A Rent In A Cloud

“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 to you?” 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.”

“He is generous,” 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; he did 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 of your stamp 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, if you had not fallen into matrimony, and I into 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 of my stamp 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.”

CHAPTER X. A DAYBREAK BESIDE THE RHINE

THE day was just breaking over that wide flat beside the Rhine at Basle, as two men, descending from a carriage on the high road, took one of the narrow paths which lead through the fields, walking slowly, and talking to each other in the careless tone of easy converse.

“We are early, Barnard, I should say; fully half an hour before our time,” said Calvert, as he walked on first, for the path did not admit of two abreast. “What grand things these great plains are, traversed by a fine river, and spreading away to a far distant horizon. What a sense of freedom they inspire; how suggestive they are of liberty; don’t you feel that?”

“I think I see them coming,” said the other. “I saw a carriage descend the hill yonder. Is there nothing else you have to say – nothing that you think of, Harry?”

“Nothing. If it should be a question of a funeral, Bob, my funds will show how economically it must be done; but even if I had been richer, it is not an occasion I should like to make costly.”

“It was not of that I was thinking. It was of friends or relations.”

“My dear fellow, I have few relatives and no friends. No man’s executorship will ever entail less trouble than mine. I have nothing to leave, nor any to leave it to.”

“But these letters – the cause of the present meeting – don’t you intend that in case of – in the event of – ”

“My being killed. Go on.”

“That they should be given up to your cousin?”

“Nothing of the kind ever occurred to me. In the first place, I don’t mean to be shot; and in the second, I have not the very remotest intention of releasing the dear Sophy from those regrets and sorrows which she ought to feel for my death. Nay, I mean her to mourn me with a degree of affliction to which anxiety will add the poignancy.”

“This is not generous, Calvert.”

“I’m sure it’s not. Why, my dear friend, were I to detect any such weakness in my character, I’d begin to fancy I might end by becoming a poltroon.”

“Is that your man – he in the cloak – or the tall one behind him?” said Barnard, as he pointed to a group who came slowly along through a vineyard.

“I cannot say. I never saw Mr. Graham to my knowledge. Don’t let them be long about the preliminaries, Bob; the morning is fresh and the ground here somewhat damp. Agree to all they ask, distance and everything, only secure that the word be given by you. Remember that, in the way I’ve told you.”

As Calvert strolled listlessly along towards the river, Barnard advanced to meet the others, who, to the number of five, came now forward. Colonel Rochefort, Mr. Graham’s friend, and Barnard were slightly acquainted, and turned aside to talk to each other in confidence.

“It is scarcely the moment to hope for it, Mr. Barnard,” said the other, “but I cannot go on without asking, at least, if there is any peaceful settlement possible?”

“I fear not. You told me last night that all retraction by your friend of his offensive letter was impossible.”

“Utterly so.”

“What, then, would you suggest?”

“Could not Mr. Calvert be brought to see that it was he who gave the first offence? That, in writing, as he did, to a man in my friend’s position – ”

“Mere waste of time, colonel, to discuss this; besides, I think we have each of us already said all that we could on this question, and Calvert is very far from being satisfied with me for having allowed myself to entertain it There is really nothing for it but a shot.”

“Yes, Sir; but you seem to forget, if we proceed to this arbitrament, it is not a mere exchange of fire will satisfy my friend.”

“We are, as regards that, completely at his service; and if your supply of ammunition be only in proportion to the number of your followers, you can scarcely be disappointed.”

The colonel reddened deeply, and in a certain irritation replied: “One of these gentlemen is a travelling companion of my friend, whose health is too delicate to permit him to act for him; the other is a French officer of rank, who dined with us yesterday; the third is a surgeon.”

“To us it is a matter of perfect indifference if you come accompanied by fifty, or five hundred; but let us lose no more time. I see how I am trying my friend’s patience already. Ten paces, short paces, too,” began Barnard as he took his friend’s arm.

“And the word?”

“I am to give it.”

“All right; and you remember how?”

“Yes! the word is, One – two; at the second you are to fire.”

“Let me hear you say them.”

“One – two.”

“No, no; that’s not it. One-two – sharp; don’t dwell on the interval; make them like syllables of one word.”

“One-two.”

“Yes, that’s it; and remember that you cough once before you begin. There, don’t let them see us talking together. Give me a shake hands, and leave me.”

“That man is nervous, or I am much mistaken,” said Graham’s invalid friend to the colonel; and they both looked towards Calvert, who with his hat drawn down over his brows, walked lazily to his ground.

“It is not the reputation he has,” whispered the colonel. “Be calm, Graham; be as cool as the other fellow.”

The principals were now placed, and the others fell back on either side, and almost instantaneously, so instantaneously, indeed, that Colonel Rochefort had not yet ceased to walk, two shots rang out one distinctly before the other, and Graham fell.

All ran towards him but Calvert, who, throwing his pistol at his feet, stood calm and erect. For a few seconds they bent down over the wounded man, and then Barnard, hastening back to his friend, whispered, “Through the chest; it is all over.”

“Dead?” said the other.

He nodded, and taking his arm, said, “Don’t lose a moment; the Frenchman says you have not an instant to spare.”

For a moment Calvert moved as if going towards the others, then, as if with a changed purpose, he turned sharply round and walked towards the high road.

As Calvert was just about to gain the road, Barnard ran after him, and cried out, “Stop, Calvert, hear what these men say; they are crying out unfair against us. They declare – ”

“Are you an ass, Bob?” said the other, angrily. “Who minds the stupid speech of fellows whose friend is knocked over?”

“Yes, but I’ll hear this out,” cried Barnard.

“You’ll do so without me, then, and a cursed fool you are for your pains. Drive across to the Bavarian frontier, my man,” said he, giving the postilion a Napoleon, “and you shall have a couple more if you get there within two hours.”

With all the speed that whip and spur could summon, the beasts sped along the level road, and Calvert, though occasionally looking through the small pane in the back of the carriage to assure himself he was not pursued, smoked on unceasingly. He might have been a shade graver than his wont, and preoccupied too, for he took no notice of the objects on the road, nor replied to the speeches of the postilion, who, in his self-praise, seemed to call for some expression of approval.

“You are a precious fool, Master Barnard, and you have paid for your folly, or you had been here before this.”