Part 29 (1/2)
”I can't ask Kew, he is one of the family; he is going to marry Miss Newcome. It is no use asking him.”
All Clive's blood tingled at the idea that any man was going to marry Miss Newcome. He knew it before--a fortnight since, and it was nothing to him to hear it. He was glad that the growing darkness prevented his face from being seen. ”I am of the family, too,” said Clive, ”and Barnes Newcome and I had the same grandfather.”
”Oh, yes, old boy--old banker, the weaver, what was he? I forgot,” says poor Jack, kicking on Clive's bed, ”in that family the Newcomes don't count. I beg your pardon,” groans poor Jack.
They lapse into silence, during which Jack's cigar glimmers from the twilight corner where Clive's bed is; whilst Clive wafts his fragrance out of the window where he sits, and whence he has a view of Lady Anne Newcome's windows to the right, over the bridge across the little rus.h.i.+ng river, at the Hotel de Hollande hard by. The lights twinkle in the booths under the pretty lime avenues. The hum of distant voices is heard; the gambling-palace is all in a blaze; it is an a.s.sembly night, and from the doors of the conversation rooms, as they open and close, escape gusts of harmony. Behind on the little hill the darkling woods lie calm, the edges of the fir-trees cut sharp against the sky, which is clear with a crescent moon and the lambent lights of the starry hosts of heaven. Clive does not see pine-robed hills and s.h.i.+ning stars, nor think of pleasure in its palace yonder, nor of pain writhing on his own bed within a few feet of him, where poor Belsize was groaning. His eyes are fixed upon a window whence comes the red light of a lamp, across which shadows float now and again. So every light in every booth yonder has a scheme of its own: every star above s.h.i.+nes by itself; and each individual heart of ours goes on brightening with its own hopes, burning with its own desires, and quivering with its own pain.
The reverie is interrupted by the waiter, who announces M. le Vicomte de Florac, and a third cigar is added to the other two smoky lights.
Belsize is glad to see Florac, whom he has known in a thousand haunts.
”He will do my business for me. He has been out half a dozen times,”
thinks Jack. It would relieve the poor fellow's boiling blood that some one would let a little out. He lays his affair before Florac; he expects a message from Lord Dorking.
”Comment donc?” cries Florac; ”il y avait donc quelque chose! Cette pauvre pet.i.te Miss! Vous voulez tuer le pere, apres avoir delaisse la fille? Cherchez d'autres temoins, Monsieur. Le Vicomte de Florac ne se fait pas complice de telles lachetes.”
”By Heaven,” says Jack, sitting up on the bed, with his eyes glaring, ”I have a great mind, Florac, to wring your infernal little neck, and to fling you out of the window. Is all the world going to turn against me? I am half mad as it is. If any man dares to think anything wrong regarding that little angel, or to fancy that she is not as pure, and as good, and as gentle, and as innocent, by Heaven, as any angel there,--if any man thinks I'd be the villain to hurt her, I should just like to see him,” says Jack. ”By the Lord, sir, just bring him to me. Just tell the waiter to send him upstairs. Hurt her! I hurt her! Oh! I'm a fool! a fool! a d----d fool! Who's that?”
”It's Kew,” says a voice out of the darkness from behind cigar No. 4, and Clive now, having a party a.s.sembled, sc.r.a.pes a match and lights his candles.
”I heard your last words, Jack,” Lord Kew says bluntly, ”and you never spoke more truth in your life. Why did you come here? What right had you to stab that poor little heart over again, and frighten Lady Clara with your confounded hairy face? You promised me you would never see her. You gave your word of honour you wouldn't, when I gave you the money to go abroad. Hang the money, I don't mind that; it was on your promise that you would prowl about her no more. The Dorkings left London before you came there; they gave you your innings. They have behaved kindly and fairly enough to that poor girl. How was she to marry such a bankrupt beggar as you are? What you have done is a shame, Charley Belsize. I tell you it is unmanly and cowardly.”
”Pst,” says Florac, ”numero deux, voila le mot lache.”
”Don't bite your thumb at me,” Kew went on. ”I know you could thrash me, if that's what you mean by shaking your fists; so could most men. I tell you again--you have done a bad deed; you have broken your word of honour, and you knocked down Clara Pulleyn to-day as cruelly as if you had done it with your hand.”
With this rush upon him, and fiery a.s.sault of Kew, Belsize was quite bewildered. The huge man flung up his great arms, and let them drop at his side as a gladiator that surrenders, and asks for pity. He sank down once more on the iron bed.
”I don't know,” says he, rolling and rolling round, in one of his great hands, one of the bra.s.s k.n.o.bs of the bed by which he was seated. ”I don't know, Frank,” says he, ”what the world is coming to, or me either; here is twice in one night I have been called a coward by you, and by that little what-d'-you-call-'m. I beg your pardon, Florac. I don't know whether it is very brave in you to hit a chap when he is down: hit again, I have no friends. I have acted like a blackguard, I own that; I did break my promise; you had that safe enough, Frank, my boy; but I did not think it would hurt her to see me,” says he, with a dreadful sob in his voice. ”By--I would have given ten years of my life to look at her.
I was going mad without her. I tried every place, everything; went to Ems, to Wiesbaden, to Hombourg, and played like h.e.l.l. It used to excite me once, and now I don't care for it. I won no end of money,--no end for a poor beggar like me, that is; but I couldn't keep away. I couldn't, and if she had been at the North Pole, by Heavens I would have followed her.”
”And so just to look at her, just to give your confounded stupid eyes two minutes' pleasure, you must bring about all this pain, you great baby,” cries Kew, who was very soft-hearted, and in truth quite torn himself by the sight of poor Jack's agony.
”Get me to see her for five minutes, Kew,” cries the other, griping his comrade's hand in his; ”but for five minutes.”
”For shame,” cries Lord Kew, shaking away his hand, ”be a man, Jack, and have no more of this puling. It's not a baby, that must have its toy, and cries because it can't get it. Spare the poor girl this pain, for her own sake, and balk yourself of the pleasure of bullying and making her unhappy.”
Belsize started up with looks that were by no means pleasant. ”There's enough of this chaff I have been called names, and blackguarded quite sufficiently for one sitting. I shall act as I please. I choose to take my own way, and if any gentleman stops me he has full warning.” And he fell to tugging his mustachios, which were of a dark tawny hue, and looked as warlike as he had ever done on any field-day.
”I take the warning!” said Lord Kew. ”And if I know the way you are going, as I think I do, I will do my best to stop you, madman as you are! You can hardly propose to follow her to her own doorway and pose yourself before your mistress as the murderer of her father, like Rodrigue in the French play. If Rooster were here it would be his business to defend his sister; In his absence I will take the duty on myself, and I say to you, Charles Belsize, in the presence of these gentlemen, that any man who iusults this young lady, who persecutes her with his presence, knowing it can but pain her, who persists in following her when he has given his word of honour to avoid her, that such a man is----”
”What, my Lord Kew?” cries Belsize, whose chest began to heave.
”You know what,” answers the other. ”You know what a man is who insults a poor woman, and breaks his word of honour. Consider the word said, and act upon it as you think fit.”
”I owe you four thousand pounds, Kew,” says Belsize, ”and I have got four thousand on the bills, besides four hundred when I came out of that place.”
”You insult me the more,” cries Kew, flas.h.i.+ng out, ”by alluding to the money. If you will leave this place to-morrow, well and good; if not, you will please to give me a meeting. Mr. Newcome will you be so kind as to act as my friend? We are connexions, you know, and this gentleman chooses to insult a lady who is about to become one of our family.”