"Have I not? I hope she is quite well, and her lively companion, Signora Venosta."
"They are not sick, sir; or at least they were not so last night when my wife and I had the pleasure to see them. Of course you have read Mademoiselle Cicogna"s book--a bright performance, sir, age considered."
"Certainly, I have read the book; it is full of unquestionable genius.
Is Mademoiselle writing another? But of course she is."
"I am not aware of the fact, sir. It may be predicated; such a mind cannot remain inactive; and I know from M. Savarin and that rising young man Gustave Rameau, that the publishers bid high for her brains considerable. Two translations have already appeared in our country.
Her fame, sir, will be world-wide. She may be another George Sand, or at least another Eulalie Grantmesnil."
Graham"s cheek became as white as the paper I write on. He inclined his head as in a.s.sent, but without a word. The Colonel continued:
"We ought to be very proud of her acquaintance, sir. I think you detected her gifts while they were yet unconjectured. My wife says so.
You must be gratified to remember that, sir--clear grit, sir, and no mistake."
"I certainly more than once have said to Mrs. Morley, that I esteemed Mademoiselle"s powers so highly that I hoped she would never become a stage-singer and actress. But this M. Rameau? You say he is a rising man. It struck me when at Paris that he was one of those charlatans with a great deal of conceit and very little information, who are always found in scores on the ultra-Liberal side of politics;-possibly I was mistaken."
"He is the responsible editor of Le Sens Commun, in which talented periodical Mademoiselle Cicogna"s book was first raised."
"Of course, I know that; a journal which, so far as I have looked into its political or social articles, certainly written by a cleverer and an older man than M. Rameau, is for unsettling all things and settling nothing. We have writers of that kind among ourselves--I have no sympathy with them. To me it seems that when a man says, "Off with your head," he ought to let us know what other head he would put on our shoulders, and by what process the change of heads shall be effected.
Honestly speaking, if you and your charming wife are intimate friends and admirers of Mademoiselle Cicogna, I think you could not do her a greater service than that of detaching her from all connection with men like M. Rameau, and journals like La Sens Commun."
The Colonel here withdrew his cigar from his lips, lowered his head to a level with Graham"s, and relaxing into an arch significant smile, said: "Start to Paris, and dissuade her yourself. Start--go ahead--don"t be shy--don"t seesaw on the beam of speculation. You will have more influence with that young female than we can boast." Never was England in greater danger of quarrel with America than at that moment; but Graham curbed his first wrathful impulse, and replied coldly:
"It seems to me, Colonel, that you, though very unconsciously, derogate from the respect due to Mademoiselle Cicogna. That the counsel of a married couple like yourself and Mrs. Morley should be freely given to and duly heeded by a girl deprived of her natural advisers in parents, is a reasonable and honourable supposition; but to imply that the most influential adviser of a young lady so situated is a young single man, in no way related to her, appears to me a dereliction of that regard to the dignity of her s.e.x which is the chivalrous characteristic of your countrymen--and to Mademoiselle Cicogna herself, a surmise which she would be justified in resenting as an impertinence."
"I deny both allegations," replied the Colonel serenely. "I maintain that a single man whips all connubial creation when it comes to gallantising a single young woman; and that no young lady would be justified in resenting as impertinence my friendly suggestion to the single man so deserving of her consideration as I estimate you to be, to solicit the right to advise her for life. And that"s a caution."
Here the Colonel resumed his regalia, and again gazed intent on the ceiling.
"Advise her for life! You mean, I presume, as a candidate for her hand."
"You don"t Turkey now. Well, I guess, you are not wide of the mark there, sir."
"You do me infinite honour, but I do not presume so far."
"So, so--not as yet. Before a man who is not without gumption runs himself for Congress, he likes to calculate how the votes will run.
Well, sir, suppose we are in caucus, and let us discuss the chances of the election with closed doors."
Graham could not help smiling at the persistent officiousness of his visitor, but his smile was a very sad one.
"Pray change the subject, my dear Colonel Morley--it is not a pleasant one to me; and as regards Mademoiselle Cicogna, can you think it would not shock her to suppose that her name was dragged into the discussions you would provoke, even with closed doors?"
"Sir," replied the Colonel, imperturbably, "since the doors are closed, there is no one, unless it be a spirit-listener under the table, who can wire to Mademoiselle Cicogna the substance of debate. And, for my part, I do not believe in spiritual manifestations. Fact is, that I have the most amicable sentiments towards both parties, and if there is a misunderstanding which is opposed to the union of the States, I wish to remove it while yet in time. Now, let us suppose that you decline to be a candidate; there are plenty of others who will run; and as an elector must choose one representative or other, so a gal must choose one husband or other. And then you only repent when it is too late. It is a great thing to be first in the field. Let us approximate to the point; the chances seem good-will you run? Yes or no?"
"I repeat, Colonel Morley, that I entertain no such presumption."
The Colonel here, rising, extended his hand, which Graham shook with constrained cordiality, and then leisurely walked to the door; there he paused, as if struck by a new thought, and said gravely, in his natural tone of voice, "You have nothing to say, sir, against the young lady"s character and honour?"
"I!--heavens, no! Colonel Morley, such a question insults me."
The Colonel resumed his deepest nasal ba.s.s: "It is only, then, because you don"t fancy her now so much as you did last year--fact, you are soured on her and fly off the handle. Such things do happen. The same thing has happened to myself, sir. In my days of celibacy, there was a gal at Saratoga whom I gallantised, and whom, while I was at Saratoga, I thought Heaven had made to be Mrs. Morley: I was on the very point of telling her so, when I was suddenly called off to Philadelphia; and at Philadelphia, sir, I found that Heaven had made another Mrs. Morley. I state this fact, sir, though I seldom talk of my own affairs, even when willing to tender my advice in the affairs of another, in order to prove that I do not intend to censure you if Heaven has served you in the same manner. Sir, a man may go blind for one gal when he is not yet dry behind the ears, and then, when his eyes are skinned, go in for one better. All things mortal meet with a change, as my sisters little boy said when, at the age of eight, he quitted the Methodys and turned Shaker. Threep and argue as we may, you and I are both mortals--more"s the pity. Good morning, sir (glancing at the clock, which proclaimed the hour of 3 P.M.),--I err--good evening."
By the post that day the Colonel transmitted a condensed and laconic report of his conversation with Graham Vane. I can state its substance in yet fewer words. He wrote word that Graham positively declined the invitation to Paris; that he had then, agreeably to Lizzy"s instruction, ventilated the Englishman, in the most delicate terms, as to his intentions with regard to Isaura, and that no intentions at all existed.
The sooner all thoughts of him were relinquished, as a new suitor on the ground, the better it would be for the young lady"s happiness in the only state in which happiness should be, if not found, at least sought, whether by maid or man.
Mrs. Morley was extremely put out by this untoward result of the diplomacy she had intrusted to the Colonel; and when, the next day, came a very courteous letter from Graham, thanking her gratefully for the kindness of her invitation, and expressing his regret briefly, though cordially, at his inability to profit by it, without the most distant allusion to the subject which the Colonel had brought on the tapis, or even requesting his compliments to the Signoras Venosta and Cicogna, she was more than put out, more than resentful,--she was deeply grieved.
Being, however, one of those gallant heroes of womankind who do not give in at the first defeat, she began to doubt whether Frank had not rather overstrained the delicacy which he said he had put into his "soundings."
He ought to have been more explicit. Meanwhile she resolved to call on Isaura, and, without mentioning Graham"s refusal of her invitation, endeavour to ascertain whether the attachment which she felt persuaded the girl secretly cherished for this recalcitrant Englishman were something more than the first romantic fancy--whether it were sufficiently deep to justify farther effort on Mrs. Morley"s part to bring it to a prosperous issue.
She found Isaura at home and alone; and, to do her justice, she exhibited wonderful tact in the fulfilment of the task she had set herself. Forming her judgment by manner and look--not words--she returned home, convinced that she ought to seize the opportunity afforded to her by Graham"s letter. It was one to which she might very naturally reply, and in that reply she might convey the object at her heart more felicitously than the Colonel had done. "The cleverest man is," she said to herself, "stupid compared to an ordinary woman in the real business of life, which does not consist of fighting and moneymaking."
Now there was one point she had ascertained by words in her visit to Isaura--a point on which all might depend. She had asked Isaura when and where she had seen Graham last; and when Isaura had given her that information, and she learned it was on the eventful day on which Isaura gave her consent to the publication of her MS. if approved by Savarin, in the journal to be set up by the handsome-faced young author, she leapt to the conclusion that Graham had been seized with no unnatural jealousy, and was still under the illusive glamoury of that green-eyed fiend. She was confirmed in this notion, not altogether an unsound one, when asking with apparent carelessness, "And in that last interview, did you see any change in Mr. Vane"s manner, especially when he took leave?"
Isaura turned away pale, and involuntarily clasping her hands-as women do when they would suppress pain-replied, in a low murmur, "His manner was changed."
Accordingly, Mrs. Morley sat down and wrote the following letter:
"DEAR MR. VANE,--I am very angry indeed with you for refusing my invitation--I had so counted on you, and I don"t believe a word of your excuse. Engagements! To b.a.l.l.s and dinners, I suppose, as if you were not much too clever to care about such silly attempts to enjoy solitude in crowds. And as to what you men call business, you have no right to have any business at all. You are not in commerce; you are not in Parliament; you told me yourself that you had no great landed estates to give you trouble; you are rich, without any necessity to take pains to remain rich, or to become richer; you have no business in the world except to please yourself: and when you will not come to Paris to see one of your truest friends--which I certainly am--it simply means, that no matter how such a visit would please me, it does not please yourself. I call that abominably rude and ungrateful.
"But I am not writing merely to scold you. I have something else on my mind, and it must come out. Certainly, when you were at Paris last year you did admire, above all other young ladies, Isaura Cicogna. And I honoured you for doing so. I know no other young lady to be called her equal. Well, if you admired her then, what would you do now if you met her? Then she was but a girl--very brilliant, very charming, it is true--but undeveloped, untested. Now she is a woman, a princess among women, but retaining all that is most lovable in a girl; so courted, yet so simple--so gifted, yet so innocent. Her head is not a bit turned by all the flattery that surrounds her. Come and judge for yourself. I still hold the door of the rooms destined to you open for repentance.
"My dear Mr. Vane, do not think me a silly match-making little woman, when I write to you thus, a coeur ouvert.
"I like you so much that I would fain secure to you the rarest prize which life is ever likely to offer to your ambition. Where can you hope to find another Isaura? Among the stateliest daughters of your English dukes, where is there one whom a proud man would be more proud to show to the world, saying, "She is mine!" where one more distinguished--I will not say by mere beauty, there she might be eclipsed--but by sweetness and dignity combined--in aspect, manner, every movement, every smile?
"And you, who are yourself so clever, so well read--you who would be so lonely with a wife who was not your companion, with whom you could not converse on equal terms of intellect,--my dear friend, where could you find a companion in whom you would not miss the poet-soul of Isaura?
Of course I should not dare to obtrude all these questionings on your innermost reflection, if I had not some idea, right or wrong, that since the days when at Enghien and Montmorency, seeing you and Isaura side by side, I whispered to Frank, "So should those two be through life," some cloud has pa.s.sed between your eyes and the future on which they gazed.
Cannot that cloud be dispelled? Were you so unjust to yourself as to be jealous of a rival, perhaps of a Gustave Rameau? I write to you frankly--answer me frankly; and if you answer, "Mrs. Morley, I don"t know, what you mean; I admired Mademoiselle Cicogna as I might admire any other pretty, accomplished girl, but it is really nothing to me whether she marries Gustave Rameau or any one else,"--why, then, burn this letter--forget that it has been written; and may you never know the pang of remorseful sigh, if, in the days to come, you see her--whose name in that case I should profane did I repeat it--the comrade of another man"s mind, the half of another man"s heart, the pride and delight of another man"s blissful home."
CHAPTER IV.
There is somewhere in Lord Lytton"s writings--writings so numerous that I may be pardoned if I cannot remember where-a critical definition of the difference between dramatic and narrative art of story, instanced by that marvellous pa.s.sage in the loftiest of Sir Walter Scott"s works, in which all the anguish of Ravenswood on the night before he has to meet Lucy"s brother in mortal combat is conveyed without the spoken words required in tragedy. It is only to be conjectured by the tramp of his heavy boots to and fro all the night long in his solitary chamber, heard below by the faithful Caleb. The drama could not have allowed that treatment; the drama must have put into words, as "soliloquy," agonies which the non-dramatic narrator knows that no soliloquy can describe.
Humbly do I imitate, then, the great master of narrative in declining to put into words the conflict between love and reason that tortured the heart of Graham Vane when, dropping noiselessly the letter I have just transcribed, he covered his face with his hands and remained--I know not how long--in the same position, his head bowed, not a sound escaping from his lips.
He did not stir from his rooms that day; and had there been a Caleb"s faithful ear to listen, his tread, too, might have been heard all that sleepless night pa.s.sing to and fro, but pausing oft, along his solitary floors.
Possibly love would have borne down all opposing seasonings, doubts, and prejudices, but for incidents that occurred the following evening. On that evening Graham dined en famille with his cousins the Altons. After dinner, the Duke produced the design for a cenotaph inscribed to the memory of his aunt, Lady Janet King, which he proposed to place in the family chapel at Alton.
"I know," said the Duke, kindly, "you would wish the old house from which she sprang to preserve some such record of her who loved you as her son; and even putting you out of the question, it gratifies me to attest the claim of our family to a daughter who continues to be famous for her goodness, and made the goodness so lovable that envy forgave it for being famous. It was a pang to me when poor Richard King decided on placing her tomb among strangers; but in conceding his rights as to her resting-place, I retain mine to her name,--Nostris liberis virtutis exemplar."
Graham wrung his cousin"s hand-he could not speak, choked by suppressed tears.
The d.u.c.h.ess, who loved and honoured Lady Janet almost as much as did her husband, fairly sobbed aloud. She had, indeed, reason for grateful memories of the deceased: there had been some obstacles to her marriage with the man who had won her heart, arising from political differences and family feuds between their parents, which the gentle meditation of Lady Janet had smoothed away. And never did union founded on mutual and ardent love more belie the a.s.sertions of the great Bichat (esteemed by Dr. Buckle the finest intellect which practical philosophy has exhibited since Aristotle), that "Love is a sort of fever which does not last beyond two years," than that between those eccentric specimens of a cla.s.s denounced as frivolous and artless by philosophers, English and French, who have certainly never heard of Bichat.
When the emotion the Duke had exhibited was calmed down, his wife pushed towards Graham a sheet of paper, inscribed with the epitaph composed by his hand. "Is it not beautiful," she said, falteringly--"not a word too much or too little?"