Part 37 (1/2)

”There is nothing trivial in the exercise in such a combination. I incline to think that beauty is almost the greatest of all the spectacles that Nature sets before us. The effect she has upon us is greater than that produced by any other influence. You are perhaps too young to have your mind awakened on such a subject----”

To hear this foolish wisdom pouring forth, while the listener felt at every breath how his own bosom thrilled with an emotion too deep to be put into words, with a pa.s.sion, hopeless, ridiculous, to which no one would accord any sympathy or comment but a laugh! Heaven and earth! and all because a fellow was some dozen years older, thinking himself a man, and you only a boy!

”----but you have a fine intelligence, and it can never be amiss for you to approach a great subject on its most elevated side. She is not much older than you are, Jock.”

”She is not so old as I am. She is three months younger than I am,”

cried Jock, in his gruffest voice.

”And yet she is a revelation,” said Mr. Derwent.w.a.ter. ”I feel that I am on the eve of a great crisis in my being. You have always been my favourite, my friend, though you are so much younger; and in this I feel we are more than ever sympathetic. Jock, to-morrow--to-morrow I am to see her, to tell her---- Come out on the balcony, there is no one there, and the moonlight and the pure air of night are more fit for such heart opening than this crowded scene.”

”What are you going to tell her?” said Jock, with his eyebrows meeting over his eyes and his back against the wall. ”If you think she'll listen to what you tell her! She likes Montjoie. It is not that he's rich and that, but she likes him, don't you know, better than any of us. Oh, talk about mysteries,” cried Jock, turning his head away, conscious of that moisture which half-blinded him, but which he could not get rid of, ”how can you account for that? She likes him, that fellow, better than either you or me!”

Better than Jock; far better than this man, his impersonation of n.o.ble manhood, whom the most levelling of all emotions, the more than Red Republican Love, had suddenly brought down to, nay, below, Jock's level--for not only was he a fool like Jock, but a hopeful fool, while Jock had penetrated the fulness of despair, and dismissed all illusion from his youthful bosom. The boy turned his head away, and the voice which he had made so gruff quavered at the end. He felt in himself at that moment all the depths of profound and visionary pa.s.sion, something more than any man ever was conscious of who had an object and a hope.

The boy had neither; he neither hoped to marry her nor to get a hearing, nor even to be taken seriously. Not even the remorse of a serious pa.s.sion rejected, the pain of self-reproach, the afterthought of pity and tenderness would be his. He would get a laugh, nothing more. That schoolboy, that brother of Lady Randolph's, who does not leave school for a year! He knew what everybody would say. And yet he loved her better than any one of them! MTutor startled, touched, went after him as Jock turned away, and linking his arm in his, said something of the kind which one would naturally say to a boy. ”My dear fellow, you don't mean to tell me----? Come, Jock! This is but your imagination that beguiles you. The heart has not learned to speak so soon,” MTutor said, leaning upon Jock's shoulder. The boy turned upon him with a fiery glow in his eyes.

”What were you saying about dancing?” he said. ”They seem to be making up that Lancers business again.”

CHAPTER XLVII.

NEXT MORNING.

”You have news to tell me, Bice mia?”

There was a faint daylight in the streets, a blueness of dawn as the ladies drove home.

”Have I? I have amused myself very much. I am not fatigued, no. I could continue as long--as long as you please,” Bice answered, who was sitting up in her corner with more bloom than at the beginning of the evening, her eyes s.h.i.+ning, a creature incapable of fatigue. The Contessa lay back in hers, with a languor which was rather adapted to her _role_ as a chaperon than rendered necessary by the fatigue she felt. If she had not been amused, she was triumphant, and this supplied a still more intoxicating exhilaration than that of mere pleasure.

”Darling!” she said, in her most expressive tone. She added a few moments after, ”But Lord Montjoie! He has spoken? I read it in his face----”

”Spoken? He said a great deal--some things that made me laugh, some things that were not amusing. After all he is perhaps a little stupid, but to dance there is no one like him!”

”And you go together--to perfection----”

”Ah!” said Bice, with a long breath of pleasure, ”when the people began to go away, when there was room! Certainly we deserted our other partners, both he and I. Does that matter in London? He says No.”

”Not, my angel, if you are to marry.”

”That was what he said,” said Bice, with superb calm. ”Now, I remember that was what he said; but I answered that I knew nothing of affairs--that it was to dance I wanted, not to talk; and that it was you, Madama, who disposed of me. It seemed to amuse him,” the girl said reflectively. ”Is it for that reason you kiss me? But it was he that spoke, as you call it, not I.”

”You are like a little savage,” cried the Contessa. ”Don't you care then to make the greatest marriage, to win the prize, to settle everything with no trouble, before you are presented or anything has been done at all?”

”Is it settled then?” said Bice. She shrugged her shoulders a little within her white cloak. ”Is that all?--no more excitement, nothing to look forward to, no tr-rouble? But it would have been more amusing if there had been a great deal of tr-rouble,” the girl said.

This was in the blue dawn, when the better portion of the world which does not go to b.a.l.l.s was fast asleep, the first pioneers of day only beginning to stir about the silent streets, through which now and then the carriage of late revellers like themselves darted abrupt with a clang that had in it something of almost guilt. Twelve hours after, the Contessa in her boudoir--with not much more than light enough to see the flushed and happy countenance of young Montjoie, who had been on thorns all the night and morning with a horrible doubt in his mind lest, after all, Bice's careless reply might mean nothing more than that fine system of drawing a fellow on--settled everything in the most delightful way.

”Nor is she without a sou, as perhaps you think. She has something that will not bear comparison with your wealth, yet something--which has been settled upon her by a relation. The Forno-Populi are not rich--but neither are they without friends.”

Montjoie listened to this with a little surprise and impatience. He scarcely believed it, for one thing; and when he was a.s.sured that all was right as to Bice herself, he cared but little for the Forno-Populi.

”I don't know anything about the sous. I have plenty for both,” he said, ”that had a great deal better go to you, don't you know. She is all I want. Bice! oh that's too foreign. I shall call her Bee, for she must be English, don't you know, Countess, none of your Bohem--Oh, I don't mean that; none of your foreign ways. They draw a fellow on, but when it's all settled and we're married and that sort of thing, she'll have to be out and out English, don't you know?”