first time at the lady next me. I saw a delicate profile, lips
compressed and colorless, chestnut hair that I had last seen with his
pearls gleaming above it: I saw, en deux mots, Beatrice Boville for the
first time since that night eight months before, when she had stood
before me in her passion and her pride. She never took her eyes off
Earlscourt while he spoke, and I wondered if she regretted having lost
him for a point of honor. Had she grown indifferent to him, that she had
come to his own legislative chamber, or was her love so much stronger
than her pride that she had sought to see him thus rather than not see
him at all? When his speech was closed, and he had resumed his place on
the benches, she leaned back, covering her eyes with her hand for a
moment: and, as I said aloud (more for her benefit than Mrs.
Breloques's) my regret that Earlscourt would wear himself out, I was
afraid, in his devotion to public life, Beatrice started at the sound
of my voice, turned her head hastily, and her face was colorless enough
to tell me she had not gratified her pride without some cost. Of course
I spoke to her; she had been a favorite of mine always, and I had often
wished to come across her again; but beyond learning that she was with
Lady Mechlin in Lowndes Square, and had been spending the winter at Pau
for her aunt's health, I had no time to hear more, for Lelia, having
only come for Earlscourt's speech, bade me take her to her carriage,
while Beatrice and her party remained for the rest of the debate; but
the rencontre struck me as so odd, that I believe it occupied my
thoughts more than Mrs. Breloques liked, who got into her carriage in
not the best of humors, and asked me if _I_ was going in for public life
that I'd grown so particularly unamusing. We're always unamusing to one
woman if we're thinking at all about another.
"Do you know who was at the House to-night, Earlscourt, to hear your
speech?" I asked him, as I met him, a couple of hours afterwards, in one
of the passages, as he was leaving the House. He had altered much in
eight months; he stooped a little from his waist; he looked worn, and
his lips were pale. Men said his stamina was not equal to his brain;
physicians, that he gave himself too much work and too little sleep. I
knew he was more wrapped in public life than ever; that in his place in
the government he worked unwearyingly, and that he found time in spare
moments for intellectual recreation that would have sufficed for their
life's study for most men. Still, I thought possibly there might be a
weakness still clinging round his heart, though he never alluded to it;
a passion which, though he appeared to have crushed it out, might be
sapping his health more than all his work for the nation.
"Do you mean any one in particular? Persigny said he should attend, but
I did not see him."
"No, I meant among the ladies. Beatrice Boville was in the seat next
me." I had no earthly business to speak of her so abruptly, for when I
had seen him for the first time after he left the Bad when Parliament
met that February, he had forbidden me ever to mention her name to him,
and no allusion to her had ever passed his lips. The worn, stern
gravity, that had become his habitual expression, changed for a moment;
bullet-proof he might be, but my arrow had shot in through the chain
links of his armor; a look of unutterable pain, eagerness, anxiety,
passion, passed over his face; but, whatever he felt, he subdued it,
though his voice was broken as he answered me:--
"Once for all, I bade you never speak that name to me. Without being
forbidden, I should have thought your own feeling, your own delicacy,
might--"
"Have checked me? O, hang it, Earlscourt, listen one second without
shutting a fellow up. I never broached the subject before, by your
desire; but, now I have once broken the ice, I must ask you one
question: Are you sure you judged the girl justly? are you sure you were
not too quick to slan--"
He pressed his hand on his chest and breathed heavily as I spoke, but he
wouldn't let me finish.
"That is enough. Would any man sacrifice what he held dearest wantonly
and without proof? She is dear to me _now_. You are the only living
being so thoughtless or so merciless as to force her name upon me, and
rake up the one folly, the one madness, the one crowning sorrow of my
life. See that you never dare bring forward her name again."
He went out before me into the soft night air. His carriage was
waiting; he entered it, threw himself back on its cushions, and was
driven off before I had time to break my word of honor to Beatrice
Boville, which I felt sorely tempted to do just then. Who among the
thousands that heard his briliant speech that night, or read it the next
morning, who saw him pass in his carriage, and had him pointed out to
them as the finest orator of his day, or dined with him at his
ministerial dinners at his house in Park Lane, would have believed that,
with all his ambition, fame, honors, and attainments, the one cross, the
one shadow, the one dark thread, in the successful stateman's life, was
due to a woman's hand, and that underneath all his strength lay that
single weakness, sapping and undermining it?
"_Did you_ see that girl Boville at the House last night?" Lady Clive
(who had smiled most sweetly ever since her thorns had brought forth
their fruit--her son _would_ be his heir--Earlscourt would never marry
now!) said to me, the next day, at one of the Musical Society concerts.
"Incredible effrontery, wasn't it, in her, to come and hear Earlscourt's
speech? One would have imagined that conscience and delicacy might have
made her reluctant to see him, instead of letting her voluntarily seek
his own legislative chamber, and listen coolly for an hour and a half to
the man whom she misled and deceived so disgracefully."
I laughed to think how long a time a woman's malice _will_ flourish,
n'importe how victorious it may have been in crushing its object, or how
harmless that object may have become.
"You are very bitter about her still, Lady Clive. Is that quite fair?
You know you were so much obliged to her for throwing Earlscourt away.
You want Horace to come in for the title, don't you?" Which truism
being unpalatable, Lady Clive averred that she had no wish on earth but
for Earlscourt's happiness; that of course she naturally grieved for his
betrayal by that little intrigante, but that had his marriage been a
well-advised one, nobody would have rejoiced more, etc., etc., and bade
me be silent and listen to Vieuxtemps, both of which commands I obeyed,
pondering in my own mind whether I should go and call in Lowndes Square
or not: if anybody heard of it, they would think it odd for me alone, of
all the family, to continue acquainted with a girl whom report
(circulated through Lady Clive) said had used Earlscourt so ill, and
wrong constructions might get put upon it; but, thank God! I never have
considered the qu'en dira-t-on. If constructions are wrong, to the deuce
with them! they matter nothing to sensible people; and the man who lives
in dread of "reports" will have to shift his conduct as the old man of
immortal fable shifted his donkey, and won't ever journey in any peace
at all. If anybody remarked my visiting Lowndes Square, I couldn't help
it: I wanted to see Beatrice Boville again, and to Lowndes Square, after
the concert, I drove my tilbury accordingly, which, as that turn-out is
known pretty tolerably in those parts, I should be wisest to leave
behind me when I don't want my calls noticed. By good fortune, I saw
Beatrice alone. They were going to drive in the Park, and she was in the
drawing room, dressed and waiting for her aunt. She was not altered: at
her age sorrow doesn't tell physically as it does at Earlscourt's. In
youth we have Hope; later on we know that of all the gifts of Pandora's
box none are so treacherous and delusive as the one that Pandora left at
the bottom. True, Beatrice had none of that insouciant, shadowless
brightness that had been her chief charm at Lemongenseidlitz, but she
was one of those women whose attractions, dependent on fascination, not
on beauty, grow more instead of less as time goes on. She met me with a
trace of embarrassment; but she was always self-possessed under any
amount of difficulties, and stood chatting, a trifle hurriedly, of all
the subjects of the year, of anything, I dare say, rather than of that
speech the night before, or of the secret of which I was her sole
confidant. But I was not going to let her off so easily. I had come
there for a definite purpose, and was not going away without
accomplishing it. I was afraid every second that Lady Mechlin might come
down, or some visitor enter, and as she sat in a low chair among the
flowers in the window, leant towards her, and plunged into it _in medias
res_.
"Miss Boville, I want you to release me from my promise."
She looked up, her face flushing slightly, but her lips and eyes
shadowed already with that determined pride and hauteur that they had
worn the last time I had seen her. She did not speak, but played with
the boughs of a coronella near her.
"You remember" (I went on speaking as briefly as possible, lest the old
lady's toilet should be finished, and our tete-a-tete cut short) "I gave
you my word of honor never to speak again of what you told me in the
Kursaal last autumn until you gave me leave; that leave I ask you for
now. Silence lies in the way of your own happiness, I feel sure, and not
alone of yours. If you give me carte blanche, you may be certain I shall
use it discreetly and cautiously. You made the prohibition in a moment
of heat and passion; withdraw it now--believe me, you will never
repent."
The flush died out of her cheeks as I spoke; but her little, white
teeth were set together as they had been that night, and she answered me
bitterly,--
"You ask what is impossible; I cannot, in justice to myself, withdraw
it. I would never have told you, but that I deemed you a man of honor,
whom I could trust."
"I do not think I have proved myself otherwise, Beatrice. I have kept my
word to you, when I have been greatly tempted to break it, when I have
doubted whether it were either right or wise to stand on such punctilio,
when greater stakes were involved by my silence. Surely, if you once had
elevated mind enough to comprehend and admire such a man as Earlscourt,
and be won by the greatness of his intellect to prefer him to younger
rivals, it is impossible you can have lowered your taste and found any
one to replace him. No woman who once loved Earlscourt could stoop to an
inferior man, and almost all men _are_ his inferiors; it is impossible
you can have grown cold towards him."
She turned her eyes upon me luminous with her old passion--the color hot
in her cheeks, and her attitude full of that fiery pride which became
her so infinitely well.
"_I_ changed!--_I_ grown cold to him! I love him more than all the
world, and shall do to my grave. Do you think that any who heard him
last night could glory in him as I did? Did you think any physical
torture would not have been easier to bear than what I felt when I saw
his face once more, and thought of what we _should have been_ to one
another, and of what we _are_? We women have to act, and smile, and wear
a calm semblance, while our hearts are bursting; and so you fancy that
we never feel."
"But, great Heavens! Beatrice, if you love Earlscourt like this, why not
give me leave to tell him? Why not write to him yourself? A word would
clear you, a word restore you to him. Your anger, your pride, he would
forgive in a moment."
I'm a military man, not a diplomatist, or I shouldn't have added that
last sentence.
She rose, and looked at me haughtily and amazedly.
"It is I who have to forgive, not he. I wronged him in no way; he
wronged me bitterly. He dared to misjudge, to suspect, to insult me. I
shall never stoop to undeceive him. He gave me up without a trial. I
never will force myself upon him. He thanked God I was not his
wife--could I seek to be his wife after that? Love him passionately I
do, but forgive him I do _not_! I forbid you, on your faith as a
gentleman, ever to tell him what I told you that night. I trusted to
your honor; I shall hold you _dis_honored if you betray me."
Just as she paused an open carriage rolled past. I looked down
mechanically; in it was Earlscourt lying back on his cushions,
returning, I believe, from a Cabinet Council. There, in the street,
stood my tilbury, with the piebald Cognac that everybody in Belgravia
knew. There, in the open window, stood Beatrice and I; and Earlscourt,
as he happened to glance upwards, saw us both! His carriage rolled on;
Beatrice grew as white as death, and her lips quivered as she looked
after him; but Lady Mechlin entered, and I took them down to their
barouche.
"You are determined not to release me from my promise?" I asked
Beatrice, as I pulled up the tiger-skin over her flounces.
She shook her head.
"Certainly not; and I should think you are too much of a gentleman not
to hold a promise sacred."
Pride and determination were written in every line of her face, in the
very arch of her eyebrows, the very form of her brow, the very curve of
her lips--a soft, delicate face enough otherwise, but as expressive of
indomitable pride as any face could be. And yet, though I swore at her
as I drove Cognac out of the square, I couldn't help liking her all the
better for it, the little Pythoness! for, after all, it was natural and
very intelligible to me--she had been misjudged and wrongly suspected,
and the noblest spirits are always the quickest to rebel against
injustice and resent false accusation.
V.
HOW IN PERFECT INNOCENCE I PLAYED THE PART OF A RIVAL.
The season whirled and spun along as usual. They were having stormy
debates in the Lower House, and throwing out bills in the Upper; stifled
by Thames odors one evening, and running down to Epsom the next morning;
blackguarding each other in parliamentary language--which, on my honor,
will soon want duels revived to keep it within decent breeding, if Lord
Robert Cecil and others don't learn better manners, and remember the
golden rule that "He alone resorts to vituperation whose argument is
illogical and weak." We, luckier dogs, who weren't slaves to St.
Stephen's, nor to anything at all except as parsons and moralists, with
whom the grapes sont verts et bons pour des goujats, said to our own
worldly vitiated tastes and evil leanings, spent our hours in the Ring
and the coulisses, White's and the United, crush balls and opera
suppers, and swore we were immeasurably bored, though we wouldn't have
led any other life for half a million. The season whirled along.
Earlscourt devoted himself more entirely than ever to public life; he
filled one of the most onerous and important posts in the ministry, and
appeared to occupy himself solely with home politics and foreign
politics. Lady Mechlin, only a baronet's widow, though she had very
tolerable society of her own, was not in _his_ monde; and Beatrice
Boville and he, with only Hyde Park Corner between them, might as well,
for any chance of rapprochement, have been severally at Spitzbergen and
Cape Horn. Two or three times they passed each other in Pall-Mall and
the Ride; but Earlscourt only lifted his hat to Lady Mechlin, and
Beatrice set her little teeth together, and wouldn't have solicited a
glance from him to save her life. Earlscourt was excessively distant to
me after seeing my tilbury at her door; no doubt he thought it strange
for me to have continued my intimacy with a woman who had wronged him so
bitterly. He said nothing, but I could see he was exceedingly
displeased; and the more I tried to smooth it with him, the more
completely I seemed to set my foot in it. It was exceedingly difficult
to touch on any obnoxious subject with him; he was never harsh or
discourteous, but he could freeze the atmosphere about him gently, but
so completely, that no mortal could pierce through it; and, fettered by
my promise to her and his prohibition to me, I hardly knew how to bring
up her name. As the Fates would have it, I often met Beatrice myself, at
the Regent Park fetes, at concerts, at a Handel Festival at Sydenham, at
one or two dinner parties; and, as she generally made way for me beside
her, and was one of those women who are invariably, though without
effort, admired and surrounded in any society, possibly people remarked
it--possibly our continued intimacy might have come round to Earlscourt,
specially as Lady Clive and Mrs Breloques abused me roundly, each a sa
mode, for countenancing that "abominable intrigante." I couldn't help
it, even if Earlscourt took exception at me for it. I knew the girl was
not to blame, and I took her part, and tried my best to tame the little
Pythoness into releasing me from my promise. But Beatrice was firm; had
she erred, no one would have acknowledged and atoned for it quicker, but
innocent and wrongly accused, she kept silent, coute que coute, and in
my heart I sympathized with her. Nothing stings so sharply, nothing is
harder to forgive, than injustice; and, knowing herself to be frank,
honorable, and open as the day, his charge of falsehood and deception
rankled in her only more keenly as time went on. Men ran after her like
mad; she had more of them about her than many beauties or belles. There
was a style, a charm, a something in her that sent beauties into the
shade, and by which, had she chosen, she could soon have replaced
Earlscourt. Still, it needed to be no Lavater to see, by the passionate
gleam of her eyes and the haughty pride on her brow, that Beatrice
Boville was not happy.
"Why _will_ you let pride and punctilio wreck your own life, Beatrice?"
I asked her, in a low tone, as we stood before one of Ed. Warren's
delicious bits of woodland in the Water-Color Exhibition, where we had
chanced to meet one day. "That he should have judged you as he did was
not unnatural. Think! how was it possible for him to guess your father
was your companion? Remember how very much circumstances were against
you."
"Had they been ten times more against me, a man who cared for me would
have believed in me, and stood by me, not condemned me on the first
suspicion. It was unchivalrous, ungenerous, unjust. I tell you, his
words are stamped into my memory forever. I shall never forgive them."
"Not even if you knew that he suffered as much and more than you do?"
She clinched her hands on the rolled-up catalogue with a passionate
gesture.
"No; because he _misjudged_ me. Anything else I would have pardoned,
though I am no patient Griselda, to put up tamely with any wrong; but
_that_ I never could--I never would!"
"I regret it, then. I thought you too warm and noble-hearted a woman to
retain resentment so long. I never blamed you in the first instance, but
I must say I blame you now."
She laughed, a little contemptuously, and glanced at me with her
haughtiest air; and on my life, much as it provoked one, nothing became
her better.
"Blame me or not, as you please--your verdict will be quite bearable,
either way. I am the one sinned against. I can have nothing explained to
Lord Earlscourt. Had he cared for me, as he once vowed, he would have
been less quick then to suspect me, and quicker now to give me a chance
of clearing myself. But you remember he thanked God I had not his name
and his honor in my hands. I dare say he rejoices at his escape."
She laughed again, turning over the catalogue feverishly and
unconsciously. _Those_ were the words that rankled in her; and it was
not much wonder if, to a proud spirit like Beatrice Boville's, they
seemed unpardonable. As I handed her and Lady Mechlin into their
carriage when they left the exhibition, Earlscourt, as ill luck would
have it, passed us, walking on to White's, the fringe of Beatrice's
parasol brushed his arm, and a hot color flushed into her cheeks at the
sudden rencontre. By the instinct of courtesy he bowed to her and Lady
Mechlin, but passed up Pall-Mall without looking at Beatrice. How well
society drills us, that we meet with such calm impassiveness in its
routine those with whom we have sorrowed and joyed, loved and hated, in
such far different scenes!
Their carriage drove on, and I overtook him as he went up Pall-Mall. He
was walking slowly, with his hand pressed on his chest, and his lips set
together, as if in bodily pain. He looked at me, as I joined him, with
an annoyed glance of unusual irritation for him, for he was always calm
and untroubled, punctiliously just, and though of a proud temper, never
quick to anger.
"You passed that girl wonderfully coldly, Earlscourt," I began, plunging
recklessly into the thick of the subject.
"Coldly!" he repeated, bitterly. "It is very strange that you will
pursue me with her name. I forbade you to intrude it upon me; was not
that sufficient?"
"No; because I think you judged her too harshly."
"Think so, if you please, but never renew the topic to me. If she gives
you her confidence, enjoy it. If you choose, knowing what you do, to be
misled by her, be so; but I beg of you to spare me your opinions and
intentions."
"But why? I say you _do_ misjudge her. She might err in impatience and
pride; but I would bet you any money you like that you would prove her
guilty of no indelicacy, no treachery, no underhand conduct, though
appearances might be against her."
"_Might_ be! You select your words strangely; you must have some deeper
motive for your unusual blindness. I desire, for the last time, that you
cease either the subject to me, or your acquaintance with me, whichever
you prefer."
With which, he went up the steps of White's, and I strolled on, amazed
at the fierce acrimony of his tone, utterly unlike anything I had ever
heard from him, wished their pride to the devil, called myself a fool
for meddling in the matter at all, and went to have a quiet weed in the
smoking-room of the U. S. to cool myself. I was heartily sick of the
whole affair. If they wanted it cleared, they must clear it
themselves--I should trouble myself no more about it. Yet I couldn't
altogether dismiss Beatrice's cause from my mind. I thought her, to say
the truth, rather harshly used. I liked her for her fearless, truthful,
impassioned character. I liked her for the very courage and pride with
which she preferred to relinquish any chance of regaining her forfeited
happiness, rather than stoop to solicit exculpation from charges of
which she knew she was innocent. Perhaps, at first, she did not consider
sufficiently Earlscourt's provocation, and perhaps, now, she was too
persisting in her resentment of it; still I liked her, and I was sorry
to see her, at an age when life should have been couleur de rose, to one
of her gay and insouciant nature, with a weary, passionate look on her
face that she should not have had for ten years to come--a look that was
rapidly hardening into stern and contemptuous sadness.
"You tell me I am too bitter," she said to me one day, "how should I be
otherwise? I, who have wronged no one, and have never in my life done
anything of which I am ashamed, am called an intrigante by Lady Clive
Edghill, and get ill-will from strangers, and misconstructions from my
friends, merely because, thinking no harm myself, it never occurs to me
that circumstances may look against me; and, hating falsehood, I cannot
lie, and smile, and give soft words where I feel contempt and
indignation. Mrs. Breloques yonder, with whom les presens ont toujours
raison, and les absens ont toujours tort, who has honeyed speeches for
her bitterest foes, and poisoned arrows (behind their back) for her most
trusting friends, who goes to early matins every morning, and pries out
for a second all over the top of her prayer-book, who kisses 'darling
Helena,' and says she 'never looked so sweetly,' whispering en petit
comite what a pity it is, when Helena is so passee, she _will_ dress
like a girl just out--she is called the sweetest woman possible--so
amiable! and is praised for her high knowledge of religion. You tell me
I am too bitter. I think not. Honesty does _not_ prosper, and truth is
at a miserable discount; straightforward frankness makes a myriad of
foes, and adroit diplomacy as many friends. If you make a
prettily-turned compliment, who cares if it is sincere? if you hold your
tongue where you cannot praise, because you will not tell a conventional
falsehood, the world thinks you very ill-natured, or odiously satirical.
Society is entirely built upon insincerity and conventionality, from the
wording of an acceptance of a dinner invitation, where we write 'with
much pleasure,' thinking to ourselves 'what a bore!' to the giant
hypocrisies daily spoken without a blush from pulpit and lecturn, and
legitimatized both as permissible and praiseworthy. To truth and
unconventionality society of course is adverse; and whoever dares to
uphold them must expect to be hissed, as Paul by the Ephesians, because
he shivered their silver shrines and destroyed the craft by which they
got their wealth."