Part 86 (2/2)
”Is he poor, or is he extravagant?”
”Not extravagant, and not positively poor, but dependent.”
”Then we have him,” said the count, composedly. ”If his a.s.sistance be worth buying, we can bid high for it. Sur mon ame, I never yet knew money fail with any man who was both worldly and dependent. I put him and myself in your hands.”
Thus saying, the count opened the door, and conducted his sister with formal politeness to her carriage. He then returned, reseated himself, and mused in silence. As he did so, the muscles of his countenance relaxed. The levity of the Frenchman fled from his visage, and in his eye, as it gazed abstractedly into s.p.a.ce, there was that steady depth so remarkable in the old portraits of Florentine diplomatist or Venetian Oligarch. Thus seen, there was in that face, despite all its beauty, something that would have awed back even the fond gaze of love,--something hard, collected, inscrutable, remorseless. But this change of countenance did not last long. Evidently thought, though intense for the moment, was not habitual to the man; evidently he had lived the life which takes all things lightly,--so he rose with a look of fatigue, shook and stretched himself, as if to cast off, or grow out of, an unwelcome and irksome mood. An hour afterwards, the Count of Peschiera was charming all eyes, and pleasing all ears, in the saloon of a high-born beauty, whose acquaintance he had made at Vienna, and whose charms, according to that old and never-truth-speaking oracle, Polite Scandal, were now said to have attracted to London the brilliant foreigner.
CHAPTER III.
The marehesa regained her house, which was in Curzon Street, and withdrew to her own room, to readjust her dress, and remove from her countenance all trace of the tears she had shed.
Half an hour afterwards she was seated in her drawing-room, composed and calm; nor, seeing her then, could you have guessed that she was capable of so much emotion and so much weakness. In that stately exterior, in that quiet att.i.tude, in that elaborate and finished elegance which comes alike from the arts of the toilet and the conventional repose of rank, you could see but the woman of the world and the great lady.
A knock at the door was heard, and in a few moments there entered a visitor, with the easy familiarity of intimate acquaintance,--a young man, but with none of the bloom of youth. His hair, fine as a woman's, was thin and scanty, but it fell low over the forehead, and concealed that n.o.blest of our human features. ”A gentleman,” says Apuleius, ”ought to wear his whole mind on his forehead.” The young visitor would never have committed so frank an imprudence. His cheek was pale, and in his step and his movements there was a languor that spoke of fatigued nerves or delicate health. But the light of the eye and the tone of the voice were those of a mental temperament controlling the bodily,--vigorous and energetic. For the rest, his general appearance was distinguished by a refinement alike intellectual and social. Once seen, you would not easily forget him; and the reader, no doubt, already recognizes Randal Leslie. His salutation, as I before said, was that of intimate familiarity; yet it was given and replied to with that unreserved openness which denotes the absence of a more tender sentiment.
Seating himself by the marchesa's side, Randal began first to converse on the fas.h.i.+onable topics and gossip of the day; but it was observable that while he extracted from her the current anecdote and scandal of the great world, neither anecdote nor scandal did he communicate in return.
Randal Leslie had already learned the art not to commit himself, nor to have quoted against him one ill-natured remark upon the eminent. Nothing more injures the man who would rise beyond the fame of the salons than to be considered backbiter and gossip; ”yet it is always useful,”
thought Randal Leslie, ”to know the foibles, the small social and private springs, by which the great are moved. Critical occasions may arise in which such a knowledge may be power.” And hence, perhaps (besides a more private motive, soon to be perceived), Randal did not consider his time thrown away in cultivating Madame di Negra's friends.h.i.+p. For, despite much that was whispered against her, she had succeeded in dispelling the coldness with which she had at first been received in the London circles. Her beauty, her grace, and her high birth had raised her into fas.h.i.+on, and the homage of men of the first station, while it perhaps injured her reputation as woman, added to her celebrity as fine lady. So much do we cold English, prudes though we be, forgive to the foreigner what we avenge on the native.
Sliding at last from these general topics into very well-bred and elegant personal compliment, and reciting various eulogies, which Lord this and the Duke of that had pa.s.sed on the marchesa's charms, Randal laid his hand on hers, with the license of admitted friends.h.i.+p, and said,
”But since you have deigned to confide in me, since when (happily for me, and with a generosity of which no coquette could have been capable) you, in good time, repressed into friends.h.i.+p feelings that might else have ripened into those you are formed to inspire and disdain to return, you told me with your charming smile, 'Let no one speak to me of love who does not offer me his hand, and with it the means to supply tastes that I fear are terribly extravagant,'--since thus you allowed me to divine your natural objects, and upon that understanding our intimacy has been founded, you will pardon me for saying that the admiration you excite amongst these grands seigneurs I have named only serves to defeat your own purpose, and scare away admirers less brilliant, but more in earnest. Most of these gentlemen are unfortunately married; and they who are not belong to those members of our aristocracy who, in marriage, seek more than beauty and wit,--namely, connections to strengthen their political station, or wealth to redeem a mortgage and sustain a t.i.tle.”
”My dear Mr. Leslie,” replied the marchesa,--and a certain sadness might be detected in the tone of the voice and the droop of the eye,--”I have lived long enough in the real world to appreciate the baseness and the falsehood of most of those sentiments which take the n.o.blest names. I see through the hearts of the admirers you parade before me, and know that not one of them would shelter with his ermine the woman to whom he talks of his heart. Ah,” continued Beatrice, with a softness of which she was unconscious, but which might have been extremely dangerous to youth less steeled and self-guarded than was Randal Leslie's,--”ah, I am less ambitious than you suppose. I have dreamed of a friend, a companion, a protector, with feelings still fresh, undebased by the low round of vulgar dissipation and mean pleasures,--of a heart so new, that it might restore my own to what it was in its happy spring. I have seen in your country some marriages, the mere contemplation of which has filled my eyes with delicious tears. I have learned in England to know the value of home. And with such a heart as I describe, and such a home, I could forget that I ever knew a less pure ambition.”
”This language does not surprise me,” said Randal; ”yet it does not harmonize with your former answer to me.”
”To you,” repeated Beatrice, smiling, and regaining her lighter manner; ”to you,--true. But I never had the vanity to think that your affection for me could bear the sacrifices it would cost you in marriage; that you, with your ambition, could bound your dreams of happiness to home.
And then, too,” said she, raising her head, and with a certain grave pride in her air,--”and then, I could not have consented to share my fate with one whom my poverty would cripple. I could not listen to my heart, if it had beat for a lover without fortune, for to him I could then have brought but a burden, and betrayed him into a union with poverty and debt. Now, it may be different. Now I may have the dowry that befits my birth. And now I may be free to choose according to my heart as woman, not according to my necessities, as one poor, hara.s.sed, and despairing.”
”Ah,” said Randal, interested, and drawing still closer towards his fair companion,--”ah, I congratulate you sincerely; you have cause, then, to think that you shall be--rich?”
The marchesa paused before she answered, and during that pause Randal relaxed the web of the scheme which he had been secretly weaving, and rapidly considered whether, if Beatrice di Negra would indeed be rich, she might answer to himself as a wife; and in what way, if so, he had best change his tone from that of friends.h.i.+p into that of love. While thus reflecting, Beatrice answered,
”Not rich for an Englishwoman; for an Italian, yes. My fortune should be half a million--”
”Half a million!” cried Randal, and with difficulty he restrained himself from falling at her feet in adoration. ”Of francs!” continued the marchesa.
”Francs! Ah,” said Randal, with a long-drawn breath, and recovering from his sudden enthusiasm, ”about L20,000? eight hundred a year at four per cent. A very handsome portion, certainly (Genteel poverty!” he murmured to himself. ”What an escape I have had! but I see--I see. This will smooth all difficulties in the way of my better and earlier project. I see),--a very handsome portion,” he repeated aloud,--”not for a grand seigneur, indeed, but still for a gentleman of birth and expectations worthy of your choice, if ambition be not your first object. Ah, while you spoke with such endearing eloquence of feelings that were fresh, of a heart that was new, of the happy English home, you might guess that my thoughts ran to my friend who loves you so devotedly, and who so realizes your ideal. Proverbially, with us, happy marriages and happy homes are found not in the gay circles of London fas.h.i.+on, but at the hearths of our rural n.o.bility, our unt.i.tled country gentlemen. And who, amongst all your adorers, can offer you a lot so really enviable as the one whom, I see by your blush, you already guess that I refer to?”
”Did I blush?” said the marchesa, with a silvery laugh. ”Nay, I think that your zeal for your friend misled you. But I will own frankly, I have been touched by his honest ingenuous love,--so evident, yet rather looked than spoken. I have contrasted the love that honours me with the suitors that seek to degrade; more I cannot say. For though I grant that your friend is handsome, high-spirited, and generous, still he is not what--”
”You mistake, believe me,” interrupted Randal. ”You shall not finish your sentence. He is all that you do not yet suppose him; for his shyness, and his very love, his very respect for your superiority, do not allow his mind and his nature to appear to advantage. You, it is true, have a taste for letters and poetry rare among your countrywomen.
He has not at present--few men have. But what Cimon would not be refined by so fair an Iphigenia? Such frivolities as he now shows belong but to youth and inexperience of life. Happy the brother who could see his sister the wife of Frank Hazeldean.”
The marchesa leaned her cheek on her hand in silence. To her, marriage was more than it usually seems to dreaming maiden or to disconsolate widow. So had the strong desire to escape from the control of her unprincipled and remorseless brother grown a part of her very soul; so had whatever was best and highest in her very mixed and complex character been galled and outraged by her friendless and exposed position, the equivocal wors.h.i.+p rendered to her beauty, the various debas.e.m.e.nts to which pecuniary embarra.s.sments had subjected her--not without design on the part of the count, who though grasping, was not miserly, and who by precarious and seemingly capricious gifts at one time, and refusals of all aid at another, had involved her in debt in order to retain his hold on her; so utterly painful and humiliating to a woman of her pride and her birth was the station that she held in the world,--that in marriage she saw liberty, life, honour, self-redemption; and these thoughts, while they compelled her to co-operate with the schemes by which the count, on securing to himself a bride, was to bestow on herself a dower, also disposed her now to receive with favour Randal Leslie's pleadings on behalf of his friend.
<script>