Two Years Ago, Volume I

"Why not laughing at him?"

"Poor thing; that's where it all is: she's just as anxious about his poetry as he is, and would write it just as well as he, I'll warrant, if she hadn't better things to do; and all her fuss is, that people should 'appreciate' him. He's always talking about appreciating, till I hate the sound of the word. How any woman can go on so after a man that behaves as he does! but we're all soft fools, I'm afraid, Doctor Thurnall." And Clara began a languishing look or two across the counter, which made Tom answer to an imaginary Doctor Heale, whom he heard calling from within.

"Yes, Doctor! coming this moment, Doctor! Good-bye, Miss Clara. I must hear more next time; you may trust me, you know; secret as the grave, and always your friend, and your lady's too, if you will allow me to do myself such an honour. Coming, Doctor!"

And Tom bolted through the glass door, till Miss Clara was safe on her way up the street.

"Very well," said Tom to himself. "Knowledge is power: but how to use it? To get into Mrs. Vavasour's confidence, and show an inclination to take her part against her husband? If she be a true woman, she would order me out of the house on the spot, as surely as a fish-wife would fall tooth and nail on me as a base intruder, if I dared to interfere with her sacred right of being beaten by her husband when she chooses. No; I must go straight to John Briggs himself, and bind him over to keep the peace; and I think I know the way to do it."

So Tom pondered over many plans in his head that day; and then went to Trebooze, and saw the sick child, and sat down to dinner, where his host talked loud about the Treboozes of Trebooze, who fought in the Spanish Armada—or against it; and showed an unbounded belief in the greatness and antiquity of his family, combined with a historic accuracy about equal to that of a good old dame of those parts, who used to say "her family comed over the water, that she knew; but whether it were with the Conqueror, or whether it were wi' Oliver, she couldn't exactly say!"

Then he became great on the subject of old county families in general, and poured out all the vials of his wrath on "that confounded upstart of a Newbroom, Lord Minchampstead," supplanting all the fine old blood in the country—"Why, sir, that Pentremochyn, and Carcarrow moors too (—good shooting there, there used to be), they ought to be mine, sir, if every man had his rights!" And then followed a long story; and a confused one withal, for by this time Mr. Trebooze had drunk a great deal too much wine, and as he became aware of the fact, became proportionately anxious that Tom should drink too much also; out of which story Tom picked the plain facts, that Trebooze's father had mortgaged Pentremochyn estate for more than its value, and that Lord Minchampstead had foreclosed; while some equally respectable uncle, or cousin, just deceased, had sold the reversion of Carcarrow to the same mighty Cotton Lord twenty years before. "And this is the way, sir, the land gets eaten up by a set of tinkers, and cobblers, and money-lending jobbers, who suck the blood of the aristocracy!" The oaths we omit, leaving the reader to pepper Mr. Trebooze's conversation therewith, up to any degree of heat which may suit his palate.

Tom sympathised with him deeply, of course; and did not tell him, as he might have done, that he thought the sooner such cumberers of the ground were cleared off, whether by an encumbered estates' act, such as we may see yet in England, or by their own suicidal folly, the better it would be for the universe in general, and perhaps for themselves in particular. But he only answered with pleasant effrontery—

"Ah, my dear sir, I am sure there are hundreds of good sportsmen who can sympathise with you deeply. The wonder is, that you do not unite and defend yourselves. For not only in the West of England, but in Ireland, and in Wales, and in the north, too, if one is to believe those novels of Currer Bell's and her sister, there is a large and important class of landed proprietors of the same stamp as yourself, and exposed to the very same dangers. I wonder at times that you do not all join, and use your combined influence on the Government."

"The Government? All a set of Whig traitors! Call themselves Conservative, or what they like. Traitors, sir! from that fellow Peel upwards—all combined to crush the landed gentry—ruin the Church—betray the country party—D'Israeli—Derby—Free trade—ruined, sir!—Maynooth—Protection—treason—help yourself, and pass the—you know, old fellow—"

And Mr. Trebooze's voice died away, and he slumbered, but not softly.

The door opened, and in marched Mrs. Trebooze, tall, tawdry, and terrible.

"Mr. Trebooze! it's past eleven o'clock!"

"Hush, my dear madam! He is sleeping so sweetly," said Tom, rising, and gulping down a glass, not of wine, but of strong ammonia and water. The rogue had put a phial thereof in his pocket that morning, expecting that, as Trebooze had said, he would be required to make a night of it,

She was silent; for to rouse her tyrant was more than she dare do. If awakened, he would crave for brandy and water; and if he got that sweet poison, he would probably become furious. She stood for half a minute; and Tom, who knew her story well, watched her curiously.

"She is a fine woman: and with a far finer heart in her than that brute. Her eyebrow and eye, now, have the true Siddons' stamp; the great white forehead, and sharp-cut little nostril, breathing scorn—and what a Siddons-like attitude!—I should like, madam, to see the child again before I go."

"If you are fit, sir," answered she.

"Brave woman; comes to the point at once, I am a poor doctor, madam, and not a country gentleman; and have neither money nor health to spend in drinking too much wine."

"Then why do you encourage him in it, sir? I had expected a very different sort of conduct from you, sir."

Tom did not tell her what she would not (no woman will) understand; that it is morally and socially impossible to escape from the table of a fool, till either he or you are conquered; and she was too shrewd to be taken in by commonplace excuses; so he looked her very full in the face, and replied a little haughtily, with a slow and delicate articulation, using his lips more than usual, and yet compressing them:—

"I beg your pardon, madam, if I have unintentionally displeased you: but if you ever do me the honour of knowing more of me, you will be the first to confess that your words are unjust. Do you wish me to see your son, or do you not?"

Poor Mrs. Trebooze looked at him, with an eye which showed that she had been accustomed to study character keenly, perhaps in self-defence. She saw that Tom was sober; he had taken care to prove that, by the way in which he spoke; and she saw, too, that he was a better bred man than her husband, as well as a cleverer. She dropped her eye before his; heaved something very like a sigh; and then said, in her curt, fierce tone, which yet implied a sort of sullen resignation—

"Yes; come up-stairs."

Tom went up, and looked at the boy again, as he lay sleeping. A beautiful child of four years old, as large and fair a child as man need see; and yet there was on him the curse of his father's sins; and Tom knew it, and knew that his mother knew it also.

"What a noble boy!" said he, after looking, not without honest admiration, upon the sleeping child, who had kicked off his bed-clothes, and lay in a wild graceful attitude, as children are wont to lie; just like an old Greek statue of Cupid, "It all depends upon you, madam, now."

"On me?" she asked, in a startled, suspicious tone.

"Yes. He is a magnificent boy: but—I can only give palliatives. It depends upon your care now."

"He will have that, at least, I should hope," she said, nettled.

"And on your influence ten years hence," went on Tom.

"My influence?"

"Yes; only keep him steady, and he may grow up a magnificent man. If not—you will excuse me—but you must not let him live as freely as his father; the constitutions of the two are very different."

"Don't talk so, sir. Steady? His father makes him drunk now, if he can; teaches him to swear, because it is manly—God help him and me!"

Tom's cunning and yet kind shaft had sped. He guessed that with a coarse woman like Mrs. Trebooze his best plan was to come as straight to the point as he could; and he was right. Ere half an hour was over, that woman had few secrets on earth which Tom did not know.

"Let me give you one hint before I go," said he at last. "Persuade your husband to go into a militia regiment."

"Why? He would see so much company, and it would be so expensive."

"The expense would repay itself ten times over. The company which he would see would be sober company, in which he would be forced to keep in order. He would have something to do in the world; and he'd do it well. He is just cut out for a soldier, and might have made a gallant one by now, if he had had other men's chances. He will find he does his militia work well; and it will be a new interest, and a new pride, and a new life to him. And meanwhile, madam, what you have said to me is sacred. I do not pretend to advise or interfere. Only tell me if I can be of use—how, when, and where—and command me as your servant."

And Tom departed, having struck another root; and was up at four the next morning (he never worked at night; for, he said, he never could trust after-dinner brains), drawing out a detailed report of the Pentremochyn cottages, which he sent to Lord Minchampstead with—

"And your lordship will excuse my saying, that to put the cottages into the state in which your lordship, with your known wish for progress of all kinds, would wish to see them is a responsibility which I dare not take on myself, as it would involve a present outlay of not less than £450. This sum would be certainly repaid to your Lordship and your tenants, in the course of the next three years, by the saving in poor-rates; an opinion for which I subjoin my grounds drawn from the books of the medical officer, Mr. Heale: but the responsibility and possible unpopularity, which employing so great a sum would involve, is more than I can, in the present dependent condition of poor-law medical officers, dare to undertake, in justice to Mr. Heale my employer, save at your special command. I am bound, however, to inform your lordship, that this outlay would, I think, perfectly defend the hamlets, not only from that visit of the cholera which we have every reason to expect next summer, but also from those zymotic diseases which (as your lordship will see by my returns) make up more than sixty-five per cent of the aggregate sickness of the estate."

Which letter the old Cotton Lord put in his pocket, rode into Whitbury therewith, and showed it to Mark Armsworth.

"Well, Mr. Armsworth, what am I to do?"

"Well, my Lord; I told you what sort of a man you'd have to do with; one that does his work thoroughly, and, I think, pays you a compliment, by thinking that you want it done thoroughly."

Lord Minchampstead was of the same opinion; but he did not say so. Few, indeed, have ever heard Lord Minchampstead give his opinion: though many a man has seen him act on it.

"I'll send down orders to my agent."

"Don't."

"Why, then, my good friend?"

"Agents are always in league with farmers, or guardians, or builders, or drain-tile makers, or attorneys, or bankers, or somebody; and either you'll be told that the work don't need doing; or have a job brewed out of it, to get off a lot of unsaleable drain-tiles, or cracked soil-pans; or to get farm ditches dug, and perhaps the highway rates saved building culverts, and fifty dodges beside. I know their game; and you ought, too, by now, my lord, begging your pardon."

"Perhaps I do, Mark," said his lordship with a chuckle.

"So, I say, let the man that found the fox, run the fox, and kill the fox, and take the brush home."

"And so it shall be," quoth my Lord Minchampstead.

CHAPTER IX.

"AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A SISTER?"

But what was the mysterious bond between La Cordifiamma and the American, which had prevented Scoutbush from following the example of his illustrious progenitor, and taking a viscountess from off the stage?

Certainly, any one who had seen her with him on the morning after Scoutbush's visit to the Mellots, would have said that, if the cause was love, the love was all on one side.

She was standing by the fireplace in a splendid pose, her arm resting on the chimney-piece, the book from which she had been reciting in one hand, the other playing in her black curls, as her eyes glanced back ever and anon at her own profile in the mirror. Stangrave was half sitting in a low chair by her side, half kneeling on the footstool before her, looking up beseechingly, as she looked down tyrannically.

"Stupid, this reciting? Of course it is! I want realities, not shams; life, not the stage; nature, not art."

"Throw away the book, then, and words, and art, and live!"

She knew well what he meant; but she answered as if she had misunderstood him.

"Thanks, I live already, and in good company enough. My ghost-husbands are as noble as they are obedient; do all which I demand of them, and vanish on my errands when I tell them. Can you guess who my last is? Since I tired of Egmont, I have taken Sir Galahad, the spotless knight. Did you ever read the Mort d'Arthur?"

"A hundred times."

"Of course!" and she spoke in a tone of contempt so strong that it must have been affected. "What have you not read! And what have you copied. No wonder that these English have been what they have been for centuries, while their heroes have been the Galahads, and their Homer the Mort d'Arthur."

"Enjoy your Utopia!" said he bitterly. "Do you fancy they acted up to their ideals? They dreamed of the Quest of the Sangreal: but which of them ever went upon it?"

"And does it count for nothing that they felt it the finest thing in the world to have gone on it, had it been possible? Be sure if their ideal was so self-sacrificing, so lofty, their practice was ruled by something higher than the almighty dollar."

"And so are some other men's, Marie," answered he reproachfully.

"Yes, forsooth;—when the almighty dollar is there already, and a man has ten times as much to spend every day as he can possibly invest in French cookery, and wines, and fine clothes, then he begins to lay out his surplus nobly on self-education, and the patronage of art, and the theatre—for merely aesthetic purposes, of course; and when the lust of the flesh has been satisfied, thinks himself an archangel, because he goes on to satisfy the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Christ was of old the model, and Sir Galahad was the hero. Now the one is exchanged for Goethe, and the other for Wilhelm Meister."

"Cruel! You know that my Goethe fever is long past. How would you have known of its existence if I had not confessed it to you as a sin of old years? Have I not said to you, again and again, show me the thing which you would have me do for your sake, and see if I will not do it!"

"For my sake? A noble reason! Show yourself the thing which you will do for its own sake; because it ought to be done. Show it yourself, I say; I cannot show you. If your own eyes cannot see the Sangreal, and the angels who are bearing it before you, it is because they are dull and gross; and am I Milton's archangel, to purge them with euphrasy and rue? If you have a noble heart, you will find for yourself the noblest Quest. If not, who can prove to you that it is noble?" And tapping impatiently with her foot, she went on to herself—

"'A gentle sound, an awful light!Three angels bear the holy Grail;With folded feet, in stoles of white,On sleeping wings they sail.Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!The spirit beats her mortal bars,As down dark tides, the glory slides,And star-like mingles with the stars.'

"Why, there was not a knight of the round table, was there, who did not give up all to go upon that Quest, though only one was found worthy to fulfil it? But now-a-days, the knights sit drinking hock and champagne, or drive sulky-wagons, and never fancy that there is a Quest at all."

"Why talk in these parables?"

"So the Jews asked of their prophets. They are no parables to my ghost-husband, Sir Galahad. Now go, if you please; I must be busy, and write letters."

He rose with a look, half of disappointment, half amused, and yet his face bore a firmness which seemed to say, "You will be mine yet." As he rose, he cast his eye upon the writing-table, and upon a letter which lay there: and as he did so, his cheek grew pale, and his brows knitted.

The letter was addressed to "Thomas Thurnall, Esq., Aberalva."

"Is this, then, your Sir Galahad?" asked he, after a pause, during which he had choked down his rising jealousy, while she looked first at herself in the glass, and then at him, and then at herself again, with a determined and triumphant air.

"And what if it be?"

"So he, then, has achieved the Quest of the Sangreal?"

Stangrave spoke bitterly, and with an emphasis upon the "he;" and—

"What if he have? Do you know him?" answered she, while her face lighted up with eager interest, which she did not care to conceal, perhaps chose, in her woman's love of tormenting, to parade.

"I knew a man of that name once," he replied, in a carefully careless tone, which did not deceive her; "an adventurer—a doctor, if I recollect—who had been in Texas and Mexico, and I know not where besides. Agreeable enough he was; but as for your Quest of the Sangreal, whatever it may be, he seemed to have as little notion of anything beyond his own interest as any Greek I ever met."

"Unjust! Your words only show how little you can see! That man, of all men I ever met, saw the Quest at once, and followed it, at the risk of his own life, as far at least as he was concerned with it:—ay, even when he pretended to see nothing. Oh, there is more generosity in that man's affected selfishness, than in all the noisy good-nature which I have met with in the world. Thurnall! oh, you know his nobleness as little as he knows it himself."

"Then he, I am to suppose, is your phantom-husband, for as long, at least, as your present dream lasts?" asked he, with white, compressed lips.

"He might have been, I believe," she answered carelessly, "if he had even taken the trouble to ask me."

"Marie, this is too much! Do you not know to whom you speak? To one who deserves, if not common courtesy, at least common mercy."

"Because he adores me, and so forth? So has many a man done; or told me that he has done so. Do you know that I might be a viscountess to-morrow, so Sabina informs me, if I but chose?"

"A viscountess? Pray accept your effete English aristocrat, and, as far as I am concerned, accept my best wishes for your happiness."

"My effete English aristocrat, did I show him that pedigree of mine which I have ere now threatened to show you, would perhaps be less horrified at it than you are."

"Marie, I cannot bear this! Tell me only what you mean. What care I for pedigree? I want you—worship you—and that is enough, Marie!"

"You admire me because I am beautiful. What thanks do I owe you for finding out so patent a fact? What do you do more to me than I do to myself?" and she glanced back once more at the mirror.

"Marie, you know that your words are false; I do more—"

"You admire me," interrupted she, "because I am clever. What thanks to you for that, again? What do you do more to me than you do to yourself?"

"And this, after all—"

"After what? After you found me, or rather I found you—you, the critic, the arbiter of the greenroom, the highly-organised do-nothings—teaching others how to do nothing most gracefully; the would-be Goethe who must, for the sake of his own self-development, try experiments on every weak woman whom he met. And I, the new phenomenon, whom you must appreciate to show your own taste, patronise to show your own liberality, develop to show your own insight into character. You found yourself mistaken! You had attempted to play with the tigress—and behold she was talons; to angle for the silly fish—and behold the fish was the better angler, and caught you."

"Marie, have mercy! Is your heart iron?"

"No; but fire, as my name shows:" and she stood looking down on him with a glare of dreadful beauty.

"Fire, indeed!"

"Yes, fire, that I may scorch you, kindle you, madden you, to do my work, and wear the heart of fire which I wear day and night!"

Stangrave looked at her startled. Was she mad? Her face did not say so; her brow was white, her features calm, her eye fierce and contemptuous, but clear, steady, full of meaning.

"So you know Mr. Thurnall?" said she, after a while.

"Yes; why do you ask?"

"Because he is the only friend I have on earth."

"The only friend, Marie?"

"The only one," answered she calmly, "who, seeing the right, has gone and done it forthwith. When did you see him last?"

"I have not been acquainted with Mr. Thurnall for some years," said Stangrave, haughtily.

"In plain words, you have quarrelled with him?"

Stangrave bit his lip.

"He and I had a difference. He insulted my nation, and we parted."

She laughed a long, loud, bitter laugh, which rang through Stangrave's ears.

"Insulted your nation? And on what grounds, pray?"

"About that accursed slavery question!"

La Cordifiamma looked at him with firm-closed lips a while.

"So then! I was not aware of this! Even so long ago you saw the Sangreal, and did not know it when you saw it. No wonder that since then you have been staring at it for months, in your very hands, played with it, admired it, made verses about it, to show off your own taste: and yet were blind to it the whole time! Farewell, then!"

"Marie, what do you mean?" and Stangrave caught both her hands.

"Hush, if you please. I know you are eloquent enough, when you choose, though you have been somewhat dumb and monosyllabic to-night in the presence of the actress whom you undertook to educate. But I know that you can be eloquent, so spare me any brilliant appeals, which can only go to prove that already settled fact. Between you and me lie two great gulfs. The one I have told you of; and from it I shrink. The other I have not told you of; from it you would shrink."

"The first is your Quest of the Sangreal."

She smiled assent, bitterly enough.

"And the second?"

She did not answer. She was looking at herself in the mirror; and Stangrave, in spite of his almost doting affection, flushed with anger, almost contempt, at her vanity.

And yet, was it vanity which was expressed in that face? No; but dread, horror, almost disgust, as she gazed with side-long, startled eyes, struggling, and yet struggling in vain, to turn her face from some horrible sight, as if her own image had been the Gorgon's head.

"What is it? Marie, speak!"

But she answered nothing. For that last question she had no heart to answer; no heart to tell him that in her veins were some drops, at least, of the blood of slaves. Instinctively she had looked round at the mirror—for might he not, if he had eyes, discover that secret for himself? Were there not in her features traces of that taint? And as she looked,—was it the mere play of her excited fancy,—or did her eyelid slope more and more, her nostril shorten and curl, her lips enlarge, her mouth itself protrude?

It was more than the play of fancy; for Stangrave saw it as well as she. Her actress's imagination, fixed on the African type with an intensity proportioned to her dread of seeing it in herself, had moulded her features, for the moment, into the very shape which it dreaded. And Stangrave saw it, and shuddered as he saw.

Another half minute, and that face also had melted out of the mirror, at least for Marie's eyes; and in its place an ancient negress, white-haired, withered as the wrinkled ape, but with eyes closed—in death. Marie knew that face well; a face which haunted many a dream of hers; once seen, but never forgotten since; for to that old dame's coffin had her mother, the gay quadroon woman, flaunting in finery which was the price of shame, led Marie when she was but a three years' child; and Marie had seen her bend over the corpse, and call it her dear old granny, and weep bitter tears.

Suddenly she shook off the spell, and looked round and down, terrified, self-conscious. Her eye caught Stangrave's; she saw, or thought she saw, by the expression of his face, that he knew all, and burst away with a shriek.