THE WAY TO TRIUMPH
EMMA, laughing, singing, not a care in her sea-blue eyes four years
later. Emma, the sunlight of the Palazzo Sessa, sweet as a summer dawn
to Hamilton and to all the world. Greville, forgotten as a lover,
preserved as a friend—after a fashion! We write to him, we enter
sympathetically into his concerns. He is still unmarried. We do not tell
him we rejoice in Miss Middleton’s refusal, for that would be unkind,
injudicious. We say she is a foolish girl who will have cause to regret
her folly. Naturally we dwell on the domestic peace and happiness of the
Palazzo Sessa, and the charm of days that drift like flower petals on a
breeze. We threaten no more—that was but a wild outburst of passion at
a very irritating moment, and much better forgotten. Greville has no
cause for uneasiness. Emma is pleasantly provided for. Sir William is
furnished with a mistress so charming that no anxiety about marriage can
possibly arise, and he may rise up and call himself blessed, for his
plan has been a success from beginning to end. He certainly had not the
smallest fear that his uncle would make himself ridiculous, and what
could be more ridiculous than to marry a woman whom all Europe knew as
his _belle amie_. Besides he himself had already given the elderly lover
his views as to the proper provision to be made for Emma when this last
bond should wear thin. That suggestion would probably bring forth an
enlightening answer. It brought forth a very comfortable one; the more
so because so evidently sincere.
“I fear,” Sir William wrote, “that her views are beyond what I can bring
myself to execute, and that when her hopes on this point are over she
will make herself and me unhappy.”
So all was well to the last point. Sir William duly on his guard and
Emma’s impetuosity, as usual, hurrying her into mistakes. Greville laid
that letter beside a friendly one from Emma, with a contented sigh and
pursued his irreproachable way in peace.
So also did Emma, though not by any means in inward quiet. The more
dazzling, the more delightful her triumphs, the more she felt the
insecurity of the foundation. Sir William was her slave, but not her
legalized slave, and though she had no fears for the present it must be
her certain doom to be dismissed with a slender “provision” when he grew
older and his family reclaimed him as it does all old and wealthy men.
Day by day she made herself dearer and more necessary to him but never a
day seemed to bring that goal nearer. She would hint, sigh, glance
gently near the target, but never an arrow found the bull’s eye. He
would do anything, everything for her—excepting the one thing that
mattered more than all the wealth of the world, and yet she could not
teach herself to think it impossible. Sometimes, the inward storm broke
in nervous irritations in which he must have guessed the truth, and then
she would be terrified and redouble her wifely submissions. Suppose he
should think, as Greville had thought, that she had an ungoverned
temper; then all hope would be over. He certainly was keenly on the
watch—and why, why, if he thought the thing impossible?
Her circumspection was almost perfect. She solved the nearly impossible
problem of being passionately admired, the dancing star of gaiety, the
sighed for of all the distinguished and attractive men who came and went
in their society, and yet of preserving a reputation of unsullied
fidelity to her Ambassador. No other man had so much as a look to boast
of. They called her the lovely ice-image. Sir William knew better and
was radiant. But never a word of the only reward she craved, and she
could see only a future in which Greville and the family would consult
coldly on an adequate pension in return for her services.
And yet, the Queen had seen her immaculate propriety of behaviour with
admiration, and had even pointed her out as an example to the giddy
ladies who formed the Royal circle. “If a young woman in _her_ position
can so conduct herself, what ought,” etc. The rest of the little sermon
may be imagined, and might have been more effective but for the Royal
preacher’s own intimacy with the cool, handsome Irishman Acton who was
the Neapolitan Minister of Marine, whom the wits of Naples coupled with
King and Queen in the assertion that the three were _hic, haec, hoc_,
and the King the last of them. But what did Emma care? Royalty is
royalty, amuse itself how it will, and every word that fell from Marie
Caroline’s lips was treasured and laid before Hamilton. She had chilled
the King off effectually and the lovers laughed together over that
thwarted gallantry. He was lost in admiration of the tender affection
which nothing could swerve. Emma, who desired the Queen’s attentions
very much more eagerly than the King’s, knew well of Her Majesty’s
highly unreasonable jealousy of her consort’s diversions, and trimmed
her sails accordingly. Not that they were any temptation to her. She was
firmly if temperately attached to Hamilton, was less physically than
intellectually sensuous, and had, moreover, a clear end before her and a
tangled way to it which absorbed all her deeper interests. And as yet no
prospect of success. He was wary beyond all her skill. A plotter, an
adventuress she may be called by the too righteous, but would not any
woman have done the same? And her heart was sincere if her brain was
tortuous. She cared for her man; was grateful for benefits received
although she hoped for more.
Sir William came in one day a little disquieted.
“News, my dearest child, news from England. A relation of mine, a very
important relation coming out. I would have had her here in the house
but—no, no, my Emma, my dear, don’t look sad. Don’t hide your face.
What is she or any one compared to my beauty? You never thought I meant
that. Come here!”
He drew her to his knee and she drooped her head on his shoulder.
“But, Sir William, the foreign ladies here don’t mind me. Indeed they
don’t! See how they come to our evenings! And when we entertain at the
Villa Emma, or anywhere, they don’t hold away. They have no objections.”
“My angel, yes.” He smoothed her hair tenderly. Never once did he fail
in the gentlest kindness and even respect. “But English women,
particularly English women about Queen Charlotte, have to be careful.
Absurd, ridiculous, when every one knows what goes on, and when some of
the women they pass by are a million times better and more beautiful
than themselves! But this is a very great lady and was in attendance on
the Queen for a considerable time. It is the Duchess of Argyll, my
cousin by marriage. Her first husband was Duke of Hamilton. You can
imagine I would give anything that she should know my jewel and see it
sparkle, but ’tis impossible. She will hear your praises all over
Naples—that’s my consolation—your kind heart not the least. But I
wanted to prepare you for this, for I would not have it hurt you when
she comes.”
“It won’t, it shan’t hurt me!” she said, smiling courageously into his
eyes. “No one can have everything and I’d like to know where is the
woman that has so much as me! Duchess as she is I daresay she hasn’t the
quarter! No, my own Sir William, you shall go see her and then come back
to our home, and I believe you’ll own there’s no place so happy for us
both. What do I want with duchesses? Is she very proud?”
“As proud as a gorgeous peacock. Didn’t Bozzy, old Dr. Johnson’s
Boswell, say she chilled him nearly into marble with her majesty? But,
for all that, he ended by allowing there was something pleasant
too—‘better be strangled by a silk rope than a hempen,’—I forget the
exact words. But she’s all the prouder because she began life so poor
that she and her beautiful sister, Maria, had to borrow dresses from a
saucy actress before they could make any appearance in the world. Well
born, all the same, granddaughters of Lord Mayo’s. Gunning was their
name.”
“Oh, tell me more!” cried Emma, sparkling with interest. “I’ve heard
Greville speak of the beautiful Gunnings. Were they as beautiful—as
me?”
She pouted those incomparable lips into a kiss that ensured his denial.
“Of course not. Whoever was or will be? But Maria—she married Lord
Coventry—came as near you as mortal woman could, for all she was a
lovely doll with not a gleam of your good sense and talents. Elizabeth,
the double Duchess, had more brains, and a great deal more dignity, and
an amazing beauty. Her smile—”
“I want to see her. I want to see her!” Emma clapped her hands and sent
the rays flashing from two rings of great diamonds. She might have been
a graven image hung with jewels if she would, but refused extravagance
of that order and commanded Sir William to save every stray penny for
his Etruscan urns. What wonder she wore his heart instead of his
fripperies? As a matter of fact, these rings were his dead wife’s. Even
his good taste was not flawless.
“You _shall_ see her, I promise, and she shall see you. But remember she
is fifty now, and her health not strong. I like her. There’s a kind of
courage in her that matches your own. If things had been different you
might have been friends.”
Emma sighed, a soft little sigh, no more. But it said, and he heard
it—“If things were different! Ah, and they might be. Have I not
deserved it?” Much may be said in a sigh.
The Duchess came, her fame preceding her, with a little attendant court
of her own, and all Naples thrilled to receive the greatest of the great
English ladies. However she had begun in life she had since acquired a
most majestic dignity, and the English women who had held coldly aloof
from Emma were now certain of a leader who would open the way to victory
and the public rout of the fair sinner.
Sir William waited upon her directly she arrived. He felt it was best to
place the matter on a footing of perfect frankness at once, and was
eager to find her alone; an impossibility, as it seemed, for all the gay
world of Naples was perpetually in her salon.
At last he secured her, and by the merest chance, for they met in the
same rose-hung gardens where Emma had repelled the King’s advances,
beneath a long trellised pergola with a delicate sea-breeze wandering
like a bee drunken with perfume and colour among the roses. She sat,
leaning back in the chair her footman had set beneath the delicious
shadow, half smiling with delight at the beauty about her.
“What a place! What a scene!” she said softly. “My dear Sir William,
though you have written to Charlotte more than once, and even when you
came to England last, you never expressed the half of it. ’Tis
surprising to me that we endure the English climate who could be here.
’Tis to share the very youth of the world.”
“Many things conspire to make it fascinating. When on a moonlit night on
the Marina I hear the soft thrum of guitars, the singing voices and
subdued laughter I often wonder whether I can bear the chill of the
foggy North any more,” he said. “It is home in a sense but—well, I left
it a long time ago. My notions are Italian—lax, some would call them.
And yet, call them what you will, they are the same all the world over,
at bottom.”
“For my part the English air wearies me,” says her Grace, wielding a
black fan, her large calm eyes studying him above its rim. “I was always
happier in Scotland than at Court. Hamilton Palace was my heaven; and
later, Inverary. I suppose ’twas the Irish blood in me, my father’s
blood, that couldn’t content itself with beef and pudding and solid
worth; that was better pleased with the haunted castles and purple
heather of the North. Yes, even in the winter and the grey rain that
falls and falls! I remember Oban in a smurr of sea fog”—she looked
across the sapphire sea and sighed—“I wonder shall I ever see it more!”
“Why, madam, yes! Your Grace will reign queen of the Highland hearts for
many a long day yet.”
“No, no, my good Sir William, when beauty goes, hearts follow her like
her own doves. I was a queen once. I am an elderly duchess now.”
She turned her sweet face upon him smiling, sweet like a half-faded rose
that hangs a little wearily on its stem, but perfumed and lovely still
with a pathetic loveliness. Her voice was soft as the breeze. That had
been always a part of the Gunning charm. To him who could remember when
she and her dead sister had set London in a ferment, twin stars rising
with mutual rays, the very sight of her must always recall the time when
he too was young and a worshipper at the little feet which earned their
shoemaker half a fortune when he exhibited the beauties’ shoes at so
much a head to the crowd. Only Sir William had never been certain which
of the two possessed his heart. Was it Elizabeth, was it Maria? How
could any poor devil tell? Dear dead frivolities, how they warmed him!
He laughed a little at the memory and they talked together over places
and people well known to both; the perfect free masonry of caste. A
pleasant hour.
“I saw Greville before I left London. He does not improve on me in spite
of his cleverness and excellent fine manners. A selfish young man, as I
think, and cold. I was not surprised Miss Middleton refused him. A
warm-hearted girl.”
“A better, more well-conducted, sensible man does not exist, your
Grace!” Sir William was eager in the defence. “I know no one whose
advice I would sooner take.”
“Yes, on a Greek urn or a question of worldly wisdom or good taste,”
says her Grace with her soft, imperial air. “But not on a matter of the
heart or of kindness or—what shall I say?—heart’s honour. No, Sir
William; indeed, believe me, women are the best judges of such matters,
and _there_ I pronounce Greville outside the pale.”
“Madam, I protest!”
“No, you agree! you always agreed with me. You remember when Hamilton
laughed at my Irish brogue you would say it was the music of the
spheres.”
“And it was and always will be!”
“No—I am always contradicting my kind cousin—I have forgotten my Irish
days and Irish ways, I am only a dull old duchess now. But I love beauty
though I don’t see any to match—”
“Your own!” he interrupted.
“No, my poor sister’s. Heavens, how lovely she was! Do you remember—but
who’s that?”
She pointed covertly with her fan at a girl pacing absently down the
pergola with an elderly woman handsomely dressed leaning on her arm. She
herself was dressed in white, with a large straw hat trimmed with blue
ribbons shading her face, and carried a basket of roses in the other
hand. A little black and white silken spaniel trotted after her.
She was looking gravely down on the path as she walked, lost in thought,
and evidently knew nothing of who sat among the roses. The pair stopped
a little way off and there she stood in perfect quiet, looking far away
to the sea. A lovely tranquillity was on her face and the gently relaxed
figure. It was as though some vaguely pleasant thought possessed her,
all sunshine and roses.
“That girl,” said the Duchess softly, lest she should be overheard, “is
the greatest beauty I have seen since my sister died. I should say a
perfect beauty if I did not remember Maria. I can think no one else
equals _her_. What is your judgment?”
“You must not ask my judgment here!” he whispered, and as Emma and her
mother moved towards them again in passing, he rose and bowed with the
most punctilious courtesy, Emma flushing brightly as they curtseyed in
answer and passed on. She could guess very well who the noble-looking
woman must be who sat so much at ease with Sir William. She could not
hurry her mother, however, and so they went slowly out of sight.
“Who is she?” the Duchess demanded.
He looked her straight in the face.
“As I remember you, madam, your Grace was bound by no conventions. You
were not held by other people’s approvals and disapprovals. You judged
for yourself and imposed your own will on others. If so great a lady
cannot, who can? That was your attitude. Is it so still?”
“Certainly, so far as I know. Who is she? An unmentionable?”
“No, an extremely mentionable, mentioned indeed by all here who can
admire beauty, genius, and the warmest heart in the world.”
“There spoke a lover!” says the Duchess, fixing him with her clear eyes.
“I know who she is now. She is the lady of the Embassy. Oh, I have heard
all about her. Well, cousin, I like you for bowing to her while you sat
with me. You _could_ have made as though you did not see her. It was
like you. I think all the Hamiltons are gentlemen.”
“Madam, not even for your Grace’s good opinion would I slight the woman
I love best in the world. Yet I am thankful it approves mine.”
“Tell me about her. I have heard so many scandals since I came that the
truth would be of interest. Is she of the common sort—or what?”
Let Sir William’s speech be imagined rather than related. He painted her
for the Duchess as no other voice, not even Romney’s nor yet his brush,
could have painted her. Her heart, her purity, her intellect, her
extraordinary accomplishments (indeed the Duchess had heard much of the
latter), all were passed in review with a lover’s fondness.
She listened without a frown. In that perfumed languid air it was
perhaps more irksome to sit in judgment than in the grey chills of
England, but in any case she considered her station too high to be bound
by any other opinion than her own. Her Grace was accustomed to say that
the working class and the aristocratic are a law unto themselves in
matters of morals and that it is but the middle class who skulk and
hypocritize. It may be observed that she coined her words as well as her
views and was more likely to be friendly with the farmer’s wife than the
lawyer’s lady.
Therefore she brought an unprejudiced mind to hear on Sir William’s
story, which included neither Up Park nor Edgware Row nor the
appurtenances thereof. The picture presented to her mind was that of a
young and pure-minded woman submerged by cruel fate and gifted with
beauty and genius worthy of the highest, the widest opportunity. Let the
reader judge how far she was deceived.
When Sir William had finished, she, noting meanwhile with some
compassion how the clear sunlight emphasized the lines of sixty years in
his face, answered kindly enough.
“I see how your interest is engaged, and indeed the story is a very
singular one. I see also that you would willingly engage my sympathy for
the young person, and ’tis so easily engaged where courage and beauty
are concerned that I must needs say I prefer to give my judgment a
little play also. What is her position in the society of Naples?”
“Why, madam, the Queen is much interested and has said often to me that
she would willingly make her acquaintance, but you are aware ’tis
impossible she should be received at Court. The King used to call at the
Palazzo Sessa to sing duos with her—ill enough for a King!—but, as you
know his reputation with women, Emma in her discretion judged it best to
stop that diversion of His Majesty’s, which much gratified the Queen,
and made her favour secure in that quarter. The Neapolitan ladies treat
her with every courtesy, and God knows ’twere ridiculous otherwise, as
not one is without her lover. As for the English ladies, some visiting
here, of high birth, like my Lady Diana Beauclerck and the artist Mrs.
Darner, have not disdained her, but they are more or less ladies errant
in the eyes of the English resident here, and I must own the residents
defy the Embassy and all its works. They will not see that such genius
as Emma’s makes its own laws—”
“But they can be scarcely expected to see it should make theirs!”
interrupted the Duchess with a hidden smile in her eyes. It was somewhat
absurd to hear a man who knew the world present his case in this way.
“True, madam. Well, I will trouble your Grace no more. Mrs. Hart has a
large society—if it could content her—and the admiration of every man
of judgment who ever beheld her.”
“She appears then like the man in the fairy tale who having got the moon
wanted the sun also.”
“Are not your sex ever so, madam?”
“May be, may be not. Well, my good Sir William, I desire to see your
paragon at closer quarters. Would she consent, do you think, to come
quietly to my salon one evening and sing for an old lady who finds San
Carlo somewhat fatiguing? May I see those poses of which all the world
talks? Whatever the lady be she won’t hurt either my morals or my
manners!” She laughed softly, and Sir William grew hot in his reply.
“She will hurt no one’s, your Grace. Rather others may learn from her.
But, indeed, if it gives you pleasure she will do her best to please you
from her good heart, which shows equal kindness to the beggars on the
quay as to the greatest duchess in England.”
“And very commendable!” says her Grace, slowly furling her fan. “Then do
me the favour to bring her on the evening of Thursday and then, if you
would have a candid opinion, it is yours.”
They talked a little longer of other matters; indeed, the Duchess
lingered until the sun was low and the shadows long. A man dark-browed
and swarthily beautiful, lying against the pedestal of the marble faun
near at hand, took up his guitar, and sang low and sweet in a mellow
tenor while she beat time gently with a jewelled hand on her knee.
Mare si lucido,
Lido si caro,
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!
The famous song of Naples.
“This is heaven,” says she, when the voice was silent, “and you and your
Emma trouble yourselves about the weary world! Oh, fools, fools! Forgive
me, my good cousin!”
Indeed, it was with a beating heart that Emma prepared for that
introduction. Not even to Sir William would she admit how much it
signified to her. He viewed it but as the caprice of a lady too great to
be crossed. She, as the golden key which might possibly unlock another
of the endless gates which stayed her progress. Yet she betrayed no
eagerness, no agitation, though it awakened every intelligence to its
work. “What would I not do for any relative of my own Sir William’s,”
was all she said when it was laid before her.
But her preparations! She had resolved that she would wear the dress in
which the Attitudes should be performed, and indeed it served her well.
Had she known her business completely she would never have been seen in
anything else.
Behold, then, the Duchess of Argyll’s salon in the Villa Columbaia,
high, cool and beautiful with the grace of Italian and the comfort of
English furnishings. A naked girl in marble, carved by a famous Italian,
poised life-size by the windows, running; caught in the flush of her
speed with a butterfly perched on her finger.
The Duchess herself sat in a noble chair carved long ago by English
workmen, and above her head was a picture of her sister, the dead Lady
Coventry, seductive, entrancing, with her long languid eyes. She
herself, in an Italian evening gown of purple lustring trimmed with
silver gauze, harmonized the incongruities with an odd but delightful
unity. There was beside her a great stand of tall and shaded wax candles
which shed the most flattering light known to the imagination on her
beautiful worn face, and the great bowl of luscious roses at her elbow.
There was only a small party in attendance (for all present had the air
of attending her Grace): three or four men, the Lady Diana Beauclerck,
the Duke and Duchess de St. Maître and a few more; Lady Diana,
sketchbook in hand, for she would never lose the chance of some new and
surprising pose of Emma’s.
To these, talking and laughing, the lacquey makes his unashamed
announcement.
“His Excellency the Ambassador and Mrs. Hart.” And the Duchess beholds
framed in the tall dim doorway—what? A statue from the Museo come to
pay her respects? No, a somewhat tall young woman robed in pure white of
some subtly soft material which drapes like Greek marble, and falls in
long slender folds to chastely hidden but sandalled feet. Chastely
hidden the beautiful bosom also, rounding softly through the veil, but
the noble throat, a pillar of ivory, rears itself proudly from the
uncovered chest as strongly and finely modelled as that of Diana’s
swiftest nymph, with room and to spare for ample lungs and untroubled
breath. The sleeve is looped to the shoulder on one side, and falls in
long drapery on the other. Her face, a little pale with controlled
agitation, is serenely sweet and modest. A magnificent young animal in
rejoicing health, if no more, thinks the Duchess as Sir William leads
the beauty forward and she makes her reverence before the thronelike
chair. Her Grace may then remark the masses of gold-touched bronze hair
pressed and calmed down upon the small head that its luxuriance may be
controlled into reason, and the rose-red lips above the perfect chin.
The eyes are not on show. Mrs. Hart veils them chastely with long
lashes. She showed like a lovely survival of the lost glory of Greece
among these fashionably dressed ladies—and knew it. The Duchess
received her graciously and motioned that a chair be set beside her. Sir
William should have nothing to complain of and, indeed, she was curious
herself.
“I take it very kind, madam, that you visit me this evening,” says she
with gentle dignity. “But Sir William has no doubt made my excuses and
told you that my physicians forbid any fatigue. Therefore I am compelled
to ask my friends to be charitable and favour me with their company when
they will be so good.”
“Oh, madam, what could I think it but an honour to visit your Grace,”
says the sweet statue, carefully tutored in her forms of address by the
best tutor of the polite world, and then relapses into a graceful
silence with bows and smiles to such of the company as she knows; Lady
Diana especially warm in her greeting, for there was never an artist
heart could hold away from its spiritual kin in Emma.
“And did he tell you that I entreated as a special favour that I might
hear what I am told is one of the finest voices of our day?” the Duchess
continues.
“Indeed, madam, yes. He told me your Grace would find San Carlo too
fatiguing.”
“And those famous poses of which I understand the great Goethe has
written in terms of such delight?”
“All is at your service, madam. I have come dressed in the antique taste
for the purpose. I only beg one favour; that if you find them
_ennuyante_ you will stop me.”
“I promise!” says the Duchess, with a smile which disarms her words.
There was more talk, and refreshments were served, however, before she
would put the statue in motion. Mrs. Hart was not to feel she was bidden
merely as a raree-show for fashionable folks. Indeed, Lady Diana
exhibited first her portfolio of new drawings done for the decoration of
one of Mr. Horace Walpole’s rooms at his gimcrack castle of Strawberry
Hill, and one of the gentlemen, the Duke de San Maître, favoured them
with a song, “Napoli bella” and so forth, which Emma applauded with more
smiling warmth than any of the party, the Duchess watching her well
pleased.
It was her turn next—the poses which gained her the nickname of The
Gallery of Statues from the said Mr. Horace Walpole. I will not, I must
not particularize, though on such beauty one would linger if possible,
but as she melted from one loveliness to another, the Duchess’s eyes
followed and could not be satisfied. She laughed with the laughing
comedy, held her breath while the ruined Cassandra, pointing to the
violating Sun, seemed to hurl forth the dreadful prophecies that none
regarded, smiled for pure pleasure at the nymph with a tambourine, and
so forth through every act of the lovely show—so lovely that even the
girl’s enemies could not withhold their reluctant praises.
When it was over, she clapped her hands.
“Wonderful, marvellous—I could see it forever and ever! It is a new
art. It is painting and poetry and sculpture and the theatre all
expressed in one,” cried she. “My dear, you have genius. I never saw
anything remotely like it. And now—can it be possible that with all
these perfections you also have a voice worth hearing? If so, I declare
it unjust, preposterous. The most of us have no gifts at all. The few
have one, but you—”
“I have called her Pandora, for indeed she has them all,” says Sir
William, and the gentlemen who understood the classical allusion
applauded. And Emma sang. She put her heart into it. She gave them her
famous “Luce bella” with ornaments of diamond and crystal clearness that
the Banti herself could not have excelled. Her voice sparkled and
glittered; nothing more brilliant could be imagined. And then when she
had driven them all into the realms of soulless admiration—for what is
such art but an exquisite gymnastic?—she led them back into the forests
of true romance with a simple ballad from Scotland, in homage to the
Duchess whose soft eyes filled with tears in listening.
They have slain the Earl o’ Moray
And laid him on the green.—
The cry of it! The tears in her soft voice!
Oh, the bonny Earl o’ Moray
He was the Queen’s love.
And lang, lang may his lady
Look o’er the Castle doun,
Ere she see the Earl o’ Moray
Come sounding through the toun.
So she ended in a dying sweetness with notes as deep as doom, and would
sing no more, and the silence that followed was better than all words.
The Duchess drew her near and kissed her cheek without any.
Indeed, Emma spoke little that night. She was conscious herself, to a
certain extent, that she was on her promotion. Conscious, too, that
there were faults of speech which great ladies might view with scorn
unsoftened by the bright beauty which made even these a naïve
enchantment to men. She was therefore at her best, nothing breaking out
of control; pliable, gentle, unassuming; in all things obedient and
attentive to Sir William.
He drew near the Duchess while Emma at Lady Diana’s request poised her
tambourine for a rapid sketch in Mr. Walpole’s interest. The others had
gathered about the pretty sight.
“Your opinion, madam?”
“I am charmed, dazzled. She is a revelation of the most exquisite
beauty. There is genius, Sir William. I never saw her like.”
“Then you don’t condemn me, madam? You don’t think me the infatuated
fool I am called in some circles?”
“I think you have shown yourself a man of supreme taste. That girl—take
care she does not leave you some day and take Europe as a lover instead!
Every great capital would be at her feet.”
“You forget she loves me. She will not leave me,” he said complacently.
The Duchess looked at him with pitying eyes.
“You forget, my friend, I fear, that you are sixty, and she—” She
pointed with her fan at the radiant figure, incarnate youth, and the men
crowding about her to admire. It struck like the chill of death, as a
truth known with secret fear to ourselves will do when repeated from
other lips.
“I must take my fate like another man!” he answered, with a voice that
shook a little. His eyes fell on his hands; beautifully shaped but
veined and wrinkled.
“We can’t escape Fate,” says the Duchess, “but we can evade her for a
while.”
They looked at each other. “And what would you do?” he asked, turning
his eyes away last.
“Marry her!” said the Duchess. Then, hastily, “My friend, it is not my
business. I intrude. My Lady Diana, are you for cards?”