by Ouida
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 Cæsar’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 voué 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 hot
el 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 coûte 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.’”
“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.