"My Novel" — Complete

CHAPTER XXII

Harley had made one notable oversight in that appeal to Beatrice’s better and gentler nature, which he entrusted to the advocacy of Leonard,—a scheme in itself very characteristic of Harley’s romantic temper, and either wise or foolish, according as his indulgent theory of human idiosyncrasies in general, and of those peculiar to Beatrice di Negra in especial, was the dream of an enthusiast, or the inductive conclusion of a sound philosopher.

Harley had warned Leonard not to fall in love with the Italian,—he had forgotten to warn the Italian not to fall in love with Leonard; nor had he ever anticipated the probability of that event. This is not to be very much wondered at; for if there be anything on which the most sensible men are dull-eyed, where those eyes are not lighted by jealousy, it is as to the probabilities of another male creature being beloved. All, the least vain of the whiskered gender, think it prudent to guard themselves against being too irresistible to the fair sex; and each says of his friend, “Good fellow enough, but the last man for that woman to fall in love with!”

But certainly there appeared on the surface more than ordinary cause for Harley’s blindness in the special instance of Leonard.

Whatever Beatrice’s better qualities, she was generally esteemed worldly and ambitious. She was pinched in circumstances, she was luxuriant and extravagant; how was it likely that she could distinguish any aspirant of the humble birth and fortunes of the young peasant-author? As a coquette, she might try to win his admiration and attract his fancy; but her own heart would surely be guarded in the triple mail of pride, poverty, and the conventional opinions of the world in which she lived. Had Harley thought it possible that Madame di Negra could stoop below her station, and love, not wisely, but too well, he would rather have thought that the object would be some brilliant adventurer of fashion, some one who could turn against herself all the arts of deliberate fascination, and all the experience bestowed by frequent conquest. One so simple as Leonard, so young and so new! Harley L’Estrange would have smiled at himself, if the idea of that image subjugating the ambitious woman to the disinterested love of a village maid had once crossed his mind. Nevertheless, so it was, and precisely from those causes which would have seemed to Harley to forbid the weakness.

It was that fresh, pure heart, it was that simple, earnest sweetness, it was that contrast in look, in tone, in sentiment, and in reasonings, to all that had jaded and disgusted her in the circle of her admirers,—it was all this that captivated Beatrice at the first interview with Leonard. Here was what she had confessed to the sceptical Randal she had dreamed and sighed for. Her earliest youth had passed into abhorrent marriage, without the soft, innocent crisis of human life,—virgin love. Many a wooer might have touched her vanity, pleased her fancy, excited her ambition—her heart had never been awakened; it woke now. The world, and the years that the world had wasted, seemed to fleet away as a cloud. She was as if restored to the blush and the sigh of youth,—the youth of the Italian maid. As in the restoration of our golden age is the spell of poetry with us all, so such was the spell of the poet himself on her.

Oh, how exquisite was that brief episode in the life of the woman palled with the “hack sights and sounds” of worldly life! How strangely happy were those hours, when, lured on by her silent sympathy, the young scholar spoke of his early struggles between circumstance and impulse, musing amidst the flowers, and hearkening to the fountain; or of his wanderings in the desolate, lamp-lit streets, while the vision of Chatterton’s glittering eyes shone dread through the friendless shadows. And as he spoke, whether of his hopes or his fears, her looks dwelt fondly on the young face, that varied between pride and sadness,—pride ever so gentle, and sad ness ever so nobly touching. She was never weary of gazing on that brow, with its quiet power; but her lids dropped before those eyes, with their serene, unfathomable passion. She felt, as they haunted her, what a deep and holy thing love in such souls must be. Leonard never spoke to her of Helen—that reserve every reader can comprehend. To natures like his, first love is a mystery; to confide it is to profane. But he fulfilled his commission of interesting her in the exile and his daughter, and his description of them brought tears to her eyes. She inly resolved not to aid Peschiera in his designs on Violante. She forgot for the moment that her own fortune was to depend on the success of those designs. Levy had arranged so that she was not reminded of her poverty by creditors,—she knew not how. She knew nothing of business. She gave herself up to the delight of the present hour, and to vague prospects of a future associated with that young image,—with that face of a guardian angel that she saw before her, fairest in the moments of absence; for in those moments came the life of fairy-land, when we shut our eyes on the world, and see through the haze of golden revery. Dangerous, indeed, to Leonard would have been the soft society of Beatrice di Negra, had not his heart been wholly devoted to one object, and had not his ideal of woman been from that object one sole and indivisible reflection. But Beatrice guessed not this barrier between herself and him. Amidst the shadows that he conjured up from his past life, she beheld no rival form. She saw him lonely in the world, as she was herself. And in his lowly birth, his youth, in the freedom from presumption which characterized him in all things (save that confidence in his intellectual destinies which is the essential attribute of genius), she but grew the bolder by the belief that, even if he loved her, he would not dare to hazard the avowal.

And thus, one day, yielding, as she had ever been wont to yield, to the impulse of her quick Italian heart—how she never remembered, in what words she could never recall—she spoke, she owned her love, she pleaded, with tears and blushes, for love in return. All that passed was to her as a dream,—a dream from which she woke with a fierce sense of agony, of humiliation,—woke as the woman “scorned.” No matter how gratefully, how tenderly Leonard had replied, the reply was refusal.

For the first time she learned she had a rival; that all he could give of love was long since, from his boyhood, given to another. For the first time in her life, that ardent nature knew jealousy, its torturing stings, its thirst for vengeance, its tempest of loving hate. But, to outward appearance, silent and cold she stood as marble. Words that sought to soothe fell on her ear unheeded: they were drowned by the storm within. Pride was the first feeling which dominated the warring elements that raged in her soul. She tore her hand from that which clasped hers with so loyal a respect. She could have spurned the form that knelt at her feet, not for love, but for pardon. She pointed to the door with the gesture of an insulted queen. She knew no more till she was alone. Then came that rapid flash of conjecture peculiar to the storms of jealousy; that which seems to single from all nature the one object to dread and to destroy; the conjecture so often false, yet received at once by our convictions as the revelation of instinctive truth. He to whom she had humbled herself loved another; whom but Violante,—whom else, young and beautiful, had he named in the record of his life?—None! And he had sought to interest her, Beatrice di Negra, in the object of his love; hinted at dangers which Beatrice knew too well; implied trust in Beatrice’s will to protect. Blind fool that she had been! This, then, was the reason why he had come, day after day, to Beatrice’s house; this was the charm that had drawn him thither; this—she pressed her hands to her burning temples, as if to stop the torture of thought. Suddenly a voice was heard below, the door opened, and Randal Leslie entered.

CHAPTER XXIII

Punctually at eight o’clock that evening, Baron Levy welcomed the new ally he had secured. The pair dined en tete a tete, discussing general matters till the servants left them to their wine. Then said the baron, rising and stirring the fire—then said the baron, briefly and significantly,

“Well!”

“As regards the property you spoke of,” answered Randal, “I am willing to purchase it on the terms you name. The only point that perplexes me is how to account to Audley Egerton, to my parents, to the world, for the power of purchasing it.”

“True,” said the baron, without even a smile at the ingenious and truly Greek manner in which Randal had contrived to denote his meaning, and conceal the ugliness of it—“true, we must think of that. If we could manage to conceal the real name of the purchaser for a year or so, it might be easy,—you may be supposed to have speculated in the Funds; or Egerton may die, and people may believe that he had secured to you something handsome from the ruins of his fortune.”

“Little chance of Egerton’s dying.”

“Humph!” said the baron. “However, this is a mere detail, reserved for consideration. You can now tell us where the young lady is?”

“Certainly. I could not this morning,—I can now. I will go with you to the count. Meanwhile, I have seen Madame di Negra; she will accept Frank Hazeldean if he will but offer himself at once.”

“Will he not?”

“No! I have been to him. He is overjoyed at my representations, but considers it his duty to ask the consent of his parents. Of course they will not give it; and if there be delay, she will retract. She is under the influence of passions on the duration of which there is no reliance.”

“What passions? Love?”

“Love; but not for Hazeldean. The passions that bring her to accept his hand are pique and jealousy. She believes, in a word, that one who seems to have gained the mastery over her affections with a strange suddenness, is but blind to her charms because dazzled by Violante’s. She is prepared to aid in all that can give her rival to Peschiera; and yet, such is the inconsistency of woman” (added the young philosopher, with a shrug of the shoulders), “that she is also prepared to lose all chance of securing him she loves, by bestowing herself on another!”

“Woman, indeed, all over!” said the baron, tapping his snuff-box (Louis Quinze), and regaling his nostrils with a scornful pinch. “But who is the man whom the fair Beatrice has thus honoured? Superb creature! I had some idea of her myself when I bought up her debts; but it might have embarrassed me, in more general plans, as regards the count. All for the best. Who’s the man? Not Lord L’Estrange?”

“I do not think it is he; but I have not yet ascertained. I have told you all I know. I found her in a state so excited, so unlike herself, that I had no little difficulty in soothing her into confidence so far. I could not venture more.”

“And she will accept Frank?”

“Had he offered to-day she would have accepted him!”

“It may be a great help to your fortunes, mon cher, if Frank Hazeldean marry this lady without his father’s consent. Perhaps he may be disinherited. You are next of kin.

“How do you know that?” asked Randal, sullenly.

“It is my business to know all about the chances and connections of any one with whom I do money matters. I do money matters with young Mr. Hazeldean; so I know that the Hazeldean property is not entailed; and, as the squire’s half-brother has no Hazeldean blood in him, you have excellent expectations.”

“Did Frank tell you I was next of kin?”

“I rather think so; but I am sure you did.”

“I—when?”

“When you told me how important it was to you that Frank should marry Madame di Negra. Peste! mon cher, do you think I am a blockhead?”

“Well, Baron, Frank is of age, and can marry to please himself. You implied to me that you could help him in this.”

“I will try. See that he call at Madame di Negra’s tomorrow, at two precisely.”

“I would rather keep clear of all apparent interference in this matter. Will you not arrange that he call on her? And do not forget to entangle him in a post-obit.”

“Leave it to me. Any more wine? No?—then let us go to the count’s.”

CHAPTER XXIV

The next morning Frank Hazeldean was sitting over his solitary breakfast-table. It was long past noon. The young man had risen early, it is true, to attend his military duties, but he had contracted the habit of breakfasting late. One’s appetite does not come early when one lives in London, and never goes to bed before daybreak.

There was nothing very luxurious or effeminate about Frank’s rooms, though they were in a very dear street, and he paid a monstrous high price for them. Still, to a practised eye, they betrayed an inmate who can get through his money, and make very little show for it. The walls were covered with coloured prints of racers and steeple-chases, interspersed with the portraits of opera-dancers, all smirk and caper. Then there was a semi-circular recess covered with red cloth, and fitted up for smoking, as you might perceive by sundry stands full of Turkish pipes in cherry-stick and jessamine, with amber mouthpieces; while a great serpent hookah, from which Frank could no more have smoked than he could have smoked out of the head of a boa constrictor, coiled itself up on the floor; over the chimney-piece was a collection of Moorish arms. What use on earth ataghan and scimitar and damasquined pistols, that would not carry straight three yards, could be to an officer in his Majesty’s Guards is more than I can conjecture, or even Frank satisfactorily explain. I have strong suspicions that this valuable arsenal passed to Frank in part payment of a bill to be discounted. At all events, if so, it was an improvement on the bear that he had sold to the hair-dresser. No books were to be seen anywhere, except a Court Guide, a Racing Calendar, an Army List, the Sporting Magazine complete (whole bound in scarlet morocco, at about a guinea per volume), and a small book, as small as an Elzevir, on the chimney-piece, by the side of a cigar-case. That small book had cost Frank more than all the rest put together; it was his Own Book, his book par excellence; book made up by himself,—his BETTING Book!

On a centre table were deposited Frank’s well-brushed hat; a satinwood box, containing kid-gloves, of various delicate tints, from primrose to lilac; a tray full of cards and three-cornered notes; an opera-glass, and an ivory subscription-ticket to his opera stall.

In one corner was an ingenious receptacle for canes, sticks, and whips—I should not like, in these bad times, to have paid the bill for them; and mounting guard by that receptacle, stood a pair of boots as bright as Baron Levy’s,—“the force of brightness could no further go.” Frank was in his dressing-gown,—very good taste, quite Oriental, guaranteed to be true Indian cashmere, and charged as such. Nothing could be more neat, though perfectly simple, than the appurtenances of his breakfast-table: silver tea-pot, ewer, and basin, all fitting into his dressing-box—for the which may Storr and Mortimer be now praised, and some day paid! Frank looked very handsome, rather tired, and exceedingly bored. He had been trying to read the “Morning Post,” but the effort had proved too much for him.

Poor dear Frank Hazeldean!—true type of many a poor dear fellow who has long since gone to the dogs. And if, in this road to ruin, there had been the least thing to do the traveller any credit by the way! One feels a respect for the ruin of a man like Audley Egerton. He is ruined en roi! From the wrecks of his fortune he can look down and see stately monuments built from the stones of that dismantled edifice. In every institution which attests the humanity of England was a record of the princely bounty of the public man. In those objects of party, for which the proverbial sinews of war are necessary, in those rewards for service, which private liberality can confer, the hand of Egerton had been opened as with the heart of a king. Many a rising member of parliament, in those days when talent was brought forward through the aid of wealth and rank, owed his career to the seat which Audley Egerton’s large subscription had secured to him; many an obscure supporter in letters and the Press looked back to the day when he had been freed from the jail by the gratitude of the patron. The city he represented was embellished at his cost; through the shire that held his mortgaged lands, which he had rarely ever visited, his gold had flowed as a Pactolus; all that could animate its public spirit, or increase its civilization, claimed kindred with his munificence, and never had a claim disallowed. Even in his grand, careless household, with its large retinue and superb hospitality, there was something worthy of a representative of that time-honoured portion of our true nobility, the untitled gentlemen of the land. The Great Commoner had, indeed, “something to show” for the money he had disdained and squandered. But for Frank Hazeldean’s mode of getting rid of the dross, when gone, what would be left to tell the tale? Paltry prints in a bachelor’s lodging; a collection of canes and cherry-sticks; half-a-dozen letters in ill-spelt French from a figurante; some long-legged horses, fit for nothing but to lose a race; that damnable Betting-Book; and—sic transit gloria—down sweeps some hawk of a Levy, on the wings of an I O U, and not a feather is left of the pigeon!

Yet Frank Hazeldean has stuff in him,—a good heart, and strict honour. Fool though he seem, there is sound sterling sense in some odd corner of his brains, if one could but get at it. All he wants to save him from perdition is, to do what he has never yet done,—namely, pause and think. But, to be sure, that same operation of thinking is not so easy for folks unaccustomed to it, as people who think—think!

“I can’t bear this,” said Frank, suddenly, and springing to his feet. “This woman, I cannot get her out of my head. I ought to go down to the governor’s; but then if he gets into a passion, and refuses his consent, where am I? And he will, too, I fear. I wish I could make out what Randal advises. He seems to recommend that I should marry Beatrice at once, and trust to my mother’s influence to make all right afterwards. But when I ask, ‘Is that your advice?’ he backs out of it. Well, I suppose he is right there. I can understand that he is unwilling, good fellow, to recommend anything that my father would disapprove. But still—”

Here Frank stopped in his soliloquy, and did make his first desperate effort to—think!

Now, O dear reader, I assume, of course, that thou art one of the class to which thought is familiar; and, perhaps, thou hast smiled in disdain or incredulity at that remark on the difficulty of thinking which preceded Frank Hazeldean’s discourse to himself. But art thou quite sure that when thou hast tried to think thou hast always succeeded? Hast thou not often been duped by that pale visionary simulacrum of thought which goes by the name of revery? Honest old Montaigne confessed that he did not understand that process of sitting down to think, on which some folks express themselves so glibly. He could not think unless he had a pen in his hand and a sheet of paper before him; and so, by a manual operation, seized and connected the links of ratiocination. Very often has it happened to myself when I have said to Thought peremptorily, “Bestir thyself: a serious matter is before thee, ponder it well, think of it,” that that same thought has behaved in the most refractory, rebellious manner conceivable; and instead of concentrating its rays into a single stream of light, has broken into all the desultory tints of the rainbow, colouring senseless clouds, and running off into the seventh heaven, so that after sitting a good hour by the clock, with brows as knit as if I was intent on squaring the circle, I have suddenly discovered that I might as well have gone comfortably to sleep—I have been doing nothing but dream,—and the most nonsensical dreams! So when Frank Hazeldean, as he stopped at that meditative “But still “—and leaning his arm on the chimney-piece, and resting his face on his hand, felt himself at the grave crisis of life, and fancied he was going “to think on it,” there only rose before him a succession of shadowy pictures,—Randal Leslie, with an unsatisfactory countenance, from which he could extract nothing; the squire, looking as black as thunder in his study at Hazeldean; his mother trying to plead for him, and getting herself properly scolded for her pains; and then off went that Will-o’-the-wisp which pretended to call itself Thought, and began playing round the pale, charming face of Beatrice di Negra, in the drawing-room at Curzon Street, and repeating, with small elfin voice, Randal Leslie’s assurance of the preceding day, “as to her affection for you, Frank, there is no doubt of that; she only begins to think you are trifling with her.” And then there was a rapturous vision of a young gentleman on his knee, and the fair pale face bathed in blushes, and a clergyman standing by the altar, and a carriage-and-four with white favours at the church-door; and of a honeymoon, which would have astonished as to honey all the bees of Hymettus. And in the midst of these phantasmagoria, which composed what Frank fondly styled, “making up his mind,” there came a single man’s elegant rat-tat-tat at the street door.

“One never has a moment for thinking,” cried Frank, and he called out to his valet, “Not at home.”

But it was too late. Lord Spendquick was in the hall, and presently within the room. How d’ye do’s were exchanged and hands shaken.

LORD SPENDQUICK.—“I have a note for you, Hazeldean.”

FRANK (lazily).—“From whom?”

LORD SPENDQUICK.—“Levy. Just come from him,—never saw him in such a fidget. He was going into the city,—I suppose to see X. Y. Dashed off this note for you, and would have sent it by a servant, but I said I would bring it.”

FRANK (looking fearfully at the note).—“I hope he does not want his money yet. ‘Private and confidential,’—that looks bad.”

SPENDQUICK.—“Devilish bad, indeed.”

Frank opens the note, and reads, half aloud, “Dear Hazeldean—”

SPENDQUICK (interrupting.)—“Good sign! He always Spendquicks me when he lends me money; and ‘t is ‘My dear Lord’ when he wants it back. Capital sign!”

Frank reads on, but to himself, and with a changing countenance,

DEAR HAZELDEAN,—I am very sorry to tell you that, in consequence of the sudden failure of a house at Paris with which I Had large dealings, I am pressed on a sudden for all the ready money I can get. I don’t want to inconvenience you, but do try to see if you can take up those bills of yours which I hold, and which, as you know, have been due some little time. I had hit on a way of arranging your affairs; but when I hinted at it, you seemed to dislike the idea; and Leslie has since told me that you have strong objections to giving any security on your prospective property. So no more of that, my dear fellow. I am called out in haste to try what I can do for a very charming client of mine, who is in great pecuniary distress, though she has for her brother a foreign count, as rich as a Croesus. There is an execution in her house. I am going down to the tradesman who put it in, but have no hope of softening him; and I fear there will be others before the day is out. Another reason for wanting money, if you can help me, mon cher! An execution in the house of one of the most brilliant women in London,—an execution in Curzon Street, May Fair! It will be all over the town if I can’t stop it.