Anna St. Ives Part 28

_Paris, Hotel de l'Universite_

Laugh at me if you will, Fairfax. Hoot! Hiss me off the stage! I am no longer worthy of the confraternity of honest, bold, free and successful fellows. I am dwindling into a whining, submissive, crouching, very humble, yes if you please, no thank you Madam, dangler! I have been to school! Have had my task set me! Must learn my lesson by rote, or there is a rod in pickle for me! Yes! I! That identical Clifton; that bold, gay, spirited fellow, who has so often vaunted of and been admired for his daring! You may meet me with my satchel at my back; not with a shining, but a whindling, lackadaisy, green-sickness face; blubbering a month's sorrow, after having been flogged by my master, beaten by my chum, and dropped my plum cake in the kennel.

'Tis very true, and I cut a d.a.m.ned ridiculous figure! But I'll remember it. The time will come, or say my name is not Clifton.

Yet what am I to do? I am in for it, flounder how I will. Yes, yes! She has hooked me! She dangles me at the end of her line, up the stream and down the stream, fair water and foul, at her good pleasure! So be it.

But I will not forget.

Then she has such a way of affronting, that curse me if she does not look as if she were doing me a favour: nay and, while she is present, I myself actually think she is; and, if vexation did not come to my relief, I believe I should so continue to think. She is the most extraordinary of all heaven's creatures: and, in despite of my railing, I cannot help declaring a most heavenly creature she is! Every body declares the same. I wish you could but see her; for a single moment, Fairfax; and, having gazed, could you but listen!--Her very soul is music. Form, features, voice, all are harmony. Then were you to hear her sing, and play--

But why the devil does she treat me thus? It is something to which I am unaccustomed, and it does not sit easily upon me. If I tamely submit to it may I--! I lie, in my teeth! Submit I must, bounce how I will. I have no remedy--

She gives me the preference, 'tis true. But what sort of a preference?

Why a cold, scrutinizing, very considerative, all wisdom and no pa.s.sion preference. I do not think there is, upon the face of the whole earth, so nauseous a thing as an over dose of wisdom; mixed up, according to the modern practice, with a quantum sufficit of virture, and a large double handful of the good of the whole. Yet this is the very dose she prescribes for me! Ay, and I must be obliged to swallow it too, let me make what wry faces I please, or my very prudent lady is not so deeply in love but she can recede! And shall I not note down this in my tablets?--

I was sufficiently piqued at the first delay. Why delay, when I offer?

Would you have thought, Fairfax, I should have been so very ready with a tender of this my pleasant person, and my dear freedom? And could you moreover have thought it would have been so haughtily rejected?--No--Curse it! Let me do her justice, too. It is not haughtily. She puts as many smiles, and as much sweetness, and plausibility, into her refusal as heart could desire. But refusal it is, nevertheless.

I must be further just to her: I must own that I have acted like a lunatic--I am mad at the recollection!--

I told you of the young fellow--Frank Henley--Whom I talked of chastising. Curse on my petulance! He has doubly chastised me since! He has had his full revenge! And in such a generous, n.o.ble manner--I am ashamed of myself--He has saved my life, and d.a.m.n me if I do not feel as if I could never forgive him. There was an end of me and my pa.s.sions. What business had he to interfere?--He did it too in such an extraordinary style! He appears to have risked more, laboured more, performed more for me than man almost ever did for his dearest and sworn friend.

Mine was an act of such ridiculous phrensy that I am half ashamed to tell what it was. I jumped headlong down a declivity, because I knew I was a good swimmer, into a lake; but, like a blockhead, never perceived that I should get stunned by the shelving of the rock, and consequently drowned. And for what, truly? Why to prove to a vapouring, crack-brained French Count, that he was a coward; because perhaps he had not learned to swim! When I look back I have absolutely no patience with myself!--

And then this generous Frank Henley!--After a still more seemingly desperate leap than mine, and bringing me out of the water, dead as a door nail, two hours did he incessantly labour to restore me to life!

I, who a few hours before had struck him! And here do I live to relate all this!

I think I could have forgiven him any thing sooner than this triumph over me. Yet he claims and forces my admiration. I must own he is a dauntless fellow--Yes, he has a heart--! d.a.m.n him! I could kiss him one minute and kill him the next!

He has been the hero of the women ever since. But they are safe enough, for him. He has principles! He is a man of virtue, forsooth! He is not the naughty cat that steals the cream! Let him be virtuous. Let him lave in his own imaginary waters of purity; but do not let him offend others, every moment, by jumping out and calling--'Here! Look at me!

How white and spotless I am!'

As I tell you, the women are bewitched to him; are all in love with him! My sister, Louisa, does not scruple to tell him so, in her letter!

But she is one of these high-flyers. Nor can I for the soul of me persuade myself that, family pride excepted, she--ay, she herself, my she, would not prefer him to me. But these gentry are all so intolerably prudent that, talk to them of pa.s.sions, and they answer they must not have any. Oh, no! They are above such mundane weakness!

As for him, he sits in as much stern state as the Old Red Lion of Brentford. Yes, he is my Lord Chief Justice Nevergrin! He cannot qualify, he! He is prime tinker to Madam Virtue, and carries no softening epithets in his budget. Folly is folly, and vice vice in his Good Friday vocabulary--t.i.tles too are gilt gingerbread, dutch dolls, punch's puppet show. A duke or a scavenger with him are exactly the same--Saving and excepting the aforesaid exceptions, of wisdom, virtue, and the good of the whole!

Did you never observe, Fairfax, how these fellows of obscure birth labour to pull down rank, and reduce all to their own level?

Not but it is cursed provoking to be obliged to own that a t.i.tle is no sufficient pa.s.sport for so much as common sense. I sincerely think there is not so foolish a fellow in the three kingdoms, as the n.o.ble blockhead to whom I have the honour to be related, Lord Evelyn: and, while I have tickled my fancy with the recollection of my own high descent, curse me if I have not blushed to acknowledge him, who is the head and representative of the race, as my kinsman! I own however he has been of some service to me in the present affair; for by his medium I have been introduced to the uncle of my deity, Lord Fitz-Allen, who has considerable influence in the family, and the very essence of whose character is pride. He is proud of himself, proud of his family, proud of his t.i.tles, proud of his gout, proud of his cat, proud of whatever can be called _his_; by which appellation in his opinion his very coach-horses are dignified. I happen to please him, not by any qualities of mind or person, of which he is tolerably insensible, but because there is a possibility that I may one day be a peer of the realm, if my b.o.o.by relations will but be so indulgent as to die fast enough.

Once more to these catechumenical inspectors of morality, these self-appointed overseers of the conscience.

I do not deny that there is some nay much truth in the doctrines they preach to me. But I hate preaching! I have not time to be wisdom crammed. What concern is it of mine? What have I to do with the world, be it wrong or right, wise or foolish? Let it laugh or cry, kiss or curse, as it pleases! Like the Irishman in the sinking ship, "Tis nothing to me, I am but a pa.s.senger."

But, notwithstanding these airs, I have my lesson set me. Ay and I must con it too; must say it off by rote; no parrot better!

There is no resisting one's destiny; and to be her slave is preferable to reigning over worlds! You have, for you can have, no conception of her and her omnipotence! She is so unlike every other woman on earth! I wonder while I hear her, am attentive, nay am convinced! What is most strange, though the divinest creature that ever the hand of Heaven fashioned, the moment she begins to speak you forget that she is beautiful!

But she should not hesitate, when I offer. No--She should beware of that! At least to any other woman the world contains, it would have been dangerous; and I am not sure that even she is safe.

However, I must learn to pa.r.s.e my lesson, for the present, and be quiet. Yes, yes; she shall find me very complaisant. I must be so, for live without her I cannot. She must she shall be mine. It is a prize which I am born to bear away from all compet.i.tors. This is what flatters and consoles me.

You, Fairfax, think yourself more in luck. You continue to range at large. You scorn to wear the chain to-day which you cannot shake off laughingly to-morrow. Well I envy you not--When you see her, if you do not envy me may I be impaled and left to roast in the sun, a banquet for the crows.

Good night.

C. CLIFTON

LETTER LV

_Frank Henley to Oliver Trenchard_

_Paris, Hotel de l'Universite_

Some events have happened, since I wrote to thee, on which I meant to have been silent, till we had met; but I want thy advice on a new incident, and must therefore briefly relate what has pa.s.sed. I have had an opportunity of appeasing that hungry vanity, which is continually craving after unwholesome food. I have proved to Clifton that it was not fear which made me submit to obloquy, which in his opinion could only be washed away in blood. I have been instrumental in saving his life.

There is a half lunatic count, who was a visitor at the Chateau, and who is enamoured of her whom all are obliged to love and admire. I know not whether it be their climate, their food, their wine, or these several causes combining and strengthened by habit, or whether it be habit and education only which give the natives of the south of France so much apparently const.i.tutional ardour; but such the fact appears to be. This count is one of the most extravagant of all the hot-brained race I have mentioned. He indulges and feeds his flighty fancy by reading books of chivalry, and admiring the most romantic of the imaginary feats of knight-errantry.

The too haughty Clifton, angry that he should dare to address her to whom he openly paid his court, fell into habitual contests with him, daring him to shew who could be most desperate, and at last gave a tolerably strong proof that, though he has an infinitely more consistent mind, he can be at moments more mad than the count himself.

He leaped down a rock into a lake, where it is probable he must have perished, but for me.

One would have imagined that what followed would have cooled even a Ma.r.s.eillian fever of such phrensy. But no: the count has been brooding over the recollection, till he had persuaded himself he was a dishonoured man, and must find some means to do away the disgrace. I thought him gone to Fontainebleau; but instead of that he has just been here. He came and inquired of the servants for the monsieur who had taken the famous leap; cursing all English names, as too barbarous to be understood by a delicate Provencal ear, and wholly incapable of being remembered. The servants, thinking he meant me, for I was obliged to leap too, introduced him to my apartment.

Luckily Clifton was out for the day. She and Sir Arthur were with him. I am hourly put to the trial, Oliver, of seeing him preferred--But--Pshaw--

After a torrent of crazy compliments from the count, who professes to admire me, I learned at last it was Clifton and not me he wanted; and I also learned in part what was the purport of his errand. His mind was too full not to overflow. Knowing how hot, unruly, and on such subjects irrational, the spirits were that were in danger of encountering, I was immediately alarmed. The most effectual expedient I could conceive to prevent mischief was to shew its actual absurdity. I saw no better way than that of making it appear, as it really was, its tragical consequences excepted, ludicrous. But the difficulty was to give it the colouring which should produce that effect on a mind so distorted.

_Mort de ma vie!_ said the count, I shall never pardon myself for having lost so fine an opportunity! I am not so heavy as he. I should not have been hurt by the fall. I should have saved the life of my rival, and been admired by the whole world! My triumph would have been complete! Every gazette in Europe would have trumpeted the exploit; and the family of Beaunoir would have been rendered famous, by me, to all eternity! No! I never shall forgive myself!

I think, sir, you ought rather to be angry with me than with Mr.

Clifton.

_Parbleu!_ I have been thinking of that. Why did you prevent me? The thought could not long have escaped me, if you had not been in such devilish haste!

True. The only danger was that, while you were waiting for the thought, the gentleman might have been drowned.

_Diable m'emporte_! I had forgotten that. Well then, I must have satisfaction of Monsieur Calif--Morbleu!--What is the gentleman's name?

[I wish I could confide enough in my French to write the dialogue in the language in which it pa.s.sed; but I must not attempt it. The ideas however are tolerably strong in my memory, and they must suffice.]

Clifton.

_Oui da_--Califton--Monsieur Califton must give me satisfaction for the _sanglante_ affront I have received.