A CONSULTATION: WITH OPINIONS UPON WELSHWOMEN AND THE CAMBRIAN RACE
Later in the day she heard that he was out scouring the country on one of
her uncle's horses. She had too many distressing matters to think of for
so singular a young man to have any other place than that which is given
to the fantastical in a troubled and serious mind. He danced there like
the whimsy sunbeam of a shaken water below. What would be his opinion of
Adiante if he knew of her determination to sell the two fair estates she
inherited from a grandmother whom she had venerated; that she might
furnish arms to her husband to carry out an audacious enterprise likely
to involve both of them in blood and ruin? Would he not bound up aloft
and quiver still more wildly? She respected, quaint though it was, his
imaginative heat of feeling for Adiante sufficiently to associate him
with her so far; and she lent him in fancy her own bewilderment and grief
at her cousin's conduct, for the soothing that his exaggeration of them
afforded her. She could almost hear his outcry.
The business of the hour demanded more of her than a seeking for
refreshment. She had been invited to join the consultation of her uncle
with his lawyer. Mr. Adister tossed her another letter from Vienna, of
that morning's delivery. She read it with composure. It became her task
to pay no heed to his loss of patience, and induce him to acquiesce in
his legal adviser's view which was, to temporise further, present an
array of obstacles, and by all possible suggestions induce the princess
to come over to England, where her father's influence with her would have
a chance of being established again; and it might then be hoped that she,
who had never when under sharp temptation acted disobediently to his
wishes at home, and who certainly would not have dreamed of contracting
the abhorred alliance had she been breathing the air of common sense
peculiar to her native land, would see the prudence, if not the solemn
obligation, of retaining to herself these family possessions. Caroline
was urgent with her uncle to act on such good counsel. She marvelled at
his opposition, though she detected the principal basis of it.
Mr. Adister had no ground of opposition but his own intemperateness.
The Welsh grandmother's legacy of her estates to his girl, overlooking
her brothers, Colonel Arthur and Captain David, had excessively vexed
him, despite the strong feeling he entertained for Adiante; and not
simply because of the blow he received in it unexpectedly from that old
lady, as the last and heaviest of the long and open feud between them,
but also, chiefly, that it outraged and did permanent injury to his ideas
of the proper balance of the sexes. Between himself and Mrs. Winnion
Rhys the condition of the balance had been a point of vehement
disputation, she insisting to have it finer up to equality, and he that
the naturally lighter scale should continue to kick the beam. Behold now
the consequence of the wilful Welshwoman's insanest of legacies! The
estates were left to Adiante Adister for her sole use and benefit, making
almost a man of her, and an unshackled man, owing no dues to posterity.
Those estates in the hands of a woman are in the hands of her husband;
and the husband a gambler and a knave, they are in the hands of the Jews
--or gone to smoke. Let them go. A devilish malignity bequeathed them:
let them go back to their infernal origin. And when they were gone, his
girl would soon discover that there was no better place to come to than
her home; she would come without an asking, and alone, and without much
prospect of the intrusion of her infamous Hook-nose in pursuit of her at
Earlsfont. The money wasted, the wife would be at peace. Here she would
have leisure to repent of all the steps she had taken since that fatal
one of the acceptance of the invitation to the Embassy at Vienna. Mr.
Adister had warned her both against her going and against the influence
of her friend Lady Wenchester, our Ambassadress there, another Welsh
woman, with the weathervane head of her race. But the girl would accept,
and it was not for him to hold out. It appeared to be written that the
Welsh, particularly Welsh women, were destined to worry him up to the end
of his days. Their women were a composition of wind and fire. They had
no reason, nothing solid in their whole nature. Englishmen allied to
them had to learn that they were dealing with broomstick witches and
irresponsible sprites. Irishwomen were models of propriety beside them:
indeed Irishwomen might often be patterns to their English sisterhood.
Mr. Adister described the Cambrian ladies as a kind of daughters of the
Fata Morgana, only half human, and deceptive down to treachery, unless
you had them fast by their spinning fancy. They called it being
romantic. It was the ante-chamber of madness. Mad, was the word for
them. You pleased them you knew not how, and just as little did you know
how you displeased them. And you were long hence to be taught that in a
certain past year, and a certain month, and on a certain day of the
month, not forgetting the hour of the day to the minute of the hour, and
attendant circumstances to swear loud witness to it, you had mortally
offended them. And you receive your blow: you are sure to get it: the
one passion of those women is for vengeance. They taste a wound from the
lightest touch, and they nurse the venom for you. Possibly you may in
their presence have had occasion to praise the military virtues of the
builder of Carnarvon Castle. You are by and by pierced for it as hard as
they can thrust. Or you have incidentally compared Welsh mutton with
Southdown:--you have not highly esteemed their drunken Bards:--you have
asked what the Welsh have done in the world; you are supposed to have
slighted some person of their family--a tenth cousin!--anything turns
their blood. Or you have once looked straight at them without speaking,
and you discover years after that they have chosen to foist on you their
idea of your idea at the moment; and they have the astounding presumption
to account this misreading of your look to the extent of a full
justification, nothing short of righteous, for their treachery and your
punishment! O those Welshwomen!
The much-suffering lord of Earlsfont stretched forth his open hand, palm
upward, for a testifying instrument to the plain truth of his catalogue
of charges. He closed it tight and smote the table. 'Like mother--and
grandmother too--like daughter!' he said, and generalised again to
preserve his dignity: 'They're aflame in an instant. You may see them
quiet for years, but it smoulders. You dropped the spark, and they time
the explosion.'
Caroline said to Mr. Camminy: 'You are sure you can give us the day?'
'All of it,' he replied, apologising for some show of restlessness. 'The
fact is, Miss Adister, I married a lady from over the borders, and though
I have never had to complain of her yet, she may have a finale in store.
It's true that I love wild Wales.'
'And so do I' Caroline raised her eyes to imagined mountains.
'You will pardon me, Camminy,' said Mr. Adister.
The lawyer cracked his back to bow to the great gentleman so
magnanimously humiliating himself. 'Sir! Sir!' he said. 'Yes, Welsh
blood is queer blood, I own. They find it difficult to forgive; and
trifles offend; and they are unhappily just as secretive as they are
sensitive. The pangs we cause them, without our knowing it, must be
horrible. They are born, it would seem, with more than the common
allowance of kibes for treading on: a severe misfortune for them. Now
for their merits: they have poetry in them; they are valiant; they are
hospitable to teach the Arab a lesson: I do believe their life is their
friend's at need--seriously, they would lay it down for him: or the
wherewithal, their money, their property, excepting the three-stringed
harp of three generations back, worth now in current value sixpence
halfpenny as a curiosity, or three farthings for firewood; that they'll
keep against their own desire to heap on you everything they have--if
they love you, and you at the same time have struck their imaginations.
Offend them, however, and it's war, declared or covert. And I must admit
that their best friend can too easily offend them. I have lost excellent
clients, I have never understood why; yet I respect the remains of their
literature, I study their language, I attend their gatherings and
subscribe the expenses; I consume Welsh mutton with relish; I enjoy the
Triads, and can come down on them with a quotation from Catwg the Wise:
but it so chanced that I trod on a kibe, and I had to pay the penalty.
There's an Arabian tale, Miss Adister, of a peaceful traveller who ate a
date in the desert and flung away the stone, which hit an invisible son
of a genie in the eye, and the poor traveller suffered for it. Well, you
commit these mortal injuries to the invisible among the Welsh. Some of
them are hurt if you call them Welsh. They scout it as the original
Saxon title for them. No, they are Cymry, Cambrians! They have forgiven
the Romans. Saxon and Norman are still their enemies. If you stir their
hearts you find it so. And, by the way, if King Edward had not trampled
them into the mire so thoroughly, we should hear of it at times even now.
Instead of penillions and englyns, there would be days for fiery
triplets. Say the worst of them, they are soundheaded. They have a
ready comprehension for great thoughts. The Princess Nikolas, I
remember, had a special fondness for the words of Catwg the Wise.'
'Adiante,' had murmured Caroline, to correct his indiscretion.
She was too late.
'Nikolas!' Mr. Adister thundered. 'Hold back that name in this house,
title and all, if you speak of my daughter. I refuse admission to it
here. She has given up my name, and she must be known by the one her
feather-brained grandmother proposed for her, to satisfy her pleasure in
a fine sound. English Christian names are my preference. I conceded
Arthur to her without difficulty. She had a voice in David, I recollect;
with very little profit to either of the boys. I had no voice in
Adiante; but I stood at my girl's baptism, and Adiante let her be. At
least I saved the girl from the addition of Arianrod. It was to have
been Adiante Arianrod. Can you credit it? Prince-pah! Nikolas? Have
you a notion of the sort of prince that makes an English lady of the best
blood of England his princess?'
The lawyer had a precise notion of the sort of prince appearing to Mr.
Adister in the person of his foreign son-in-law. Prince Nikolas had been
described to him before, with graphic touches upon the quality of the
reputation he bore at the courts and in the gambling-saloons of Europe.
Dreading lest his client's angry heat should precipitate him on the
prince again, to the confusion of a lady's ears, Mr. Camminy gave an
emphatic and short affirmative.
'You know what he is like?' said Mr. Adister, with a face of disgust
reflected from the bare thought of the hideous likeness.
Mr. Camminy assured him that the description of the prince's lineaments
would not be new. It was, as he was aware, derived from a miniature of
her husband, transmitted by the princess, on its flight out of her
father's loathing hand to the hearthstone and under his heel.
Assisted by Caroline, he managed to check the famous delineation of the
adventurer prince in which a not very worthy gentleman's chronic fever of
abomination made him really eloquent, quick to unburden himself in the
teeth of decorum.
'And my son-in-law! My son-in-law!' ejaculated Mr. Adister, tossing his
head higher, and so he stimulated his amazement and abhorrence of the
portrait he rather wondered at them for not desiring to have sketched for
their execration of it, alluringly foul as it was: while they in concert
drew him back to the discussion of his daughter's business, reiterating
prudent counsel, with a knowledge that they had only to wait for the
ebbing of his temper.
'Let her be informed, sir, that by coming to England she can settle the
business according to her wishes in one quarter of the time it would take
a Commission sent out to her--if we should be authorised to send out
one,' said Mr. Camminy. 'By committing the business to you, I fancy I
perceive your daughter's disposition to consider your feelings: possibly
to a reluctance to do the deed unsanctioned by her father. It would
appear so to a cool observer, notwithstanding her inattention to your
remonstrances.'
The reply was: 'Dine here and sleep here. I shall be having more of
these letters,' Mr. Adister added, profoundly sighing.
Caroline slipped away to mark a conclusion to the debate; and Mr. Camminy
saw his client redden fast and frown.
'Besides,' he spoke in a husky voice, descending upon a subject hateful,
'she tells me to-day she is not in a state to travel! Do you hear? Make
what you can of it.'
The proud and injured gentleman had the aspect of one who receives a blow
that it is impossible for him to resent. He could not speak the shame he
felt: it was literally in his flesh. But the cause had been sufficiently
hinted to set the lawyer staring as men do when they encounter situations
of grisly humour, where certain of the passions of man's developed nature
are seen armed and furious against our mild prevailing ancient mother
nature; and the contrast is between our utter wrath and her simple
exposition of the circumstances and consequences forming her laws. There
are situations which pass beyond the lightly stirred perceptive wits to
the quiet court of the intellect, to be received there as an addition to
our acquaintance with mankind. We know not of what substance to name
them. Humour in its intense strain has a seat somewhere about the mouth
of tragedy, giving it the enigmatical faint wry pull at a corner visible
at times upon the dreadful mask.
That Mr. Adister should be astonished at such a communication from the
princess, after a year of her marriage: and that he should take it for a
further outrage of his paternal sentiments, should actually redden and be
hoarse in alluding to it: the revelation of such points in our human
character set the humane old lawyer staring at the reserve space within
himself apart from his legal being, whereon he by fits compared his own
constitution with that of the individuals revealed to him by their acts
and confidential utterances. For him, he decided that he would have
rejoiced at the news.
Granting the prince a monster, however, as Mr. Adister unforcedly
considered him, it was not so cheering a piece of intelligence that
involved him yet closer with that man's rank blood: it curdled his own.
The marriage had shocked and stricken him, cleaving, in his love for his
daughter, a goodly tree and withering many flowers. Still the marriage
was but Adiante's gulf: he might be called father-in-law of her spangled
ruffian; son-in-law, the desperado-rascal would never be called by him.
But the result of the marriage dragged him bodily into the gulf: he
became one of four, numbering the beast twice among them. The subtlety
of his hatred so reckoned it; for he could not deny his daughter in the
father's child; he could not exclude its unhallowed father in the
mother's: and of this man's child he must know and own himself the
grandfather. If ever he saw the child, if drawn to it to fondle it,
some part of the little animal not his daughter's would partake of his
embrace. And if neither of his boys married, and his girl gave birth to
a son! darkness rolled upon that avenue of vision. A trespasser and
usurper-one of the demon's brood chased his very name out of Earlsfont!
'Camminy, you must try to amuse yourself,' he said briskly. 'Anything
you may be wanting at home shall be sent for. I must have you here to
make sure that I am acting under good advice. You can take one of the
keepers for an hour or two of shooting. I may join you in the afternoon.
You will find occupation for your gun in the north covers.'
He wandered about the house, looking into several rooms, and only
partially at rest when he discovered Caroline in one, engaged upon some
of her aquarelle sketches. He asked where the young Irishman was.
'Are you in search of him?' said she. 'You like him, uncle? He is out
riding, they tell me.'
'The youngster is used to south-western showers in that climate of his,'
Mr. Adister replied. 'I dare say we could find the Jesuit in him
somewhere. There's the seed. His cousin Con O'Donnell has filled him
with stuff about Ireland and England: the man has no better to do than to
train a parrot. What do you think of him, my love?'
The judgement was not easily formed for expression. 'He is not quite
like what I remember of his brother Philip. He talks much more, does he
not? He seems more Irish than his brother. He is very strange. His
feelings are strong; he has not an idea of concealing them. For a young
man educated by the Jesuits, he is remarkably open.'
'The Jesuits might be of service to me just now!' Mr. Adister addressed
his troubled soul, and spoke upon another conception of them: 'How has he
shown his feelings?'
Caroline answered quickly: 'His love of his brother. Anything that
concerns his brother moves him; it is like a touch on a musical
instrument. Perhaps I should say a native one.'
'Concerns his brother?' Mr. Adister inquired, and his look requesting
enlightenment told her she might speak.
'Adiante,' she said softly. She coloured.
Her uncle mused awhile in a half-somnolent gloom. 'He talks of this at
this present day?'
'It is not dead to him. He really appears to have hoped . . . he is
extraordinary. He had not heard before of her marriage. I was a witness
of the most singular scene this morning, at the piano. He gathered it
from what he had heard. He was overwhelmed by it. I could not
exaggerate. It was impossible to help being a little touched, though it
was curious, very strange.'
Her uncle's attentiveness incited her to describe the scene, and as it
visibly relieved his melancholy, she did it with a few vivid indications
of the quaint young Irishman's manner of speech. She concluded: 'At last
he begged to see a portrait of her husband.'
'Not of her?' said Mr. Adister abruptly.
'No; only of her husband.'
'Show him her portrait.'
A shade of surprise was on Caroline's forehead. 'Shall I?' She had a dim
momentary thought that the sight of the beautiful face would not be good
for Patrick.
'Yes; let him see the woman who could throw herself away on that branded
villain called a prince, abjuring her Church for a little fouler than
hangman to me and every gentleman alive. I desire that he should see it.
Submission to the demands of her husband's policy required it of her,
she says! Show it him when he returns; you have her miniature in your
keeping. And to-morrow take him to look at the full-length of her before
she left England and ceased to be a lady of our country. I will order it
to be placed in the armoury. Let him see the miniature of her this day.'
Mr. Adister resolved at the same time that Patrick should have his
portrait of the prince for a set-off to the face of his daughter. He
craved the relief it would be to him to lay his colours on the prince for
the sparkling amazement of one whom, according to Caroline's description,
he could expect to feel with him acutely, which neither his niece nor his
lawyer had done: they never did when he painted the prince. He was
unstrung, heavily plunged in the matter of his chagrin and grief: his
unhealed wound had been scraped and strewn with salt by his daughter's
letter; he had a thirst for the kind of sympathy he supposed he would
find in the young Irishman's horror at the husband of the incomparable
beauty now past redemption degraded by her hideous choice; lost to
England and to her father and to common respect. For none, having once
had the picture of the man, could dissociate them; they were like heaven
and its reverse, everlastingly coupled in the mind by their opposition of
characters and aspects. Her father could not, and he judged of others by
himself. He had been all but utterly solitary since her marriage,
brooded on it until it saturated him; too proud to speak of the thing
in sadness, or claim condolence for this wound inflicted on him by the
daughter he had idolised other than through the indirect method of
causing people to wonder at her chosen yoke-fellow. Their stupefaction
refreshed him. Yet he was a gentleman capable of apprehending
simultaneously that he sinned against his pride in the means he adopted
to comfort his nature. But the wound was a perpetual sickness needing
soul-medicine. Proud as he was, and unbending, he was not stronger than
his malady, and he could disguise, he could not contain, the cry of
immoderate grief. Adiante had been to him something beyond a creature
beloved; she had with her glorious beauty and great-heartedness been the
sole object which had ever inspirited his imagination. He could have
thought no man, not the most illustrious, worthy of her. And there she
was, voluntarily in the hands of a monster! 'Husband!' Mr. Adister broke
away from Caroline, muttering: 'Her husband's policy!'
She was used to his interjections; she sat thinking more of the strange
request to her to show Mr. O'Donnell the miniature of Adiante. She had
often thought that her uncle regretted his rejection of Philip.
It appeared so to her now, though not by any consecutive process of
reasoning. She went to fetch the miniature, and gazing on it, she tried
to guess at Mr. O'Donnell's thoughts when doing the same; for who so
inflammable as he? And who, woman or man, could behold this lighted
face, with the dark raised eyes and abounding auburn tresses, where the
contrast of colours was in itself thrilling, and not admire, or more,
half worship, or wholly worship? She pitied the youth: she fancied that
he would not continue so ingenuously true to his brother's love of
Adiante after seeing it; unless one might hope that the light above
beauty distinguishing its noble classic lines, and the energy of
radiance, like a morning of chivalrous promise, in the eyes, would subdue
him to distant admiration. These were her flitting thoughts under the
spell of her queenly cousin's visage. She shut up the miniature-case,
and waited to hand it to young Mr. O'Donnell.