most people, even with the man who had loved her best. Had she been
ready with an adroit falsehood and a quick excuse, Earlscourt's
suspicions would never have been raised as they were by her frank
admission that there was something she would rather not tell him, and
her innocent request to be trusted. That must have been some very
innocent and unworldly village schoolmaster, I should say, who first set
going that venerable proverb, "Honesty is the best policy." He must have
known comically little of life. A diplomatist who took it as his motto
would soon come to grief, and ladies would soon stone out of their
circles any woman bete enough to try its truth among them. There is no
policy at greater discount in the world, and straightforward and candid
people stand at very unequal odds with the rest of humanity; they are
the one morsel of bread to a hogshead of sack, the handful of Spartans
against a swarm of Persians, and they get the brunt of the battle and
the worst of the fight.
VI.
HOW PRIDE BOWED AND FELL.
Beyond meeting Earlscourt at White's, or, for an hour, at the reunion of
some fair leader of ton, I scarcely saw him that season, for he was more
and more devoted to public life. He looked wretchedly ill, and his
physicians said if he wished to live he must go to the south of France
in July, and winter at Corfu; but he paid them no heed; he occupied
himself constantly with political and literary work, and grudged the
three or four hours he gave to sleep that did him little good.
"Will you get me admittance to the Lords to-morrow night?" Beatrice
asked me, one morning, when I met her in the Ride. I looked at her
surprised.
"To the Lords? Of course, if you wish."
"I do wish it." Her hands clinched on her bridle, and the color flushed
into her face, for Earlscourt just then passed us, riding with one of
his brother ministers. He looked at us both, and his face changed
strangely, though he rode on, continuing his conversation with the other
man, while I went round the turn with Beatrice and the other fellows who
were about her; le fruit defendu is always most attractive, and
Beatrice's profound negligence of them all made them more mad about her
than all the traps and witcheries, beguilements and attractions, that
coquettes and beauties set out for them. She rode beautifully; and a
woman who _does_ sit well down on her saddle, and knows how to handle
her horse, never looks better than en Amazone. Earlscourt met her three
times at the turn of the Ride; and though you would not have told that
he was passing any other than an utter stranger, I think it must have
struck him that he had lost much in losing Beatrice Boville. I was
riding on her off-side each time when we passed him. As I say, I never,
thank God! have cared a straw for the qu'en dira-t-on? and if people
remarked on my intimacy with my cousin's cast off fiancee, so they
might, but to Earlscourt I wished to explain it more for Beatrice's sake
than my own; and as I rode out by Apsley House afterwards, I overtook
him, and went up to Piccadilly with him, though his manner was decidedly
distant and chill, so pointedly so that it would have been rude, had he
not been too entirely a disciple of Chesterfield to be ever otherwise
than courteous to his deadliest foe; but, disregarding his coldness, I
said what I intended to say, and began an explanation that I considered
only due to him.
"I beg your pardon, Earlscourt, for intruding on you a topic you have
forbidden, but I shall be obliged to you to listen to me a moment. I
wish to tell you my reasons for what, I dare say, seems strange to you,
my continued intimacy with--"
But I was not permitted to end my sentence; he divined what I was about
to say, and stopped me, with a cold, wearied air.
"I understand; but I prefer not to hear them. I have no desire to
interfere with your actions, and less to be troubled with your motives.
Of course, you choose your friendships as you please. All I beg is, that
you obey the wish I expressed the other day, and intrude the subject no
more upon me."
And he bade me good morning, urged his mare into a sharp canter, and
turned down St. James's Street. How little those in the crowd, who
looked at him as he rode by, pointing him out to the women with them as
Viscount Earlscourt, the most eloquent debater in the Lords, the
celebrated foreign minister, author, and diplomatist, guessed that a
woman's name could touch and sting him as nothing else could do, and
that under the calm and glittering upper-current of his life ran a dark,
slender, unnoticed thread that had power to poison all the rest! Those
women, mon ami!--if we _do_ satirize them a little bit now and then, are
we doing any more than taking a very mild revenge? Don't they make fools
of the very best and wisest of us, play the deuce with Caesar as with
Catullus, and make Achilles soft as Amphimachus?
The next morning I met Beatrice at a concert at the Marchioness of
Pursang's. Lady Pursang would not have been, vous concevez, on the
visiting list of Lady Mechlin, as she was one of the creme de la creme,
but she had met Beatrice the winter before at Pau, had been very
delighted with her, and now continued the acquaintance in town. I
happened to sit next our little Pythoness, who looked better, I think,
that morning, than ever I saw her, though her face was set into that
disdainful sadness which had become its habitual expression. She liked
my society, and sought it, no doubt, because I was the only link between
her and her lost past; and she was talking with me more animatedly than
usual, thanking me for having got her admittance to the Lords that
night, during a pause in the concert, when Earlscourt entered the room,
and took the seat reserved for him, which was not far from ours. Music
was one of his passions, the only delassement, indeed, he ever gave
himself now; but to-day, though ostensibly he listened to Alboni and
Arabella Goddard, Halle and Vieuxtemps, and talked to the marchioness
and other women of her set, in reality he was watching Beatrice, who,
her pride roused by his presence, laughed and chatted with me and other
men with her old gay abandon, and, impervious to dereglement though he
was, I fancy even _he_ felt it a severe trial of his composure when Lady
Pursang, who had been the last five years in India with her husband, and
who was ignorant of or had forgotten the name of the girl Earlscourt was
to have married the year before, asked him, when the concert was over,
to let her introduce him to her, yet Beatrice Boville, bringing him in
innocent cruelty up to that little Pythoness, with whom he had parted so
passionately and bitterly ten months before! Happy for them that they
had that armor which the Spartans called heroism, the stoics philosophy,
and we--simply style good breeding, or they would hardly have gone
through that ordeal as well as they did when she introduced them to each
other as strangers!--those two who had whispered such passionate love
words, given and received such fond caresses, vowed barely twelve
months before to pass their lifetime together! Happy for them they were
used to society, or they would hardly have bowed to each other as calmly
and admirably as they did, with the recollection of that night in which
they had parted so bitterly, so full as it was in the minds of both.
Beatrice was standing in one of the open windows of the little cabinet
de peinture almost empty, and when the marchioness moved away, satisfied
that she had introduced two people admirably fitted to entertain one
another, Earlscourt, with people flirting and talking within a few yards
of him, was virtually alone with Beatrice--for there is, after all, no
solitude like the solitude of a crowd--and _then_, for the first time in
his life, his self-possession forsook him. Beatrice was silent and very
pale, looking out of the window on to the Green Park, which the house
overlooked, and Earlscourt's pride had a hard struggle, but his passion
got the better of him, malgre lui, and he leaned towards her.
"Do you remember the last night we were together?"
She answered him bitterly. She had not forgiven him. She had sometimes,
I am half afraid, sworn to revenge herself.
"I am hardly likely to forget it, Lord Earlscourt."
He looked at her longingly and wistfully; his pride was softened, that
granite pride, hitherto so unassailable! and he bent nearer to her.
"Beatrice! I would give much to be able to wash out the memories of that
night--to be proved mistaken--to be convicted of haste, of sternness--"
The tears rushed into her eyes.
"You need only have given one little thing--all I asked of you--trust!"
"Would to God I dare believe you now! Tell me, answer me, did I judge
you too harshly? Love at my age never changes, however wronged; it is
the latest, and it only expires with life itself. I confess to you, you
are dearer to me still than anything ever was, than anything ever will
be. Prove to me, for God's sake, that I misjudged you! Only prove it to
me; explain away what appeared against you, and we may yet--"
He stopped; his voice trembled, his hand touched hers, he breathed short
and fast. The Pythoness was very nearly tamed; her eyes grew soft and
melting, her lips trembled; but pride was still strong in her. At the
touch of his hand it very nearly gave way, but not wholly; it was there
still, tenacious of its reign. She set her little teeth obstinately
together, and looked up at him with her old hauteur.
"No, as I told you then, you must believe in me _without_ proof. I have
not forgotten your bitter words, nor yet forgiven them. I doubt if I
ever shall. You roused an evil spirit in me that night, Lord Earlscourt,
which you cannot exorcise at a moment's notice. Remember what was your
own motto, 'An indiscreet woman is never frank,'--yet from my very
frankness you accused me of indiscretion, and of far worse than
indiscretion--"
"My God! if I accused you falsely, Beatrice, forgive me!"
He must have loved her very much to bow his pride so far as that. _He_
was at _her_ feet--at _her_ mercy now; he, whom she had vainly sued,
sued her; but a perverse, fiery devil in her urged her to take her own
revenge, compelled her to throw away her own peace.
"You should have asked me that ten months ago; it is too late now."
His face dyed white, his eyes filled with passionate anguish. He crushed
her hand in his.
"Too late! Great Heavens! Answer me, child, I entreat you--I beseech
you--is it 'too late' because report is true that you have replaced me
with your cousin--that you are engaged to Hervey? Tell me truth now, for
pity's sake. I will be trifled with no longer."
Beatrice threw back her haughty little head contemptuously, though
ladies _don't_ sneer at the idea of being liees with me generally, I can
assure you. Her heart throbbed triumphantly and joyously. She had
conquered him at last. The man of giant intellect and haughty will had
bowed to her. She held him by a thread, he who ruled the fate of
nations!--and she loved him so dearly! But the Pythoness was not wholly
tamed, and she could not even yet forget her wrongs.
"You told me before I spoke falsehoods to you, Lord Earlscourt; my word
would find no more credence now."
He looked at her, dropped her hand, and turned away, before Beatrice
could detain him. Five minutes after he left the house. Little as I
guessed it, he was jealous of me--I! who never in my own life rivalled
any man who wished to _marry_! Beatrice had fully revenged herself. I
wonder if she enjoyed it quite as much as she had anticipated, as she
stood where he had left her looking out on the Green Park?
I went with Beatrice and her party to the Lords that night; it was the
tug of war for the bill which Earlscourt was so determined should pass,
and a great speech was expected from him. We were not disappointed. When
he rose he spoke with effort, and his oratory suffered from the slight
hoarseness of his voice, for half the beauty of his rhetoric lay in the
flexibility and music of his tones; still, it was emphatically a great
speech, and Beatrice Boville listened to it breathlessly, with her eyes
fixed on the face--weary, worn, but grandly intellectual--of the man
whom Europe reverenced, and she--a girl of twenty!--ruled. Perhaps her
heart smote her for the lines she had added there; perhaps she felt her
pride misplaced to him, great as he was, with his stainless honor and
unequalled genius; perhaps she thought of how, with all his strength,
his hand had trembled as it touched hers; and how, with all her love,
she had been wilful and naughty to him a second time. His voice grew
weaker as he ended, and he spoke with visible effort; still it was one
of his greatest political triumphs: his bill passed by a large majority,
and the papers, the morning after, filled their leading articles with
admiration of Viscount Earlscourt's speech. But before those journals
were out, Earlscourt was too ill almost to notice the success of his
measures: as he left the House, the presiding devil of beloved Albion,
that plays the deuce with English statesmen as with Italian
cantatrices,--the confounded east wind,--had caught him, finished what
over-exertion had begun, and knocked him over, prostrated with severe
bronchitis. What pity it is that the body _will_ levy such cruel black
mail upon the mind; that a gust of wind, a horse's plunge, the effluvia
of a sewer, the carelessness of a pointsman, can destroy the grandest
intellect, sweep off the men whose genius lights the world, as
ruthlessly as a storm of rain a cloud of gnats, and strike Peel and
Canning, Macaulay and Donaldson, in the prime of their power, as
heedlessly as peasants little higher than the brutes, dull as the clods
of their own valley, who stake their ambitions on a surfeit of fat
bacon, and can barely scrawl their names upon a slate!
Unconscious that Earlscourt's jealousy had fastened so wrongly upon me,
I was calling upon Beatrice late the next morning, ignorant myself of
his illness, when his physician, who was Lady Mechlin's too, while
paying her a complimentary visit, regretted to me my cousin's sudden
attack.
"Lord Earlscourt would speak last night," he began. "I entreated him
not; but those public men are so obstinate; to-day he is very ill--very
ill indeed, though prompt measures stopped the worst. He has risen to
dictate something of importance to his secretary; he would work his
brain if he were dying; but it has taken a severe hold on him, I fear. I
shall send him somewhere south as soon as he can leave the house, which
will not be for some weeks. He would be a great loss to the country. We
have not such another foreign minister. But I admit to you, Major
Hervey--though of course I do not wish it to go further--that I _do_
think very seriously of Lord Earlscourt's state of health."
Beatrice heard him as she sat at her Davenport; her face grew white, and
her eyes filled with great anguish. She thought of his words to her only
the day before, and of how her pride had repelled him a second time. I
saw her hand clinch on the pen she was playing with, and her teeth set
tight together, her habitual action under any strong emotion, thinking
to herself, no doubt, "And my last words to him were bitter ones!"
When the physician had left, I went up to her.--
"Beatrice, you must let me tell him _now_!"
She did not answer, but her hand clinched tighter on the pen-handle.
"His life is in your hands; for God's sake relinquish your pride."
But her pride was strong in her, and dear to her still, strong and dear
as her love; and the two struggled together. Earlscourt had bowed _his_
pride to her; but she had not yielded up her own, and it cost her much
to yield it even now. All the Pythoness in her was not tamed yet. She
was silent--she wavered--then her great love for him vanquished all
else. She rose, white as death, her passionate eyes full of unshed
tears, the bitterest, yet the softest, Beatrice Boville had ever known.
"Take me to him. No one shall tell him but myself."
Earlscourt was lying on a couch in his library; he had been unable to
dictate or to write himself, for severe remedies had prostrated him
utterly, and he could not speak above his breath, though he was loath to
give up, and acknowledge himself as ill as he was. His eyes were closed,
his forehead knitted together in pain, and his labored breathing told
plainly enough how fiercely his foe had attacked him, and that it was by
no means conquered yet. He had not slept all night, and had fallen into
a short slumber now, desiring his attendants to leave him. I bade the
groom of the chambers let us enter unannounced, and, opening the door
myself, signed to Beatrice to go in, while her aunt and I waited in the
anteroom. She stopped a moment at the entrance; her pride had its last
struggle; but he turned restlessly, with a weary sigh, and by that sigh
the Pythoness was conquered. Beatrice went forward and fell on her knees
beside his sofa, bending down till her lips touched his brow, and her
hot tears fell on his hands.
"I was too proud last night to tell you you misjudged me. I have no
pride now. I am your own--wholly your own. I never loved, I never should
love, any but you. I forgive you now. O, how could you ever doubt me?
Lord Earlscourt--Ernest--may we not yet be all we once were to one
another?"
Awakened by her kisses on his brow, bewildered by her sudden appearance,
he tried to rise, but sank back exhausted. He did not disbelieve her
now. He had no voice to speak to her, no strength to answer her; but he
drew her down closer and closer to him, as she knelt by him, and, as her
heart beat once more against his, the little Pythoness, tamed at last,
threw her arms round him and sobbed like a child on his breast. And
so--Beatrice Boville took her best REVENGE!--while I shut the library
door, invited Lady Mechlin to inspect Earlscourt's collection of French
pictures, and asked what she thought of _Punch_ this week.
I don't know what his physicians would have said of the treatment, as
they'd recommended him "perfect quiet;" all I do know is, that though
Earlscourt went to the south of Europe as soon as he could leave the
house, Beatrice Boville went with him; and he took his place on the
benches and in the cabinet this season, without any trace of bronchia,
or any sign of wearing out.
Lady Clive, I regret to say, "does not know" Lady Earlscourt: anything
for her beloved brother she _would_ do, were it possible; but she hopes
we understand that, for her daughters' sakes, she feels it quite
impossible to countenance that "shocking little intrigante."
A LINE IN THE "DAILY."
A LINE IN THE "DAILY."
WHO DID IT, AND WHO WAS DONE BY IT.
"Lieutenant-Colonel Fairlie's troop of Horse Artillery is ordered to
Norwich to replace the 12th Lancers, en route to Bombay."--Those three
lines in the papers spread dismay into the souls of Norfolk young
ladies, and no less horror into ours, for we were very jolly at
Woolwich, could run up to the Clubs and down to Epsom, and were far too
material not to prefer ball-room belles to bluebells, strawberry-ice to
fresh hautboys, the sparkle of champagne-cups to all the murmurs of the
brooks, and the flutter of ballet-girls' wings to all the rustle of
forest-leaves. But, unhappily, the Ordnance Office is no more given to
considering the feelings of their Royal Gunners than the Horse Guards
the individual desires of the two other Arms; and off we went to
Norwich, repining bitterly, or, in modern English, swearing hard at our
destinies, creating an immense sensation with our 6-pounders, as we
flatter ourselves the Royals always contrive to do, whether on fair
friends or fierce foes, and were looked upon spitefully by the one or
two young ladies whose hearts were gone eastwards with the Twelfth,
smilingly by the one or two hundred who, having fruitlessly laid out a
great deal of tackle on the Twelfth, proceeded to manufacture fresh
flies to catch us.
We soon made up, I think, to the Norwich girls for the loss of the
Twelfth. They set dead upon Fairlie, our captain, a Brevet
Lieutenant-Colonel, and a C. B. for "services in India," where he had
rivalled Norman Ramsay at Fuentes d'Onor, had had a ball put in his hip,
and had come home again to be worshipped by the women for his romantic
reputation. They made an immense deal, too, of Levison Courtenay, the
beauty of the troop, and called Belle in consequence; who did not want
any flummery or flirtation to increase his opinion of himself, being as
vain of his almond eyes as any girl just entered as the favorite for the
season. There were Tom Gower, too, a capital fellow, with no nonsense
about him, who made no end of chaff of Belle Courtenay; and Little Nell,
otherwise Harcourt Poulteney Nelson, who had by some miracle escaped
expulsion both from Carshalton and the College; and _votre humble
serviteur_ Phil Hardinge, first lieutenant; and one or two other
fellows, who having cut dashing figures at our Woolwich reviews,
cantering across Blackheath Common, or waltzing with dainty beauties
down our mess-room, made the Artillery welcome in that city of shawls
and oratorios, where according to the Gazetteer, no virtuous person
ought to dwell, that volume, with characteristic lucidity, pronouncing
its streets "ill-disposed."
The Clergy asked us to their rectories--a temptation we were often proof
against, there being three noticeable facts in rectories, that the talk
is always slow, "the Church" being present, and having much the same
chilling effect as the presence of a chaperone at a tete-a-tete; the
daughters generally ugly, and, from leading the choir at morning
services, perfectly convinced that they sing like Clara Novello, and
that the harmonium is a most delightful instrument; and, last and worst,
the wines are almost always poor, except the port which the reverend
host drinks himself, but which, Dieu merci! we rarely or never touch.
The County asked us, too; and there we went for good hock,
tolerable-looking women, and first-rate billiard-tables. For the first
month we were in Norfolk we voted it unanimously the most infernally
slow and hideous county going; and I dare say we made ourselves
uncommonly disagreeable, as people, if they are not pleased, be they
ever so well bred, have a knack of doing.
Things were thus quiescent and stagnant, when Fairlie one night at mess
told us a bit of news.
"Old fellows, whom do you think I met to-day?"
"How should we know? Cut along."
"The Swan and her Cygnets."
"The Vanes? Oh, bravo!" was shouted at a chorus, for the dame and
demoiselles in question we had known in town that winter, and a nicer,
pleasanter, faster set of women I never came across. "What's bringing
them down here, and how's Geraldine?"
"Vane's come into his baronetcy, and his place is close by Norwich,"
said Fairlie; "his wife's health has been bad, and so they left town
early; and Geraldine is quite well, and counting on haymaking, she
informed me."
"Come, that is good news," said Belle, yawning. "There'll be one pretty
woman in the county, thank Heaven! Poor little Geraldine! I must go and
call on her to-morrow."
"She has existed without your calls, Belle," said Fairlie, dryly, "and
don't look as if she'd pined after you."
"My dear fellow, how should you know?" said Belle, in no wise
disconcerted. "A little rogue soon makes 'em look well, and as for
smiles, they'll smile while they're dying for you. Little Vane and I
were always good friends, and shall be again--if I care."
"Conceited owl!" said Fairlie, under his moustaches. "I'm sorry to hurt
your feelings, then, but your pretty 'friend' never asked after you."
"I dare say not," said Belle, complacently. "Where a woman's most
interested she's always quietest, and Geraldine----"
"Lady Vane begged me to tell you you will always be welcome over there,
old fellows," said Fairlie, remorselessly cutting him short. "Perhaps we
shall find something to amuse us better than these stiltified Chapter
dinners."