IT was late at night when Calvert left the villa, but, instead of rowing directly back to the little inn, he left his boat to drift slowly in the scarce perceptible current of the lake, and wrapping himself in his cloak, lay down to muse or to sleep.
It was just as day broke that he awoke, and saw that he had drifted within a few yards of his quarters, and in a moment after he was on shore.
As he gained his room, he found a letter for him in Loyd’s hand. It ran thus:
“I waited up all night to see you before I started, for Ihave been suddenly summoned home by family circumstances. Iwas loth to part in an angry spirit, or even in coldness,with one in whose companionship I have passed so many happyhours, and for whom I feel, notwithstanding what has passedbetween us, a sincere interest. I wanted to speak to you ofmuch which I cannot write—that is to say, I would haveendeavoured to gain a hearing for what I dare not venture toset down in the deliberate calm of a letter. When I own thatit was of yourself, your temper, your habits, your nature,in short, that I wished to have spoken, you will, perhaps,say that it was as well time was not given me for suchtemerity. But bear in mind, Calvert, that though I am freeto admit all your superiority over myself, and never wouldpresume to compare my faculties or my abilities with yours—though I know well there is not a single gift or grace inwhich you are not my master, there is one point in which Ihave an advantage over you—I had a mother! You, you haveoften told me, never remember to have seen yours. To thatmother’s trainings I owe anything of good, however humble itbe, in my nature, and, though the soil in which the seed hasfallen be poor and barren, so much of fruit has it bornethat I at least respect the good which I do not practise,and I reverence that virtue to which I am a rebel. Thelesson, above all others, that she instilled into we, was toavoid the tone of a scoffer, to rescue myself from the cheapdistinction which is open to everyone who sets himself tosee only ridicule in what others respect, and to mock thethemes that others regard with reverence. I stop, for I amafraid to weary you—I dread that, in your impatience, youwill throw this down and read no more—I will only say, andI say it in all the sincerity of truth, that if you wouldendeavour to be morally as great as what your faculties canmake you intellectually, there is no eminence you might notattain, nor any you would not adorn.“If our intimacy had not cooled down of late, from whatcauses I am unable to tell, to a point in which the firstdisagreement must be a breach between us, I would have toldyou that I had formed an attachment to Florence Walter, andobtained her aunt’s consent to our marriage; I mean, ofcourse, at some future which I cannot define, for I have myway to make in the world, and, up to the present, have onlybeen a burden on others. We are engaged, however, and welive on hope. Perhaps I presume too far on any interest youcould feel for me when I make you this communication. Itmay be that you will say, ‘What is all this to me?’ At allevents, I have told you what, had I kept back, would haveseemed to myself an uncandid reservation. Deal with it howyou may.“There is, however, another reason why I should tell youthis. If you were unaware of the relations which existbetween our friends and myself, you might unconsciouslyspeak of me in terms which this knowledge would, perhaps,modify—at least, you would speak without the consciousnessthat you were addressing unwilling hearers. You now know theties that bind us, and your words will have thatsignificance which you intend they should bear.“Remember, and remember distinctly, I disclaim allpretension, as I do all wish, to conciliate your favour asregards this matter; first, because I believe I do not needit; and secondly, that if I asked for, I should be unworthyof it. I scarcely know how, after our last meeting, I standin your estimation, but I am ready to own that if you wouldonly suffer yourself to be half as good as your nature hadintended you and your faculties might make you, you would beconferring a great honour on being the friend of yourstruly,“Joseph Loyd.”
“What a cant these fellows acquire!” said Calvert as he read the letter and threw it from him. “What mock humility! what downright and palpable pretension to superiority through every line of it! The sum of it all being, I can’t deny that you are cleverer, stronger, more active, and more manly than me; but, somehow, I don’t exactly see why or, how, but I’m your better! Well, I’ll write an answer to this one of these days, and such an answer as I flatter myself he’ll not read aloud to the company who sit round the fire at the vicarage. And so, Mademoiselle Florence, this was your anxiety, and this the reason for all that interest about our quarrel which I was silly enough to ascribe to a feeling for myself. How invariably it is so! How certain it is that a woman, the weakest, the least experienced, the most commonplace, is more than a match in astuteness for a man, in a question where her affections are concerned. The feminine nature has strange contradictions. They can summon the courage of a tigress to defend their young, and the spirit of a Machiavelli to protect a lover. She must have had some misgiving, however, that, to prefer a fellow like this to me would be felt by me as an outrage. And then the cunning stroke of implying that her sister was not indisposed to listen to me. The perfidy of that!”
Several days after Loyd’s departure, Calvert was lounging near the lake, when he jumped up, exclaiming, “Here comes the postman! I see he makes a sign to me. What can this be about? Surely, my attached friend has not written to me again. No, this is a hand that I do not recognise. Let us see what it contains.” He opened and read as follows:
“Sir,—I have received your letter. None but a scoundrelcould have written it! As all prospect of connexion withyour family is now over, you cannot have a pretext for notaffording me such a satisfaction as, had you been agentleman in feeling as you are in station, it would neverhave been necessary for me to demand from you. I leave this,to-morrow, for the continent, and will be at Basle by Mondaynext. I will remain there for a week at your orders, andhope that there may be no difficulty to their speedyfulfilment.“I am, your obedient and faithful servant,“Wentworth Gordon GRAHAM.”
“The style is better than yours, Master Loyd, just because it means something. The man is in an honest passion and wants a fight The other fellow was angry, and begged me not to notice it. And so, Sophy, I have spoiled the wedding favours, and scattered the bridesmaids! What a heavy lesson for an impertinent note. Poor thing! why did she trust herself with a pen? Why did she not know that the most fatal of all bottles is the ink bottle? Precious rage old Uncle Geoffrey must be in. I’d like to have one peep at the general discomfiture—the deserted dinner-table, and the empty drawing-room. They deserve it all! they banishedme, and much good have they got of it Well, Mr. Wentworth Gordon Graham must have his wicked way. The only difficulty will be to find what is so absurdly misnamed as a friend. I must have a friend; I’ll run up to Milan and search the hotels: I’ll surely find some one who will like the cheap heroism of seeing another man shot at. This is the season when all the fellows who have no money for Baden come across the Alps. I’m certain to chance upon one to suit me.”
Having despatched a short note, very politely worded to Mr. Graham, to the post office, Basle, he ordered a carriage, and set out for Milan.
The city was in full festivity when he arrived, overjoyed at its new-born independence, and proud of the presence of its king. The streets were crowded with a holiday population, and from all the balconies and windows hung costly tapestries, or gay coloured carpets, Military music resounded on all sides, and so dense was the throng of people and carriages, that Calvert could only proceed at a walking pace, none feeling any especial care to make way for a dusty traveller, seated in one of the commonest of country conveyances.
As he moved slowly and with difficulty forwards, he suddenly heard his name called; he looked up, and saw a well known face, that of a brother officer, who had left India on a sick leave along with himself.
“I say, old fellow!” cried Barnard, “this is your ground; draw into that large gate to your right, and come up here.”
In a few seconds, Calvert, escorted by a waiter, was shown to his friend’s apartment.
“I never dreamed of meeting you here, Calvert.”
“Nor I of finding you lodged so sumptuously,” said Calvert, as his eyes ranged over the splendid room, whose massive hangings of silk, and richly gilt ceiling, gave that air of a palace one so often sees in Italian hotels.
“Luck, Sir, luck. I’m married, and got a pot of money with my wife.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, while, with a gesture of his thumb towards an adjoining room, he motioned his friend to be cautious.
“Who was she?”
“Nobody; that is, not anyone you ever heard of Stockport people, called Reppingham. The father, a great railway contractor, vulgar old dog—begun as a navvy—with one daughter, who is to inherit, they say, a quarter of a million; but, up to this, we’ve only an allowance—two thousand a year. The old fellow, however, lives with us—a horrible nuisance.” This speech, given in short, abrupt whispers, was uttered with many signs to indicate that the respected father-in-law was in the vicinity. “Now, of yourself, what’s your news? What have you done last, eh?”
“Nothing very remarkable. I have been vegetating on a lake in the north of Italy, trying to live for five shillings a day, and spending three more in brandy, to give me courage to do it.”
“But your leave is up; or perhaps you have got renewal?”
“No, my leave goes to the fifteenth of October.”
“Not a bit of it; we got our leave on the same day, passed the Board the same day, and for exactly the same time. My leave expired on the tenth of August. I’ll show you the paper; I have it here.”
“Do so. Let me see it.”
Barnard opened his desk, and quickly found the paper he sought for. It was precisely as Barnard said. The Board of Calcutta had confirmed the regimental recommendation, and granted a two-years’ leave, which ended on the tenth of August.
“Never mind, man,” said Barnard; “get back to London as hard as you can, furbish up some sick certificate to say that you were unable to quit your bed—”
“That is not so easy as you imagine; I have a little affair in hand, which may end in more publicity than I have any fancy for.” And he told him of his approaching meeting with Graham, and asked him to be his friend.
“What was the quarrel about?” asked Barnard.
“A jealousy; he was going to marry a little cousin I used to flirt with, and we got to words about it. In fact, it is what Sir Lucius would call a very pretty quarrel, and there’s nothing to be done but finish it. You’ll stand by me, won’t you?”
“I don’t see how I can. Old Rep, our governor, never leaves me. I’m obliged to report myself about four times a day.”
“But you know that can never go on. You needn’t be told by me that no man can continue such a system of slavery, nor is there anything could recompense it. You’ll have to teach her better one of these days; begin at once. My being here gives you a pretext to begin. Start at once—to-day. Just say, ‘I’ll have to show Calvert the lions; he’ll want to hunt up galleries,’ and such-like.”
“Hush! here comes my wife. Fanny, let me present to you one of my oldest friends, Calvert It’s a name you have often heard from me.”
The young lady—she was not more than twenty—was pleasing-looking and well mannered. Indeed, Calvert was amazed to see her so unlike what he expected; she was neither pretentious nor shy; and, had his friend not gone into the question of pedigree, was there anything to mark a class in life other than his own. While they talked together they were joined by her father, who, however, more than realised the sketch drawn by Barnard.
He was a morose, down-looking old fellow, with a furtive expression, and a manner of distrust about him that showed itself in various ways. From the first, though Calvert set vigorously to work to win his favour, he looked with a sort of misgiving at him. He spoke very little, but in that little there were no courtesies wasted; and when Barnard whispered, “You had better ask him to dine with us, the invitation will come better from you!” the reply was, “I won’t; do you hear that? I won’t.”
“But he’s an old brother-officer of mine, Sir; we served several years together.”
“The worse company yours, then.”
“I say, Calvert,” cried Barnard, aloud, “I must give you a peep at our gay doings here. I’ll take you a drive round the town, and out of the Porta Orientale, and if we should not be back at dinner-time, Fanny—”
“We’ll dine without you, that’s all!” said the old man; while, taking his daughter’s hand, he led her out of the room.
“I say, Bob, I’d not change with you, even for the difference,” said Calvert.
“I never saw him so bad before,” said the other, sheepishly.
“Because you never tried him! Hitherto you have been a spaniel, getting kicked and cuffed, and rather liking it; but, now that the sight of an old friend has rallied you to a faint semblance of your former self, you are shocked and horrified. You made a bad start, Bob; that was the mistake. You ought to have begun by making him feel the immeasurable distance there lay between him and a gentleman; not only in dress, language, and behaviour, but in every sentiment and feeling. Having done this, he would have tacitly submitted to ways that were not his own, by conceding that they might be those of a class he had never belonged to. You might, in short, have ruled him quietly and constitutionally. Now you have nothing for it but one thing.”
“Which is—”
“A revolution! Yes, you must overthrow the whole government, and build up another out of the smash. Begin to-day. We’ll dine together wherever you like. We’ll go to the Scala if it’s open. We’ll sup—”
“But Fanny?”
“She’ll stand by her husband. Though, probably, she’ll have you ‘up’ for a little private discipline afterwards. Come, don’t lose time. I want to do my cathedral, and my gallery, and my other curiosities in one day, for I have some matters to settle at Orto before I start for Basle. Have they a club, a casino, or anything of the sort here, where they play?”
“There is a place they call the Gettone, but I’ve never been there but once.”
“Well, we’ll finish there this evening; for I want to win a little money, to pay my journey.”
“If I can help you—”
“No, no. Not to be thought of. I’ve got some fifty Naps by me—tame elephants—that are sure to entrap others. You must come with me to Basle, Bob. You can’t desert me in such a crisis,” said Calvert, as they left the inn together.
“We’ll see. I’ll think over it. The difficulty will be—”
“The impossibility is worse than a difficulty; and that is what I shall have to face if you abandon me. Why, only think of it for a moment Here I am, jilted, out of the army—for I know I shall lose my commission—without a guinea; you’d not surely wish me to say, without a friend! If it were not that it would be so selfish, I’d say the step will be the making of you. You’ll have that old bear so civilised on your return, you’ll not know him.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I know it. He’ll see at once that you’ll not stand this sort of bullying. That if you did, your friends would not stand it. We shan’t be away above four days, and those four days will give him a fright he’ll never forget.”
“I’ll think over it”
“No. You’ll do it—that’s better; and I’ll promise you—if Mr. Graham does not enter a fatal objection—to come back with you and stand to you through your troubles.”
Calvert had that about him in his strong will, his resolution, and his readiness at reply, which exercised no mean despotism over the fellows of his own age. And it was only they who disliked and avoided him who ever resisted him. Barnard was an easy victim, and before the day drew to its close., he had got to believe that it was by a rare stroke of fortune Calvert had come to Milan-come to rescue him from the “most degrading sort of bondage a good fellow could possibly fall into.”
They dined splendidly, and sent to engage a box at the Opera; but the hours passed so pleasantly over their dinner, that they forgot all about it, and only reached the theatre a few minutes before it closed.
“Now for the—what do you call the place?” cried Calvert.
“The Gettone.”
“That’s it. I’m eager to measure my luck against these Milanais. They say, besides, no fellow has such a vein as when his life is threatened; and I remember myself, when I had the yellow fever at Galle, I passed twenty-one times at écarte’, all because I was given over!”
“What a fellow you are, Calvert!” said the other, with a weak man’s admiration for whatever was great, even in infamy.
“You’ll see how I’ll clear them out But what have I done with my purse? Left it on my dressing table, I suppose they are honest in the hotel?”
“Of course they are. It’s all safe; and I’ve more money about me than you want Old Rep handed me three thousand francs this morning to pay the bill, and when I saw you, I forgot all about it.”
“Another element of luck,” cried Calvert, joyously. “The money that does not belong to a man always wins. Why, there’s five thousand francs here,” said Calvert, as he counted over the notes.
“Two of them are Fanny’s, She got her quarter’s allowance yesterday. Stingy, isn’t it? Only three hundred a year.”
“It’s downright disgraceful. She ought to have eight at the very least; but wait till we come back from Basle. You’ll not believe what a change I’ll work in that old fellow, when I take him in hand.”
By this time they had reached the Gettone, and, after a brief colloquy, were suffered to pass up stairs and enter the rooms.
“Oh, it’s faro they play; my own game,” whispered Calvert, “I was afraid the fellows might have indulged in some of their own confounded things, which no foreigner can compete in. At faro I fear none.”
While Barnard joined a group of persons round a roulette-table, where fashionably-dressed women adventured their franc pieces along with men clad in the most humble mode, Calvert took his place among the faro players. The boldness of his play, and the reckless way he adventured his money, could not conceal from their practised acuteness that he was master of the game, and they watched him attentively.
“I think I have nearly cleaned them out, Bob,” cried he to his friend, as he pointed to a heap of gold and silver, which lay promiscuously piled up before him.
“I suppose you must give them their revenge?” whispered the other, “if they wish for it.”
“Nothing of the kind. At a public table, a winner rises when he pleases. If I continue to sit here now, it is because that old fellow yonder has got a rouleau in his pocket which he cannot persuade himself to break. See, he has taken it out: for the fourth time, this is. I wonder can he screw up his courage to risk it. Yes! he has! There go ten pieces on the queen. Go back to your flirtation with the blonde ringlets, and don’t disturb my game. I must have that fellow’s rouleau before I leave. Go back, and I’ll not tell your wife.”
It was in something less than an hour after this that Barnard felt a hand laid on his shoulder, and looking up, saw Calvert standing over him. “Well, it took you some time to finish that old fellow, Calvert!”
“He finishedmewhich was worse. Have you got a cigar?”
“Do you mean that you lost all your winnings?”
“Yes, and your five thousand francs besides, not to speak of a borrowed thousand from someone I have given my card to. A bore, isn’t it?”
“It’s more than a bore—it’s a bad business. I don’t know how I’ll settle it with the landlord.”
“Give him a bill, he’ll never be troublesome: and, as to your wife’s money, tell her frankly you lost it at play. Isn’t that the best way, Madame?” said he, addressing a young and pretty woman at his side. “I am advising my friend to be honest with his wife, and confess that he spent his money in very pleasant company. Come along out of this stuffy place. Let us have a walk in the fresh cool air, and a cigar, if you have one. I often wonder,” said he, as they gained the street, “how the fellows who write books and want to get up sensation scenes, don’t come and do something of this sort There’s a marvellous degree of stimulant in being cleaned out, not only of one’s own cash, but of one’s credit; and by credit I mean it in the French sense, which says, ‘Le crédit est l’argent des autres.’”
“I wish you had not lost that money,” muttered the other.
“So do I. I have combativeness very strong, and I hate being beaten by anyone in anything.”
“I’m thinking of the money!” said the other, doggedly.
“Naturally, for it was yours. ‘‘Twas mine, ‘tis his,’ as Hamlet has it Great fellow, Hamlet! I don’t suppose that anyone ever drew a character wherein Gentleman was so distinctly painted as Hamlet. He combined all the grandest ideas of his class with a certain ‘disinvoltura’—a sort of high bred levity—that relieved his sternness, and made him much better company than such fellows as Laertes and Horatio.”
“When you saw luck turning, why didn’t you leave off?”
“Why not ask why the luck turned before I left off? That would be the really philosophic inquiry. Isn’t it chilly?”
“I’m not cold, but I’m greatly provoked.”
“So am I foryou; for I haven’t got enough to repay you, but trust me to arrange the matter in the morning. The landlord will see the thing with the eyes of his calling: he’ll soon perceive that the son-in-law of a man who travels with two carriages, and can’t speak one word of French, is one to be trusted. I mean him to cash a bill for us before I leave. Old Rep’s white hat and brown spencer are guarantees for fifty thousand francs in any city of Europe. There is a solvent vulgarity in the very creak of his shoes.”
“Oh! he’s not a very distinguished-looking person, certainly,” said Barnard, who now resented the liberty he had himself led the way to.
“There I differ with you;Icall him eminently distinguished, and I’d rather be able to ‘come’ that cravat tie, and have the pattern of the dark-green waistcoat with the red spots, than I’d have—what shall I say?—all the crisp bank paper I lost awhile ago. You are not going in, surely?” cried he, as the other rang violently at the hotel.
“Yes; I am very tired of this fooling. I wish you hadn’t lost that money.”
“Do you remember how it goes, Bob?
‘His weary song,The whole day long,Was still l’argent, l’argent, l’argent’
She is complaining that though the linnet is singing in the trees, and the trout leaping in the river, her tiresome husband could only liken them to the clink of the gold as it fell on the counter? Why, man, you’ll wake the dead if you ring in that fashion!”
“I want to get in.”
“Here comes the fellow at last; how disgusted he’ll be to find there’s not a five-franc piece between us.”
Scarcely was the door opened than Barnard passed in and left him without even a good-night.
CALVERT’S first care as he entered his room was to ascertain if his purse was there. It was all safe and untouched. He next lit a cigar, and opening his window, leaned out to smoke. It was a glorious autumn night, still, starry and cloudless. Had anyone from the street beneath seen him there, he might have said, “There is some wearied man of brain-labour, taking his hour of tranquil thought before he betakes himself to rest; or he is one of those contemplative natures who loves to be free to commune with his own heart in the silence of a calm night.” He looked like this, and perhaps—who knows if he were not nearer it than we wot of?
It was nigh daybreak before he lay down to sleep. Nor had he been fully an hour in slumber when he was awoke, and found Barnard, dressed in a morning gown and slippers, standing beside his bed.
“I say, Calvert, rub your eyes and listen to me. Are you awake?”
“Not very perfectly; but quite enough for anything you can have to say. What is it?”
“I am so fretted about that money.”
“Why you told me that last night,” said Calvert, addressing himself, as it were, again to sleep.
“Oh, its all very fine and very philosophic to be indifferent about another man’s ‘tin;’ but I tell you I don’t know what to do, what to say about it I’m not six weeks married, and it’s rather early to come to rows and altercations with a father-in-law.”
“Address him to me. Say ‘Go to Calvert—he’ll talk to you.’ Do that like a good fellow and go to bed. Good night.”
“I’ll not stand this sort of thing, Calvert. I’m no going to lose my money and be laughed at too!”
“You’ll not stand what?” cried Calvert, sitting up in bed, and looking now thoroughly awake.
“I mean,” said the other, doggedly, “you have got me into a confounded scrape, and you are bound to get me out of it.”
“That is speaking like a man of sense. It is what I intend to do; but can’t we sleep over it first? I want what the old ladies call my ‘natural rest.’”
“There’s no time for that. The old governor is always pottering about by six o’clock, and it’s just as likely, as the landlord talks English, he’ll be down by way of gossiping with him, and ask if the bill is settled.”
“What an old beast he must be. I wonder you could have married into such a vulgar set.”
“If you have nothing to say but abuse of my connections, I am not going to waste any more time here.”
“There, that’s a dear fellow; go to bed now, and call me somewhere towards four in the afternoon.”
“This is rather more than a joke.”
“To be sure it is, man; it is dead sleepiness. Goodnight.”
“I see you have found your purse—how much had you in it?”
“Count it, if you’re curious,” said Calvert, drowsily.
“Fifty-four Napoleons and a half,” said the other, slowly. “Look ye, Calvert, I’m going to impound this. It’s a sorry instalment, but, as far as it goes—”
“Take it, old fellow, and leave me quiet.”
“One word more, Calvert,” said Barnard, seriously. “I cannot muster courage to meet old Rep this morning, and if you like to start at once and settle this affair you have in Switzerland, I’m ready, but it must be done instanter.”
“All right; I shall be ready within an hour. Tell the porter to send my bath up at once, and order coffee by the time you’ll be dressed.”
There was very little trace of sleep about Calvert’s face now, as, springing from his bed, he prepared for the road. With such despatch, indeed, did he proceed, that he was already in the coffee-room before his friend had descended.
“Shall we say anything to the landlord before we start, Calvert?” whispered he.
“Of course; send Signor Angelo, or Antonio, or whatever his name, here. The padrone, I mean,” said he to the waiter.
“He is called Luigi Filippo, Sir,” said the man indignantly.
“A capital name for a rogue. Let us have him here.”
A very burly consequential sort of man, marvellously got up as to beard, moustaches, and watch-chain, entered and bowed.
“Signor Luigi Filippo,” said Calvert, “my friend here—the son of that immensely wealthy mi Lordo up stairs—is in a bit of scrape; he had an altercation last night with a fellow we take to be an Austrian spy.”
The host spat out, and frowned ferociously.
“Just so; a dog of a Croat, I suspect,” went on Culvert; “at all events, he must put a bullet in him, and to do so, must get over the frontier beyond Como; we want therefore a little money from you, and your secrecy, till this blows over.”
The host bowed, and pursed up his lips like one who would like a little time for reflection, and at last said, “How much money, Signor?”
“What do you say, Bob? will a hundred Naps do, or eighty?”
“Fifty; fifty are quite enough,” cried Barnard.
“On a circular note, of course, Signor?” asked the host.
“No, a draft at six days on my friend’s father; mi Lordo means to pass a month here.”
“I don’t think I’ll do that, Calvert,” whispered Barnard; but the other stopped him at once with, “Be quiet; leave this to me.”
“Though payable at sight, Signor Luigi, we shall ask you to hold it over for five or six days, because we hope possibly to be back here before Saturday, and if so, we’ll settle this ourselves.”
“It shall be done, gentlemen,” said the host “I’ll go and draw out the bills, and you shall have the money immediately.”
“How I touched the fellow’s patriotism, Bob. It was the Austrian dodge stood us in stead, there. I know that I have jeopardised your esteem for me by the loss of that money last night; but do confess that this was a clever hit of mine.”
“It’s a bad business from beginning to end!” was however all that he could obtain from Barnard.
“Narrow-minded dog! he won’t see any genius in a man that owes him five shillings.”
“I wish it was only five shillings.”
“What an ignoble confession! It means this that your friendship depends on the rate of exchanges, and that when gold rises—But here comes Luigi Fillipo.
“Now, no squeamishness, but write your name firmly. ‘Cut boldly,’ said the auger, ‘and he cut it through.’ Don’t you remember that classic anecdote in your Roman history?”
It is a strange fact that the spirit of raillery, which to a dull man is, at first, but a source of irritation and fretfulness, will, when persevered in, become at last one of the most complete despotisms. He dreads it as a weapon which he cannot defend himself against; and he comes to regard it as an evidence of superiority and power. Barnard saw the dominion that the other exercised over him, but could not resist it.
“Where to now?” asked he, as they whirled rapidly along the road towards Monza.
“First of all, to Orta. There is an English family I want to see. Two prettier girls you can’t imagine—not that the news has any interest for you, poor caged mouse that you are—but I am in love with one of them. I forget which, but I believe it’s the one that won’t have me.”
“She’s right,” said Barnard, with a half smile.
“Well, I half suspect she is. I could be a charming lover, but I fear I’d make only a sorry husband. My qualities are too brilliant for every-day use. It is your dreary fellows, with a tiresome monotony of nature, do best in that melancholy mill they call marriage. You, for instance, ought to be a model ‘mari.’”
“You are not disposed to give me the chance, I think,” said Barnard, peevishly.
“On the contrary, I am preparing you most carefully for your career. Conjugal life is a reformatory. You must come to it as a penitent Now I’ll teach you the first part of your lesson; your wife shall supply the second.”
“I’d relish this much better if—”
“I had not lost that money, you were going to say. Out with it, man. When a fellow chances upon a witty thing, he has a right to repeat it; besides, you have reason on your side. A loser is always wrong. But after all, Bob, whether the game be war, or marriage, or a horse-race, one’s skill has very little to say to it Make the wisest combinations that ever were fashioned, and you’ll lose sometimes. Draw your card at hazard, and you’ll win. If you only saw the fellow that beat me t’other day in a girl’s affections—as dreary a dog as ever you met in your life, without manliness, without ‘go’ in him—and yet he wasn’t a curate. I know you suspect he was a curate.”
“If you come through this affair all right, what do you intend to turn to, Calvert?” said the other, who really felt a sort of interest in his fortunes.
“I have thought of several things: the Church—the Colonies—Patent Fuel—Marriage—Turkish Baths, and a Sympathy Society for Suffering Nationalities, with a limited liability to all who subscribe fifty pounds and upwards.”
“But, seriously, have you any plans?”
“Ten thousand plans! I have plans enough to ruin all Threadneedle Street; but what use are plans? What’s the good of an architect in a land were there are no bricks, no mortar, and no timber? When I’ve shot Graham, I’ve a plan how to make my escape out of Switzerland; but, beyond that, nothing; not one step, I promise you. See, yonder is Monte Rosa; how grand he looks in the still calm air of the morning. What a gentleman a mountain is! how independent of the changeful fortunes of the plains, where grass succeeds tillage, and what is barley to-day, may be a brick-field to-morrow; but the mountain is ever the same—proud and cold if you will, but standing above all the accidents of condition, and asserting itself by qualities which are not money-getting. I’d like to live in a land of mountains, if it were not for the snobs that come to climb them.”
“But why should they be snobs?”
“I don’t know; perhaps the mountains like it. There, look yonder, our road leads along that ledge till we reach Chiasso, about twelve miles off; do you think you can last that long without breakfast? There, there, don’t make that pitiful face; you shall have your beefsteak, and your chocolate, and your eggs, and all the other claims of your Anglo-Saxon nature, whose birthright it is to growl for every twenty-four hours, and ‘grub’ every two.”
They gained the little inn at Orta by the evening, and learned, as Calvert expected, that nothing had changed in his absence—indeed what was there to change—so long as the family at the villa remained in the cottage. All was to Calvert as he left it.
Apologising to his friend for a brief absence, he took boat and crossed the lake. It was just as they had sat down to tea that he entered the drawing-room.
If there was some constraint in the reception of him, there was that amount of surprise at his appearance that half masked it “You have been away, Mr. Calvert?” asked Miss Grainger.
“Yes,” said he, carelessly, “I got a rambling fit on me, and finding that Loyd had started for England, I grew fidgety at being alone, so I went up to Milan, saw churches and galleries, and the last act of a ballet; but, like a country mouse, got home-sick for the hard peas and the hollow tree, and hurried back again.”
After some careless talk of commonplaces he managed at last to secure the chair beside Florence’s sofa, and affected to take an interest in some work she was engaged at. “I have been anxious to see you and speak to you, Florry,” said he, in a low tone, not audible by the others. “I had a letter from Loyd, written just before he left. He has told me everything.”
She only bent down her head more deeply over her work, but did not speak.
“Yes; he was more candid than you,” continued he. “He said you were engaged—that is—that you had owned to him that you liked him, and that when the consent he hoped for would be obtained, you would be married.”
“How came he to write this toyou?” said she, with a slight tremor in her voice.
“In this wise,” said he, calmly. “He felt that he owed me an apology for something that had occurred between us on that morning; and, when making his excuses, he deemed he could give no better proof of frankness than by this avowal. It was, besides, an act of fairness towards one who, trusting to his own false light, might have been lured to delusive hopes.”
“Perhaps so,” said she, coldly.
“It was very right of him, very proper.”
She nodded.
“It was more—it was generous.”
“Heisgenerous,” said she, warmly.
“He had need be.”
“How do you mean, that he had need be?” asked she, eagerly.
“I mean this—that he will require every gift he has, and every grace, to outbalance the affection which I bear you—which I shall never cease to bear you. You prefer him. Now, you may regard me how you will—I will not consent to believe myself beaten. Yes, Florence, I know not only that I love you more than he does, but I love you with a love he is incapable of feeling. I do not wish to say one word in his dispraise, least of all to you, in whose favour I want to stand well; but I wish you—and it is no unfair request—to prove the affection of the two men who solicit your love.”
“I am satisfied with his.”
“You may be satisfied with the version your own imagination renders of it. You may be satisfied with the picture you have coloured for yourself; but I want you to be just to yourself, and just to me. Now if I can show you in his own handwriting—the ink only dried on the paper a day ago—a letter from him to me, in which he asks my pardon in terms so abject as never were wrung from any man, except under the pressure of a personal fear?”
“You say this to outrage me. Aunt Grainger,” cried she, in a voice almost a scream, “listen to what this gentleman has had the temerity to tell me. Repeat it now, Sir, if you dare.”
“What is this, Mr. Calvert? You have not surely presumed—”
“I have simply presumed, Madam, to place my pretensions in rivalry with Mr. Loyd’s. I have been offering to your niece the half of a very humble fortune, with a name not altogether ignoble.”
“Oh dear, Mr. Calvert!” cried the old lady, “I never suspected this. I’m sure my niece is aware of the great honour we all feel—at least I do most sensibly—that, if she was not already engaged—Are you ill, dearest? Oh, she has fainted. Leave us, Mr. Calvert Send Maria here. Milly, some water immediately.”
For more than an hour Calvert walked the little grass-plot before the door, and no tidings came to him from those within. To a momentary bustle and confusion, a calm succeeded—lights flitted here and there through the cottage. He fancied he heard something like sobbing, and then all was still and silent.
“Are you there, Mr. Calvert?” cried Milly, at last, as she moved out into the dark night air. “She is better now—much better. She seems inclined to sleep, and we have left her.”
“You know how it came on?” asked he in a whisper. “You know what brought it about?”
“No; nothing of it.”
“It was a letter that I showed her—a letter of Loyd’s to myself—conceived in such terms as no man of, I will not say of spirit, but a common pretension to the sense of gentleman, could write. Wait a moment, don’t be angry with me till you hear me out. We had quarrelled in the morning. It was a serious quarrel, on a very serious question. I thought, of course, that all young men, at least, regard these things in the same way. Well, he did not. I have no need to say more;hedid not, and consequently nothing could come of it. At all events, I deemed that the man who could not face an adversary had no right to brave a rival, and so I intimated to him. For the second time he differed with me, and dared in my own presence to prosecute attentions which I had ordered him to abandon. This was bad enough, but there was worse to come, for, on my return home from this, I found a letter from him in the most abject terms; asking my pardon—for what?—for my having insulted him, and begging me, in words of shameful humility, to let him follow up his courtship, and, if he could, secure the hand of your sister, Now she might, or might not accept my offer. I am not coxcomb enough to suppose I must succeed simply because I wish success; but, putting myself completely out of the question, could I suffer a girl I deemed worthy of my love, and whom I desired to make my wife, to fall to the lot of one so base as this? I ask you, was there any other course open to me than to show her the letter? Perhaps it was rash; perhaps I ought to have shown it first of all to Miss Grainger. I can’t decide this point. It is too subtle for me. I only know that what I did I should do again, no matter what the consequences might be.”
“And this letter, has she got it still?” asked Milly.
“No, neither she nor any other will ever read it now. I have torn it to atoms. The wind has carried the last fragment at this moment over the lake.”
“Oh dear; what misery all this is,” cried the girl in an accent of deep affliction. “If you knew how she is attached—” Then suddenly checking the harsh indiscretion of her words, she added, “I am sure you did all for the best, Mr. Calvert I must go back now. You’ll come and see us, or perhaps you’ll let me write to you, to-morrow.”
“I have to say good-bye, now,” said he, sadly. “I may see you all again within a week. It may be this is a good-bye for ever.”
He kissed her hand as he spoke, and turned to the lake, where his boat was lying.
“How amazed she’ll be to hear that she saw a letter—read it—held it in her hands,” muttered he, “but I’ll stake my life she’ll never doubt the fact when it is told to her by those who believe it.”
“You seem to be in rare spirits,” said Barnard when Calvert returned to the inn. “Have you proposed and been accepted?”
“Not exactly,” said the other, smiling, “but I have had a charming evening; one of those fleeting moments of that ‘vie de famille’ Balzac tells us are worth all our wild and youthful excesses.”
“Yes!” replied Barnard, scoffingly; “domesticity would seem to be your forte. Heaven help your wife, say I, if you ever have one.”
“You don’t seem to be aware how you disparage conjugal life, my good friend, when you speak of it as a thing in which men ofyourstamp are the ornaments. It would be a sorry institution if its best requirements were a dreary temperament and a disposition that mistakes moodiness for morality.”
“Good-night; I have had enough,” said the other, and left the room.
“What a pity to leave such a glorious spot on such a morning,” said Calvert, as he stood waiting while the post-horses were being harnessed. “If we had but been good boys, as we might have been—that is, ifyouhad not fallen into matrimony, andIinto a quarrel—we should have such a day’s fishing here! Yonder, where you see the lemon-trees hanging over the rock, in the pool underneath there are some twelve and fourteen ‘pounders,’ as strong as a good-size pike; and then we’d have grilled them under the chestnut-trees, and talked away, as we’ve done scores of times, of the great figure we were to make—I don’t know when or how, but some time and in some wise—in the world; astonishing all our relations, and putting to utter shame and confusion that private tutor at Dorking who would persist in auguring the very worst of us.”
“Is that the bill that you are tearing up? Let me see it What does he charge for that Grignolino wine and those bad cigars?” broke in Barnard.
“What do I know or care?” said Calvert, with a saucy laugh. “If you possessed a schoolboy’s money-box with a slit in it to hold your savings, there would be some sense in looking after the five-franc pieces you could rescue from a cheating landlord, and add to your store; but when you know in your heart that you are never the richer nor the better of the small economies that are only realised at the risk of an apoplexy and some very profane expressions, my notion is, never mind them—never fret about them.”
“You talk like a millionaire,” said the other contemptuously.
“It is all the resemblance that exists between us, Bob; not, however, that I believe Baron Rothschild himself could moralise over the insufficiency of wealth to happiness as I could. Here comes our team, and I must say a sorrier set of screws never tugged in a rope harness. Get in first I like to show all respect to the man who pays. I say, my good fellow,” cried he to the postilion, “drive your very best, for mi Lordo here is immensely rich, and would just as soon give you five gold Marengos as five francs.”
“What was it you said to him?” asked Barnard, as they started at a gallop.
“I said he must not spare his cattle, for we were running away from our creditors.”
“How could you—”
“How could I? What nonsense, man! besides, I wanted the fellow to take an interest in us, and, you see, so he has. Old Johnson was right; there are few pleasures more exhilarating than being whirled along a good road at the top speed of post-horses.”
“I suppose you saw that girl you are in love with?” said Barnard after a pause.
“Yes; two of them. Each of the syrens has got a lien upon my heart, and I really can’t say which of them holds the preference shares.’”
“Is there money?”
“Not what a great Croesus like yourself would call money, but still enough for a grand ‘operation’ at Hom-burg, or a sheep-farming exploit in Queensland.”
“You’re more ‘up’ to the first than the last”
“All wrong! Games of chance are to fellows like you, who must accept Fortune as they find her. Men ofmystamp mould destiny.”
“Well, I don’t know. So long as I have known you, you’ve never been out of one scrape without being half way into another.”
“And yet there are fellows who pay dearer for their successes than ever I have done for my failures.”
“How so? What do they do?”
“They marry! Ay, Bob, they marry rich wives, but without any power to touch the money, just as a child gets a sovereign at Christmas under the condition he is never to change it.”
“I must say you are a pleasant fellow to travel with.”
“So I am generally reputed, and you’re a lucky dog to catch me ‘in the vein,’ for I don’t know when I was in better spirits than this morning.”