Barren Honour Part 2

If there is any written manual adapted to such rifle-practice, (I mean where a young woman has to fire off at her parent a piece of intelligence particularly important or startling), I fancy, here, it would run thus--"At the word 'three,' sink down at once on the right knee, six inches to the right and twelve inches to the rear of the left heel, and square with the foot, which is to be under the body and upright"--the great difference being, that the fair recruit is "_not_ to fix the eye steadfastly on an object in front."

So far, certainly, Helen acted up to the formula provided for her case; but she had not been much drilled, and was indeed singularly exempt from most of the little weaknesses, conventionalisms, and _minauderies_ which are, justly or unjustly, attributed to modern damosels. Natures like hers affect, as a rule, no more diffidence than they feel, and are seldom unnecessarily demonstrative, however small and select their audience and however dramatic the piece they are playing. So, after a few minutes' silence, she looked up and said, quite quietly and simply--

"Mamma, Alan asked me this afternoon to marry him; and--I love him dearly."

The two voices were strangely alike in their accent and inflexions; but the girl's voice, even when, as now, somewhat tremulous and uncertain, was mellower in its rich cadences, fuller and rounder in its music.

Lady Mildred clasped her daughter's waist, and bent down to kiss her, repeatedly, with pa.s.sionate tenderness. When the close embrace was ended, she lingered yet for a few seconds with her cheek pillowed on Helen's forehead; during those seconds her features were set, and her lips tense and rigid; that brief interval of self-indulgence lasted just so long as it would have taken her to utter the words--"It shall never be."

Now, mark; the daughter was kneeling at her mother's feet, as she might have knelt to say the first prayer of infancy; she had just told the secret which involved her life's hope of happiness--whether wrongly or rightly founded it matters not; the mother sate there, with a firm, cool resolve at her heart to crush the hope and frustrate the purpose; and yet she kissed her child without shivering or shrinking. To our rough common sense it would seem, that caress more cruel in its falsehood, more base in its deliberate treachery, never was bestowed since that one over which angels wept and devils shouted for joy--the kiss given in the Garden of Gethsemane.

But who are we, that we should criticize the policy of a Mother of England, cavil at her concessions to expediency, or question the rect.i.tude of her intentions? They are white-hot Protestants, many of them, but none the less do they cherish and act upon the good old Jesuit maxim--"The end justifies the means." Unluckily, sometimes even _their_ sagacity and foresight are baffled in guessing what the end of all will be. You have read _Aspen Court_, of course? Do you remember Cyprian Heywood's definition of a parable?--"A falsehood in ill.u.s.tration of truth." "My lady" affected this convenient figure of speech a good deal; her first words now were decidedly parabolical.

"My dearest child, you have quite taken my breath away. I cannot tell yet whether I am sorry or glad to hear this. It comes so very suddenly!"

"Ah, mamma, say at least that you are not angry--with Alan," the soft voice pleaded.

Lady Mildred did not think it necessary to remain long astounded, being always averse to unnecessary expenditure of time or trouble. So she answered, after drawing one or two deep, agitated breaths (wonderfully well done), with intense gentleness of manner and tone--

"How could I be angry, darling? Next to Max, and yourself, and your father, I think I love Alan better than anything in the world. He has been rash and wild, of course; but I believe he is quite good and steady now. I am sure he will try and make you happy. Every one will exclaim against your imprudence, and mine; but we will not look forward despondently. Only you must not be impatient; you _must_ wait and hope.

You don't know as well as I do what difficulties are in the way. Perhaps I ought to have foreseen what was likely to happen, when you and Alan were thrown so much together as you have been lately; but I never dreamt--" she stopped, compressing her lips, as if annoyed that a truth, for once, was escaping them. "Well--never mind; confess, Helen, you did not fear that _I_ should oppose your wishes? You know my first object in life is to see you happy; and I have not often contradicted you, have I, since you were old enough to have a will of your own?"

I fancy that most damsels, under similar circ.u.mstances, would have been of Miss Vavasour's opinion--"That there never was such a darling mother." She did not express it very intelligibly, though; and, indeed, it must be confessed, that the conversation from this point was of a somewhat incoherent and irrational nature. Feminine example is miraculously contagious; if the fountain of tears is once unlocked, the gentle influence of the Naad will be sure to descend on every womanly bosom within the circle of its spray. I do not mean to imply that upon the present occasion there was any profuse weeping; but they got into a sort of _caressive_ and altogether childish frame of mind--a condition very unusual with either mother or daughter. It may be questioned, if the sympathetic weakness displayed by Lady Mildred was altogether a.s.sumed. The most accomplished actresses have sometimes so identified themselves with their parts, as to ignore audience and foot-lights, and become natural in real emotion. Five minutes, however, were more than enough to restore one of the parties to her own calm, calculating self.

Another yet fonder caress told Helen, as plainly as words could have done, that the audience was ended: as soon as she was alone, Lady Mildred fell back into her old quiet, musing att.i.tude. But the French novel was not taken up again; its late reader had a plot, if not a romance, of her own, to interest her now. Whether the thoughts that chased one another so rapidly through that busy brain were kindly or angry, whether the glimpses of the future were gloomy or hopeful--the smooth, white brow and steady lips betrayed, neither by frown nor smile.

CHAPTER IV.

A WAIF FROM A WRECK.

"Look into a man's Past, if you would understand his Present, or guess at his Future." So spake some sage, name unknown, but probably intermediate in date between the Great King and Mr. M. F. Tupper. The rule is not implicitly to be relied on, but perhaps there is as much of truth in it as in most apophthegms of proverbial philosophy.

So it may save some time and trouble hereafter, if we sketch briefly now some of Alan Wyverne's antecedents; for he is to be the chief character in this story, which has no _hero_, properly so-called, nor heroine either.

The main facts are very soon told: his twenty-first birthday saw him in possession of a perfectly unenc.u.mbered estate of 12,000 a year, and all the acc.u.mulations that two paragon guardians had toiled to ama.s.s during an unusually long minority; his twenty-eighth dawned on a comparative pauper.

The last score of centuries have taught us many things; amongst others, to go down hill with a certain caution and timidity, if not with sobriety. We never hear now of those great disasters to which the very vastness of their proportions lent a false grandeur; where a colossal fortune foundered suddenly, leaving on the world's surface a vortex of turbulence and terror, such as surrounds the spot where a three-decker has gone down. The Regent and his _roues_ were wild in their generation, but they never quite attained the antique magnificence of recklessness.

The expenses of a contested county election fifty years back, would have shown poorly by the aedile's balance-sheet, A. C. 65, when Caesar laughed to see his last _sestertium_ vanish in the brilliancy of the Circensian Games. What modern general would carry 20,000 of debt as lightly as he did half-a-million, when he went out to battle with the Lusitanian? If we even hear nowadays of a like liability, it is probably in connexion with a great commercial "smash," involving curious disclosures as to the capabilities of stamped paper, and the extent of public credulity; but the interest of such rarely spreads west of Temple-bar. Truth to say--however moving the tale may be to the unfortunates ruined by the delinquent, there is little romance to be extracted out of mercantile atrocities.

Nevertheless, if you only give him time, and don't hurry him beyond his stride, a dwarf will "go to the dogs" just as easily and surely as a giant. After our _mesquine_ fashion, that journey is performed so constantly, that only some peculiarities in Alan's case make it worth noting at all.

Few men have trodden the road to ruin with such a perfectly smooth and even pace; there was no rush or hurry about it from beginning to end; nothing like a crash to attract notice or scandal. He was known to bet high and play deep; but no one spoke of him at the clubs as having lost an extraordinary stake on any one night, nor did the chroniclers of the Turf ever allude to him amongst those "hit hard" on any single event.

_One_ destructive element never showed itself throughout his career. It must have been gratifying to those much-abused Hetaerae to reflect (do they ever reflect at all?) that none could charge any one of the sisterhood with having aided in Wyverne's downfall. Reckless and extravagant as the son of Clinias, he escaped--at least Timandra. More than one scruple, probably, helped him to maintain a continence which soon became so well-known, that the most persevering of feminine fowlers never thought of laying her snares in his way. Something might be ascribed to principles learnt at his dead mother's knee, which all the contagion of Bohemia failed quite to efface--something to a chivalrous reverence for the s.e.x, which withheld him from deliberately abetting in its open degradation--something to the pride of race, with which he was thoroughly imbued. He loved his ancient name too dearly, to see it dragged through the dust past the statue of Achilles, at the chariot-wheels of the fairest Phryne of them all. For once--hearing a story of human folly and frailty, you asked, "_Dove la donna?_" and waited in vain for a reply.

If the Sirens failed to seduce Wyverne, that was about the only peril or temptation from which he escaped scathless. Profuse hospitality all the year round in London, Leicestershire, and at his home in the north, cost something: a string of ten horses in training (besides yearlings and untried two-year-olds), which only won when their owner had backed something else heavily, cost more: backing other men's bills _currente calamo_, receiving no substantial considerations for so doing, cost most of all. Alan's bold, careless handwriting was as well known in a certain branch of commerce as the official signature on the Bank of England's notes. There was joy in Israel when they saw his autograph: Ezekiel and Solomon--most cautious of their tribe (those crack bill-discounters are always lineally descended, it would seem, from some prophet or king)--smacked their bulbous lips in satisfaction as they clutched the paper bearing his endors.e.m.e.nt: their keen eyes looked three months forward into futurity, and saw the spoil of the Egyptian secure. Alan's own resources, though rapidly diminishing, always sufficed his own wants: but he never tired of paying these disinterested liabilities as long as his friends could furnish him with any decent excuse for his doing so: if the defaulter failed in making out even a shadow of a case, Wyverne still paid, but never consorted with him afterwards. Then the dark side of his character came out. Generous and kind-hearted to a fault, he was at times obstinate to relentlessness: slow to take offence or to suspect intentional injury, he was yet slower in forgiving or forgetting either: he did not trouble himself to detect the falsehood at the bottom of any tale of distress, but against imposture carried with a high hand he set his face as it were a millstone.

Hercules St. Levant (of the Chilian Cuira.s.siers) would tell you--if he could be brought to speak coherently on the subject--that he dates his ruin from the day when he miscalculated the extent of Sir Alan Wyverne's long-suffering or laziness. Surely some of us can remember that wonderful Copper Captain--the round, ringing tones tempting you with a point over the proper odds--the scarfs and waistcoats blinding in their gorgeousness, so "loud" that you _heard_ them coming all the way up from the distance post--the supernatural whiskers, whose sable volutes shaded his broad shoulders like the leaves of a talipat-palm? Hercules was very successful at first: he must have started with a nominal capital, but he had plenty of courage, some judgment, and more luck; so, by dint of industry, and now and then picking up crumbs from the table of those by whom the "good things" of the turf are shared, he contrived to ruffle it for awhile with the best of them. Men of mark and high estate would meet and hold communion with him--as they have done with deeper and darker villains--on the neutral ground at "The Corner," without caring to inquire too closely what Cacique had signed his commission, or on what foughten-fields the rainbow of his ribbons was won. With common prudence he might have held his own till now. But St. Levant was a buccaneer to the backbone: he spent his winnings as lavishly as any one of the young patricians whom he delighted to honour and imitate; and took his ease in the sunshine, scorning to make the slightest provision for the season of the rains. It came at last, in an Epsom Summer Meeting. The adverse Fates had it all their own way there: several of the Captain's certainties were overturned, and several promising "plants" were withered in their bud. It was the fourth "day of rebuke and blasphemy,"

and still the battle went hard against the Peruvian plunger. The Oaks dealt him the _coup de grace_: it was won by an extreme outsider.

Hercules saw the number go up, and staggered out of the enclosure like a drunken man, with hardly breath enough left to hiss out a curse between his white lips. "Hecuba" was one of six that Wyverne had taken with him against the field for an even thousand: her name had never been mentioned in the betting at the time, and Alan only selected her because he chanced to know her owner and breeder well.

St. Levant was ruined horse-and-foot, without power or hope of redemption: that one bet would have pulled him through. Some pleasanter engagement had kept Wyverne away from The Corner on the "comparing day,"

and with his usual carelessness he had even omitted to send his book down by other hands: Hercules saw a last desperate chance, and grasped at it, as drowning men will do. He appeared at the settling with his well-known betting book (gorgeous, like all his other belongings, in green morocco and gold,) but Hecuba's name was replaced by the second favourite's. He chanced to have in his possession a fac-simile of the original volume, and had copied out, in the interim, every bet it contained, with this one trifling alteration. The matter came before the authorities, of course. The discussion that ensued, though stormy (on one side) was very short and decisive: the swindler's foamy a.s.severations were shivered, like spray, on the granite of the other's calm, contemptuous firmness. The judges did not hesitate long in p.r.o.nouncing against St. Levant their sentence of perpetual banishment.

All his piteous pet.i.tions addressed to Wyverne in after days to induce the latter to obtain a mitigation of his punishment, remained absolutely unanswered. There still survives--a pale, blurred shadow of his former self--as it were, the _wraith_ of the Great Captain. We see occasionally a hirsute head rising above the sea of villanous figures and faces that seethe and surge against the rails of the enclosure: we catch glimpses of a meteoric waistcoat flashing through the surrounding seediness; and we hear a voice, thunderous as that of the elder Ajax, dominating the din of the meaner _melee_; but there is no reversal of his doom. The poor lost spirit must ramp and roar among the "welshers" of the outer darkness, for the paradise of the Ring is closed to him for evermore.

Everybody--including the two or three friends who might hope to ride his horses--was sorry for Wyverne when a heavy fall over timber laid him up, quite early in the season, with a broken arm and collar-bone. The only pity was, that the fortunate accident should not have happened three years earlier. The indoor resources of a country-town, where all one's a.s.sociates hunt five days a-week at least, are limited. One morning Alan felt so bored, that the whim seized him to look into his affairs, and ascertain how he stood with the world: so he went for his solicitor (as much for the sake of having some one to talk to as anything else), and went in at business with great patience and determination. The men who sat with him on the second evening after the lawyer's arrival, thought Wyverne looking paler and graver than usual, but he listened to their account of the run with apparently undiminished interest, and sympathized with his friends' mishaps or successes as cordially as ever.

Only once his lips shook a little as he answered in the negative a question--"If he felt in much pain?" Yet that morning had been a sore trial both of brain and nerve. It is not a pleasant time, when you have to call for the reckoning of ten thousand follies and faults, and to pay it too--when the bitter _quart d'heure de Rabelais_ is prolonged through days.

Though they arrived then at a tolerably accurate idea of the state of Alan's finances, it took months to complete the final arrangements. When everything in town and country that could well be sold had been disposed of, Wyverne was left with a life-income of just as many hundreds a-year as he had started with thousands. But all his personal debts, and liabilities incurred for others, were paid in full. The only absolute luxuries that he retained (with the exception of all the presents that he had ever received) were the two best hunters in his stud, and his gray Arab, "Maimouna." That residue might have been nearly doubled, if Alan would have consented to dismantle the Abbey. But he could not help looking upon its antique furniture and fittings in the light of heirlooms. He had added little to them when he came into his inheritance: he took nothing away when he lost it. So the great, grave mansion still retained its old-fashioned and somewhat faded magnificence; and few changes, so far, were to be seen there, except that the gra.s.s grew long on the lawns, and the flowers wandered over the parterres at their own sweet will, and instead of thick reeks of unctuous smoke, only a thin blue line stole out modestly from two or three chimneys now and then in the shooting season. The game was still kept up, and the farmers watched it as jealously and zealously as if they had been keepers in their landlord's pay.

The sternest Stoic alive could scarcely have fallen into his new position more naturally, or adapted himself to its requirements more gracefully, than did that gay, careless Epicurean. If he had any regrets for the irrevocable Past, he kept them to himself, and never wearied his friends for their sympathy or compa.s.sion; he accused no one with reference to his ruin; I doubt if he even blamed himself very severely. There was no more of recklessness in his conduct, than there was of despondency in his demeanour; but he comported himself exactly as you would expect to see a man do, of good birth and breeding, and average steadiness, born to a modest competency. His experience, brief as it was, might have taught him to be somewhat sceptical as to the virtues of our human nature, more especially having regard to such trifles as truth and honesty; but no amount of punishment will beat wisdom or knowledge into a confirmed dunce or idler. His const.i.tutional indolence may have had something to say to it; but to the last hour of his life Alan Wyverne never learnt to be suspicious, or sullen, or cynical.

To be sure, the world in this case broke through an established rule, and behaved better to him when he was at the bottom of the wheel than it had ever done at the culminating point of his fortunes. There seemed to be a general impression that he had been very badly treated by some "person or persons unknown," and it became the fashion to compa.s.sionate Wyverne (in his absence) exceedingly. People who in former days met and parted from him quite indifferently, found out suddenly that they had always been very fond of him, and contended as to who should attract him to their house in the hunting or shooting season. The Marquis of Montserrat, for instance, roused himself from where he lay, surrounded by every delight of a Mussulman's paradise, in his summer palace by the Bosphorus, to send a sort of _firmun_, giving Alan powers of life and death over the keepers and coverts of all his territory marching with the lands of Wyverne Abbey; an instance of good-nature which was the more remarkable, inasmuch as the great Absentee not only carries laziness and selfishness to a pitch of sublimity, but has of late registered a vow against befriending any one under any circ.u.mstances whatever. This last and rather superfluous hardening process was brought about in this wise.

Some years ago there appeared suddenly in the firmament of fashion a little star; no one knew whence it came--though it was supposed to have risen in the East; and when, after twinkling brightly for a brief s.p.a.ce, it shot down into utter darkness, no one cared to ask whither it went.

Mr. Richardson had advanced just so far in intimacy with the magnates of the land that they began to call him "Tom" (his Christian name was Walter), when the crash came, and he subsided into nothingness. He lived upon that recollection, and little else, for the remainder of his days.

Yet one chance was given him. Wandering about the Continent, he met the Marquis of Montserrat. The mighty golden Crater and the poor shattered Amphora had once floated side by side, for a league or two, down the same stream. After a _tete-a-tete_ dinner (the _cotelettes a la Pompadour_ were a success), old recollections, or his own Clos Vougeot, made the peer's heart warm, and he bethought himself how he might serve the unlucky pauper. At last he said,

"Tom, there is a regular establishment at Grandmanoir, and there always will be in my time, though I never mean to see it again. Go and live there; you'll be more comfortable than in lodgings, and save rent and firing besides. Make yourself quite at home; slay the venison; eat the fruit of the vine, and drink the juice thereof (the cellar ought to be well filled); and grow as fat as Jeshurun, if you like. I only insist on one thing. Whether matters are going on well or ill in the house or out of it--don't bother _me_ about them. I don't want to hear a word on the subject. Is it settled so?"

You may fancy Tom Richardson's profuse thanks and his great joy and gladness at finding himself chatelain of Grandmanoir. The _valetaille_ treated him at first with no small kindness (he was a meek little man, averse to giving unnecessary trouble), and for some months all went merrily. But before a year had pa.s.sed there began to dawn on the stranger's mind suspicions, which soon changed into certainties. There existed at Grandmanoir the most comprehensive and consistent system of robbery that could well be conceived. It would have been harder to find one honest menial there than ten saints in a City of the Plain.

Everybody was in it, from the agent and house-steward, who plundered _en prince_, down to the scullion (fat, but _not_ foolish), who peculated _en paysanne_. There was commercial blood in Tom Richardson's veins, and the sight of these enormous misdeeds vexed his righteous soul exceedingly. One day he could withhold himself no longer, but sat down in a fury and wrote,

"My dear lord,--In spite of your prohibition, I feel it my duty," &c.

And so went through all the disagreeable details regularly. The reply came by return of post, though not exactly in the shape that he expected. The steward came in with scant ceremony, an evil smile on his face (he probably guessed at the truth), charged with his lord's commands that the visitor should quit Grandmanoir before sunset and never return there. Thus rudely was broken the last of poor Tom's golden dreams. The Great Marquis, when the circ.u.mstances were alluded to, never could be brought to see any harshness in his own conduct, but spoke of his _protege's_ rather plaintively as "an instance of human ingrat.i.tude that he was really not prepared for." He did not give the species many chances of surprising him in _that_ way again.

If the chiefs of his tribe were ready to comfort and cherish the disabled "brave," now that he could no longer put on paint and plume, and go forth with them on the "war-trail," be sure that the matrons and maidens were yet more active and demonstrative in sympathy. There must be extraordinarily bad features in the case of distress that fails to secure feminine compa.s.sion; except in a matrimonial point of view, our sisters rarely consider a man deteriorated because he is ruined. Though he was a general favourite in his set, Wyverne possessed many more real friends of the other s.e.x than of his own. If there is anything in reciprocity, it was only fair that it should be so. Alan's reverence and affection for Womanhood in the abstract were so intense and sincere, as to be almost independent of individual attributes. His companion for the moment might be the homeliest, humblest, least attractive female you can conceive; but with the first word his tone and manner would change and soften in a way that she could not but perceive, even if she did not appreciate it. Most of them _did_ appreciate it, though, and this was the secret of his invariable and proverbial success. Wyverne could like a woman honestly, and let her know it, without a thought of love, and could always render courtesy where admiration, or even respect, unfortunately, were out of the question. However good the sport might be in other ways, he considered the day comparatively lost in which the feminine element was wanting. While his comrades were resting for an hour before dinner--dead beat with seven hours' hard stalking in the corries of Benmac-Dhui--Alan would be found loitering about the door of the chief keeper's bothy, carrying on, under extreme difficulties of dialect, a flirtation on first principles with his orange-haired daughter. He seemed to derive some refreshment from the process, though the absence of a beard, and the (occasional) presence of a petticoat, were about the only distinctive characteristics of her s.e.x that the robust Oread could boast of. When the season was at the flood, he would spend hours of an afternoon in the quiet twilight of a boudoir in Mayfair, by the side of an invalid's sofa. Sooth to say, that room held no ordinary attractions. Lady Rutherglen had been a famous beauty in the Waterloo year; and though long illness had somewhat sharpened her delicate features, she still retained the low sweet voice and winning manner which had made wild work with the heart of the Great Czar (the imperial wooing was utterly wasted, for the witty, wayward Countess could guard her honour as well as the stupidest of Pamelas); there was hardly a wrinkle on the little white hand, and the lovely silver hair looked softer and silkier now than it had ever done in its golden prime.

Sad and strange shapes of sin and sorrow cross our path sometimes, as we walk home from club or ball through the early morning. Saddest, perhaps, and strangest of all, is the spectacle of one of G.o.d's creatures, uns.e.xed and deformed by pa.s.sion and fiery liquor, struggling in blind undiscriminating rage, and shrieking out defiance alike of friends and foes. The Menad ceased to be romantic when the Great Pan died. Erigone may be magnificent on canvas, but even Beranger failed in making her attractive on paper: in flesh and blood she is simply repellent. Public sympathy would side rather with Pentheus nowadays than with his cruelly convivial mother; and we hold the disguise of drink to be the least becoming of all Myrrha's masquerades. Such a sight affected Wyverne with a disgust and pain that few men could have fully appreciated; but he rarely would pa.s.s by without an attempt at mediation. They say that his kind, gentle voice was almost magical in its soothing power. The exasperated guardian of the night would relax the roughness of his grasp; and the "strayed reveller" would subside from shrill fury into murmurs placable and plaintive, yielding, in spite of the devil that possessed her, to the charm of his cordial compa.s.sion and invincible courtesy.

All things considered, womankind had rather a better reason for petting Alan than could be given for most of their whims. When his resources were almost unlimited, he was always so perfectly regardless of time and trouble and cost in endeavouring to gratify even their unexpressed wishes, that it was no wonder if, when the positions were reversed, he began to reap his reward, and found out that he had laid up treasure against the time of need.

I have said more than enough to give you some insight into a character in which the elements of hardness and ductility, pa.s.sionate impulse and consummate coolness, recklessness and self-control, were strangely mingled, like the gold, bra.s.s, iron, and clay in the frame of the giant Image that stood beside the prophet in his trance, on the banks of "the great river Hiddekel."

With all his faults and failings, Hubert Vavasour would have chosen him out of broad England for a son-in-law. Lady Mildred thought that such a bridal dress would become her daughter worse than a winding-sheet.

Which of the two was right? Probably neither. There is little wisdom in extremes.

CHAPTER V.

THE GIFTS OF A GREEK.