Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Punctuation has been normalized. All other
printer's errors have been retained.
BEATRICE BOVILLE
AND
OTHER STORIES.
BY
"OUIDA."
AUTHOR OF
"STRATHMORE," "GRANVILLE DE VIGNE," "CHANDOS,"
"IDALIA," "RANDOLPH GORDON," ETC., ETC.
Third Series.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1905
CONTENTS.
BEATRICE BOVILLE.
I.--OF EARLSCOURT'S FIANCEE. 9
II.--THE FIRST SHADOW. 13
III.--HOW PRIDE SOWED AND REAPED. 23
IV.--WHERE I SAW BEATRICE BOVILLE AGAIN. 33
V.--HOW IN PERFECT INNOCENCE I PLAYED THE PART OF A RIVAL. 44
VI.--HOW PRIDE BOWED AND FELL. 51
A LINE IN THE "DAILY."
WHO DID IT, AND WHO WAS DONE BY IT. 65
HOLLY WREATHS AND ROSE CHAINS.
I.--THE COLONEL OF THE "WHITE FAVORS" AND CECIL ST. AUBYN. 109
II.--THE CANADIAN'S COLD BATH WARMS UP THE COLONEL. 119
III.--SHOWING THAT LOVE-MAKING ON HOLY GROUND DOESN'T PROSPER. 132
IV.--THE COLONEL KILLS HIS FOX, BUT LOSES HIS HEAD AFTER
OTHER GAME. 146
SILVER CHIMES AND GOLDEN FETTERS.
I.--WALDEMAR FALKENSTEIN AND VALERIE L'ESTRANGE. 161
II.--FALKENSTEIN BREAKS LANCES WITH "LONGS YEUX BLEUS." 174
III.--"SCARLET AND WHITE" MAKES A HIT, AND FALKENSTEIN FEELS
THE WEIGHT OF THE GOLDEN FETTERS. 188
IV.--THE GOLDEN FETTERS ARE SHAKEN OFF AND OTHERS ARE PUT ON. 202
V.--THE SILVER CHIMES RING IN A HAPPY NEW YEAR. 215
SLANDER AND SILLERY.
I.--THE LION OF THE CHAUSSEE D'ANTIN. 225
II.--NINA GORDON. 233
III.--LE LION AMOUREUX. 242
IV.--MISCHIEF. 252
V.--MORE MISCHIEF, AND AN END. 263
SIR GALAHAD'S RAID.
AN ADVENTURE ON THE SWEET WATERS. 285
"REDEEMED."
AN EPISODE WITH THE CONFEDERATE HORSE. 307
OUR WAGER; OR, HOW THE MAJOR LOST AND WON.
I.--INTRODUCES MAJOR TELFER OF THE 50TH DASHAWAY HUSSARS. 333
II.--VIOLET TRESSILLIAN. 339
III.--FROM WHICH IT WOULD APPEAR, THAT IT IS SOMETIMES WELL
TO BEGIN WITH A LITTLE AVERSION. 346
IV.--IN WHICH THE MAJOR PROVOKES A QUARREL IN BEHALF OF
THE FAIR TRESSILLIAN. 353
V.--THE DUEL, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 367
OUR COUNTRY QUARTERS. 379
BEATRICE BOVILLE.
I
OF EARLSCOURT'S FIANCEE.
"To compass her with sweet observances,
To dress her beautifully and keep her true."
That, according to Mr. Tennyson's lately-published opinion, is the
devoir of that deeply-to-be-pitied individual, l'homme marie. Possibly
in the times of which the Idyls treat, Launcelot and Gunevere _might_
have been the sole, exceptional mauvais sujets in the land, and woad,
being the chief ingredient in the toilet-dress, mightn't come quite so
expensive. But nowadays "sweet observances," rendered, I presume, by
gifts from Hunt and Roskell's and boxes in the grand tier, tell on a
cheque-book so severely; "keeping her true" is such an exceedingly
problematical performance, to judge by Sir C. C.'s breathless work, and
"dressing her beautifully" comes so awfully expensive, with crinoline
and cashmeres, pink pearls, and Mechlin, and the beau sexe's scornful
repudiation, not alone of a faded silk, like poor Enid's, but of the
handsomest dress going, if it's damned by being "seen twice," that I
have ever vowed that, plaise a Dieu, I will never marry, and with
heaven's help will keep the vow better than I might most probably keep
the matrimonial ones if I took them. Yet if ever I saw a woman for whom
I could have fancied a man's committing that semisuicidal act, that
woman was Beatrice Boville. Not for her beauty, for, except one of the
loveliest figures and a pair of the most glorious eyes, she did not
claim much; not for her money, for she had none; not for her birth, for
on one side that was somewhat obscure; but for _herself_; and had I ever
tried the herculean task of dressing anybody beautifully and keeping
anybody true, it should have been she, but for the fact that when I knew
her first she was engaged to my cousin Earlscourt. We had none of us
ever dreamt he would marry, for he had been sworn to political life so
long, given over so utterly to the battle-ground of St. Stephen's and
the intrigues of Downing Street, that the ladies of our house were
sorely wrathful when they heard that he had at last fallen in love and
proposed to Beatrice Boville, who, though she was Lady Mechlin's niece,
was the daughter of a West Indian who had married her mother, broken her
heart, spent her money, deserted her, and never been heard of since; the
more wrathful as they had no help for themselves, and were obliged to be
contented with distinguishing her with refreshing appellations of a
"very clever schemer," evidently a "perfect intrigante," and similar
epithets with which their sex is driven for consolation under such
trying circumstances. It's a certain amount of relief to us to call a
man who has cut us down in a race "a stupid owl; very little in him!"
but it is mild gratification to that enjoyed by ladies when they
retaliate for injury done them by that delightful bonbon of a sentence,
"No doubt a most artful person!" You see it conveys so much and proves
three things in one--their own artlessness, their enemy's worthlessness,
and their victim's folly. Being with Earlscourt at the time of his
"singularly unwise, step," as they phrased it, I knew that he wasn't
trapped in any way, and that he was loved irrespectively of his social
rank; but where was the good of telling that to deeply-injured and
perforce silenced ladies? "They knew better;" and when a woman says
that, always bow to her superior judgment, my good fellow, even when
she knows better than you what you did with yourself last evening, and
informs you positively you were at that odious Mrs. Vanille's opera
supper, though, to the best of your belief, you never stirred from the
U. S. card-room; or you will be voted a Goth, and make an enemy for the
rest of your natural life.
In opposition to the rest of the family, _I_ thought (and you must know
by this time, amis lecteurs, that I hardly think marriage so enjoyable
an institution as some writers do, but perhaps a little like a pipe of
opium, of which the dreams are better than the awakening)--I thought
that he could hardly have done better, as far as his own happiness went,
as I saw her standing by him one evening in the window of Lady Mechlin's
rooms at Lemongenseidlitz, where we all were that August, a brilliant,
fascinating woman already, though then but nineteen, noble-hearted,
frank, impetuous, with something in the turn of her head and the proud
glance of her eyes, that told you, you might trust her; that she was of
the stuff to keep her word even to her own hinderance; that neither
would she tell a lie, nor brook one imputed to her; that she might err
on the side of pride, on the side of meanness never; that she might have
plenty of failings, but not anything petty, low, or ungenerous among
them. The evening sun fell on them as they stood, on her high, white
forehead, with its chestnut hair turned off it as you see it in old
pictures, which Earlscourt was touching caressingly with his hand as he
talked to her. They seemed well suited, and yet--his fault was pride,
an unassailable, unyielding pride; hers was pride, too, pride in her own
truth and honor, which would send you to the deuce if you ever presumed
to doubt either; and I wondered idly as I looked at them, whether those
two prides would ever come in conflict, and if so, whether either of
them would give in in such a case--whether there would be submission on
one side or on both, or on neither? Such metaphysical and romantic
calculations are not often my line; but as they stood together, the sun
faded off, and a cold, stormy wind blew up in its stead, which, perhaps,
metaphorically suggested the problem to me. As one goes through life one
gets up to so many sunny, balmy, cloudless days, and so often before the
night is down gets wetted to the skin by a drenching shower, that one
contracts an uncomfortable habit when the sun _does_ shine, of looking
out for squalls, a fear that, sans doute, considerably damps the
pleasures of the noon. But the fear is natural, isn't it, more's the
pity, when one has been often caught?
I chanced to ask her that night what made her so fond of Earlscourt. She
turned her fearless, flashing eyes half laughingly, half haughtily on
me, the color brighter in her face:
"I should have thought you would rather have asked how could I, or any
other woman whom he stooped to notice, fail to love him? There are few
hearts and intellects so noble: he is as superior to you ball-room
loungers, you butterfly flutterers, as the stars to that chandelier."
"Bien oblige!" laughed I. "But that is just what I meant. Most young
ladies are afraid of him; you never were?"
She laughed contemptuously.
"Afraid! You do not know much of me. It is precisely his giant
intellect that first drew me to him, when I heard his speech on the
Austrian question. Do you remember how the Lords listened to him so
quietly that you could have heard a feather fall? I like that silence of
theirs when they hear what they admire, better than I do the cheers of
the other house. Afraid of him! What a ludicrous idea! Do you suppose I
should be afraid of any one? It is only those who are conceited or
cowardly, who are timid. If you have nothing to assume, or to conceal,
what cause have you to fear? I love, honor, reverence Lord Earlscourt,
God knows; but fear him--never!"
"Not even his anger, if you ever incurred it?" I asked her, amused with
her haughty indignation.
"Certainly not. Did I merit it, I would come to him frankly, and ask his
pardon, and he would give it; if I did not deserve it, _he_ would be the
one to repent."
She looked far more attractive than many a handsomer woman, and
infinitely more noble than a more tractable one. She was admirably
fitted for Earlscourt, if he trusted her; but it was just possible he
might some day _mis_trust and _mis_understand her, and then there might
be the devil to pay!
II.
THE FIRST SHADOW.
Lemongenseidlitz was a charming little Bad. Beatrice Boville
and her aunt Lady Mechlin, Earlscourt and I, had been there
six weeks. His brother peers--of whom there were scores at
Lemongenseidlitz--complimented Earlscourt on his fiancee.
"So you're caught at last?" said an octogenarian minister, who was as
sprightly as a schoolboy. "Well, my dear fellow, you might have gone
higher, sans doute, but on my honor I don't think you could have done
better."
It was the universal opinion. Beatrice was not the belle of the Bad,
because there were dozens of beautiful women, and beautiful she was not;
but she was more admired than any of them, and had Earlscourt wanted
voices to justify his choice he would have had them, but he didn't; he
was entirely independent of the opinions of others, and had he chosen to
set his coronet on the brows of a peasant girl, would have cared little
what any one thought or said. We all of us enjoyed that six weeks. Lady
Mechlin lost to her heart's content at roulette, and was as complacent
over her losses as any old dowager could be. Beatrice Boville shone
best, as nice natures ever do, in a sunny atmosphere; and if she had any
faults of impatient temper or pride, there was nothing to call them
forth. Earlscourt, cold politician though he'd been, gave himself up
entirely to the warmer, brighter existence, which he found in his new
passion; and I, not being in love with anybody, made the pleasantest
love possible wherever I liked. We all of us found a couleur de rose
tint in the air of little Lemongenseidlitz, and I'd quite forgotten my
presentiment, when, one night at the Kursaal, a cloud no bigger than a
man's hand came up on the sunny horizon, and put me in mind of it.
Earlscourt came into the ball room rather late; he had been talking with
some French ministers on some international project which he was anxious
to effect, and asked Lady Mechlin where Beatrice was.
"She was with me a moment ago; she is waltzing, I dare say," said the
old lady, whose soul was hankering after the ivory ball.
"Very likely," he answered, as he looked among the dancers for her; he
was restless without her, though he would have liked none to see the
weakness, for he was a man who felt more than he told. He could not see
her, and went through the rooms till he found her, which was in a small
anteroom alone. She started as he spoke to her, and a start being a
timorous and nervous thing of which Beatrice Boville was never guilty,
he drew her to him anxiously.
"My darling, has anything annoyed you?"
She answered him with her habitual candor:
"Yes; but I cannot tell you what, just now."
"Cannot tell me! and why?"
"Because I cannot. I can give no other reason. It is nothing of import
to you, or you are sure I should not keep it from you."
"Yes; but I am equally sure that anything that concerns you _is_ of
import to me. To whom should you tell anything, if not to me? I do not
like concealment, Beatrice."
His tone was grave; indeed, too much like reproof to a fractious child
to suit Beatrice's pride. She drew away from him.
"Nor I. You must think but meanly of me if you can impute anything like
concealment to me."
"How can I do otherwise? You tell me you have been annoyed, and refuse
to say how, and by whom. Is that anything but concealment? If any one
has offended or insulted you, I ought to be the first you came to. A
woman, Beatrice, should have nothing hidden from the man who is, or will
be, her husband."
She threw her arms around him. Her moods were variable as a child's.
Perhaps this very variability Earlscourt hardly understood, for it was
utterly opposed to his own character: you always found him the same;
_she_ would be all storm one moment, all sunshine the next.
"Do you suppose I would hide anything from you? Do you think for a
moment I would hold back anything you had a right to know? You might
look into my heart; there would be no thought or feeling there I should
wish to keep from you. But if you exact confidence, so do I. Would you
think of taking as your wife one you could not trust?"
He answered her a little sternly:
"No; if I once ceased to believe in your truth or honor, as I believe in
my own, I should part from you forever, though God knows what it would
cost me!"
"God knows what it would cost _me!_ But I give you free leave. The
instant you find a flaw in either, I am no longer worthy of your love;
withdraw it, and I will never complain. But trust me you must and will;
I merit your confidence, and I exact it. Look at me, Ernest. Do you
believe I could ever deceive you?"
He looked into her eyes long and earnestly.
"No. When you do, your eyes will droop before mine. I trust you,
Beatrice, fully, and I know you will never wrong it."
She clung to him with caressant softness, softer in her than in a
meeker-spirited woman, as she whispered, 'Never!' and a man would need
have been obtuse and skeptical, indeed, who could then have doubted her.
And so that cloud blew over, for a time, at the least--trusted, Beatrice
Boville was soft and gentle as a lamb; mistrusted or misjudged, she was
fiery as a young lioness, and Earlscourt, I thought, though originally
won by her intellect, held her too much as a child to fully understand
her character, and to see that, though she was his darling and
plaything, she was also a passionate, ardent, proud-spirited woman,
stung by injustice and impatient of doubt. No two people could be more
fitted to make each other's happiness, yet it struck me that it was just
possible they might make each other's misery very completely, through
want of comprehension on the one side, through want of explanation on
the other.
"Your marriage is fixed, isn't it, Earlscourt?" asked his sister, Lady
Clive Edghill, who had come to Lemongenseidlitz, and, though compelled
by him, as he compelled all the rest of the family, to show Beatrice
strict courtesy, disliked her, because she was not an advantageous
match, was much too young in their opinion, and had no money--the
gravest crimes a woman can have in the eyes of any man's relatives.
"The 14th! Indeed! yours is a very short engagement!"
"Is there any reason why it should be longer?"
"O, dear, no! none that I am aware of. I wish, earnestly, my dear
Earlscourt, I could congratulate you more warmly; but I can never say
what I do not feel, and I had so much hoped--"
"My dear Helena, as long as I have so much reason to congratulate
myself, it matters very little whether you do or do not," smiled
Earlscourt. He was too much of a lion to be stung by gnats.
"I dare say. I sincerely trust you may ever have reason. But I heard
some very disagreeable things about that Mr. Boville, Beatrice's father.
Do you know that he was in a West India regiment, but was deprived of
his commission even there?--a perfect blackleg and sharper, I
understand. I suppose she has never mentioned him to you?"
"You are very much mistaken; all that Beatrice knows of him, I know;
that is but little, for Lady Mechlin took her long ago, when her mother
died, from such unfit guardianship. Beatrice is as open as the day--"
"Indeed! A little too frank, perhaps?"
"Too frank? That is a paradox. No one can have too much candor. It is
not a virtue of your sex, but it is one, thank God! which she possesses
in a rare degree, though possibly it gains her enemies where it should
gain her friends."
"Still frankness _may_ merge into indiscretion," said Helena, musingly.
"I doubt it. An indiscreet woman is never frank, for she has always the
memory of silly things said and done which require concealment."
"I was merely thinking," Helena went on, regardless of a speech which
she did not perhaps relish, pour cause, "merely from my deep interest in
you, and my knowledge of all you will wish your wife to be, that perhaps
Beatrice might be, in pure insouciance, a little too careless, a little
too candid for so prominent a position as she will occupy. Last night,
in passing a little anteroom in the Redoute, I saw her in such extremely
earnest conversation with a man, a handsome man, about your height and
age, and--"
The anteroom! Earlscourt thought, with a pang, of the start she had
given when he entered it the previous night. But he was not of a jealous
temperament, nor a curious one; his mind was too constantly occupied
with great projects and ambitions to be capable of joining petty things
together into an elaborate mosaic; he had no petitesses himself, and
trifles passed unheeded. He interrupted her decidedly:
"What is there in that to build a pyramid of censure from? Doubtless it
was one of her acquaintances--probably one of mine also. I should have
thought you knew me better, Helena, than to attempt this gossiping
nonsense with me."
"O, I say no more. I only thought you, of all men, would wish Caesar's
wife to be above--"
The gnat-strings had been too insignificant to rouse him before, but at
this one his eyebrows contracted, and he rose.
"Silence! Never venture to make such a speech as that to me again. In
insulting Beatrice you insult me. Unless you can mention her in terms of
proper respect and reverence, never presume to speak her name to me
again. Her enemies are my enemies, and, whoever they may be, I will
treat them as such."
Helena was sorely frightened; if she held anybody in veneration it was
Earlscourt, and she would never have ventured so far with him but for
the causeless hate she had taken to Beatrice, simply because Lady Clive
had decided long ago that her brother was too voue to public life ever
to marry, and that her son would succeed to his title. She was sorely
frightened, but she comforted herself--the little thorn she had thrust
in might rankle after a while; as pleasant a consolation under failure
as any lady could desire.
Beatrice was coming along the corridor as Earlscourt left Helena's
rooms, which were in the same hotel as Lady Mechlin's. She was stopping
to look out of one of the windows at the sunset; she did not see him at
first, and he watched her unobserved, and smiled at the idea of
associating anything deceitful with her--smiled still more at the idea
when she came up to him, with her frank, bright, regard, lifting her
face for a caress, and patting both her hands through his arm.
Accustomed to chill and reserved women in his own family, her abandon
had a great charm for him; but perhaps it led him into his error in
holding her still as half a child.
"You have been seeing my enemy?" she said, laughingly. "Your sister does
not like me, does she?"
"Not like you! Why should you think so? She may not like my marrying,
perhaps, because she had decided for me that I should never do so; and
no woman can bear any prophecies she makes to prove wrong."
"Very possibly that may be one reason; but she does not think me good
enough for you."
Her tips curved disdainfully, and Earlscourt caught a glimpse of her in
her fiery mood. He laughed at her where, with her, he had better have
admitted the truth. Beatrice had too much pride to be wounded by it, and
far too much good sense to measure herself by money and station.
"Nonsense, Beatrice; I should have thought you too proud to suppose such
a thing," he said, carelessly.
"It is the truth, nevertheless."
"More foolish she, then; but if you and I do not, what can it signify?"
"Nothing. As long as I am worthy of you in your eyes, what others think
or say is nothing to me. I honor you too much to make the gauge between
us a third person's opinion; or measure you or myself by a few stops
higher or lower in the social ladder. Your sister thinks me below you in
rank, soit! She is right; I am quite ready to admit it; but that I am
your equal in all that makes men and women equal in the sight of Heaven,
I know. When she finds me unworthy of you in thought or deed, then she
may call me beneath you--not till then."
Her cheeks were flushed; he could hear her quick breathings, and in her
vehemence and haughty indignation she picked the petals of her bouquet
de corsage to pieces and flung them away. Another time he would have
thought how well her pride became her, and given her some fond reply.
Just now the thorn rankled as Lady Clive had hoped, and he answered her
gravely, in the tone which it was as unwise to use to her as to prick a
thorough-bred colt with both spurs.
"You are quite right. Were I a king, you would be my equal as long as
your heart was mine, your mind as noble, and your character as unsullied
as I hope them to be now."
She turned on him rapidly with the first indignant look she had ever
given to him.
"_Hope!_ You might say _know_, I think!"
"I would have said 'know,' and meant it too, yesterday."
"Yesterday? What do you mean? Why am I less worthy your confidence
to-day than yesterday?"
She looked wonderingly at him, her eyes full of inquiry and
bewilderment. It was marvellous acting, if it was acting; yet he thought
she could scarcely have so soon forgotten their scene in the anteroom
the previous night. They had now come into the salon; he left her side
and walked to the mantel-piece, leaning his arm on it, and speaking
coldly, as he had never done to her since they first met.
"Beatrice, do not attempt to act with me. You cannot have forgotten what
we said in the anteroom last night. Nothing assumed ever deceives me,
and you only lower yourself in my estimation."
She clinched her hands till the rings he had given her crushed together.
"Act! assume! Great Heaven, how dare you speak such words to me?"
"Dare? You speak like an angry child, Beatrice. When you are reasonable
I will answer you."
The tears welled into her eyes, but she would not let them fall.
"Reasonable? Is there anything unreasonable in resenting words utterly
undeserved? Would you be calm under them yourself, Lord Earlscourt? I
remember now what you mean by yesterday; I did not remember when I asked
you. Had I done so I should never have simulated ignorance and surprise.
Only last night you promised to trust me. Is this your trust, to accuse
me of artifice, of acting, of falsehood? I would bear no such imputation
from any one, still less from you, who ought to know me so well. What
happiness can we have if you--"
She stopped, the tears choking her voice, but he did not see them; he
only saw her indignant attitude, her flushed cheeks, her flashing eyes,
and put them down to her girlish passion.
"Calm yourself, Beatrice, I beg. This sort of scene is very distasteful
to me; to figure in a lover's quarrel hardly suits me. I am not young
enough to find amusement in disputation and reconciliation, sparring one
moment and caresses the next. My life is one of grave pursuits and
feverish ambitions; I am often harassed, annoyed, worn out in body and
mind. What I hoped for from you was, to borrow the gayety and brightness
of your own youth, to find rest, and happiness, and distraction. A life
of disputes, reproaches, and misconstruction, would be what I never
would endure."
Beatrice was silent; she leaned her forehead on her arms and did not
answer him. His tone stung her pride, but his words touched her heart.
Her passion was always short-lived, and no evil spirit possessed her
long. She rebelled against the first part of his speech with all her
might, but she softened to the last. She came up to him with her hands
out.
"I had no right to speak so impatiently to you. God knows, to make your
life happy will be my only thought, and care, and wish. If I spoke
angrily, forgive me!"
Earlscourt knew that the nature so quick to acknowledge error was worth
fifty unerring and unruffled ones; still he sighed as he answered her,--
"My dear child, I forgive you. But, Beatrice, there is no foe to love so
sure and deadly as dissension!" And as he drew her to him and felt her
soft warm lips on his, he thought, half uneasily yet, "She has never
told me who annoyed her--never mentioned her companion in the anteroom
last night."
Lady Clive had her wish; the thorn festered as promisingly as she could
have desired. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute in quarrels as in
all else. Dispute once, you are very sure to dispute again, whether with
the man you hate or the woman you love.
III.
HOW PRIDE SOWED AND REAPED.
It only wanted three weeks to Beatrice Boville's marriage. We were all
to leave Lemongenseidlitz together in a fortnight's time for old Lady
Mechlin's house in Berks, where the ceremony was to take place.
"Earlscourt is quite infatuated," said Lady Clive to me one evening.
"Beatrice is very charming, of course, but she is not at all suited to
him, she is so fiery, so impetuous, so self-reliant."
"I think you are mistaken," said I. I admired Beatrice Boville--comme je
vous ai dit--and I didn't like our family's snaps and snarls at her.
"She may be impetuous, but, as her impulses are always generous, that
doesn't matter much. She is only fiery at injustice, and, for myself, I
prefer a woman who can stand up for her own rights and her friends' to
one who'll sit by in--you'll call it meekness, I suppose? I call it
cowardice and hypocrisy--to hear herself or them abused."
"Thank you, mon ami," said Beatrice's voice at my elbow, as Lady Clive
rose and crossed the room. "I am much obliged for your defence; I
couldn't help hearing it as I stood in the balcony, and I wish very much
I deserved it. I am afraid, though, I cannot dispute Helena's verdict of
'fiery,' 'impetuous,'--"
"And self-reliant?" I asked her. She laughed softly, and her eyes
unconsciously sought Earlscourt, who was talking to Lady Mechlin.
"Well? Not quite, now! But, by the way, why should people charge
self-reliance on to one as something reprehensible and undesirable? A
proper self-reliance is an indispensable ground-work to any success. If
you cannot rely upon yourself, upon your power to judge and to act, you
must rely upon some other person, possibly upon many people, and you
become, perforce, vacillating and unstable.
'To thine own self be true,
And it shall follow, as the day the night,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'"
As she spoke a servant brought a note to her, and I noticed her cheeks
grow pale as she saw the handwriting upon it. She broke it open, and
read it hastily, an oddly troubled, worried look coming over her face, a
look that Earlscourt could not help but notice as he stood beside her.
"Is there anything in that letter to annoy you, Beatrice?" he asked,
very naturally.
She started--rather guiltily, I thought--and crushed the note in her
hand.
"Whom is it from? It troubles you, I think. Tell me, my darling, is it
anything that vexes or offends you?" he whispered, bending down to her.
She laughed, a little nervously for her, and tore the note into tiny
pieces.
"Why do you not tell me, Beatrice?" he said again, with a shade of
annoyance on his face.
"Because I would rather not," she said, frankly enough, letting the
pieces float out of the window into the street below. The shadow grew
darker in his face; he bent his head in acquiescence, and said no more,
but I don't think he forgot either the note or her destroyal of it.
"I thought there was implicit confidence _before_ marriage whatever
there is after," sneered his sister, as she passed him. He answered her
calmly:--
"I should say, Helena, that neither before nor after marriage would any
man who respected his wife suffer curiosity or suspicion to enter into
him. If he do, he has no right to expect happiness, and he will
certainly not go the way to get it."
That was the only reply he gave Lady Clive, but her thorn No. 2 festered
in him, and when he bade Beatrice good night, standing alone with her in
the little drawing room, he took both her hands in his, and looked
straight into her eyes.
"Beatrice, why would you not let me see that note this evening?"
She looked up at him as fearlessly and clearly.
"If I tell you why, I must tell you whom the note was from, and what it
was about, and I would much rather do neither as yet."
"That is very strange. I dislike concealment of all kinds, especially
from you, who so soon will be my wife. It is inconceivable to me why you
should need or desire any. I thought your life was a fair open book,
every line of which I might read if I desired."
Beatrice looked at him in amazement.
"So you may. Do you suppose, if I had any secret from you that I feared
you should know, I could have a moment's peace in your society, or look
at you for an instant as I do now? I give you my word of honor that
there was nothing either in the note that concerns you, or that you
would wish me to tell you. In a few days you shall know all that was in
it, but I ask you as a kindness not to press me now. Surely you do not
think me such a child but that you can trust me in so small a trifle. If
you say I am not worthy of your confidence, you imply that I am not
worthy of your love. You spoke nobly to your sister just now, Ernest; do
not act less nobly to me."
He could not but admire her as she looked at him, with her fearless,
unshadowed regard, her head thrown a little back, and her attitude
half-commanding, half-entreating. He smiled in spite of himself.
"You are a wayward, spoiled child, Beatrice. You must have your own
way?"
She gave a little stamp of her foot. She hated being called a spoiled
child, specially by him, and in a serious moment.
"If I have my own way, have I your full confidence too?"
"Yes; but, my dear Beatrice, the only way to gain confidence is never to
excite suspicion." And Lady Clive's thorn rankled a ravir; for even as
he pressed his goodnight kisses on her lips, he thought, restlessly,
"Shall we make each other happy?--am I too grave for her?--and is she
too wilful for me? I want rest, not contention."
The night after that there was a bal-masque at the Redoute. I was just
coming out of my room as Beatrice came down the corridor; She had her
mask in her hand, her dress was something white starred with gold, and
round her hair she had a little band of pearls of Earlscourt's gift. I
never saw her look better, specially when her cheeks flushed and her
eyes brightened as Earlscourt opened his door next mine, and met her. He
did not see me, the corridor was empty, and he bent down to her with
fond words and caresses.
"Do I look well?" she said, with child-like delight.
"I am so glad, Ernest, I want to do you honor."
In that mood he understood her well enough, and he pressed her against
his heart with the passion that was in him, whose strength he so rarely
let her see. Then he drew her hand through his arm, and led her down the
stairs; and, as I laughed to find to what lengths our cold statesman
could come at last, I thought Lady Clive's thorns would be innocuous,
however well planted.
Earlscourt never danced; nothing but what was calm and stately could
possibly have suited him; but Beatrice did, and waltzed like a Willis,
(though she liked even better than that standing on his arm and talking
with his friends--diplomatic, military, and ministerial--on all sorts of
questions, most of which she could handle nearly as well as they;) and
about the middle of the evening, while she was waltzing with some man or
other who had begged to be introduced to her, Earlscourt left the
ball-room for ten minutes in earnest conversation with one of the French
ministers, who was leaving the next morning. As he came back again, I
asked him where Beatrice was, because Powell, of the Bays, was bothering
my life out to introduce him to her.
"In the ball room, isn't she? She is with Lady Mechlin, of course, if,
the waltz is over."
A familiar voice stopped him.
"She is not in the ball room. Go where you found her the other night,
and see if Caesar's promised wife be above suspicion!"
I could have sworn the voice was Lady Clive's; a pink domino passed us
too fast for detention, but Earlscourt's lips turned white at the subtle
whisper, and he muttered a fierce oath--fiercer from him, because he's
never stirred into fiery expletives. "There is some vile plot against
her. I must sift it to the bottom;" and, pushing past me, he entered the
ball room. Beatrice was not there; and wending his way through the
crowd, he went in through several other apartments leading off to the
right, and involuntarily I followed him, to see what the malicious
whisper of the pink domino had meant. Earlscourt lifted the curtain that
parted the anteroom from the other chamber--lifted it to see Beatrice
Boville, as the pink domino had prophesied, and not alone! With her was
a man, masked, but about Earlscourt's height, and seemingly about his
age, who, as he saw us, let go her hand with a laugh, turned on to a
balcony, which was but a yard or so from the street, and dropped on to
the pave below. Beatrice started and colored, but I thought she must be
the most desperate actress going, for she came up to Earlscourt with a
smile, and was about to put her hand through his arm, but he signed her
away from him.
"Your acting is quite useless with me. I am not to be blinded by it
again. I have believed in your truth as in my own--"
"So you may still. Listen to me, Ernest!"
"Hush! Do not add falsehood to falsehood."
He spoke sternly and coldly; his pride, which was as strong as his love
for her, would not gratify her by a sign of the torture within him, and
even in his bitterest anger Earlscourt would never have been ungentle to
a woman. That word acted like an incantation on her, the blood crimsoned
her temples, her eyes literally flashed fire, and she threw back her
head with the haughty, impatient gesture habitual to her.
"Falsehood? Three times of late you have used that word to me."
"And why? Because you merited it."
She stood before him, the indignant flush hotter still upon her cheeks,
her lips curved into scornful anger. If she was an actress, she knew her
role to perfection.
"Do you speak that seriously, Lord Earlscourt? Do you believe that I
have lied to you?"
"God help me! What else can I believe?" he muttered, too low for her to
hear it.
She asked him the question again, fiercely, and he answered her briefly
and sternly,--
"I believe that all your life with me has been a lie. I trusted you
implicitly, and how do you return it? By carrying on clandestine
intercourse with another man, giving him interviews that you conceal
from me, having letters that you destroy, doubtless receiving caresses
that you take care are unwitnessed; while you dare to smile in my face,
and to dupe me with child-like tenderness, and to bid me 'trust' you and
believe in you! Love shared to me is worthless, and on my wife,
Beatrice, no stain must rest!"
As he spoke, a dark shadow spread over her countenance, her evil spirit
rose up in her, and her bright, frank, fearless face grew almost as
hard and cold as his, while her teeth were set together, till her lips,
usually soft and laughing, were pressed into one straight haughty line.
"Since you give me up so easily, far be it from me to dispute your will.
We part from this hour, if you desire it. My honor is as dear to me as
yours to you, and to those who dare to suspect it I never stoop to
defend it!"
"But, my God! Beatrice, what _am_ I to believe?"
"Whatever you please!"
"What I please! Child, you must be mad. What _can_ I believe, but that
you are the most perfect of all actresses, that your art is the greatest
of all sins, the art that clothes itself in innocence, and carries
would-be truth upon its lips. Prove to me that I wrong you!"
She shook her head; the devil in her had still the victory; her eyes
glittered, and her little teeth were clinched together.
"What I exact is trust without proof. I am not your prisoner, Lord
Earlscourt, to be tried coldly, and acquitted if you find legal evidence
of innocence; convicted, if there be a link wanting. If you choose to
trust me, I have told you often your trust will never be wronged; if you
choose to condemn me, do. I shall not stoop to show you your injustice."
Earlscourt's face grew dark and hard as hers, but it was wonderful how
well his pride chained down all evidence of suffering; the only sign was
in the hoarseness of, and quiver in, his voice.
"Say nothing more--prevarication is guilt! God forgive you, Beatrice
Boville! If you loved me, and knelt at my feet, I would not make you my
wife after the art and the lies with which you have repaid my trust.
Thank God, you do not already bear my name and my honor in your hands!"
With those words he left her. Beatrice stood still in the same place,
her lips set in one scornful line, her eyes glittering, her brow
crimson, her whole attitude defiant, wronged, and unyielding. Earlscourt
passed me, his face white as death, and was out of sight in a second. I
waited a moment, then I followed my impulse, and went up to her.
"Beatrice, for Heaven's sake, what is all this?"
She turned her large eyes on me haughtily.
"Do _you_ believe what your cousin does?"
I answered her as briefly:--
"No, I do not. There is some mistake here."
She seized my arm, impetuously:--
"Promise me, on your honor, never to tell what I tell to you while I
live. Promise me, on your faith as a gentleman."
"On my honor, I promise. Well?"
"The man whom you saw with me to-night is my father. Lord Earlscourt
chose to condemn me without inquiry; so let him! But I tell you, that
you may tell him if I die before him, that he wronged me. You know Mr.
Boville's--my father's--character. I had not seen him since I was a
child, but when he heard of my engagement to Lord Earlscourt he found me
out, and wanted to force himself on him, and borrow money of him, and--"
She stopped, her face was crimson, but she went on, passionately. "All
my efforts, of course, were to keep them apart, to spare my father such
degradation, and your cousin such an application. I could not tell Lord
Earlscourt, for he is generous as the winds, and I knew what he would
have done. My note was from my father; he wanted to frighten me into
introducing him to Lord Earlscourt, but he did not succeed. I would not
have your cousin disgraced or pained by--Arthur, that is all my crime!
No very great one, is it?" And she laughed a loud, bitter laugh, as
unlike her own as the stormy shadow on her face was like the usual
sunshine.
"But, great Heaven! why not have told this to Earlscourt?"
She signed me to silence with a passionate gesture.
"No! He dishonored me with suspicion; let him go. I forbid you ever to
breathe a word of what I have told you to him. If he has pride, so have
I. He would hold no dishonor greater than for another man to charge him
with a lie. My truth is as untainted as his, and my honor as dear to me.
He accused me wrongly; let him repent. I would have loved and reverenced
him as never any woman yet could do; but once suspected, I could find no
happiness with him. His bitter words are stamped into my heart. I shall
never forget--I doubt if I shall ever forgive--them. I can bear anything
but injustice or misconception. If any doubt me, they are free to do so;
theirs is the sin, not mine. As he has sown so must he reap, and so must
I!" A low, gasping sob choked her voice, but she stood like a little
Pythoness, the pearl gleaming above her brow, her eyes unnaturally
bright, the color burning in her face, her attitude what it was when he
left her, defiant, wronged, unyielding. She swept away from me to a man
who was coming through the other room, and he stared at her set lips and
her gleaming eyes as she asked him, carelessly, "Count Avonyl, will you
have the kindness to take me to Lady Mechlin?"
That was the last I saw of her. She left the Bad with her aunt as soon
as the day dawned, and when I went to our hotel, I found that Earlscourt
had ordered post-horses immediately he quitted the ball room, and
gone--where he did not leave word. So my presentiment was verified; the
pride of both had come in conflict, and the pride of neither had
succumbed. How long it would sustain and satisfy them, I could not
guess; but Lady Clive smiled again, as sweetly as ladies ever do when
their thorns have thriven and brought forth abundant fruit. Some other
time I will tell you how I saw Beatrice Boville again; but I often
thought of
"Pauline, by pride
Angels have fallen ere thy time!"
when I recalled her with the pearls above her brow, and her passionate,
gleaming eyes, and her fearless, scornful, haughty anguish, as she had
stood before me that night when Pride _v_. Pride caused the wreck of
both their lives.
IV.
WHERE I SAW BEATRICE BOVILLE AGAIN
I don't belong to St. Stephen's myself, thank Heaven. Very likely they
would have returned me for the county when the governor departed this
life had I tried them; but as I generally cut the county, from not being
one of the grass countries, and as I couldn't put forward any patriotic
claims like Mr. Harper Twelvetrees, (who, as he's such a slayer of
vermin, thought, I suppose, that he'd try his hand at the dry-rot and
the red tapeworms, which, according to cotton grumblers, are sapping the
nation,) I haven't solicited its suffrages. The odds at Tattersall's
interest me more than the figures of the ways and means; and
Diophantus's and Kettledrum's legerdemain at Newmarket and Epsom is more
to my taste than our brilliant rhetorician's with the surplus. I don't
care a button about Lord Raynham and Sir C. Burrell's maids-of-all-work;
they are not an attractive class, I should say, and, if they like to
amuse their time tumbling out of windows, I can't see for the life of me
why peers and gentlemen should rush to the rescue like Don Quixote to
Dulcinea's. And as for that great question, Tea _v_. Paper, bohea
delights the souls of old ladies and washerwomen--who destroy crumpets
and character over its inebriating cups, and who will rush to crown Lord
Derby's and Mr. Disraeli's brows with laurels if they ever go to the
country with a teapot blazoned on their patriotic banners--more than it
does mine, which prefers Bass and Burgundy, seltzer and Sillery; and,
though I dare say Brown, Jones, and Robinson find the Divorce News
exciting, and paper collars very showy and economical, as I myself am
content with the _Times_ and its compeers, and think, with poor Brummel,
that life without daily clean linen were worthless, _that_ subject
doesn't absorb me as it does those gentlemen who find "the last tax of
knowledge" so grandiloquent and useful a finishing period. So I have
never stood for the county, nor essayed to stand for it, seeing that to
one Bernal Osborne there are fifty prosers in St. Stephen's, and to be
bored is, to a butterfly flutterer, as the young lady whose name heads
this paper once obligingly called me, torture unparalleled by anything
short of acid wine or the Chinese atrocities, though truly he who heads
our Lower House with his vernal heart and his matchless brain were
enough to make any man, coxcomb or hero, oppositionist or
ministerialist, proud to sit in the same chamber with him. But there are
nights now and then, of course, when I like to go to both Houses, to
hear Lord Derby's rich, intricate oratory, or Gladstone's rhetoric,
(which has so potent a spell even for his foes, and is yet charged so
strangely against him as half a crime; possibly by the same spirit with
which plain women reproach a pretty one for her beauty: what business
has he to be more attractive than his compeers? of course it's a peche
mortel in their eyes!) and when Mrs. Breloques, who is a charming little
woman, to whom no man short of a Goth could possibly say "No" to any
petition, gave me a little blow with her fan, and told me, as I valued
her friendship, to get an order and take her and Gwen to hear the Lords'
debate on Tuesday, when my cousin Viscount Earlscourt, one of the best
orators in the Upper House, was certain to speak, of course I obliged
her. Her sister Gwen, who was a girl of seventeen, barely out, and whom
I wished at Jerico, (three is so odious a number, one of the triad must
ever be _de trop_,) was wrathful with the Upper House; it in no wise
realized her expectations; the peers should have worn their robes, she
thought, (as if the horrors of a chamber filled with Thames odors in
June wasn't enough without being bored with velvet and ermine) she would
have been further impressed by coronets also; they had no business to
lounge on their benches as if they were in a smoking-room; they should
have declaimed like Kean, not spoken colloquially; and--in fact, they
shouldn't have been ordinary men at all. I think a fine collection from
Madame Tussaud's, with a touch of the Roman antique, would have been
much more to Gwen's ideal, and she wasn't at all content till Earlscourt
rose; _he_ reconciled her a little, for he had a grand-seigneur air, she
said, that made up for the incongruities of his dress. It was a measure
that he had much at heart; he had exerted for it all his influence in
the cabinet, and he was determined that the bill should pass the Lords,
though the majority inclined to throw it out. As he stood now against
the table, with his calm dignity of gesture, his unstrained flow of
words, and his rich and ringing voice, which could give majesty to
commonplace subjects, and sway even an apathetic audience as completely
as Sheridan's Begum speech, every one in the House listened attentively,
and each of his words fell with its due weight. I heard him with pride,
often as I had done so before, though I noticed with pain that the lines
in his forehead and his mouth were visibly deepened; that he seemed to
speak with effort, for him, and looked altogether, as somebody had said
to me at White's in the morning, as if he were wearing out, and would go
down in his prime, like Canning and Pitt.
"Lord Earlscourt looks very ill--don't you think so?" said Lelia
Breloques.