_An Interesting Rencontre_
WHEN Tancred returned home, musing, from a visit to Sidonia, he found
the following note:
‘Lady Bertie and Bellair returns Lord Montacute his carriage with a
thousand compliments and thanks. She fears she greatly incommoded
Lord Montacute, but begs to assure him how very sensible she is of his
considerate courtesy.
‘Upper Brook Street, Wednesday.’
The handwriting was of that form of scripture which attracts; refined
yet energetic; full of character. Tancred recognised the titles of
Bertie and Bellair as those of two not inconsiderable earldoms, now
centred in the same individual. Lady Bertie and Bellair was herself
a lady of the high nobility; a daughter of the present Duke of
Fitz-Aquitaine; the son of that duke who was the father-in-law of Lord
de Mowbray, and whom Lady Firebrace, the present Lady Bardolf, and
Tadpole, had dexterously converted to conservatism by persuading him
that he was to be Sir Robert’s Irish viceroy. Lady Bertie and Bellair,
therefore, was first-cousin to Lady Joan Mountchesney, and her sister,
who is still Lady Maud Fitz-Warene. Tancred was surprised that he never
recollected to have met before one so distinguished and so beautiful.
His conversation with Sidonia, however, had driven the little adventure
of the morning from his memory, and now that it was thus recalled to
him, he did not dwell upon it. His being was absorbed in his paramount
purpose. The sympathy of Sidonia, so complete, and as instructive as it
was animating, was a sustaining power which we often need when we are
meditating great deeds. How often, when all seems dark, and hopeless,
and spiritless, and tame, when slight obstacles figure in the cloudy
landscape as Alps, and the rushing cataracts of our invention have
subsided into drizzle, a single phrase of a great man instantaneously
flings sunshine on the intellectual landscape, and the habitual
features of power and beauty, over which we have so long mused in secret
confidence and love, resume all their energy and lustre.
The haunting thought that occasionally, notwithstanding his strong will,
would perplex the soul and agitate the heart of Tancred; the haunting
thought that, all this time, he was perhaps the dupe of boyish
fantasies, was laid to-day. Sometimes he had felt, Why does no one
sympathise with my views; why, though they treat them with conventional
respect, is it clear that all I have addressed hold them to be absurd?
My parents are pious and instructed; they are predisposed to view
everything I say, or do, or think, with an even excessive favour.
They think me moonstruck. Lord Eskdale is a perfect man of the world;
proverbially shrewd, and celebrated for his judgment; he looks upon me
as a raw boy, and believes that, if my father had kept me at Eton and
sent me to Paris, I should by this time have exhausted my crudities. The
bishop is what the world calls a great scholar; he is a statesman
who, aloof from faction, ought to be accustomed to take just and
comprehensive views; and a priest who ought to be under the immediate
influence of the Holy Spirit. He says I am a visionary. All this might
well be disheartening; but now comes one whom no circumstances impel to
judge my project with indulgence; who would, at the first glance, appear
to have many prejudices arrayed against it, who knows more of the world
than Lord Eskdale, and who appears to me to be more learned than
the whole bench of bishops, and he welcomes my ideas, approves my
conclusions, sympathises with my suggestions; develops, illustrates,
enforces them; plainly intimates that I am only on the threshold of
initiation, and would aid me to advance to the innermost mysteries.
There was this night a great ball at Lady Bardolfs, in Belgrave Square.
One should generally mention localities, because very often they
indicate character. Lady Bardolf lived next door to Mrs. Guy Flouncey.
Both had risen in the world, though it requires some esoteric knowledge
to recognise the patrician par-venue; and both had finally settled
themselves down in the only quarter which Lady Bardolf thought worthy of
her new coronet, and Mrs. Guy Flouncey of her new visiting list.
Lady Bardolf had given up the old family mansion of the Firebraces in
Hanover Square, at the same time that she had resigned their old title.
Politics being dead, in consequence of the majority of 1841, who, after
a little kicking for the million, satisfactorily assured the minister
that there was no vice in them.
Lady Bardolf had chalked out a new career, and one of a still more
eminent and exciting character than her previous pursuit. Lady Bardolf
was one of those ladies--there are several--who entertain the curious
idea that they need only to be known in certain high quarters to be
immediately selected as the principal objects of court favour. Lady
Bardolf was always putting herself in the way of it; she never lost an
opportunity; she never missed a drawing-room, contrived to be at all the
court balls, plotted to be invited to a costume fête, and expended the
tactics of a campaign to get asked to some grand château honoured by
august presence. Still Her Majesty had not yet sent for Lady Bardolf.
She was still very good friends with Lord Masque, for he had social
influence, and could assist her; but as for poor Tadpole, she had sadly
neglected him, his sphere being merely political, and that being no
longer interesting. The honest gentleman still occasionally buzzed about
her, slavering portentous stories about malcontent country gentlemen,
mumbling Maynooth, and shaking his head at Young England. Tadpole was
wont to say in confidence, that for his part he wished Sir Robert had
left alone religion and commerce, and confined himself to finance, which
was his forte as long as he had a majority to carry the projects which
he found in the pigeon-holes of the Treasury, and which are always at
the service of every minister.
Well, it was at Lady Bardolfs ball, close upon midnight, that Tancred,
who had not long entered, and had not very far advanced in the crowded
saloons, turning his head, recognised his heroine of the morning,
his still more recent correspondent, Lady Bertie and Bellair. She was
speaking to Lord Valentine. It was impossible to mistake her; rapid as
had been his former observation of her face, it was too remarkable to
be forgotten, though the captivating details were only the result of his
present more advantageous inspection. A small head and large dark eyes,
dark as her rich hair which was quite unadorned, a pale but delicate
complexion, small pearly teeth, were charms that crowned a figure rather
too much above the middle height, yet undulating and not without grace.
Her countenance was calm without being grave; she smiled with her eyes.
She was for a moment alone; she looked round, and recognised Tancred;
she bowed to him with a beaming glance. Instantly he was at her side.
‘Our second meeting to-day,’ she said, in a low, sweet voice.
‘How came it that we never met before?’ he replied.
‘I have just returned from Paris; the first time I have been out;
and, had it not been for you,’ she added, ‘I should not have been here
to-night. I think they would have put me in prison.’
‘Lady Bardolf ought to be very much obliged to me, and so ought the
world.’
‘I am,’ said Lady Bertie and Bellair.
‘That is worth everything else,’ said Tancred.
‘What a pretty carriage you have! I do not think I shall ever get into
mine again. I am almost glad they have destroyed my chariot. I am sure I
shall never be able to drive in anything else now except a brougham.’
‘Why did you not keep mine?’
‘You are magnificent; too gorgeous and oriental for these cold climes.
You shower your presents as if you were in the East, which Lord
Valentine tells me you are about to visit. When do you leave us?’
‘I think of going immediately.’
‘Indeed!’ said Lady Bertie and Bellair, and her countenance changed.
There was a pause, and then she continued playfully, yet as it were half
in sadness, ‘I almost wish you had not come to my rescue this morning.’
‘And why?’ ‘Because I do not like to make agreeable acquaintances only
to lose them.’
‘I think that I am most to be pitied,’ said Tancred.
‘You are wearied of the world very soon. Before you can know us, you
leave us.’
‘I am not wearied of the world, for indeed, as you say, I know nothing
of it. I am here by accident, as you were in the stoppage to-day. It
will disperse, and then I shall get on.’
‘Lord Valentine tells me that you are going to realise my dream of
dreams, that you are going to Jerusalem.’
‘Ah!’ said Tancred, kindling, ‘you too have felt that want?’
‘But I never can pardon myself for not having satisfied it,’ said Lady
Bertie and Bellair in a mournful tone, and looking in his face with her
beautiful dark eyes. ‘It is the mistake of my life, and now can never be
remedied. But I have no energy. I ought, as a girl, when they opposed
my purpose, to have taken up my palmer’s staff, and never have rested
content till I had gathered my shell on the strand of Joppa.’
‘It is the right feeling’ said Tancred. ‘I am persuaded we ought all to
go.’
‘But we remain here,’ said the lady, in a tone of suppressed and elegant
anguish; ‘here, where we all complain of our hopeless lives; with not
a thought beyond the passing hour, yet all bewailing its wearisome and
insipid moments.’
‘Our lot is cast in a material age,’ said Tancred.
‘The spiritual can alone satisfy me,’ said Lady Bertie and Bellair.
‘Because you have a soul,’ continued Tancred, with animation, ‘still
of a celestial hue. They are rare in the nineteenth century. Nobody now
thinks about heaven. They never dream of angels. All their existence is
concentrated in steamboats and railways.’
‘You are right,’ said the lady, earnestly; ‘and you fly from it.’
‘I go for other purposes; I would say even higher ones,’ said Tancred.
‘I can understand you; your feelings are my own. Jerusalem has been
the dream of my life. I have always been endeavouring to reach it, but
somehow or other I never got further than Paris.’
‘And yet it is very easy now to get to Jerusalem,’ said Tancred; ‘the
great difficulty, as a very remarkable man said to me this morning, is
to know what to do when you are there.’
‘Who said that to you?’ inquired Lady Bertie and Bellair, bending her
head.
‘It was the person I was going to call upon when I met you; Monsieur de
Sidonia.’
‘Monsieur de Sidonia!’ said the lady, with animation. ‘Ah! you know
him?’
‘Not as much as I could wish. I saw him to-day for the first time. My
cousin, Lord Eskdale, gave me a letter of introduction to him, for
his advice and assistance about my journey. Sidonia has been a great
traveller.’
‘There is no person I wish to know so much as M. de Sidonia,’ said Lady
Bertie and Bellair. ‘He is a great friend of Lord Eskdale, I think?
I must get Lord Eskdale,’ she added, musingly, ‘to give me a little
dinner, and ask M. de Sidonia to meet me.’
‘He never goes anywhere; at least I have heard so,’ said Tancred.
‘He once used to do, and to give us great fêtes. I remember hearing of
them before I was out. We must make him resume them. He is immensely
rich.’
‘I dare say he may be,’ said Tancred. ‘I wonder how a man with his
intellect and ideas can think of the accumulation of wealth.’
‘’Tis his destiny,’ said Lady Bertie and Bellair. ‘He can no more
disembarrass himself of his hereditary millions than a dynasty of the
cares of empire. I wonder if he will get the Great Northern. They talked
of nothing else at Paris.’
‘Of what?’ said Tancred.
‘Oh! let us talk of Jerusalem!’ said Lady Bertie and Bellair. ‘Ah, here
is Augustus! Let me make you and my husband acquainted.’
Tancred almost expected to see the moustached companion of the
morning, but it was not so. Lord Bertie and Bellair was a tall, thin,
distinguished, withered-looking young man, who thanked Tancred for his
courtesy of the morning with a sort of gracious negligence, and, after
some easy talk, asked Tancred to dine with them on the morrow. He was
engaged, but he promised to call on Lady Bertie and Bellair immediately,
and see some drawings of the Holy Land.