Part 62 (1/2)
”And you approve of this change, and welcome it?” asked she, derisively.
”I have never said so, madame. I foresee the hurricane, that's all. Men like Stubber are to be seen almost everywhere throughout Europe. They are a kind of declaration that, for the government and guidance of mankind, the possession of a good head and an honest heart is amply sufficient; that rulers neither need fourteen quarterings nor names coeval with the Roman Empire.”
”You have given me but another reason to detest him,” said the Princess, angrily. ”I don't think I shall receive him to-day.”
”But you want to speak with him about that villa; there is some formality to be gone through before a foreigner can own property here. I think you promised Glencore you would arrange the matter.”
She made no reply, and he continued: ”Poor fellow! a very short lease would suffice for his time; he is sinking rapidly. The conflict his mind wages between hope and doubt has hastened all the symptoms of his malady.”
”In such a struggle a woman has more courage than a man.”
”Say more boldness, Princess,” said Upton, slyly.
”I repeat, courage, sir. It is fear, and nothing but fear, that agitates him. He is afraid of the world's sneer; afraid of what society will think, and say, and write about him; afraid of the petty gossip of the millions he will never see or hear of. This cowardice it is that checks him in every aspiration to vindicate his wife's honor and his boy's birth.”
”_Si cela se peut_,” said Upton, with a very equivocal smile.
A look of haughty anger, with a flush of crimson on her cheek, was the only answer she made him.
”I mean that he is really not in a position to prove or disprove anything. He a.s.sumed certain 'levities'--I suppose the word will do--to mean more than levities; he construed indiscretions into grave faults, and faults into crimes. But that he did all this without sufficient reason, or that he now has abundant evidence that he was mistaken, I am unable to say, nor is it with broken faculties and a wandering intellect that he can be expected to review the past and deliver judgment on it.”
”The whole moral of which is: what a luckless fate is that of a foreign wife United to an English husband!”
”There is much force in the remark,” said Upton, calmly.
”To have her thoughts, and words, and actions submitted to the standard of a nation whose moral subtleties she could never comprehend; to be taught that a certain amount of gloom must be mixed up with life, just as bitters are taken for tonics; that _ennui_ is the sure type of virtue, and low spirits the healthiest condition of the mind,--these are her first lessons: no wonder if she find them hard ones.
”To be told that all the harmless familiarities she has seen from her childhood are dangerous freedoms, all the innocent gayeties of the world about her are snares and pitfalls, is to make existence little better than a penal servitude,--this is lesson the second. While, to complete her education, she is instructed how to a.s.sume a censorial rigidity of manner that would shame a duenna, and a condemnatory tone that a.s.sumes to arraign all the criminals of society, and pa.s.s sentence on them. How amiable she may become in disposition, and how suitable as a companion by this training, _you_, sir, and your countrymen are best able to p.r.o.nounce.”
”You rather exaggerate our demerits, my dear Princess,” said Upton, smiling. ”We really do _not_ like to be so very odious as you would make us.”
”You are excellent people, with whom no one can live,--that's the whole of it,” said she, with a saucy laugh. ”If your friend Lord Glencore had been satisfied to stay at home and marry one of his own nation, he might have escaped a deal of unhappiness, and saved a most amiable creature much more sorrow than falls to the lot of the least fortunate of her own country. I conclude you have some influence over him?”
”As much, perhaps, as any one; but even that says little.”
”Can you not use it, therefore, to make him repair a great wrong?”
”You had some plan, I think?” said he, hesitatingly.
”Yes; I have written to her to come down here. I have pretended that her presence is necessary to certain formalities about the sale of the villa. I mean that they should meet, without apprising either of them. I have sent the boy out of the way to Pontremoli to make me a copy of some frescoes there; till the success of my scheme be decided, I did not wish to make him a party to it.”
”You don't know Glencore,--at least as I know him.”
”There is no reason that I should,” broke she in. ”What I would try is an experiment, every detail of which I would leave to chance. Were this a case where all the wrong were on one side, and all the forgiveness to come from the other, friendly aid and interposition might well be needed; but here is a complication which neither you, nor I, nor any one else can pretend to unravel. Let them meet, therefore, and let Fate--if that be the name for it--decide what all the prevention and planning in the world could never provide for.”
”The very fact that their meeting has been plotted beforehand will suggest distrust.”
”Their manner in meeting will be the best answer to that,” said she, resolutely. ”There will be no acting between them, depend upon 't.”
”He told me that he had destroyed the registry of their marriage, nor does he know where a single witness of the ceremony could be found.”