without waiting for a further greeting. "I suppose, now that your marriage is publicly announced, Frank, it need no longer be a tabooed subject between us, and that you will receive my congratulations."
My first impulse was to a.s.sure him that the announcement was unauthorised so far as I was concerned, but the prospect of the impending interview with Ursula restrained me, and I felt completely at a loss. "Don"t you think, Grandon," I said, "that I should have told you as much as gossip tells the public, had I felt myself ent.i.tled to do so?
I only ask you to trust me for another twenty-four hours, and I will tell you everything."
Grandon looked stern. "You are bound not to allow the report to go one moment uncontradicted if there is nothing in it; and if there is, you are now equally bound to acknowledge it."
"Surely," I said, in rather a piqued tone, "Broadhem is as much interested in the matter as you are, and he is satisfied with my conduct."
"I tell you fairly I am not," said Grandon. "You will do Lady Ursula a great injustice, and yourself a great injury, if you persist in a course which is distinctly dishonourable."
At that moment who should come swaggering across the lobby where we happened to be standing but Larkington and d.i.c.k Helter! "Well, Frank, when is it to be?" said the latter. "You were determined to take the world by surprise, and I must congratulate you on your success."
"Thanks," said I, calmly, for I was smarting under Grandon"s last words: "the day is not yet fixed. What between Lady Broadhem"s scruples about Lent and some arrangements I had to make in Ireland, there has been a good deal of delay, but I think," I went on, with a slight simper, "that it has nearly come to an end."
"There," said I to Grandon, when they had favoured me with a few _ba.n.a.lites_, and pa.s.sed on, "that is explicit enough, surely; will that satisfy you, or do you like this style better?" and I turned to receive Bower and Sc.r.a.per, who generally hunt tufts and scandal in couples, and were advancing towards us with much _empress.e.m.e.nt_.
"My dear Lord Frank, charmed to see you; no wonder you are looking beaming, for you are the luckiest man in London," said Bower.
"How so?" said I, looking unconscious.
"Come, come," said Sc.r.a.per, and he winked at me respectfully; "we have known all about it for the last two months. I got it out of Lord Broadhem very early in the day."
"Then you got a most deliberate and atrocious fabrication, for I suppose you mean the report of my marriage to his sister, and I beg you will contradict it most emphatically whenever you hear it," said I, very stiffly. And I walked on into the House, leaving Grandon more petrified than the two little toadies I had snubbed. I can generally listen to Gladstone when he is engaged in keeping the House in suspense over the results of his arithmetical calculations; but the relative merits of a reduction of the tax on tea and on malt fell flat on my ears that evening, and even the consideration of twopence in the pound off the income-tax failed to exercise that soothing influence on my mind which it seemed to produce on those around. I looked in vain for Grandon; his accustomed seat remained empty, and I felt deeply penitent and miserable. What is there in my nature that prompts me, when I am trying to act honestly and n.o.bly, to be impracticable and perverse? Grandon could not know the extent of the complication in which I am involved, and was right in saying what he did; yet I could no more at the moment help resenting it as I did, than a man in a pa.s.sion who is struck can help returning the blow. Then the fertility and readiness of invention which the demon of perverseness that haunts me invariably displays, fairly puzzles me. And you too, I thought, as I looked up and saw little Sc.r.a.per whispering eagerly to d.i.c.k Helter, who was regarding me with a bewildered look, quite unconscious that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had become poetical in regard to rags, and was announcing that we were about
"To serve as model for the mighty world, And be the fair beginning of a time,"
--"ah," thought I, as I gazed on that brilliant and ingenious orator, "he is the only man in the House, who, if he was in such a mess as I am, would find a way out of it."
My first impulse on the following morning, before going to Grosvenor Square, was to go and apologise to Grandon; and I had an additional reason for doing so after reading the following paragraph in the "Morning Post":--
"The Earl and Countess of Whitechapel had the honour of entertaining at dinner last night the Marquess and Marchioness of Scilly, the Countess (Dowager) of Broadhem, the Earl of Broadhem and Lady Ursula Newlyte, Mr and Lady Jane Helter, Lord Grandon, the Honourable Spiffington Goldtip, and Mr Sc.r.a.per."
To have made it thoroughly unlucky I ought to have been there as a thirteenth. As it is, I wonder what conclusion the company in general arrived at in reference to the affair in which I am so nearly interested, and I told them off in the order in which they must have gone in to dinner. The Scillys and Whitechapels paired off; Helter took down old Lady Broadhem; Broadhem took Lady Jane; Grandon, Lady Ursula; and Spiffy and Sc.r.a.per brought up the rear. I pictured the delight with which Helter would mystify Lady Broadhem, by allowing her to extract from him what he had heard first from me and then from Sc.r.a.per, and how Spiffy and Sc.r.a.per would each pretend to have the right version of the story, and be best informed on this important matter. All this was easy enough, but my imagination failed to suggest what probably pa.s.sed between Grandon and Ursula; so I screwed up my courage and determined to go up to Grandon"s room and find out We often used to breakfast together, and I sent up my servant to tell him to expect me. Under the circ.u.mstances I thought it right to give him the opportunity of refusing to see me, but I knew him too well to think that he would take advantage of it.
He was sitting at his writing-table looking pale and haggard, as I entered, and turned wearily towards me with an air of reserve very foreign to his nature.
"My dear Grandon," I said, "I have come to apologise to you for my unjustifiable conduct yesterday, but you cannot conceive the worry and annoyance to which I have been subject by the impertinent curiosity and unwarrantable interference of the world in my private affairs. When you told me I was acting dishonourably, an impulse of petulance made me forget what was due to Ursula, and answer my inquisitive friends as I did; but I am on my way to Grosvenor Square now, and will put matters straight in an hour."
"The mischief is done," said Grandon, gloomily, "and it is not in your power to undo it. Whatever may have been the motives by which you have been actuated--and far be it from me to judge them--you have caused an amount of misery which must last as long as those whom you have chosen as your victims live."
"I beseech you be more explicit," I said; "what happened last night?--I insist upon knowing."
"You know perfectly well that as you stand in no nearer relation to Lady Ursula than I do," and Grandon"s voice trembled, while his eye gleamed for a second with a flash of triumph, "you have no right to insist upon anything; but I have no objection to tell you that as Lady Ursula was quite in ignorance of any such report having currency as that which has now received a certain stamp of authority, by virtue of the conspiracy into which you seem to have entered with her mother and brother, she was overwhelmed with confusion at the congratulations which it seems the ladies heaped upon her after dinner last night, and finally fainted. Of course all London will be talking of it to-day, as the Helters went away early on purpose to get to Lady Mundane"s before Sc.r.a.per could arrive there with his version of the catastrophe."
"Did she tell you she did not care for me, Grandon?" said I, very humbly.
"She told me to forgive you, and love you as I used to, G.o.d help me!"
burst out Grandon, and he covered his face with his hands. "Frank," he said, "she is an angel of whom neither you nor I is worthy; but oh, spare her! Don"t, for G.o.d"s sake hold her up to the pity and curiosity of London. I would do anything on earth she told me; but what spell have you thrown over her that in spite of your heartless conduct she should still implore me to love and cherish you? How can I obey her in this when your acts are so utterly at variance with all that is n.o.ble and honourable? I have at least one cause for grat.i.tude," he continued, in a calmer tone, "and that is, that the doubt which would force itself upon me when I vainly tried to account for her conduct in accepting you so suddenly has been removed."
I had discovered what I wanted, for in spite of every effort to conceal it, I detected a mixture of jealousy and of triumph in Grandon"s last speech. Ursula, in her moment of agony, had unconsciously allowed him to perceive that he alone was loved, and had urged him still to love and cherish me, because as an irresponsible being she had thought me more than ever in need of sympathy and protection For a moment I wavered in my resolution. Should I open my heart and give my dearest friend a confidence which should justify me in his eyes, at the risk of destroying the project I had formed on that night when, walking home from my interview with Lady Broadhem, I had determined to devote my energies to the happiness of others and not of myself? or should I maintain that flippant, heartless exterior which seemed for the time necessary to the success of my plans? As usual, my mind made itself up while I was doubting what to do, and in spite of myself I said jauntily, "Well, now that you know that she cares about you and not about me, I suppose you have nothing to do but to return her affection?"
"I have done that for some time," he replied, "but you know how perfectly hopeless our love is; and yet," and his voice deepened and his face flushed with enthusiasm, "I am happier loving hopelessly and knowing that I am loved, than I have ever been before. Forgive me, Frank, but I do not feel for you as I should have done had you behaved differently. You had no right to let me suppose that she had accepted you when the subject had never been breathed between you. Your conscience must tell you that you have acted in an unworthy manner towards us both."
"Grandon," I said, sententiously, "my conscience works on a system utterly incomprehensible to an ordinary intelligence, and I am quite satisfied with it. I will have a metaphysical discussion with you on the matter on some other occasion. Meantime you think Ursula has decided on preferring the ruin and disgrace of the Broadhem family to a _mariage de convenance_ either with me or any one else?"
"I did not know it was a question of disgrace," said Grandon, "and I am quite sure that Lady Ursula will do the right thing. I would rather not discuss the subject any further; we shall certainly not agree, and I am afraid that we might become more widely estranged than I should wish.
Here is breakfast. It was you who last asked me to bury this unhappy subject, it is my turn now to make the same request. I wish to heaven it had never arisen between us."
"What a lucky fellow you are!" said I, looking at him with the eye of a philosopher; "now you would never imagine yourself to be one of the most enviable men in London, with the most charming of women and the most devoted of friends ready to sacrifice themselves at your feet--she _incomprise_, I _incompris_."
"Don"t trifle," said Grandon, sternly, interrupting me; "my patience is not inexhaustible."
"Luckily mine is," said I, with my mouth full of grilled salmon, "otherwise I should not be the right stuff for a social missionary.
Apropos, you have never asked me what I have been doing in that line; nor told me what you thought of the long letter I wrote you from Flityville. Did you get me the answers to those questions?"
"No," he replied, "I must honestly tell you, Frank, that it pains me to discuss so serious a subject with one who makes so fair and earnest a pretence of having deep convictions as you do, and whose acts are so diametrically opposed to them; and now I must be off, for I have a committee of the House to attend."
"And I a rendezvous of a still more interesting character to keep;" and as I left Grandon I observed a shade of disgust and disappointment cross his face at my last speech. I always overdo it, I thought, as I walked towards Grosvenor Square, but Grandon ought to make allowances for me.
He has known me all my life, but it was reserved for us both to be in love with the same woman to bring out the strong points in each of us.
Lavater says you never know whether a man is your friend until you have divided an inheritance with him; but it is a much more ticklish thing to go halves in a woman"s love. Never mind, I will astonish them both yet.
Now then, to begin with her; and I boldly knocked at the door. I found Broadhem in his own little den.
"It is all right," he said, as I entered; "I have told Ursula you are coming, and she will see you in the drawing-room."
I had not been for two minutes alone with Lady Ursula since we parted at d.i.c.kiefield; indeed, when it is remembered that my whole intercourse with her upon that occasion extended over little more than twenty-four hours, and that we had never been on any other terms since than those of the most casual acquaintances, the embarra.s.sing nature of the impending interview presented itself to me in a somewhat unpleasant aspect. Now that it had come to the point, I could not make up my mind exactly what to say. I tried to collect my ideas and go over the history of the events which had resulted in the present predicament. Why was I in the singular position of having to make a special appointment with a young lady with whom I was desperately in love, whom I knew but slightly, but who supposed me to be mad, for the purpose of asking her, first, whether she considered herself engaged to be married to me or not; and secondly, if not, whether she would have any objection to the world supposing that such was the case? Now my readers will remember that the sudden impulse which induced me in the first instance to delude Lady Broadhem into believing that Lady Ursula had accepted me, arose from the desire to save her from the tender mercies of Chundango. Lady Ursula had in fact owed the repose she had enjoyed for the last two months entirely to her supposed engagement to me. The moment that is at an end, her fate becomes miserable. If she will but consider herself drowning, and me the straw, I shall only be too happy to be clutched. If I cannot propose myself as a husband, I will at least suggest that she should regard me in the light of a straw.
I had got thus far when I found myself in her presence. She looked very pale, and there was an expression of decision about the corners of her mouth which I had not before remarked. It did not detract from its sweetness, nor did the slight tremor of the upper lip as she greeted me detract from its force. It is a great mistake to suppose that a tremor of the lip denotes weakness; on the contrary, it often arises from a concentration of nervous energy. I am not quite so sure about a tremor of the knees. That was what I suffered from at the moment, together with a very considerable palpitation of the heart. Now the difficulty at such a moment is to know how to begin. I have often heard men say that when they have obtained an interview with a great statesman for the purpose of asking a favour, and he waits for them to begin without helping them out with a word, they have experienced this difficulty. That arises from the consciousness that they are sacrificing their self-respect to their "career." If they would never go near a statesman except when they wanted to confer a favour upon him, they would have no difficulty in finding words. Fortunately the great majority of our public _employes_ are not yet hardened beggars like the Neapolitans, and are not, like them, dead to any sentiment of shame upon these occasions, though it is to be feared that they will soon become so. The responsibility of demoralising the servants of the public lies entirely with the heads of the departments. In proportion as these gentlemen are not ashamed of sacrificing their subordinates in order to keep themselves in office, will those subordinates become as unblushing place-hunters as their masters are place-keepers. Once accustom a man to being a scapegoat, and you destroy at a blow his respect for himself and for the man who offers him up. I could become very eloquent upon this subject, if I was not afraid of keeping Ursula waiting. There are few men who need having their duties pointed out to them more constantly than Cabinet Ministers.
Attacks in the House of Commons do them no good, as they are generally the result of party tactics, and spring from as unworthy a motive as does the defence. Men who have got place do not pay much attention to attacks from men who want it. Then, as I said before, the Church utterly ignores its duties in this respect. Who ever heard of a bishop getting up and pointing out to her Majesty"s Ministers the necessity of considering the interests of the country before their own? It would be immediately supposed that he was bullying them, because he wanted to be "translated;" and this would be considered the only excuse for the same want of "good taste" which I, who am only desirous for their good, am now displaying. I put it to you, my lords, in all humility, do you ever get up in your places, not in the House of Peers, but in another House, and point out to the rulers of the country that no personal consideration should ever interfere with their doing the right thing at the right moment? Do you ever explain to the n.o.ble lords among whom you sit, that when a committee is chosen from both sides of the House to inquire into a simple question of right or wrong, the members of it are bound to vote upon its merits and according to their consciences, rather than according to the political parties to which they belong? and do you ever ask yourselves what you would do in the same circ.u.mstances? Do you ever tell the heads of departments that they are responsible for the _morale_ which pervades the special services over which they preside?
that the tone of honour, the amount of zeal and of disinterestedness which subordinates display must depend in a great measure upon the example set them by their chief? that you can no more expect an orchestra to play in tune with a leader devoid of a soul for music, than a department to work well without the soul of honour at its head? Do you ever tell the leaders of the party with which you "act" that it is wicked openly to collect funds to give candidates to bribe with at general elections? Do you ever faithfully tell these great men, that just in proportion as their position is elevated, so is their power for good or for evil? and when you see their responsibilities sit lightly upon them, do you ever take them to task for trifling with the highest interests of the country, and stifling the consciences of its servants?
If the fact that in your ecclesiastical capacity you are beholden to one or other of the political parties makes it delicate for you to attack your opponents, then let the Liberal Episcopacy jealously guard the honour of the Liberal Cabinets, and the Tory bishops watch over the public morality of their own side so soon as it shall come into office.
Of course I was not thinking of all this as I entered the drawing-room, but I had thought it often before, and feel impelled to mention it now.
What I actually did was to blush a good deal, stammer a good deal, and finally make the unpleasant discovery that that presence of mind which my readers will ere this have perceived I possess to an eminent degree, had entirely deserted me. I think this arose from the extreme desire I felt that Lady Ursula should not at that moment imagine that I was mad.
Perhaps, my reader, it may have happened to you to have to broach the most delicate of all topics to a young lady who regarded you in the light of a rather dangerous lunatic, and you can therefore enter into my feelings. I was not sorry to find myself blushing and stammering, as it might have the effect of rea.s.suring her, and making her feel that for the moment at least I was quite harmless.
"I am glad, Lord Frank," she said, observing my confusion, "that you have given me this opportunity of seeing you, as I am sure you would not willingly inflict pain, and should you find that you have unintentionally done so, will make all the reparation in your power."
At this moment I glanced significantly at Broadhem, who left the room.
"Unfortunately it too often happens, Lady Ursula," I said, "that it is necessary to inflict a temporary pain to avert what might become a permanent misery."
"I cannot conceive," replied she, "to what permanent misery, as affecting myself, you can allude, in which your intervention should be necessary, more especially when exhibited in a form which places me in such a false position. I need not say that the announcement which I saw for the first time in a newspaper caused me the greatest annoyance; but when I found afterwards that my mother, my brother, and even Lord Grandon, had heard it from your own lips many weeks before, and that in fact you had given my mother, under a promise that she would not allude to the subject to me, such a totally erroneous idea of what pa.s.sed at our interview at d.i.c.kiefield,--when I thought of all this, I could only account for it by the last revelation you made to me there."
She maintained her self-possession perfectly until she was obliged to allude to my insanity, then she dropped her eyelids, and the colour for the first time rushed into her cheeks as she shrank from touching on this delicate subject. At the moment I almost felt inclined to tell her that I was as sane as she was, but refrained, partly because I was not sure of it myself, partly because I did not think she would believe me, partly because, after all, it might be the best justification I could offer for my conduct, and partly because I was not quite ready to enter upon an explanation of the ruse by which I had hoped to save her from the persecution of her mother to marry Chundango. This suddenly reminded me of my idea that she was in the position of one drowning. I therefore said, in a careless way, for the purpose of showing her that her allusion to my insanity had produced no unfavourable impression upon me,----
"Lady Ursula, would you have any objection to regarding me in the light of a straw?"
"A what!" said Lady Ursula, in a tone in which amazement seemed blended with alarm.