By the park-gates that evening, Wilfrid received a letter from the hands
of Tracy Runningbrook. It said: “I am not able to see you now. When I
tell you that I will see you before I leave England, I insist upon your
believing me. I have no head for seeing anybody now. Emilia”--was the
simple signature, perused over and over again by this maddened lover,
under the flitting gate-lamp, after Tracy had left him. The coldness of
Emilia's name so briefly given, concentrated every fire in his heart.
What was it but miserable cowardice, he thought, that prevented him from
getting the peace poor Barrett had found? Intolerable anguish weakened
his limbs. He flung himself on a wayside bank, grovelling, to rise again
calm and quite ready for society, upon the proper application of the
clothes-brush. Indeed; he patted his shoulder and elbow to remove the
soil of his short contact with earth, and tried a cigar: but the first
taste of the smoke sickened his lips. Then he stood for a moment as
a man in a new world. This strange sensation of disgust with familiar
comforting habits, fixed him in perplexity, till a rushing of wild
thoughts and hopes from brain to heart, heart to brain, gave him
insight, and he perceived his state, and that for all he held to in
our life he was dependent upon another; which is virtually the curse of
love.
“And he passed along the road,” adds the Philosopher, “a weaker man, a
stronger lover. Not that love should diminish manliness or gains by so
doing; but travelling to love by the ways of Sentiment, attaining to the
passion bit by bit, does full surely take from us the strength of our
nature, as if (which is probable) at every step we paid fee to move
forward. Wilfrid had just enough of the coin to pay his footing. He was
verily fining himself down. You are tempted to ask what the value of
him will be by the time that he turns out pure metal? I reply, something
considerable, if by great sacrifice he gets to truth--gets to that
oneness of feeling which is the truthful impulse. At last, he will stand
high above them that have not suffered. The rejection of his cigar.”
This wages too absurd. At the risk of breaking our partnership for ever,
I intervene. My Philosopher's meaning is plain, and, as usual, good;
but not even I, who have less reason to laugh at him than anybody, can
gravely accept the juxtaposition of suffering and cigars. And, moreover,
there is a little piece of action in store.
Wilfrid had walked half way to Brookfield, when the longing to look
upon the Richford chamber-windows stirred so hotly within him that he
returned to the gates. He saw Captain Gambier issuing on horseback
from under the lamp. The captain remarked that it was a fine night, and
prepared to ride off, but Wilfrid requested him to dismount, and his
voice had the unmistakeable ring in it by which a man knows that there
must be no trifling. The captain leaned forward to look at him before he
obeyed the summons, All self-control had abandoned Wilfrid in the rage
he felt at Gambier's having seen Emilia, and the jealous suspicion that
she had failed to keep her appointment for the like reason.
“Why do you come here?” he said, hoarsely.
“By Jove! that's an odd question,” said the captain, at once taking his
ground.
“Am I to understand that you've been playing with my sister, as you do
with every other woman?”
Captain Gambier murmured quietly, “Every other woman?” and smoothed his
horse's neck. “They're not so easily played with, my dear fellow. You
speak like a youngster.”
“I am the only protector of my sister's reputation,” said Wilfrid, “and,
by heaven! if you have cast her over to be the common talk, you shall
meet me.”
The captain turned to his horse, saying, “Oh! Well!” Being mounted, he
observed: “My dear Pole, you might have sung out all you had to say. Go
to your sister, and if she complains of my behaviour, I'll meet you.
Oh, yes! I'll meet you; I have no objection to excitement. You're in the
hands of an infernally clever woman, who does me the honour to wish to
see my blood on the carpet, I believe; but if this is her scheme, it's
not worthy of her ability. She began pretty well. She arranged the
preliminaries capitally. Why, look here,” he relinquished his ordinary
drawl; “I'll tell you something, which you may put down in my favour or
not--just as you like. That woman did her best to compromise your sister
with me on board the yacht. I can't tell you how, and won't. Of course,
I wouldn't if I could; but I have sense enough to admire a very charming
person, and I did the only honourable thing in my power. It's your
sister, my good fellow, who gave me my dismissal. We had a little common
sense conversation--in which she shines. I envy the man that marries
her, but she denies me such luck. There! if you want to shoot me for my
share in that transaction, I'll give you your chance: and if you do,
my dear Pole, either you must be a tremendous fool, or that woman's ten
times cleverer than I thought. You know where to find me. Good night.”
The captain gave heel to his horse, hearing no more.
Adela confirmed to Wilfrid what Gambier had spoken; and that it was she
who had given him his dismissal. She called him by his name, “Augustus,”
in a kindly tone, remarking, that Lady Charlotte had persecuted him
dreadfully. “Poor Augustus! his entire reputation for evil is owing
to her black paint-brush. There is no man so easily 'hooked,' as Mrs.
Bayruffle would say, as he, though he has but eight hundred a year:
barely enough to live on. It would have been cruel of me to keep him,
for if he is in love, it's with Emilia.”
Wilfrid here took upon himself to reproach her for a certain
negligence of worldly interests. She laughed and blushed with humorous
satisfaction; and, on second thoughts, he changed his opinion, telling
her that he wished he could win his freedom as she had done.
“Wilfrid,” she said suddenly, “will you persuade Cornelia not to wear
black?”
“Yes, if you wish it,” he replied.
“You will, positively? Then listen, dear. I don't like the prospect of
your alliance with Lady Charlotte.”
Wilfrid could not repress a despondent shrug.
“But you can get released,” she cried; and ultimately counselled him:
“Mention the name of Lord Eltham before her once, when you are alone.
Watch the result. Only, don't be clumsy. But I need not tell you that.”
For hours he cudgelled his brains to know why she desired Cornelia not
to wear black, and when the light broke in on him he laughed like a
jolly youth for an instant. The reason why was in a web so complicated,
that, to have divined what hung on Cornelia's wearing of black, showed a
rare sagacity and perception of character on the little lady's part. As
thus:--Sir Twickenham Pryme is the most sensitive of men to ridicule and
vulgar tattle: he has continued to visit the house, learning by
degrees to prefer me, but still too chivalrous to withdraw his claim to
Cornelia, notwithstanding that he has seen indications of her not too
absolute devotion towards him:--I have let him become aware that I
have broken with Captain Gambier (whose income is eight hundred a
year merely), for the sake of a higher attachment: now, since the
catastrophe, he can with ease make it appear to the world that I was
his choice from the first, seeing that Cornelia will assuredly make no
manner of objection:--but, if she, with foolish sentimental persistence,
assumes the garb of sorrow, then Sir Twickenham's ears will tingle; he
will retire altogether; he will not dare to place himself in a position
which will lend a colour to the gossip, that jilted by one sister, he
flew for consolation to the other; jilted, too, for the mere memory of a
dead man! an additional insult!
Exquisite intricacy! Wilfrid worked through all the intervolutions,
and nearly forgot his wretchedness in admiration of his sister's mental
endowments. He was the more willing to magnify them, inasmuch as he
thereby strengthened his hope that liberty would follow the speaking of
the talismanic name of Eltham to Lady Charlotte, alone. He had come to
look upon her as the real barrier between himself and Emilia.
“I think we have brains,” he said softly, on his pillow, upon a review
of the beggared aspect of his family; and he went to sleep with a smile
on his face.