by Ouida
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.”
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 tête-à-tête; 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 n
ight 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.”
The Vanes of whom we talked were an uncommonly pleasant set of people whom we had known at Lee, where Vane, a Q. C., then resided, his prospective baronetcy being at that time held by a third or fourth cousin. Fairlie had known the family since his boyhood; there were four daughters, tall graceful women, who had gained themselves the nickname of The Swan and her Cygnets; and then there were twins, a boy of eighteen, who’d just left Eton; and the girl Geraldine, a charming young lady, whom Belle admired more warmly than that dandy often admired anybody besides himself, and whom Fairlie liked cordially, having had many a familiar bit of fun with her, as he had known her ever since he was a dashing cadet, and she made her début in life in the first column of the Times. Her sisters were handsome women; but Geraldine was bewitching. A very pleasant family they were, and a vast acquisition to us. Miss Geraldine flirted to a certain extent with us all, but chiefly with the Colonel, whenever he was to be had, those two having a very free-and-easy, familiar, pleasant style of intercourse, owing to old acquaintance; and Belle spent two hours every evening on his toilette when we were going to dine there, and vowed she was a “deuced pretty little puss. Perhaps she might — he wasn’t sure, but perhaps (it would be a horrid sacrifice), if he were with her much longer, he wasn’t sure she mightn’t persuade him to take compassion upon her, he was so weak where women were concerned!”
“What a conceit!” said Fairlie thereat, with a contemptuous twist of his moustaches and a shrug of his shoulders to me. “I must say, if I were a woman, I shouldn’t feel over-flattered by a lover who admired his own beauty first, and mine afterwards. Not that I pretend to understand women.”
By which speech I argued that his old playmate Geraldine hadn’t thrown hay over the Colonel, and been taught billiards by him, and ridden his bay mare over the park in her evening dress, without interesting him slightly; and that — though I don’t think he knew it — he was deigning to be a trifle jealous of his Second Captain, the all-mighty conqueror Belle.
“What fools they must be that put in these things!” yawned Belle one morning, reading over his breakfast coffee in the Daily Pryer one of those “advertisements for a wife” that one comes across sometimes in the papers, and that make us, like a good many other things, agree with Goldsmith:
Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can; Wise Aristotle and Smiglicious, By ratiocinations specious, Have strove to prove with great precision, With definition and division, Homo est ratione præditum, But for my soul I cannot credit ’em.
“What fools they must be!” yawned Belle, wrapping his dressing-gown round him, and coaxing his perfumy whiskers under his velvet smoking-cap. Belle was always inundated by smoking-caps in cloth and velvet, silk and beads, with blue tassels, and red tassels, and gold tassels, embroidered and filigreed, rounded and pointed; he had them sent to him by the dozen, and pretty good chaff he made of the donors. “Awful fools! The idea of advertising for a wife, when the only difficulty a man has is to keep from being tricked into taking one. I bet you, if I did like this owl here, I should have a hundred answers; and if it was known it was I — —”
“Little Geraldine’s self for a candidate, eh?” asked Tom Gower.
“Very possibly,” said Belle, with a self-complacent smile. “She’s a fast little thing, don’t check at much, and she’s deucedly in love with me, poor little dear — almost as much trouble to me as Julia Sedley was last season. That girl all but proposed to me; she did, indeed. Never was nearer coming to grief in my life. What will you bet me that, if I advertise for a wife, I don’t hoax lots of women?”
“I’ll bet you ten pounds,” said I, “that you don’t hoax one!”
“Done!” said Belle, stretching out his hand for a dainty memorandum-book, gift of the identical Julia Sedley aforesaid, and entering the bet in it— “done! If I’m not asked to walk in the Close at noon and look out for a pink bonnet and a black lace cloak, and to loiter up the market-place till I come across a black hat and blue muslin dress; if I’m not requested to call at No. 20, and to grant an interview at No. 84; if I’m not written to by Agatha A. with hazel, and Belinda B. with black, eyes — all coming after me like flies after a sugar-cask, why you shall have your ten guineas, my boy, and my colt into the bargain. Come, write out the advertisement, Tom — I can’t, it’s too much trouble; draw it mild, that’s all, or the letters we shall get will necessitate an additional Norwich postman. By George, what fun it will be to do the girls! Cut along, Tom, can’t you?”
“All right,” said Gower, pushing away his coffee-cup, and drawing the ink to him. “Head it ‘Marriage,’ of course?”
“Of course. That word’s as attractive to a woman as the belt to a prize-fighter, or a pipe of port to a college fellow.”
“‘Marriage. — A Bachelor — —’”
“Tell ’em a military man; all girls have the scarlet fever.”
“Very well— ‘an Officer in the Queen’s, of considerable personal attractions — —’”
“My dear fellow, pray don’t!” expostulated Belle, in extreme alarm; “we shall have such swarms of ’em!”
“No, no! we must say that,” persisted Gower—”’personal attractions, aged eight-and-twenty — —’”
“Can’t you put it, ‘in the flower of his age,’ or his ‘sixth lustre’? It’s so much more poetic.”
“‘ — the flower of his age,’ then (that’ll leave ’em a wide range from twenty to fifty, according to their taste), ’is desirous of meeting a young lady of beauty, talent, and good family,’ — eh?”
“Yes. All women think themselves beauties, if they’re as ugly as sin. Milliners and confectioner girls talk Anglo-French, and rattle a tin-kettle piano after a fashion, and anybody buys a ‘family’ for half-a-crown at the Heralds’ Office — so fire away.”
“‘ — who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart and sympathetic soul, will accord him the favor of a letter or an interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life.’”
“A step — like one on thin ice — very sure to bring a man to grief,” interpolated Belle. “Say something about property; those soul-and-spirit young ladies generally keep a look-out for tin, and only feel an elective affinity for a lot of debentures and consols.�
��
“‘The advertiser being a man of some present and still more prospective wealth, requires no fortune, the sole objects of his search being love and domestic felicity.’ Domestic felicity — how horrible! Don’t it sound exactly like the end of a lady’s novel, where the unlucky hero is always brought to an untimely end in a ‘sweet cottage on the banks of the lovely Severn.’”
“‘Domestic felicity’ — bah! What are you writing about?” yawned Belle. “I’d as soon take to teetotalism: however, it’ll tell in the advertisement. Bravo, Tom, that will do. Address it to ‘L. C., care of Mrs. Greene, confectioner, St. Giles Street, Norwich.’ Miss Patty’ll take the letters in for me, though not if she knew their errand. Tip seven-and-sixpence with it, and send it to the Daily Pryer.”
We did send it to the Daily, and in that broadsheet we all of us read it two mornings after.
MARRIAGE. — A Bachelor, an Officer of the Queen’s, of considerable personal attractions, and in the flower of his age, is desirous of meeting a young lady of beauty, accomplishments, and good family, who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart and sympathetic soul, will accord him the favor either of a letter or an interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life. The advertiser being a man of some present and still more prospective wealth, requires no fortune, the sole objects of his search being love and domestic felicity. Address, L. C., care of Mrs. Greene, confectioner, St. Giles Street, Norwich.