YES; WRONG;--CERTAINLY WRONG.
Harry Clavering had heard the news of his little cousin's death
before he went to Bolton Street to report the result of his
negotiation with the count. His mother's letter with the news had
come to him in the morning, and on the same evening he called on Lady
Ongar. She also had then received Mrs. Clavering's letter, and knew
what had occurred at the park. Harry found her alone, having asked
the servant whether Madame Gordeloup was with his mistress. Had such
been the case he would have gone away, and left his message untold.
As he entered the room his mind was naturally full of the tidings
from Clavering. Count Pateroff and his message had lost some of
their importance through this other event, and the emptiness of the
childless house was the first subject of conversation between him
and Lady Ongar. "I pity my sister greatly," said she. "I feel for
her as deeply as I should have done had nothing occurred to separate
us;--but I cannot feel for him."
"I do," said Harry.
"He is your cousin, and perhaps has been your friend?"
"No, not especially. He and I have never pulled well together; but
still I pity him deeply."
"He is not my cousin, but I know him better than you do, Harry. He
will not feel much himself, and his sorrow will be for his heir, not
for his son. He is a man whose happiness does not depend on the life
or death of any one. He likes some people, as he once liked me; but I
do not think that he ever loved any human being. He will get over it,
and he will simply wish that Hermy may die, that he may marry another
wife. Harry, I know him so well!"
"Archie will marry now," said Harry.
"Yes; if he can get any one to have him. There are very few men who
can't get wives, but I can fancy Archie Clavering to be one of them.
He has not humility enough to ask the sort of girl who would be glad
to take him. Now, with his improved prospects, he will want a royal
princess or something not much short of it. Money, rank, and blood
might have done before, but he'll expect youth, beauty, and wit now,
as well as the other things. He may marry after all, for he is just
the man to walk out of a church some day with the cookmaid under his
arm as his wife."
"Perhaps he may find something between a princess and a cookmaid."
"I hope, for your sake, he may not;--neither a princess nor a
cookmaid, nor anything between."
"He has my leave to marry to-morrow, Lady Ongar. If I had my wish,
Hugh should have his house full of children."
"Of course that is the proper thing to say, Harry."
"I won't stand that from you, Lady Ongar. What I say, I mean; and no
one knows that better than you."
"Won't you, Harry? From whom, then, if not from me? But come, I will
do you justice, and believe you to be simple enough to wish anything
of the kind. The sort of castle in the air which you build, is not
one to be had by inheritance, but to be taken by storm. You must
fight for it."
"Or work for it."
"Or win it in some way off your own bat; and no lord ever sat prouder
in his castle than you sit in those that you build from day to
day in your imagination. And you sally forth and do all manner
of magnificent deeds. You help distressed damsels,--poor me, for
instance; and you attack enormous dragons;--shall I say that Sophie
Gordeloup is the latest dragon?--and you wish well to your enemies,
such as Hugh and Archie; and you cut down enormous forests, which
means your coming miracles as an engineer;--and then you fall
gloriously in love. When is that last to be, Harry?"
"I suppose, according to all precedent, that must be done with the
distressed damsel," he said,--fool that he was.
"No, Harry, no; you shall take your young fresh generous heart to a
better market than that; not but that the distressed damsel will ever
remember what might once have been."
He knew that he was playing on the edge of a precipice,--that he was
fluttering as a moth round a candle. He knew that it behoved him
now at once to tell her all his tale as to Stratton and Florence
Burton;--that if he could tell it now, the pang would be over and the
danger gone. But he did not tell it. Instead of telling it he thought
of Lady Ongar's beauty, of his own early love, of what might have
been his had he not gone to Stratton. I think he thought, if not of
her wealth, yet of the power and place which would have been his were
it now open to him to ask her for her hand. When he had declared that
he did not want his cousin's inheritance, he had spoken the simple
truth. He was not covetous of another's money. Were Archie to marry
as many wives as Henry, and have as many children as Priam, it would
be no offence to him. His desires did not lie in that line. But in
this other case, the woman before him who would so willingly have
endowed him with all that she possessed, had been loved by him before
he had ever seen Florence Burton. In all his love for Florence,--so
he now told himself, but so told himself falsely,--he had ever
remembered that Julia Brabazon had been his first love, the love whom
he had loved with all his heart. But things had gone with him most
unfortunately,--with a misfortune that had never been paralleled. It
was thus he was thinking instead of remembering that now was the time
in which his tale should be told.
Lady Ongar, however, soon carried him away from the actual brink of
the precipice. "But how about the dragon," said she, "or rather about
the dragon's brother, at whom you were bound to go and tilt on my
behalf? Have you tilted, or are you a recreant knight?"
"I have tilted," said he, "but the he-dragon professes that he will
not regard himself as killed. In other words he declares that he will
see you."
"That he will see me?" said Lady Ongar, and as she spoke there came
an angry spot on each cheek. "Does he send me that message as a
threat?"
"He does not send it as a threat, but I think he partly means it so."
"He will find, Harry, that I will not see him; and that should he
force himself into my presence, I shall know how to punish such an
outrage. If he sent me any message, let me know it."
"To tell the truth he was most unwilling to speak to me at all,
though he was anxious to be civil to me. When I had inquired for him
some time in vain, he came to me with another man, and asked me to
dinner. So I went, and as there were four of us, of course I could
not speak to him then. He still had the other man, a foreigner--"
"Colonel Schmoff, perhaps?"
"Yes; Colonel Schmoff. He kept Colonel Schmoff by him, so as to guard
him from being questioned."
"That is so like him. Everything he does he does with some
design,--with some little plan. Well, Harry, you might have ignored
Colonel Schmoff for what I should have cared."
"I got the count to come out into another room at last, and then he
was very angry,--with me, you know,--and talked of what he would do
to men who interfered with him."
"You will not quarrel with him, Harry? Promise me that there shall be
no nonsense of that sort,--no fighting."
"Oh, no; we were friends again very soon. But he bade me tell you
that there was something important for him to say and for you to
hear, which was no concern of mine, and which required an interview."
"I do not believe him, Harry."
"And he said that he had once been very courteous to you--"
"Yes; once insolent,--and once courteous. I have forgiven the one for
the other."
"He then went on to say that you made him a poor return for his
civility by shutting your door in his face, but that he did not
doubt you would think better of it when you had heard his message.
Therefore, he said, he should call again. That, Lady Ongar, was the
whole of it."
"Shall I tell you what his intention was, Harry?" Again her face
became red as she asked this question; but the colour which now came
to her cheeks was rather that of shame than of anger.
"What was his intention?"
"To make you believe that I am in his power; to make you think that
he has been my lover; to lower me in your eyes, so that you might
believe all that others have believed,--all that Hugh Clavering has
pretended to believe. That has been his object, Harry, and perhaps
you will tell me what success he has had."
"Lady Ongar!"
"You know the old story, that the drop which is ever dropping will
wear the stone. And after all why should your faith in me be as hard
even as a stone?"
"Do you believe that what he said had any such effect?"
"It is very hard to look into another person's heart; and the dearer
and nearer that heart is to your own, the greater, I think, is the
difficulty. I know that man's heart,--what he calls his heart; but I
don't know yours."
For a moment or two Clavering made no answer, and then, when he did
speak, he went back from himself to the count.
"If what you surmise of him be true, he must be a very devil. He
cannot be a man--"
"Man or devil, what matters which he be? Which is the worst,
Harry, and what is the difference? The Fausts of this day want no
Mephistopheles to teach them guile or to harden their hearts."
"I do not believe that there are such men. There may be one."
"One, Harry! What was Lord Ongar? What is your cousin Hugh? What is
this Count Pateroff? Are they not all of the same nature; hard as
stone, desirous simply of indulging their own appetites, utterly
without one generous feeling, incapable even of the idea of caring
for any one? Is it not so? In truth this count is the best of the
three I have named. With him a woman would stand a better chance than
with either of the others."
"Nevertheless, if that was his motive, he is a devil."
"He shall be a devil if you say so. He shall be anything you please,
so long as he has not made you think evil of me."
"No; he has not done that."
"Then I don't care what he has done, or what he may do. You would
not have me see him, would you?" This she asked with a sudden energy,
throwing herself forward from her seat with her elbows on the table,
and resting her face on her hands, as she had already done more than
once when he had been there; so that the attitude, which became her
well, was now customary in his eyes.
"You will hardly be guided by my opinion in such a matter."
"By whose, then, will I be guided? Nay, Harry, since you put me to a
promise, I will make the promise. I will be guided by your opinion.
If you bid me see him, I will do it,--though, I own, it would be
distressing to me."
"Why should you see him, if you do not wish it?"
"I know no reason. In truth there is no reason. What he says about
Lord Ongar is simply some part of his scheme. You see what his scheme
is, Harry?"
"What is his scheme?"
"Simply this--that I should be frightened into becoming his wife. My
darling bosom friend Sophie, who, as I take it, has not quite managed
to come to satisfactory terms with her brother,--and I have no doubt
her price for assistance has been high,--has informed me more than
once that her brother desires to do me so much honour. The count,
perhaps, thinks that he can manage such a bagatelle without any aid
from his sister; and my dearest Sophie seems to feel that she can do
better with me herself in my widowed state, than if I were to take
another husband. They are so kind and so affectionate; are they not?"
At this moment tea was brought in, and Clavering sat for a time
silent with his cup in his hand. She, the meanwhile, had resumed the
old position with her face upon her hands, which she had abandoned
when the servant entered the room, and was now sitting looking at
him as he sipped his tea with his eyes averted from her. "I cannot
understand," at last he said, "why you should persist in your
intimacy with such a woman."
"You have not thought about it, Harry, or you would understand it. It
is, I think, very easily understood."
"You know her to be treacherous, false, vulgar, covetous,
unprincipled. You cannot like her. You say she is a dragon."
"A dragon to you, I said."
"You cannot pretend that she is a lady, and yet you put up with her
society."
"Exactly. And now tell me what you would have me do."
"I would have you part from her."
"But how? It is so easy to say, part. Am I to bar my door against
her when she has given me no offence? Am I to forget that she did me
great service, when I sorely needed such services? Can I tell her to
her face that she is all these things that you say of her, and that
therefore I will for the future dispense with her company? Or do you
believe that people in this world associate only with those they love
and esteem?"
"I would not have one for my intimate friend whom I did not love and
esteem."
"But, Harry, suppose that no one loved and esteemed you; that you had
no home down at Clavering with a father that admires you and a mother
that worships you; no sisters that think you to be almost perfect,
no comrades with whom you can work with mutual regard and emulation,
no self-confidence, no high hopes of your own, no power of choosing
companions whom you can esteem and love;--suppose with you it was
Sophie Gordeloup or none,--how would it be with you then?"
His heart must have been made of stone if this had not melted it. He
got up and coming round to her stood over her. "Julia," he said, "it
is not so with you."
"But it is so with Julia," she said. "That is the truth. How am I
better than her, and why should I not associate with her?"
"Better than her! As women you are poles asunder."
"But as dragons," she said, smiling, "we come together."
"Do you mean that you have no one to love you?"
"Yes, Harry; that is just what I do mean. I have none to love me. In
playing my cards I have won my stakes in money and rank, but have
lost the amount ten times told in affection, friendship, and that
general unpronounced esteem which creates the fellowship of men and
women in the world. I have a carriage and horses, and am driven about
with grand servants; and people, as they see me, whisper and say that
is Lady Ongar, whom nobody knows. I can see it in their eyes till I
fancy that I can hear their words."
"But it is all false."
"What is false? It is not false that I have deserved this. I have
done that which has made me a fitting companion for such a one as
Sophie Gordeloup, though I have not done that which perhaps these
people think."
He paused again before he spoke, still standing near her on the rug.
"Lady Ongar--" he said.
"Nay, Harry; not Lady Ongar when we are together thus. Let me feel
that I have one friend who can dare to call me by my name,--from
whose mouth I shall be pleased to hear my name. You need not fear
that I shall think that it means too much. I will not take it as
meaning what it used to mean."
He did not know how to go on with his speech, or in truth what to
say to her. Florence Burton was still present to his mind, and from
minute to minute he told himself that he would not become a villain.
But now it had come to that with him, that he would have given all
that he had in the world that he had never gone to Stratton. He
sat down by her in silence, looking away from her at the fire,
swearing to himself that he would not become a villain, and yet
wishing, almost wishing, that he had the courage to throw his honour
overboard. At last, half turning round towards her he took her hand,
or rather took her first by the wrist till he could possess himself
of her hand. As he did so he touched her hair and her cheek, and she
let her hand drop till it rested in his. "Julia," he said, "what can
I do to comfort you?" She did not answer him, but looked away from
him as she sat, across the table into vacancy. "Julia," he said
again, "is there anything that will comfort you?" But still she did
not answer him.
He understood it all as well as the reader will understand it. He
knew how it was with her, and was aware that he was at this instant
false almost equally to her and to Florence. He knew that the
question he had asked was one to which there could be made a true and
satisfactory answer, but that his safety lay in the fact that that
answer was all but impossible for her to give. Could she say, "Yes,
you can comfort me. Tell me that you yet love me, and I will be
comforted?" But he had not designed to bring her into such difficulty
as this. He had not intended to be cruel. He had drifted into
treachery unawares, and was torturing her, not because he was wicked,
but because he was weak. He had held her hand now for some minute
or two, but still she did not speak to him. Then he raised it and
pressed it warmly to his lips.
"No, Harry," she said, jumping from her seat and drawing her
hand rapidly from him; "no; it shall not be like that. Let it be
Lady Ongar again if the sound of the other name brings back too
closely the memory of other days. Let it be Lady Ongar again. I can
understand that it will be better." As she spoke she walked away from
him across the room, and he followed her.
"Are you angry?" he asked her.
"No, Harry; not angry. How should I be angry with you who alone are
left to me of my old friends? But, Harry, you must think for me, and
spare me in my difficulty."
"Spare you, Julia?"
"Yes, Harry, spare me; you must be good to me and considerate, and
make yourself like a brother to me. But people will know you are not
a brother, and you must remember all that, for my sake. But you must
not leave me or desert me. Anything that people might say would be
better than that."
"Was I wrong to kiss your hand?"
"Yes, wrong, certainly wrong;--that is, not wrong, but unmindful."
"I did it," he said, "because I love you." And as he spoke the tears
stood in both his eyes.
"Yes; you love me, and I you; but not with love that may show itself
in that form. That was the old love, which I threw away, and which
has been lost. That was at an end when I--jilted you. I am not angry;
but you will remember that that love exists no longer? You will
remember that, Harry?"
He sat himself down in a chair in a far part of the room, and two
tears coursed their way down his cheeks. She stood over him and
watched him as he wept. "I did not mean to make you sad," she said.
"Come, we will be sad no longer. I understand it all. I know how
it is with you. The old love is lost, but we will not the less be
friends." Then he rose suddenly from his chair, and taking her in his
arms, and holding her closely to his bosom, pressed his lips to hers.
He was so quick in this that she had not the power, even if she had
the wish, to restrain him. But she struggled in his arms, and held
her face aloof from him as she gently rebuked his passion. "No,
Harry, no; not so," she said, "it must not be so."
"Yes, Julia, yes; it shall be so; ever so,--always so." And he
was still holding her in his arms, when the door opened, and with
stealthy, cat-like steps Sophie Gordeloup entered the room. Harry
immediately retreated from his position, and Lady Ongar turned upon
her friend, and glared upon her with angry eyes.
"Ah," said the little Franco-Pole, with an expression of infinite
delight on her detestable visage, "ah, my dears, is it not well that
I thus announce myself?"
"No," said Lady Ongar, "it is not well. It is anything but well."
"And why not well, Julie? Come, do not be foolish. Mr. Clavering is
only a cousin, and a very handsome cousin, too. What does it signify
before me?"
"It signifies nothing before you," said Lady Ongar.
"But before the servant, Julie--?"
"It would signify nothing before anybody."
"Come, come, Julie, dear; that is nonsense."
"Nonsense or no nonsense, I would wish to be private when I please.
Will you tell me, Madame Gordeloup, what is your pleasure at the
present moment?"
"My pleasure is to beg your pardon and to say you must forgive your
poor friend. Your fine man-servant is out, and Bessy let me in. I
told Bessy I would go up by myself, and that is all. If I have come
too late I beg pardon."
"Not too late, certainly,--as I am still up."
"And I wanted to ask you about the pictures to-morrow? You said,
perhaps you would go to-morrow,--perhaps not."
Clavering had found himself to be somewhat awkwardly situated
while Madame Gordeloup was thus explaining the causes of her having
come unannounced into the room; as soon, therefore, as he found
it practicable, he took his leave. "Julia," he said, "as Madame
Gordeloup is with you, I will now go."
"But you will let me see you soon?"
"Yes, very soon; that is, as soon as I return from Clavering. I leave
town early to-morrow morning."
"Good-by, then," and she put out her hand to him frankly, smiling
sweetly on him. As he felt the warm pressure of her hand he hardly
knew whether to return it or to reject it. But he had gone too far
now for retreat, and he held it firmly for a moment in his own. She
smiled again upon him, oh! so passionately, and nodded her head at
him. He had never, he thought, seen a woman look so lovely, or more
light of heart. How different was her countenance now from that she
had worn when she told him, earlier on that fatal evening, of all the
sorrows that made her wretched! That nod of hers said so much. "We
understand each other now,--do we not? Yes; although this spiteful
woman has for the moment come between us, we understand each other.
And is it not sweet? Ah! the troubles of which I told you;--you,
you have cured them all." All that had been said plainly in her
farewell salutation, and Harry had not dared to contradict it by any
expression of his countenance.
"By, by, Mr. Clavering," said Sophie.
"Good evening, Madame Gordeloup," said Harry, turning upon her a look
of bitter anger. Then he went, leaving the two women together, and
walked home to Bloomsbury Square,--not with the heart of a joyous
thriving lover.