Part 155 (1/2)
”If knowledge be power,” soliloquized Randal, ”ability is certainly good luck, as Miss Edgeworth shows in that story of Murad the Unlucky, which I read at Eton; very clever story it is, too. So nothing comes amiss to me. Violante's escape, which has cost me the count's L10,000, proves to be worth to me, I dare say, ten times as much. No doubt she'll have a hundred thousand pounds at the least. And then, if her father have no other child, after all, or the child he expects die in infancy, why, once reconciled to his Government and restored to his estates, the law must take its usual course, and Violante will be the greatest heiress in Europe. As to the young lady herself, I confess she rather awes me; I know I shall be henpecked. Well, all respectable husbands are. There is something scampish and ruffianly in not being henpecked.” Here Randal's smile might have harmonized well with Pluto's ”iron tears;” but, iron as the smile was, the serious young man was ashamed of it. ”What am I about,” said he, half aloud, ”chuckling to myself and wasting time, when I ought to be thinking gravely how to explain away my former cavalier courts.h.i.+p? Such a masterpiece as I thought it then! But who could foresee the turn things would take? Let me think; let me think. Plague on it, here she comes.”
But Randal had not the fine ear of your more romantic lover; and, to his great relief, the exile entered the room unaccompanied by Violante.
Riccabocca looked somewhat embarra.s.sed.
”My dear Leslie, you must excuse my daughter to-day; she is still suffering from the agitation she has gone through, and cannot see you.”
The lover tried not to look too delighted.
”Cruel!” said he; ”yet I would not for worlds force myself on her presence. I hope, Duke, that she will not find it too difficult to obey the commands which dispose of her hand, and intrust her happiness to my grateful charge.”
”To be plain with you, Randal, she does at present seem to find it more difficult than I foresaw. She even talks of--”
”Another attachment--Oh, heavens!”
”Attachment, pazzie! Whom has she seen? No, a convent! But leave it to me. In a calmer hour she will comprehend that a child must know no lot more enviable and holy than that of redeeming a father's honour. And now, if you are returning to London, may I ask you to convey to young Mr. Hazeldean my a.s.surances of undying grat.i.tude for his share in my daughter's delivery from that poor baffled swindler.”
It is noticeable that, now Peschiera was no longer an object of dread to the nervous father, he became but an object of pity to the philosopher, and of contempt to the grandee.
”True,” said Randal, ”you told me Frank had a share in Lord L'Estrange's very clever and dramatic device. My Lord must be by nature a fine actor,--comic, with a touch of melodrame! Poor Frank! apparently he has lost the woman he adored,--Beatrice di Negra. You say she has accompanied the count. Is the marriage that was to be between her and Frank broken off?”
”I did not know such a marriage was contemplated. I understood her to be attached to another. Not that that is any reason why she would not have married Mr. Hazeldean. Express to him my congratulations on his escape.”
”Nay, he must not know that I have inadvertently betrayed his confidence; but you now guess, what perhaps puzzled you before,--namely, how I came to be so well acquainted with the count and his movements. I was so intimate with my relation Frank, and Frank was affianced to the marchesa.”
”I am glad you give me that explanation; it suffices. After all, the marchesa is not by nature a bad woman,--that is, not worse than women generally are, so Harley says, and Violante forgives and excuses her.”
”Generous Violante! But it is true. So much did the marchesa appear to me possessed of fine, though ill-regulated qualities, that I always considered her disposed to aid in frustrating her brother's criminal designs. So I even said, if I remember right, to Violante.”
Dropping this prudent and precautionary sentence, in order to guard against anything Violante might say as to that subtle mention of Beatrice which had predisposed her to confide in the marchesa, Randal then hurried on, ”But you want repose. I leave you the happiest, the most grateful of men. I will give your courteous message to Frank.”
CHAPTER XII.
Curious to learn what had pa.s.sed between Beatrice and Frank, and deeply interested in all that could oust Frank out of the squire's goodwill, or aught that could injure his own prospects by tending to unite son and father, Randal was not slow in reaching his young kinsman's lodgings. It might be supposed that having, in all probability, just secured so great a fortune as would accompany Violante's hand, Randal might be indifferent to the success of his scheme on the Hazeldean exchequer.
Such a supposition would grievously wrong this profound young man.
For, in the first place, Violante was not yet won, nor her father yet restored to the estates which would defray her dower; and, in the next place, Randal, like Iago, loved villany for the genius it called forth in him. The sole luxury the abstemious aspirer allowed to himself was that which is found in intellectual restlessness. Untempted by wine, dead to love, unamused by pleasure, indifferent to the arts, despising literature save as means to some end of power, Randal Leslie was the incarnation of thought hatched out of the corruption of will.
At twilight we see thin airy spectral insects, all wing and nippers, hovering, as if they could never pause, over some sullen mephitic pool.
Just so, methinks, hover over Acheron such gnat-like, noiseless soarers into gloomy air out of Stygian deeps, as are the thoughts of spirits like Randal Leslie's. Wings have they, but only the better to pounce down,--draw their nutriment from unguarded material cuticles; and just when, maddened, you strike, and exulting exclaim, ”Caught, by Jove!”
wh-irr flies the diaphanous, ghostly larva, and your blow falls on your own twice-offended cheek.
The young men who were acquainted with Randal said he had not a vice! The fact being that his whole composition was one epic vice, so elaborately constructed that it had not an episode which a critic could call irrelevant. Grand young man!
”But, my dear fellow,” said Randal, as soon as he had learned from Frank all that had pa.s.sed on board the vessel between him and Beatrice, ”I cannot believe this. 'Never loved you'? What was her object, then, in deceiving not only you, but myself? I suspect her declaration was but some heroical refinement of generosity. After her brother's dejection and probable ruin, she might feel that she was no match for you. Then, too, the squire's displeasure! I see it all; just like her,--n.o.ble, unhappy woman!”
Frank shook his head. ”There are moments,” said he, with a wisdom that comes out of those instincts which awake from the depths of youth's first great sorrow,--”moments when a woman cannot feign, and there are tones in the voice of a woman which men cannot misinterpret. She does not love me,--she never did love me; I can see that her heart has been elsewhere. No matter,--all is over. I don't deny that I am suffering an intense grief; it gnaws like a kind of sullen hunger; and I feel so broken, too, as if I had grown old, and there was nothing left worth living for. I don't deny all that.”
”My poor, dear friend, if you would but believe--”
”I don't want to believe anything, except that I have been a great fool.