THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT
Madame d'Auffray passed Renee, whispering on her way to take her seat at
the breakfast-table.
Renee did not condescend to whisper. 'Roland will be glad,' she said
aloud.
Her low eyelids challenged Beauchamp for a look of indifference. There
was more for her to unbosom than Madame d'Auffray had revealed, but the
comparative innocence of her position in this new light prompted her to
meet him defiantly, if he chose to feel injured. He was attracted by a
happy contrast of colour between her dress and complexion, together with
a cavalierly charm in the sullen brows she lifted; and seeing the reverse
of a look of indifference on his face, after what he had heard of her
frivolousness, she had a fear that it existed.
'Are we not to have M. d'Henriel to-day? he amuses me,' the baronne
d'Orbec remarked.
'If he would learn that he was fashioned for that purpose!' exclaimed
little M. Livret.
'Do not ask young men for too much head, my friend; he would cease to be
amusing.'
'D'Henriel should have been up in the fields at ten this morning,' said
M. d'Orbec. 'As to his head, I back him for a clever shot.'
'Or a duelling-sword,' said Renee. 'It is a quality, count it for what
we will. Your favourite, Madame la Baronne, is interdicted from
presenting himself here so long as he persists in offending me.'
She was requested to explain, and, with the fair ingenuousness which
outshines innocence, she touched on the story of the glove.
Ah! what a delicate, what an exciting, how subtle a question!
Had M. d'Henriel the right to possess it? and, having that, had he the
right to wear it at his breast?
Beauchamp was dragged into the discussion of the case.
Renee waited curiously for his judgement.
Pleading an apology for the stormy weather, which had detained him, and
for his ignorance that so precious an article was at stake, he held, that
by the terms of the wager, the glove was lost; the claim to wear it was a
matter of taste.
'Matters of taste, monsieur, are not, I think, decided by weapons in your
country?' said M. d'Orbec.
'We have no duelling,' said Beauchamp.
The Frenchman imagined the confession to be somewhat humbling, and
generously added, 'But you have your volunteers--a magnificent spectacle
of patriotism and national readiness for defence!'
A shrewd pang traversed Beauchamp's heart, as he looked back on his
country from the outside and the inside, thinking what amount of
patriotic readiness the character of the volunteering signified, in the
face of all that England has to maintain. Like a politic islander, he
allowed the patriotic spectacle to be imagined; reflecting that it did a
sort of service abroad, and had only to be unmasked at home.
'But you surrendered the glove, marquise!' The baronne d'Orbec spoke
judicially.
'I flung it to the ground: that made it neutral,' said Renee.
'Hum. He wears it with the dust on it, certainly.'
'And for how long a time,' M. Livret wished to know, 'does this amusing
young man proclaim his intention of wearing the glove?'
'Until he can see with us that his Order of Merit is utter kid,' said
Madame d'Auffray; and as she had spoken more or less neatly, satisfaction
was left residing in the ear of the assembly, and the glove was permitted
to be swept away on a fresh tide of dialogue.
The admirable candour of Renee in publicly alluding to M. d'Henriel's
foolishness restored a peep of his holiday to Beauchamp. Madame
d'Auffray took note of the effect it produced, and quite excused her
sister-in-law for intending to produce is; but that speaking out the
half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole, is no new trick; and
believing as she did that Renee was in danger with the handsome Count
Henri, the practice of such a kind of honesty on her part appeared
alarming.
Still it is imprudent to press for confidences when our friend's heart is
manifestly trifling with sincerity. Who knows but that some foregone
reckless act or word may have superinduced the healthy shame which cannot
speak, which must disguise itself, and is honesty in that form, but
roughly troubled would resolve to rank dishonesty? So thought the
patient lady, wiser in that than in her perceptions.
Renee made a boast of not persuading her guest to stay, avowing that she
would not willingly have him go. Praising him equably, she listened to
praise of him with animation. She was dumb and statue-like when Count
Henri's name was mentioned. Did not this betray liking for one,
subjection to the other? Indeed, there was an Asiatic splendour of
animal beauty about M. d'Henriel that would be serpent with most women,
Madame d'Auffray conceived; why not with the deserted Renee, who adored
beauty of shape and colour, and was compassionate toward a rashness of
character that her own unnatural solitariness and quick spirit made her
emulous of?
Meanwhile Beauchamp's day of adieu succeeded that of his holiday, and no
adieu was uttered. The hours at Tourdestelle had a singular turn for
slipping. Interlinked and all as one they swam by, brought evening,
brought morning, never varied. They might have varied with such a
division as when flame lights up the night or a tempest shades the day,
had Renee chosen; she had that power over him. She had no wish to use
it; perhaps she apprehended what it would cause her to forfeit. She
wished him to respect her; felt that she was under the shadow of the
glove, slight though it was while it was nothing but a tale of a lady and
a glove; and her desire, like his, was that they should meet daily and
dream on, without a variation. He noticed how seldom she led him beyond
the grounds of the chateau. They were to make excursions when her
brother came, she said. Roland de Croisnel's colonel, Coin de
Grandchamp, happened to be engaged in a duel, which great business
detained Roland. It supplied Beauchamp with an excuse for staying, that
he was angry with himself for being pleased to have; so he attacked the
practice of duelling, and next the shrug, wherewith M. Livret and M.
d'Orbec sought at first to defend the foul custom, or apologize for it,
or plead for it philosophically, or altogether cast it off their
shoulders; for the literal interpretation of the shrug in argument is
beyond human capacity; it is the point of speech beyond our treasury of
language. He attacked the shrug, as he thought, very temperately; but in
controlling his native vehemence he grew, perforce of repression, and of
incompetency to deliver himself copiously in French, sarcastic. In fine,
his contrast of the pretence of their noble country to head civilization,
and its encouragement of a custom so barbarous, offended M. d'Orbec and
irritated M. Livret.
The latter delivered a brief essay on Gallic blood; the former maintained
that Frenchmen were the best judges of their own ways and deeds.
Politeness reigned, but politeness is compelled to throw off cloak and
jacket when it steps into the arena to meet the encounter of a bull.
Beauchamp drew on their word 'solidaire' to assist him in declaring that
no civilized nation could be thus independent. Imagining himself in the
France of brave ideas, he contrived to strike out sparks of Legitimist
ire around him, and found himself breathing the atmosphere of the most
primitive nursery of Toryism. Again he encountered the shrug, and he
would have it a verbal matter. M. d'Orbec gravely recited the programme
of the country party in France. M. Livret carried the war across
Channel. You English have retired from active life, like the exhausted
author, to turn critic--the critic that sneers: unless we copy you
abjectly we are execrable. And what is that sneer? Materially it is an
acrid saliva, withering where it drops; in the way of fellowship it is a
corpse-emanation. As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness; it is
the Pharisee's incense, the hypocrite's pity, the post of exaltation of
the fat citizen, etc.; but, said M. Livret, the people using it should
have a care that they keep powerful: they make no friends. He terminated
with this warning to a nation not devoid of superior merit. M. d'Orbec
said less, and was less consoled by his outburst.
In the opinion of Mr. Vivian Ducie, present at the discussion, Beauchamp
provoked the lash; for, in the first place, a beautiful woman's apparent
favourite should be particularly discreet in all that he says: and next,
he should have known that the Gallic shrug over matters political is
volcanic--it is the heaving of the mountain, and, like the proverbial
Russ, leaps up Tartarly at a scratch. Our newspapers also had been flea-
biting M. Livret and his countrymen of late; and, to conclude, over in
old England you may fly out against what you will, and there is little
beyond a motherly smile, a nurse's rebuke, or a fool's rudeness to answer
you. In quick-blooded France you have whip for whip, sneer, sarcasm,
claw, fang, tussle, in a trice; and if you choose to comport yourself
according to your insular notion of freedom, you are bound to march out
to the measured ground at an invitation. To begin by saying that your
principles are opposed to it, naturally excites a malicious propensity to
try your temper.
A further cause, unknown to Mr. Ducie, of M. Livret's irritation was,
that Beauchamp had vexed him on a subject peculiarly dear to him. The
celebrated Chateau Dianet was about to be visited by the guests at
Tourdestelle. In common with some French philosophers and English
matrons, he cherished a sentimental sad enthusiasm for royal concubines;
and when dilating upon one among them, the ruins of whose family's castle
stood in the neighbourhood-Agrees, who was really a kindly soul, though
not virtuous--M. Livret had been traversed by Beauchamp with questions as
to the condition of the people, the peasantry, that were sweated in taxes
to support these lovely frailties. They came oddly from a man in the
fire of youth, and a little old gentleman somewhat seduced by the melting
image of his theme might well blink at him to ask, of what flesh are you,
then? His historic harem was insulted. Personally too, the fair
creature picturesquely soiled, intrepid in her amorousness, and
ultimately absolved by repentance (a shuddering narrative of her sins
under showers of salt drops), cried to him to champion her. Excited by
the supposed cold critical mind in Beauchamp, M. Livret painted and
painted this lady, tricked her in casuistical niceties, scenes of pomp
and boudoir pathos, with many shifting sidelights and a risky word or
two, until Renee cried out, 'Spare us the esprit Gaulois, M. Livret!'
There was much to make him angry with this Englishman.
'The esprit Gaulois is the sparkle of crystal common sense, madame, and
may we never abandon it for a Puritanism that hides its face to conceal
its filthiness, like a stagnant pond,' replied M. Livret, flashing.
'It seems, then, that there are two ways of being objectionable,' said
Renee.
'Ah! Madame la Marquise, your wit is French,' he breathed low; 'keep your
heart so!'
Both M. Livret and M. d'Orbec had forgotten that when Count Henri
d'Henriel was received at Tourdestelle, the arrival of the Englishman was
pleasantly anticipated by them as an eclipse of the handsome boy; but a
foreign interloper is quickly dispossessed of all means of pleasing save
that one of taking his departure; and they now talked of Count Henri's
disgrace and banishment in a very warm spirit of sympathy, not at all
seeing why it should be made to depend upon the movements of this M.
Beauchamp, as it appeared to be. Madame d'Auffray heard some of their
dialogue, and hurried with a mouth full of comedy to Renee, who did not
reproach them for silly beings, as would be done elsewhere. On the
contrary, she appreciated a scene of such absolute comedy, recognizing it
instantly as a situation plucked out of human nature. She compared them
to republicans that regretted the sovereign they had deposed for a
pretender to start up and govern them.
'Who hurries them round to the legitimate king again!' said Madame
d'Auffray.
Renee cast her chin up. 'How, my dear?'
'Your husband.'
'What of him?'
'He is returning.'
'What brings him?'
'You should ask who, my Renee! I was sure he would not hear of M.
Beauchamp's being here, without an effort to return and do the honours of
the chateau.'
Renee looked hard at her, saying, 'How thoughtful of you! You must have
made use of the telegraph wires to inform him that M. Beauchamp was with
us.'
'More; I made use of them to inform him that M. Beauchamp was expected.'
'And that was enough to bring him! He pays M. Beauchamp a wonderful
compliment.'
'Such as he would pay to no other man, my Renee. Virtually it is the
highest of compliments to you. I say that to M. Beauchamp's credit; for
Raoul has met him, and, whatever his personal feeling may be, must know
your friend is a man of honour.'
'My friend is . . . yes, I have no reason to think otherwise,' Renee
replied. Her husband's persistent and exclusive jealousy of Beauchamp
was the singular point in the character of one who appeared to have no
sentiment of the kind as regarded men that were much less than men of
honour. 'So, then, my sister Agnes,' she said, 'you suggested the
invitation of M. Beauchamp for the purpose of spurring my husband to
return! Apparently he and I are surrounded by plotters.'
'Am I so very guilty?' said Madame d'Auffray.
'If that mad boy, half idiot, half panther, were by chance to insult
M. Beauchamp, you would feel so.'
'You have taken precautions to prevent their meeting; and besides,
M. Beauchamp does not fight.'
Renee flushed crimson.
Madame d'Auffray added, 'I do not say that he is other than a perfectly
brave and chivalrous gentleman.'
'Oh!' cried Renee, 'do not say it, if ever you should imagine it.
Bid Roland speak of him. He is changed, oppressed: I did him a terrible
wrong . . . .' She checked herself. 'But the chief thing to do is to
keep M. d'Henriel away from him. I suspect M. d'Orbec of a design to
make them clash: and you, my dear, will explain why, to flatter me.
Believe me, I thirst for flattery; I have had none since M. Beauchamp
came: and you, so acute, must have seen the want of it in my face. But
you, so skilful, Agnes, will manage these men. Do you know, Agnes, that
the pride of a woman so incredibly clever as you have shown me you are
should resent their intrigues and overthrow them. As for me, I thought
I could command M. d'Henriel, and I find he has neither reason in him nor
obedience. Singular to say, I knew him just as well a week back as I do
now, and then I liked him for his qualities--or the absence of any. But
how shall we avoid him on the road to Dianet? He is aware that we are
going.'
'Take M. Beauchamp by boat,' said Madame d'Auffray.
'The river winds to within a five minutes' walk of Dianet; we could go by
boat,' Renee said musingly. 'I thought of the boat. But does it not
give the man a triumph that we should seem to try to elude him? What
matter! Still, I do not like him to be the falcon, and Nevil Beauchamp
the . . . little bird. So it is, because we began badly, Agnes!'
'Was it my fault?'
'Mine. Tell me: the legitimate king returns when?'
'In two days or three.'
'And his rebel subjects are to address him--how?'
Madame d'Auffray smote the point of a finger softly on her cheek.
'Will they be pardoned?' said Renee.
'It is for him to kneel, my dearest.'
'Legitimacy kneeling for forgiveness is a painful picture, Agnes.
Legitimacy jealous of a foreigner is an odd one. However, we are women,
born to our lot. If we could rise en masse!--but we cannot. Embrace
me.'
Madame d'Auffray embraced her, without an idea that she assisted in
performing the farewell of their confidential intimacy.
When Renee trifled with Count Henri, it was playing with fire, and she
knew it; and once or twice she bemoaned to Agnes d'Auffray her abandoned
state, which condemned her, for the sake of the sensation of living, to
have recourse to perilous pastimes; but she was revolted, as at a piece
of treachery, that Agnes should have suggested the invitation of Nevil
Beauchamp with the secret design of winning home her husband to protect
her. This, for one reason, was because Beauchamp gave her no notion of
danger; none, therefore, of requiring protection; and the presence of her
husband could not but be hateful to him, an undeserved infliction. To
her it was intolerable that they should be brought into contact. It
seemed almost as hard that she should have to dismiss Beauchamp to
preclude their meeting. She remembered, nevertheless, a certain
desperation of mind, scarce imaginable in the retrospect, by which,
trembling, fever-smitten, scorning herself, she had been reduced to hope
for Nevil Beauchamp's coming as for a rescue. The night of the storm had
roused her heart. Since then his perfect friendliness had lulled, his
air of thoughtfulness had interested it; and the fancy that he, who
neither reproached nor sentimentalized, was to be infinitely
compassionated, stirred up remorse. She could not tell her friend Agnes
of these feelings while her feelings were angered against her friend.
So she talked lightly of 'the legitimate king,' and they embraced: a
situation of comedy quite as true as that presented by the humble
admirers of the brilliant chatelaine.
Beauchamp had the pleasure of rowing Madame la Marquise to the short
shaded walk separating the river from Chateau Dianet, whither M. d'Orbec
went on horseback, and Madame d'Auffray and M. Livret were driven.
The portrait of Diane of Dianet was praised for the beauty of the dame,
a soft-fleshed acutely featured person, a fresh-of-the-toilette face,
of the configuration of head of the cat, relieved by a delicately
aquiline nose; and it could only be the cat of fairy metamorphosis which
should stand for that illustration: brows and chin made an acceptable
triangle, and eyes and mouth could be what she pleased for mice or
monarchs. M. Livret did not gainsay the impeachment of her by a great
French historian, tender to women, to frailties in particular--yes, she
was cold, perhaps grasping: but dwell upon her in her character of woman;
conceive her existing, to estimate the charm of her graciousness. Name
the two countries which alone have produced THE WOMAN, the ideal woman,
the woman of art, whose beauty, grace, and wit offer her to our
contemplation in an atmosphere above the ordinary conditions of the
world: these two countries are France and Greece! None other give you
the perfect woman, the woman who conquers time, as she conquers men,
by virtue of the divinity in her blood; and she, as little as illustrious
heroes, is to be judged by the laws and standards of lesser creatures.
In fashioning her, nature and art have worked together: in her, poetry
walks the earth. The question of good or bad is entirely to be put
aside: it is a rustic's impertinence--a bourgeois' vulgarity. She is
preeminent, voila tout. Has she grace and beauty? Then you are
answered: such possessions are an assurance that her influence in the
aggregate must be for good. Thunder, destructive to insects, refreshes
earth: so she. So sang the rhapsodist. Possibly a scholarly little
French gentleman, going down the grey slopes of sixty to second
childishness, recovers a second juvenility in these enthusiasms;
though what it is that inspires our matrons to take up with them is
unimaginable. M. Livret's ardour was a contrast to the young
Englishman's vacant gaze at Diane, and the symbols of her goddesship
running along the walls, the bed, the cabinets, everywhere that the
chaste device could find frontage and a corner.
M. d'Orbec remained outside the chateau inspecting the fish-ponds. When
they rejoined him he complimented Beauchamp semi-ironically on his choice
of the river's quiet charms in preference to the dusty roads. Madame de
Rouaillout said, 'Come, M. d'Orbec; what if you surrender your horse to
M. Beauchamp, and row me back?' He changed colour, hesitated, and
declined he had an engagement to call on M. d'Henriel.
'When did you see him?' said she.
He was confused. 'It is not long since, madame.'
'On the road?'
'Coming along-the road.'
'And our glove?'
'Madame la Marquise, if I may trust my memory, M. d'Henriel was not in
official costume.'
Renee allowed herself to be reassured.
A ceremonious visit that M. Livret insisted on was paid to the chapel of
Diane, where she had worshipped and laid her widowed ashes, which, said
M. Livret, the fiends of the Revolution would not let rest.
He raised his voice to denounce them.
It was Roland de Croisnel that answered: 'The Revolution was our
grandmother, monsieur, and I cannot hear her abused.'
Renee caught her brother by the hand. He stepped out of the chapel with
Beauchamp to embrace him; then kissed Renee, and, remarking that she was
pale, fetched flooding colour to her cheeks. He was hearty air to them
after the sentimentalism they had been hearing. Beauchamp and he walked
like loving comrades at school, questioning, answering, chattering,
laughing,--a beautiful sight to Renee, and she looked at Agrnes d'Auffray
to ask her whether 'this Englishman' was not one of them in his frankness
and freshness.
Roland stopped to turn to Renee. 'I met d'Henriel on my ride here,' he
said with a sharp inquisitive expression of eye that passed immediately.
'You rode here from Tourdestelle, then,' said Renee.
'Has he been one of the company, marquise?'
'Did he ride by you without speaking, Roland?'
'Thus.' Roland described a Spanish caballero's formallest salutation,
saying to Beauchamp, 'Not the best sample of our young Frenchman;--woman-
spoiled! Not that the better kind of article need be spoiled by them--
heaven forbid that! Friend Nevil,' he spoke lower, 'do you know, you
have something of the prophet in you? I remember: much has come true.
An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them! Ah, well: and
Madame Culling? and your seven-feet high uncle? And have you a fleet to
satisfy Nevil Beauchamp yet? You shall see a trial of our new field-guns
at Rouen.'
They were separated with difficulty.
Renee wished her brother to come in the boat; and he would have done so,
but for his objection to have his Arab bestridden by a man unknown to
him.
'My love is a four-foot, and here's my love,' Roland said, going outside
the gilt gate-rails to the graceful little beast, that acknowledged his
ownership with an arch and swing of the neck round to him.
He mounted and called, 'Au revoir, M. le Capitaine.'
'Au revoir, M. le Commandant,' cried Beauchamp.
'Admiral and marshal, each of us in good season,' said Roland. 'Thanks
to your promotion, I had a letter from my sister. Advance a grade, and I
may get another.'
Beauchamp thought of the strange gulf now between him and the time when
he pined to be a commodore, and an admiral. The gulf was bridged as he
looked at Renee petting Roland's horse.
'Is there in the world so lovely a creature?' she said, and appealed
fondlingly to the beauty that brings out beauty, and, bidding it disdain
rivalry, rivalled it insomuch that in a moment of trance Beauchamp with
his bodily vision beheld her, not there, but on the Lido of Venice,
shining out of the years gone.
Old love reviving may be love of a phantom after all. We can, if it must
revive, keep it to the limits of a ghostly love. The ship in the Arabian
tale coming within the zone of the magnetic mountain, flies all its bolts
and bars, and becomes sheer timbers, but that is the carelessness of the
ship's captain; and hitherto Beauchamp could applaud himself for steering
with prudence, while Renee's attractions warned more than they beckoned.
She was magnetic to him as no other woman was. Then whither his course
but homeward?
After they had taken leave of their host and hostess of Chateau Dianet,
walking across a meadow to a line of charmilles that led to the river-
side, he said, 'Now I have seen Roland I shall have to decide upon
going.'
'Wantonly won is deservedly lost,' said Renee. 'But do not disappoint my
Roland much because of his foolish sister. Is he not looking handsome?
And he is young to be a commandant, for we have no interest at this
Court. They kept him out of the last war! My father expects to find you
at Tourdestelle, and how account to him for your hurried flight? save
with the story of that which brought you to us!'
'The glove? I shall beg for the fellow to it before I depart, marquise.'
'You perceived my disposition to light-headedness, monsieur, when I was a
girl.'
'I said that I--But the past is dust. Shall I ever see you in
England?'
'That country seems to frown on me. But if I do not go there, nor you
come here, except to imperious mysterious invitations, which will not be
repeated, the future is dust as well as the past: for me, at least. Dust
here, dust there!--if one could be like a silk-worm, and live lying on
the leaf one feeds on, it would be a sort of answer to the riddle--living
out of the dust, and in the present. I find none in my religion. No
doubt, Madame de Breze did: why did you call Diane so to M. Livret?'
She looked at him smiling as they came out of the shadow of the clipped
trees. He was glancing about for the boat.
'The boat is across the river,' Renee said, in a voice that made him seek
her eyes for an explanation of the dead sound. She was very pale. 'You
have perfect command of yourself? For my sake!' she said.
He looked round.
Standing up in the boat, against the opposite bank, and leaning with
crossed legs on one of the sculls planted in the gravel of the river,
Count Henri d'Henriel's handsome figure presented itself to Beauchamp's
gaze.
With a dryness that smacked of his uncle Everard Romfrey, Beauchamp said
of the fantastical posture of the young man, 'One can do that on fresh
water.'
Renee did not comprehend the sailor-sarcasm of the remark; but she also
commented on the statuesque appearance of Count Henri: 'Is the pose for
photography or for sculpture?'
Neither of them showed a sign of surprise or of impatience.
M. d'Henriel could not maintain the attitude. He uncrossed his legs
deliberately, drooped hat in hand, and came paddling over; apologized
indolently, and said, 'I am not, I believe, trespassing on the grounds
of Tourdestelle, Madame la Marquise!'
'You happen to be in my boat, M. le Comte,' said Renee.
'Permit me, madame.' He had set one foot on shore, with his back to
Beauchamp, and reached a hand to assist her step into the boat.
Beauchamp caught fast hold of the bows while Renee laid a finger on Count
Henri's shoulder to steady herself.
The instant she had taken her seat, Count Henri dashed the scull's blade
at the bank to push off with her, but the boat was fast. His manoeuvre
had been foreseen. Beauchamp swung on board like the last seaman of a
launch, and crouched as the boat rocked away to the stream; and still
Count Henri leaned on the scull, not in a chosen attitude, but for
positive support. He had thrown his force into the blow, to push off
triumphantly, and leave his rival standing. It occurred that the boat's
brief resistance and rocking away agitated his artificial equipoise, and,
by the operation of inexorable laws, the longer he leaned across an
extending surface the more was he dependent; so that when the measure of
the water exceeded the length of his failing support on land, there was
no help for it: he pitched in. His grimace of chagrin at the sight of
Beauchamp securely established, had scarcely yielded to the grimness of
feature of the man who feels he must go, as he took the plunge; and these
two emotions combined to make an extraordinary countenance.
He went like a gallant gentleman; he threw up his heels to clear the
boat, dropping into about four feet of water, and his first remark on
rising was, 'I trust, madame, I have not had the misfortune to splash
you.'
Then he waded to the bank, scrambled to his feet, and drew out his
moustachios to their curving ends. Renee nodded sharply to Beauchamp to
bid him row. He, with less of wisdom, having seized the floating scull
abandoned by Count Henri, and got it ready for the stroke, said a word of
condolence to the dripping man.
Count Henri's shoulders and neck expressed a kind of negative that, like
a wet dog's shake of the head, ended in an involuntary whole length
shudder, dog-like and deplorable to behold. He must have been conscious
of this miserable exhibition of himself; he turned to Beauchamp: 'You
are, I am informed, a sailor, monsieur. I compliment you on your naval
tactics: our next meeting will be on land. Au revoir, monsieur. Madame
la Marquise, I have the honour to salute you.'
With these words he retreated.
'Row quickly, I beg of you,' Renee said to Beauchamp. Her desire was to
see Roland, and open her heart to her brother; for now it had to be
opened. Not a minute must be lost to prevent further mischief. And who
was guilty? she. Her heart clamoured of her guilt to waken a cry of
innocence. A disdainful pity for the superb young savage just made
ludicrous, relieved him of blame, implacable though he was. He was
nothing; an accident--a fool. But he might become a terrible instrument
of punishment. The thought of that possibility gave it an aspect of
retribution, under which her cry of innocence was insufferable in its
feebleness. It would have been different with her if Beauchamp had taken
advantage of her fever of anxiety, suddenly appeased by the sight of him
on the evening of his arrival at Tourdestelle after the storm, to attempt
a renewal of their old broken love-bonds. Then she would have seen only
a conflict between two men, neither of whom could claim a more secret
right than the other to be called her lover, and of whom both were on a
common footing, and partly despicable. But Nevil Beauchamp had behaved
as her perfect true friend, in the character she had hoped for when she
summoned him. The sense of her guilt lay in the recognition that he had
saved her. From what? From the consequences of delirium rather than
from love--surely delirium, founded on delusion; love had not existed.
She had said to Count Henri, 'You speak to me of love. I was beloved
when I was a girl, before my marriage, and for years I have not seen or
corresponded with the man who loved me, and I have only to lift my finger
now and he will come to me, and not once will he speak to me of love.'
Those were the words originating the wager of the glove. But what of
her, if Nevil Beauchamp had not come?
Her heart jumped, and she blushed ungovernably in his face,--as if he
were seeing her withdraw her foot from the rock's edge, and had that
instant rescued her. But how came it she had been so helpless? She
could ask; she could not answer.
Thinking, talking to her heart, was useless. The deceiver simply feigned
utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable. She burned to do
some act of extreme self-abasement that should bring an unwonted degree
of wrath on her externally, and so re-entitle her to consideration in her
own eyes. She burned to be interrogated, to have to weep, to be scorned,
abused, and forgiven, that she might say she did not deserve pardon.
Beauchamp was too English, evidently too blind, for the description of
judge-accuser she required; one who would worry her without mercy, until-
disgraced by the excess of torture inflicted--he should reinstate her by
as much as he had overcharged his accusation, and a little more.
Reasonably enough, instinctively in fact, she shunned the hollow of an
English ear. A surprise was in reserve for her.
Beauchamp gave up rowing. As he rested on the sculls, his head was bent
and turned toward the bank. Renee perceived an over-swollen monster
gourd that had strayed from a garden adjoining the river, and hung
sliding heavily down the bank on one greenish yellow cheek, in prolonged
contemplation of its image in the mirror below. Apparently this obese
Narcissus enchained his attention.
She tapped her foot. 'Are you tired of rowing, monsieur?'
'It was exactly here,' said he, 'that you told me you expected your
husband's return.'
She glanced at the gourd, bit her lip, and, colouring, said, 'At what
point of the river did I request you to congratulate me on it?'
She would not have said that, if she had known the thoughts at work
within him.
He set the boat swaying from side to side, and at once the hugeous
reflection of that conceivably self-enamoured bulk quavered and
distended, and was shattered in a thousand dancing fragments, to re-unite
and recompose its maudlin air of imaged satisfaction.
She began to have a vague idea that he was indulging grotesque fancies.
Very strangely, the ridiculous thing, in the shape of an over-stretched
likeness, that she never would have seen had he indicated it directly,
became transfused from his mind to hers by his abstract, half-amused
observation of the great dancing gourd--that capering antiquity,
lumbering volatility, wandering, self-adored, gross bald Cupid, elatest
of nondescripts! Her senses imagined the impressions agitating
Beauchamp's, and exaggerated them beyond limit; and when he amazed her
with a straight look into her eyes, and the words, 'Better let it be a
youth--and live, than fall back to that!' she understood him immediately;
and, together with her old fear of his impetuosity and downrightness,
came the vivid recollection, like a bright finger pointing upon darkness,
of what foul destiny, magnified by her present abhorrence of it, he would
have saved her from in the days of Venice and Touraine, and unto what
loathly example of the hideous grotesque she, in spite of her lover's
foresight on her behalf, had become allied.
Face to face as they sat, she had no defence for her scarlet cheeks; her
eyes wavered.
'We will land here; the cottagers shall row the boat up,' she said.
'Somewhere--anywhere,' said Beauchamp. 'But I must speak. I will tell
you now. I do not think you to blame--barely; not in my sight; though no
man living would have suffered as I should. Probably some days more and
you would have been lost. You looked for me! Trust your instinct now
I'm with you as well as when I'm absent. Have you courage? that 's the
question. You have years to live. Can you live them in this place--with
honour? and alive really?'
Renee's eyes grew wide; she tried to frown, and her brows merely
twitched; to speak, and she was inarticulate. His madness, miraculous
penetration, and the super-masculine charity in him, unknown to the world
of young men in their treatment of women, excited, awed, and melted her.
He had seen the whole truth of her relations with M. d'Henriel!--the
wickedness of them in one light, the innocence in another; and without
prompting a confession he forgave her. Could she believe it? This was
love, and manly love.
She yearned to be on her feet, to feel the possibility of an escape from
him.
She pointed to a landing. He sprang to the bank. 'It could end in
nothing else,' he said, 'unless you beat cold to me. And now I have your
hand, Renee! It's the hand of a living woman, you have no need to tell
me that; but faithful to her comrade! I can swear it for her--faithful
to a true alliance! You are not married, you are simply chained: and you
are terrorized. What a perversion of you it is! It wrecks you. But
with me? Am I not your lover? You and I are one life. What have we
suffered for but to find this out and act on it? Do I not know that a
woman lives, and is not the rooted piece of vegetation hypocrites and
tyrants expect her to be? Act on it, I say; own me, break the chains,
come to me; say, Nevil Beauchamp or death! And death for you? But you
are poisoned and thwart-eddying, as you live now: worse, shaming the
Renee I knew. Ah-Venice! But now we are both of us wiser and stronger:
we have gone through fire. Who foretold it? This day, and this misery
and perversion that we can turn to joy, if we will--if you will! No
heart to dare is no heart to love!--answer that! Shall I see you cower
away from me again? Not this time!'
He swept on in a flood, uttered mad things, foolish things, and things of
an insight electrifying to her. Through the cottager's garden, across a
field, and within the park gates of Tourdestelle it continued
unceasingly; and deeply was she won by the rebellious note in all that
he said, deeply too by his disregard of the vulgar arts of wooers: she
detected none. He did not speak so much to win as to help her to see
with her own orbs. Nor was it roughly or chidingly, though it was
absolutely, that he stripped her of the veil a wavering woman will keep
to herself from her heart's lord if she can.
They arrived long after the boat at Tourdestelle, and Beauchamp might
believe he had prevailed with her, but for her forlorn repetition of
the question he had put to her idly and as a new idea, instead of
significantly, with a recollection and a doubt 'Have I courage, Nevil?'
The grain of common sense in cowardice caused her to repeat it when her
reason was bedimmed, and passion assumed the right to show the way of
right and wrong.
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