," it was always
precisely that theatre that she had been thinking of all the morning.
She was in the seventh heaven when he won a hurdle-race in the Champ de
Mars.
They made excursions into the _banlieue_, and farther afield yet, like a
couple of the _Pays Latin_ in their first loves. The cabinets of Bercy
and St. Cloud knew them; so did the arbors of Asnières, where, in
oilskin and _vareuse_, muster for their Sabbat the ancient mariners of
the Seine. Nay, it has been whispered that more than once--close veiled
and clinging tightly to her husband's arm--Isabel witnessed at _Mabille_
and the _Chaumière_ the choregraphic triumphs of _Frisette_, _Pomare_,
and _Mogador_.
My hand trembles while I record such enormities and backslidings. O
Brougham-girls of Belgravia, who "never gave your mothers a moment's
uneasiness"--stars of the Western hemisphere, who can be trusted any
where without fear of your wandering from your orbits--think on this
lost Pleiad, once your companion, and be warned. Men are deceivers ever,
even when they mean matrimony; and the tender mercies of the Light
Dragoon are cruel.
Isabel was dreadfully startled at the sudden appearance of her cousin.
Her notions of his power were quite unlimited and irrational, and I
believe her first thought was that he had changed his mind about the
propriety of her marriage, and was come to carry her back into the house
of her bondage with the strong hand.
When his curt sentences told her the facts, sorry as she was, it
certainly was rather a relief to her. Charley was full of compassion
too, but he only confided this to his wife. He knew better than to try
condolence with Guy, and felt instantly that the case was far beyond his
simple powers of healing.
They did not see much of him. The contrast of their happiness with his
own state must have grated on his feelings. His grim presence chilled
and clouded their little banquets at the Trois Frères or the Café de
Paris. He sat there among the bright lamps and flowers like a statue of
dark marble that it is impossible to light up, drinking all the while,
moodily, of the strongest wines to that portentous extent that it made
Isabel nervous and her husband grave.
Perhaps Guy was conscious of the effect he produced; at all events, he
rather avoided the Forresters, finding in Mohun more congenial society.
The latter probably regretted what had happened; perhaps he felt an
approach to sympathy, after his rough fashion, but with this mingled a
dreary sort of satisfaction at the sight of a strong mind and hardy
nature rapidly descending to his own misanthropical level. Such an
exultation was breathed in that ghastly chorus of the dead kings and
chief ones of the earth when they rose, each on his awful throne, and
Hell beneath was moved at the advent of the Son of the Morning.
These two did not stay long in Paris before they took their departure
for Vienna.
We who were left behind in England talked a little at first, of course,
about the broken engagement, but I had no occasion to throw down the
gauntlet that had been left in my hands. I never heard any thing more
spiteful about Miss Brandon than that "she was never suited to her
_fiancé_--far too good for him." Others "had always thought how it
would be; it would take a good deal more yet to tame Livingstone." Sir
Henry Fallowfield observed, "Nothing could be more natural and correct.
The lady was a saint, and there is always a sort of incompleteness about
saints if they are not made martyrs. Suffering is their normal state."
It was remarked that he was unusually cheerful for some days afterward;
and when Guy's conduct was canvassed, seemed inclined to quote the old
school-master's words on witnessing his pupil's success, "Bless the boy!
I taught him."
Some other subject soon came up and replaced the week's wonder.
Constance left town with her uncle almost immediately, and I heard
nothing of her for many months. Miss Bellasys remained. Very few persons
even guessed at the share she had had in breaking off the match; so her
credit was not much impaired, and her campaign was as brilliantly
successful as usual. If she felt any disappointment at Guy's abrupt
departure, she concealed it remarkably well. In some things, though
naturally impetuous and impatient, she was as cool as a Red Indian, and
would wait and watch forever if she saw a prospect of ultimate success.
So the days rolled on, bringing swiftly and surely the bitter
harvest-time, when he who had sown the wind was to reap the whirlwind.