"Have you by chance a portrait of the gentleman, Miss Adister? Is there one anywhere?"
Caroline stood at her piano, turning over the leaves of a music-book, with a pressure on her eyelids. She was near upon being thrilled in spite of an astonishment almost petrifying: and she could nearly have smiled, so strange was his fraternal adoption, amounting to a vivification--of his brother"s pa.s.sion. He seemed quite naturally to impersonate Philip. She wondered, too, in the coolness of her alien blood, whether he was a character, or merely an Irish character. As to the unwontedness of the scene, Ireland was chargeable with that; and Ireland also, a little at his expense as a citizen of the polite world, relieved him of the extreme ridicule attached to his phrases and images.
She replied: "We have no portrait."
"May I beg to know, have you seen him?" said Patrick. Caroline shook her head.
"Is there no telling what he is like, Miss Adister?"
"He is not young."
"An old man!"
She had not said that, and she wished to defend her cousin from the charge of contracting such an alliance, but Patrick"s face had brightened out of a gloom of stupefaction; he a.s.sured her he was now ready to try his voice with hers, only she was to excuse a touch of hoa.r.s.eness; he felt it slightly in his throat: and could he, she asked him, wonder at it after his morning"s bath?
He vindicated the saneness of the bath as well as he was able, showing himself at least a good reader of music. On the whole, he sang pleasantly, particularly French songs. She complimented him, with an emphasis on the French. He said, yes, he fancied he did best in French, and he had an idea of settling in France, if he found that he could not live quietly in his own country.
"And becoming a Frenchman?"said Caroline.
"Why not?" said he. "I "m more at home with French people; they"re mostly of my creed; they"re amiable, though they weren"t quite kind to poor Lally Tollendal. I like them. Yes, I love France, and when I"m called upon to fix myself, as I suppose I shall be some day, I shan"t have the bother over there that I should find here."
She spoke reproachfully: "Have you no pride in the t.i.tle of Englishman?"
"I "m an Irishman."
"We are one nation."
"And it"s one family where the dog is pulled by the collar."
There was a retort on him: she saw, as it were, the box, but the lid would not open to a.s.sist her to it, and she let it go by, thinking in her patriotic derision, that to choose to be likened to the unwilling dog of the family was evidence of a want of saving pride.
Besides, she could not trust to the glibness of her tongue in a contest with a young gentleman to whom talking was as easy as breathing, even if sometimes his volubility exposed him to attack. A superior position was offered her by her being silent and critical. She stationed herself on it: still she was grieved to think of him as a renegade from his country, and she forced herself to say: "Captain O"Donnell talks in that manner."
"Captain Con is const.i.tutionally discontented because he"s a bard by nature, and without the right theme for his harp," said Patrick. "He has a notion of Erin as the unwilling bride of Mr. Bull, because her lord is not off in heroics enough to please her, and neglects her, and won"t let her be mistress of her own household, and she can"t forget that he once had the bad trick of beating her: she sees the marks. And you mayn"t believe it, but the Captain"s temper is to praise and exalt. It is.
Irony in him is only eulogy standing on its head: a sort of an upside down; a perversion: that"s our view of him at home. All he desires is to have us on the march, and he"d be perfectly happy marching, never mind the banner, though a bit of green in it would put him in tune, of course. The banner of the Cid was green, Miss Adister: or else it"s his pennon that was. And there"s a quant.i.ty of our blood in Spain too. We"ve watered many lands."
The poor young English lady"s brain started wildly on the effort to be with him, and to understand whether she listened to humour or emotion: she reposed herself as well as she could in the contemplation of an electrically-flashing maze, where every line ran losing itself in another.
He added: "Old Philip!" in a visible throb of pity for his brother; after the scrupulous dubitation between the banner and the pennon of the Cid!
It would have comforted her to laugh. She was closer upon tears, and without any reason for them in her heart.
Such a position brings the hesitancy which says that the sitting is at an end.
She feared, as she laid aside her music-books, that there would be more to come about Adiante, but he spared her. He bowed to her departing, and strolled off by himself.
CHAPTER VI. A CONSULTATION: WITH OPINIONS UPON WELSHWOMEN AND THE CAMBRIAN RACE
Later in the day she heard that he was out scouring the country on one of her uncle"s horses. She had too many distressing matters to think of for so singular a young man to have any other place than that which is given to the fantastical in a troubled and serious mind. He danced there like the whimsy sunbeam of a shaken water below. What would be his opinion of Adiante if he knew of her determination to sell the two fair estates she inherited from a grandmother whom she had venerated; that she might furnish arms to her husband to carry out an audacious enterprise likely to involve both of them in blood and ruin? Would he not bound up aloft and quiver still more wildly? She respected, quaint though it was, his imaginative heat of feeling for Adiante sufficiently to a.s.sociate him with her so far; and she lent him in fancy her own bewilderment and grief at her cousin"s conduct, for the soothing that his exaggeration of them afforded her. She could almost hear his outcry.
The business of the hour demanded more of her than a seeking for refreshment. She had been invited to join the consultation of her uncle with his lawyer. Mr. Adister tossed her another letter from Vienna, of that morning"s delivery. She read it with composure. It became her task to pay no heed to his loss of patience, and induce him to acquiesce in his legal adviser"s view which was, to temporise further, present an array of obstacles, and by all possible suggestions induce the princess to come over to England, where her father"s influence with her would have a chance of being established again; and it might then be hoped that she, who had never when under sharp temptation acted disobediently to his wishes at home, and who certainly would not have dreamed of contracting the abhorred alliance had she been breathing the air of common sense peculiar to her native land, would see the prudence, if not the solemn obligation, of retaining to herself these family possessions.
Caroline was urgent with her uncle to act on such good counsel. She marvelled at his opposition, though she detected the princ.i.p.al basis of it.
Mr. Adister had no ground of opposition but his own intemperateness. The Welsh grandmother"s legacy of her estates to his girl, overlooking her brothers, Colonel Arthur and Captain David, had excessively vexed him, despite the strong feeling he entertained for Adiante; and not simply because of the blow he received in it unexpectedly from that old lady, as the last and heaviest of the long and open feud between them, but also, chiefly, that it outraged and did permanent injury to his ideas of the proper balance of the s.e.xes. Between himself and Mrs. Winnion Rhys the condition of the balance had been a point of vehement disputation, she insisting to have it finer up to equality, and he that the naturally lighter scale should continue to kick the beam. Behold now the consequence of the wilful Welshwoman"s insanest of legacies! The estates were left to Adiante Adister for her sole use and benefit, making almost a man of her, and an unshackled man, owing no dues to posterity. Those estates in the hands of a woman are in the hands of her husband; and the husband a gambler and a knave, they are in the hands of the Jews--or gone to smoke. Let them go. A devilish malignity bequeathed them: let them go back to their infernal origin. And when they were gone, his girl would soon discover that there was no better place to come to than her home; she would come without an asking, and alone, and without much prospect of the intrusion of her infamous Hook-nose in pursuit of her at Earlsfont. The money wasted, the wife would be at peace. Here she would have leisure to repent of all the steps she had taken since that fatal one of the acceptance of the invitation to the Emba.s.sy at Vienna. Mr.
Adister had warned her both against her going and against the influence of her friend Lady Wenchester, our Amba.s.sadress there, another Welsh woman, with the weathervane head of her race. But the girl would accept, and it was not for him to hold out. It appeared to be written that the Welsh, particularly Welsh women, were destined to worry him up to the end of his days. Their women were a composition of wind and fire. They had no reason, nothing solid in their whole nature. Englishmen allied to them had to learn that they were dealing with broomstick witches and irresponsible sprites. Irishwomen were models of propriety beside them: indeed Irishwomen might often be patterns to their English sisterhood.
Mr. Adister described the Cambrian ladies as a kind of daughters of the Fata Morgana, only half human, and deceptive down to treachery, unless you had them fast by their spinning fancy. They called it being romantic. It was the ante-chamber of madness. Mad, was the word for them. You pleased them you knew not how, and just as little did you know how you displeased them. And you were long hence to be taught that in a certain past year, and a certain month, and on a certain day of the month, not forgetting the hour of the day to the minute of the hour, and attendant circ.u.mstances to swear loud witness to it, you had mortally offended them. And you receive your blow: you are sure to get it: the one pa.s.sion of those women is for vengeance. They taste a wound from the lightest touch, and they nurse the venom for you. Possibly you may in their presence have had occasion to praise the military virtues of the builder of Carnarvon Castle. You are by and by pierced for it as hard as they can thrust. Or you have incidentally compared Welsh mutton with Southdown:--you have not highly esteemed their drunken Bards:--you have asked what the Welsh have done in the world; you are supposed to have slighted some person of their family--a tenth cousin!--anything turns their blood. Or you have once looked straight at them without speaking, and you discover years after that they have chosen to foist on you their idea of your idea at the moment; and they have the astounding presumption to account this misreading of your look to the extent of a full justification, nothing short of righteous, for their treachery and your punishment! O those Welshwomen!
The much-suffering lord of Earlsfont stretched forth his open hand, palm upward, for a testifying instrument to the plain truth of his catalogue of charges. He closed it tight and smote the table. "Like mother--and grandmother too--like daughter!" he said, and generalised again to preserve his dignity: "They"re aflame in an instant. You may see them quiet for years, but it smoulders. You dropped the spark, and they time the explosion."
Caroline said to Mr. Camminy: "You are sure you can give us the day?"
"All of it," he replied, apologising for some show of restlessness.
"The fact is, Miss Adister, I married a lady from over the borders, and though I have never had to complain of her yet, she may have a finale in store. It"s true that I love wild Wales."
"And so do I" Caroline raised her eyes to imagined mountains.
"You will pardon me, Camminy," said Mr. Adister.
The lawyer cracked his back to bow to the great gentleman so magnanimously humiliating himself. "Sir! Sir!" he said. "Yes, Welsh blood is queer blood, I own. They find it difficult to forgive; and trifles offend; and they are unhappily just as secretive as they are sensitive. The pangs we cause them, without our knowing it, must be horrible. They are born, it would seem, with more than the common allowance of kibes for treading on: a severe misfortune for them. Now for their merits: they have poetry in them; they are valiant; they are hospitable to teach the Arab a lesson: I do believe their life is their friend"s at need--seriously, they would lay it down for him: or the wherewithal, their money, their property, excepting the three-stringed harp of three generations back, worth now in current value sixpence halfpenny as a curiosity, or three farthings for firewood; that they"ll keep against their own desire to heap on you everything they have--if they love you, and you at the same time have struck their imaginations.
Offend them, however, and it"s war, declared or covert. And I must admit that their best friend can too easily offend them. I have lost excellent clients, I have never understood why; yet I respect the remains of their literature, I study their language, I attend their gatherings and subscribe the expenses; I consume Welsh mutton with relish; I enjoy the Triads, and can come down on them with a quotation from Catwg the Wise: but it so chanced that I trod on a kibe, and I had to pay the penalty.
There"s an Arabian tale, Miss Adister, of a peaceful traveller who ate a date in the desert and flung away the stone, which hit an invisible son of a genie in the eye, and the poor traveller suffered for it. Well, you commit these mortal injuries to the invisible among the Welsh. Some of them are hurt if you call them Welsh. They scout it as the original Saxon t.i.tle for them. No, they are Cymry, Cambrians! They have forgiven the Romans. Saxon and Norman are still their enemies. If you stir their hearts you find it so. And, by the way, if King Edward had not trampled them into the mire so thoroughly, we should hear of it at times even now. Instead of penillions and englyns, there would be days for fiery triplets. Say the worst of them, they are soundheaded. They have a ready comprehension for great thoughts. The Princess Nikolas, I remember, had a special fondness for the words of Catwg the Wise."
"Adiante," had murmured Caroline, to correct his indiscretion.
She was too late.
"Nikolas!" Mr. Adister thundered. "Hold back that name in this house, t.i.tle and all, if you speak of my daughter. I refuse admission to it here. She has given up my name, and she must be known by the one her feather-brained grandmother proposed for her, to satisfy her pleasure in a fine sound. English Christian names are my preference. I conceded Arthur to her without difficulty. She had a voice in David, I recollect; with very little profit to either of the boys. I had no voice in Adiante; but I stood at my girl"s baptism, and Adiante let her be. At least I saved the girl from the addition of Arianrod. It was to have been Adiante Arianrod. Can you credit it? Prince-pah! Nikolas? Have you a notion of the sort of prince that makes an English lady of the best blood of England his princess?"
The lawyer had a precise notion of the sort of prince appearing to Mr.
Adister in the person of his foreign son-in-law. Prince Nikolas had been described to him before, with graphic touches upon the quality of the reputation he bore at the courts and in the gambling-saloons of Europe.
Dreading lest his client"s angry heat should precipitate him on the prince again, to the confusion of a lady"s ears, Mr. Camminy gave an emphatic and short affirmative.
"You know what he is like?" said Mr. Adister, with a face of disgust reflected from the bare thought of the hideous likeness.
Mr. Camminy a.s.sured him that the description of the prince"s lineaments would not be new. It was, as he was aware, derived from a miniature of her husband, transmitted by the princess, on its flight out of her father"s loathing hand to the hearthstone and under his heel.
a.s.sisted by Caroline, he managed to check the famous delineation of the adventurer prince in which a not very worthy gentleman"s chronic fever of abomination made him really eloquent, quick to unburden himself in the teeth of decorum.
"And my son-in-law! My son-in-law!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Adister, tossing his head higher, and so he stimulated his amazement and abhorrence of the portrait he rather wondered at them for not desiring to have sketched for their execration of it, alluringly foul as it was: while they in concert drew him back to the discussion of his daughter"s business, reiterating prudent counsel, with a knowledge that they had only to wait for the ebbing of his temper.
"Let her be informed, sir, that by coming to England she can settle the business according to her wishes in one quarter of the time it would take a Commission sent out to her--if we should be authorised to send out one," said Mr. Camminy. "By committing the business to you, I fancy I perceive your daughter"s disposition to consider your feelings: possibly to a reluctance to do the deed unsanctioned by her father. It would appear so to a cool observer, notwithstanding her inattention to your remonstrances."
The reply was: "Dine here and sleep here. I shall be having more of these letters," Mr. Adister added, profoundly sighing.
Caroline slipped away to mark a conclusion to the debate; and Mr.