Before that long caress was ended, close behind them there broke forth a low, plaintive cry, such as might be wrung from the bravest of delicate women, in her extremity of pain, when stricken by a heavy brutal hand.
The hot blood ebbed back in Guy Livingstone's veins, and froze at its fountain-head. His punishment had begun already. Before her face, white as the dress she wore, was revealed through a break in the dark green foliage of the camellias, he knew that he had trifled away his life's happiness, and lost Constance Brandon.
She came forward slowly. With a valiant effort she had shaken off the first feeling of faintness that had crept over her, and there was scarcely a trace of emotion left on her features—calm and pale as the Angel of Death.
Guy had risen, and stood still, with his head bent down on his breast. For the first time in his life he was unable to raise his eyes, weighed down by the heavy sense of bitter disgrace and forfeited honor.
But the bright flush on Flora's cheek spoke more of exultation than of shame; the bouquet which she raised to her lips only half concealed a smile of triumph. She wreathed her slender neck haughtily while she met her rival's glance without flinching. She thought that, if she had played for a heavy stake—no less than the jeopardy of her fair fame—this time, at least, the game was her own.
Constance spoke first, in a voice perfectly measured and composed. There was not a false note in the soft, musical tones. After once conquering her emotion, she would have dropped dead at Flora's feet sooner than betray how she was wounded.
"When you have taken Miss Bellasys back, will you come to me for a moment, Mr. Livingstone? I will wait for you here."
Flora rose before Guy could answer. "Don't trouble yourself," she said, gayly. "Here is my partner for the polka looking anxiously for me. I am ready, Captain Ravenswood."
She turned, before reaching the door, to fire a last shot.
"It is the next galop I am to keep for you, is it not?"
This was to Guy; but there was no answer. He stood in precisely the same attitude, without a muscle of his face stirring or an eyelash quivering.
In all the Rifle Brigade there was not a more reckless dare-devil than Harry Ravenswood, nor one who adhered more devoutly to the convenient creed, "All is fair in war or love." But he saw that something had happened quite out of his line; and he did not venture on a single allusion to it as he led his partner back to the dancing-room, with a perplexed expression on his cheery face, which amused Flora intensely when she remarked it. When the subject came on for discussion afterward in the smoking-room at his club, he thus expressed himself, in language terse and elegantly allegorical.
"You see, Livingstone is a very heavy weight; a good deal better than most in the ring. When I saw him so floored as not to be able to come to time, I knew there had been some hard hitting going on thereabouts, so I kept clear."
The two who were left alone in the conservatory remained silent for a few seconds. Then Guy roused himself, and offered his arm to his companion with an impulse of courtesy that was simply mechanical. She took it without remark, and they passed out through the door which led into the garden.
There Constance left his side; and, for the first time, their eyes met as they stood face to face under the bright moon. Guy read his sentence instantly—a sentence from which there was no appeal. The very hopelessness of his situation restored its elasticity to the somewhat sullen pride which was the mainspring of his character. He stood, waiting for her to speak; and his eyes were not cast down now, but riveted on her face—gloomily defiant.
"I hope you will believe," Miss Brandon said, "that it was quite involuntarily I became a spy on your actions. I did not overhear one word; and my partner had that moment left me, when I saw—" Not all her self-command could check the shudder that ran through every limb, and the choking in her throat that would interrupt her.
"I have very little to add," she went on, more steadily. "After what I witnessed, I need hardly say that we only meet again as the merest strangers. You might think meanly of me, indeed, if I ever allowed your lips to touch my cheek or my hand again. Remember, I told you from the first we were not suited to each other; perhaps I deserve all I have met with for allowing myself to be overruled. You can not contradict a word of this, or say that it is unjust or severe."
Did she pause in the expectation or the hope of an excuse, or an appeal from her hearer? Only the hoarse answer came,
"I have forfeited the right to defend myself or to gainsay you."
"You would find it difficult to do either," Constance rejoined, rather more haughtily; perhaps she was disappointed in the tone of his reply. "One word more: if my name is ever called in question, I am sure no one will defend it more readily than yourself. My voice will never be heard against you; and if, hereafter, you shall desire my forgiveness more than you now do; remember, I have given it unasked and freely."
Guy's tone was pregnant with cold, cruel irony as he answered,
"I congratulate you on your position, Miss Brandon; it is quite unassailable. You are in the right now, as you always have been. You were right, of course, in always doling out the tokens of your love in such scanty measure as your pride and your priests would allow. They ought to canonize you—those holy men! I doubt if they have another disciple so superior to all human weaknesses. It must be very gratifying to so eminent a Christian to be able to forgive plenarily, without danger of the favor being returned. I have nothing to urge against your decision—that we part forever. You will have no difficulty in forgetting me, whom you ought never to have stooped to. Yet I will give you one caution. I am not romantic, as you know, and I generally mean what I say. If you should think hereafter of bestowing yourself on some worthier object, hesitate a little for his sake, or wait till I am dead; otherwise, the day that makes his happiness certain may bring him very near his grave."
His voice had changed during the last words into a growl of savage menace, and his forehead was black and furrowed with passion.
It might have been his own excited fancy, or the passing just then of a light cloud over the moon; but, for an instant, he thought he saw her steady lip quiver and tremble. If so, be very sure it was not fear which caused the emotion, though even that the circumstances might have excused; rather, I think, it was a pang of self-reproach—a consciousness of having acted unwisely, though for the best; perhaps, too, the stubbornness of the heart she had ruled once—so strong and proud even in its abasement—was congenial to her own besetting sin: she liked the fierce threat better than the cool sarcasm. At any rate, she answered more gently than she had yet spoken.
"I believe you. But you know me better than to think a threat would influence me. Yet you need not fear my ever again trusting this world with my happiness. You will be very sorry hereafter for some things you have said to-night. Ask yourself—if I had loved you, as you seem to have expected, better than my own soul, would the result have been different? It is too late now to say any thing but—farewell. Will you not say it, as I do, kindly, or at least not in anger—Guy?"
She paused between the two last words, and their imploring accent was almost piteous. There must have been a strange fascination about Livingstone, for, saint as she was, no other living creature would have won such a concession from the Christian charity of Constance Brandon.
Had Guy spoken then, as he ought to have done, I believe all might have been amended; but an angry devil was busy within him, and would not let go his prey; he stood with his black brows downcast, and with folded arms, never seeming to notice the slender fingers that sought to touch his hand. True it is that nothing makes a man so unforgiving as the consciousness of having inflicted a bitter wrong. He heard a sigh, heavy and despairing as Francesca's when her dying prayer was spurned, a light shadow flitted across the streak of moonlit grass, and, when he raised his head, he was left alone, like Alp on the sea-shore, to judge the battle between a remorseful conscience and a hardened heart.
Livingstone was seen no more that night; Constance glided in alone, and her absence had been scarcely noticed. During the short time that she remained, no one could have guessed from her face that her heart was broken, any more than did Napoleon that the aid-de-camp who brought the news of Lannes' victory had been almost cut in two by a grape-shot.
I speak it diffidently, with the fear of the divine voice of the people before my eyes, as is but fitting in these equalizing days, when territories, the title to which is possession immemorial, are being plucked away acre by acre, and hereditary privileges mined one by one; but it seems to me, in this, perhaps, solitary attribute, "the brave old houses" still keep their pre-eminence.
They are not better, nor wiser in their generation (forbid it, Manchester!), nor even more daring in confronting danger than the thousands whose grandsires are creations of a powerful fancy or of a complaisant king-at-arms. In that terrible charge which swept away the Russian cavalry at Eylau, three lengths in front of the best blood in France rode the innkeeper's son. The "First Grenadier" himself was not more splendidly reckless, though he was a La Tour d'Auvergne. But in passive uncomplaining endurance, in the power of obliterating outward tokens of suffering, physical or mental, may we not still say, Noblesse oblige?
Hundreds of similar isolated instances may be quoted from the annals of the Third Estate; but, in the class I speak of, this quality seems a sixth sense wholly independent of, and often contradicting the rest of the individual's disposition.
I remember meeting in France an old Italian refugee. He had not much principle and very little pride; he was ready quidvis facere aut pati to get a five-franc piece, which he would incontinently stake and lose at baccarat or ecarté, as he had done aforetime with a large ancestral inheritance; but his quiet fortitude under privations that were neither few nor light was worthy of Belisarius.
Very often, I am sure, his evening meal must have been eaten with the Barmecide; but his pale, handsome face, finished off so gracefully by the white, pointed beard, still met you, courteous and unruffled, the idea of an exiled doge, or a Rohan in disgrace. Once only I saw him moved—when the landlord of our inn, a vast bloated bourgeois, smote the Count familiarly on the shoulder, and bantered him pleasantly on the brilliant prospects of his eldest son. It was not unkindly meant, perhaps, but the old man shrunk away from the large fat hand as if it hurt him, and turned toward us a look piteously appealing, which was not lost on myself or Livingstone. When mine host, later in the evening, shook in his gouty slippers before an ebullition of Guy's wrath, excited by the most shadowy pretext, I wonder if he guessed at the remote cause of that outpouring of the vials? Count Massa did, for he smiled intensely, as only an Italian can smile when amply revenged.
One instance more to close a long digression. I have read of a baron in the fifteenth century who once in his life said a good thing. He was a coarse, brutal marauder, illiterate enough to have satisfied Earl Angus, and as unromantic as the Integral Calculus. He was mortally wounded in a skirmish; and when his men came back from the pursuit, he was bleeding to death, resting against a tree. When they lifted him up, they noticed his eyes fixed with a curious, complacent expression on the red stream that surged and gurgled out of his wound, just as a gourmand looks at a bumper of a rare vintage held up to the light. They heard him growl to himself, "Qu'il coule rouge et fort, le bon vieux sang de Bourgogne." And then he fell back—dead.
O Publicola Thompson! Ph[=o]sphor to the Tower Hamlets and Boanerges of the platform—will you not allow that, amid a wilderness of weeds, this one fair plant flourishes under "the cold shade?"
CHAPTER XXII.
When I came to Livingstone's chambers on the following morning, I found him alone. His head was resting listlessly against the back of the vast easy-chair in which he was reclining, and his face, thrown out in relief against the crimson velvet, looked haggard and drawn. The calumet—not of peace—was between his lips, and the dense blue clouds were wreathing round him like a Scotch mist. On a table near lay a heap of gold and notes. He had finished the night at his club, where lansquenet had been raging till long after sunrise. Fortune had been more kind than usual, and the fruits of "passing" eight times lay before me. An open liqueur-case close at his elbow showed that play was not the only counter-excitement to which he had resorted.
I hoped to have found him in a repentant mood, but his first words undeceived me: "I start for Paris by this evening's train;" and then I remarked all about me the signs of immediate departure.
I only had a confused idea of what had happened, and was anxious to know the truth, but he was very brief in his answers: the particulars of what had passed I learned long afterward.
"Can nothing be done?" I asked, when he had finished all he chose to tell me.
"Nothing!" replied Livingstone, decisively. "If excuse or explanation had been of any use, I think I should have tried them last night. You would not advise me to humiliate myself to no purpose, I suppose?"
There is a certain scene in Æschylus which came into my mind just then.
A group of elderly men, with grave, rather vacuous faces, and grizzled beards, stand in the court-yard of an ancient palace. On one side is the peristyle, with its square stunted pillars, looking as if the weight above crushed them, though it wearies them no more than the heavens do Atlas; on the other, a gateway, vast, low-browed, shadowy with Cyclopean stones. Somewhat apart is a strange weird figure, ever and anon starting up and tossing her arms wildly as she utters some new denunciation, and then cowering down again in a despairing weariness. There are traces yet in the thin, wan face of the beauty which enslaved Loxian Apollo, and of the pride which turned his great love into a greater hate: round it hang the black elf-locks, disheveled, that have never been braided since the gripe of Telamonian Ajax ruffled them so rudely. In her great, troubled eyes you read terrible memories, and a prescience of coming death—death, most grateful to the dishonored princess, but before which the frail womanhood can not but shudder and quail. No wonder that the reverend men glance at her uneasily, scarcely mustering courage enough sometimes to answer her with a pious platitude. Alas! alas! Cassandra.
While we gaze, forth from the recesses of the gynæceum there breaks a cry, expressing rather wrath and surprise than mere pain. Then there comes another, more plaintive—the moan of a strong man in the death-throe.
We know that voice very well; we have heard it many times, calm and regal, above the wrangle of councils and the roar of battle; often it prayed for victory or for the people's weal, but it never yet called on earth or heaven to help Agamemnon. The Chorus hear it too; but they linger and palter, while each gives his grave sentence deliberately in his proper turn. One or two advise action and interference, and stand perfectly still. At last we hear a heavy, choking groan, and a great stillness follows. We know that all is over—we know that there is a stir already down there in Hades—we seem to catch a far-off murmur raised by a thousand weak, tremulous voices—the very ghost of a wail—as the shadows of those who died gallantly in their harness before Troy gather to meet their old leader, the mightiest Atride.
In the background of all we fancy a hideous Eidolon, from whose side even the damned recoil in loathing. There is a grin on the lips yet red and wet with the traces of the unholy banquet. Thyestes exalts over the fulfillment of another chapter in the inevitable curse.
Who has not grown savage over that scene? We hate the old drivelers less when, a few minutes later, they truckle and temporize with the awful shape, who comes forth with a splash of blood on her slender wrist, and a speck or two on her white, lofty forehead.
Just so helpless and useless I felt at that moment. I was standing by while a foul wrong was being wrought. I saw nothing but ruin for Guy, and desolate misery for Constance, in the black future. Yet I could think of no argument or counsel that would in the least avail. I felt sick at heart. It was some minutes before I answered his last question. At last the words broke from me almost unconsciously: "Ah! how will you answer to God and man for last night's work?"
I forgot that I was quoting the cry of the Covenanter's widow when she knelt by her husband's corpse, and looked up into Claverhouse's face with those sad eyes that were ever dim and cloudy after the carbines flashed across them. But Guy remembered it, and answered instantly in the words of his favorite hero,
"I can answer it to man well enough, and I will take God in my own hand."
Years afterward we both recalled that fatal defiance, when the speaker lay helpless, at the mercy of the Omnipotence whose might he challenged. Just then his servant, who was busily preparing for departure, entered the room.
Willis was a slight, under-sized man, of about fifty; his complexion was muddy and indefinite; his small whiskers, of a grayish red, were trimmed and pruned as accurately as a box border-edging, and the partial absence of eyebrows and eyelashes gave his face a sort of unfinished look. The expression natural to it was, I think, a low, vicious cunning; but his features and little green eyes were so rigidly disciplined that, as a rule, neither had any characteristic save utter vacuity. In his own line he was perfect. No commission that could be intrusted to him would draw from him a remark or a look of surprise. He executed precisely what he was told, and fulfilled the minutest duties of his station irreproachably, with a noiseless, feline activity. He was like the war-horse of the Douglas:
He held a miniature-case in his hand as he entered. "Am I to put this in, sir?" he asked, in the slow, measured voice that was habitual to him.
His master gazed sharply at him, as if trying to detect a covert sneer—it would have been safer to have stroked a rattlesnake's crest than to have trifled with Livingstone just then—but Willis's face was as innocent of any expression as a dead wall.
"Put it down, and go on with your packing; you have no time to spare." The man laid the case on a marble table near, and went out.
Guy took the miniature and regarded it steadfastly for some moments, then he looked up and caught my eye. Perhaps there was an eager appeal there (for I knew well whose likeness lay before him) which displeased and provoked his sullen temper; for he frowned darkly, and then his clenched hand fell with the crashing weight of a steam-hammer. Nothing but a heap of shivered wood, glass, and ivory remained of what had been the life-like image of Constance Brandon.
A thrill of horror shot through me icily, and a low cry burst from my lips. I felt at that moment as if the blow had fallen, not on the portrait, but on the original.
But I kept silence. The dark hour was on Saul, and I knew no spell to chase the evil spirit away.
Guy spoke at last. His manner was unusually chill and constrained.
"I expect to meet Mohun in Paris, and we shall probably go on to Vienna. I hardly like troubling you with commissions, but I must. Listen. I leave my own name—and another person's—in your keeping. I wish it to be clearly understood that the engagement was broken off by Miss Brandon, not by me. If you hear any man speak disparagingly of her in connection with what has passed, you can insult him on my behalf as grossly as you please. I will be here, as fast as steam can bring me, to back what you may have said or done. This is the only point in which I hope you will guard my honor. As for blaming me, they may say what they please. Do you quite understand? And will you promise?"
I did promise; and so, after a few more last words, we parted, more coldly than we had ever done in all the years through which we had been intimate.
Guy left England the same evening, and descended like a thunder-clap on the joyous little ménage in the Rue de la Madeleine, where Forrester and his bride were still fluttering their wings in the honeymoon-shine of post-nuptial spring.
They were miraculously happy, those two. Indeed, they seemed to have only one taste between them, and that was Charley's. If he felt inclined, which was not seldom, to utter inaction, his wife encouraged him in his laziness, sitting contentedly for hours on her footstool, with her silky hair just within reach of his indolent hand. If, after dinner, he suggested the "Italiens," or the "Bouffes," it was always precisely that theatre that she had been thinking of all the morning. She was in the seventh heaven when he won a hurdle-race in the Champ de Mars.
They made excursions into the banlieue, and farther afield yet, like a couple of the Pays Latin in their first loves. The cabinets of Bercy and St. Cloud knew them; so did the arbors of Asnières, where, in oilskin and vareuse, muster for their Sabbat the ancient mariners of the Seine. Nay, it has been whispered that more than once—close veiled and clinging tightly to her husband's arm—Isabel witnessed at Mabille and the Chaumière the choregraphic triumphs of Frisette, Pomare, and Mogador.
My hand trembles while I record such enormities and backslidings. O Brougham-girls of Belgravia, who "never gave your mothers a moment's uneasiness"—stars of the Western hemisphere, who can be trusted any where without fear of your wandering from your orbits—think on this lost Pleiad, once your companion, and be warned. Men are deceivers ever, even when they mean matrimony; and the tender mercies of the Light Dragoon are cruel.
Isabel was dreadfully startled at the sudden appearance of her cousin. Her notions of his power were quite unlimited and irrational, and I believe her first thought was that he had changed his mind about the propriety of her marriage, and was come to carry her back into the house of her bondage with the strong hand.
When his curt sentences told her the facts, sorry as she was, it certainly was rather a relief to her. Charley was full of compassion too, but he only confided this to his wife. He knew better than to try condolence with Guy, and felt instantly that the case was far beyond his simple powers of healing.
They did not see much of him. The contrast of their happiness with his own state must have grated on his feelings. His grim presence chilled and clouded their little banquets at the Trois Frères or the Café de Paris. He sat there among the bright lamps and flowers like a statue of dark marble that it is impossible to light up, drinking all the while, moodily, of the strongest wines to that portentous extent that it made Isabel nervous and her husband grave.
Perhaps Guy was conscious of the effect he produced; at all events, he rather avoided the Forresters, finding in Mohun more congenial society. The latter probably regretted what had happened; perhaps he felt an approach to sympathy, after his rough fashion, but with this mingled a dreary sort of satisfaction at the sight of a strong mind and hardy nature rapidly descending to his own misanthropical level. Such an exultation was breathed in that ghastly chorus of the dead kings and chief ones of the earth when they rose, each on his awful throne, and Hell beneath was moved at the advent of the Son of the Morning.
These two did not stay long in Paris before they took their departure for Vienna.
We who were left behind in England talked a little at first, of course, about the broken engagement, but I had no occasion to throw down the gauntlet that had been left in my hands. I never heard any thing more spiteful about Miss Brandon than that "she was never suited to her fiancé—far too good for him." Others "had always thought how it would be; it would take a good deal more yet to tame Livingstone." Sir Henry Fallowfield observed, "Nothing could be more natural and correct. The lady was a saint, and there is always a sort of incompleteness about saints if they are not made martyrs. Suffering is their normal state."
It was remarked that he was unusually cheerful for some days afterward; and when Guy's conduct was canvassed, seemed inclined to quote the old school-master's words on witnessing his pupil's success, "Bless the boy! I taught him."
Some other subject soon came up and replaced the week's wonder.
Constance left town with her uncle almost immediately, and I heard nothing of her for many months. Miss Bellasys remained. Very few persons even guessed at the share she had had in breaking off the match; so her credit was not much impaired, and her campaign was as brilliantly successful as usual. If she felt any disappointment at Guy's abrupt departure, she concealed it remarkably well. In some things, though naturally impetuous and impatient, she was as cool as a Red Indian, and would wait and watch forever if she saw a prospect of ultimate success. So the days rolled on, bringing swiftly and surely the bitter harvest-time, when he who had sown the wind was to reap the whirlwind.
CHAPTER XXIII.
It was the middle of October; the reflux of the winter season was beginning to fill Paris, and thither Mohun and Livingstone had returned from their German tour, the latter decidedly the worse for his wanderings. He had not suffered much physically, for the hard living that would have utterly broken up some constitutions had only been able to make his face thinner, to deepen the bistre tints under the eyes, and to give a more angular gauntness to his massive frame.
But morally he was not the same man. Play, which had formerly been only an occasional excitement, had now become a necessary part of his daily existence. Mohun would never say—perhaps he did not know—how much Guy had lost during those few months. In spite of several gigantic coups (he broke the bank both at Baden and Hombourg), the balance was fearfully on the wrong side, so much so that it entailed a heavy mortgage—the maiden one in his time—on the fair lands of Kerton Manor.
I wonder people have not got tired of quoting "Heureux en jeu; malheureux en amour." It seems one of the least true of all stale, stupid proverbs. Luck will run itself out in more ways than one; and sometimes you will never hold a trump, however often the suit changes. The ancients knew better than we when they called the double-sixes "Venus's cast." The monotony of Guy's reckless dissipations was soon broken up by an event which ought to have sobered him.
He had been dining with Mohun at the Trois Frères, and they were returning late toward the Boulevards, when their attention was attracted by a group in one of the narrow streets leading out of the Rue Vivienne. Five or six raffish-looking men had surrounded a fair, delicate girl, and were preparing to besiege her in form, deriving apparently intense amusement from the piteous entreaties of their victim to be released. Not the roués of the Regency after the suppers that have become a by-word—not the mousquetaires after the wildest of their orgies—were ever so unrelenting in brutality toward women quite lonely and undefended as those unshorn ornaments of Young France, when replete with a dinner at forty sous, and with the anomalous liquor that Macon blushes to own.
In all Europe there is no more genial companion and gallant gentleman than the aristocrat of France pur sang—in all the world no more terrible adversary than her wiry, well-trained soldier; but, from the prolific decay of old institutions and prejudices, a mushroom growth has sprouted of child-atheists and precocious profligates, calculating debauchees while their cheeks are still innocent of down, who, after the effervescence of a foul, vicious youth has spent itself, simmer down into avaricious, dishonest bourgeois and bloated café politicians. The teeth of the Republican dragon have been drawn, but they are sown broadcast from Dan even to Beersheba. Ancient realm of Capet, Valois, and Bourbon—motherland of Du Guesclin and Bayard—you may well be proud of your Cadmean offspring!
Guy was passing the scene with a careless side-glance when the accent of the suppliant caught his ear—not French, though she spoke the language perfectly.
"By G—d," he said, dropping Mohun's arm, "I believe it's an Englishwoman they are bullying;" and three of his long strides took him into the midst of the group.
Two of the aggressors reeled back, right and left, from the shock of his mighty shoulders; and griping another, the tallest, by the collar, he whirled him some paces off on his back in the streaming kennel, as one might do with a very weak, light little child. "Au large, canaille!" he said, as he advanced on the two who still kept their feet. These drew back from his path without a second warning. One indeed, eminent in the savate, made a demonstration for an instant; but his comrade, who had just gathered himself up, caught his arm, muttering "Ne t'y frotte pas, Alphonse. C'est trop dur." None of them fancied an encounter with the grim giant who confronted them, his muscles braced and salient, his eyes gleaming with the gaudia certaminis, and his nostrils dilated as if they snuffed the battle.
So they made way for Guy and his charge to pass, only grinding out between their teeth the strange guttural blasphemies that characterize impotent Gallic wrath.
Mohun, a reserve scarcely leas formidable, stood by all the while, looking on lazily; he saw that his companion was more than equal to the emergency.
"I hope you have not been much annoyed," Livingstone said, kindly. "Where were you going to? I shall be too happy to escort you, if you will allow me."
She named the street, only a few hundred yards off, and tried to thank him gratefully, but her voice was broken and scarcely audible, and the blinding tears would rush into her eyes. Poor child! it was very long since she had heard gentle, courteous words in her mother-tongue. She recovered herself, however, during their short walk, and they had nearly reached her destination when Livingstone said, "Forgive me for being impertinent; I have no right to advise you; but I think you would find it better not to walk alone, often, at this hour. There is always a chance of something disagreeable."
He could see her blush painfully as she answered, "I have no one to accompany me. I work hard at drawing and painting as long as there is light, and I had gone out to see if I could sell what I have done. But I fear I am a very poor artist; no one would offer me as much as they had cost me. And I tried at so many places!"
It was piteous to hear the heavy, heart-broken sigh.
"Perhaps I have better taste," replied Livingstone. "Those print-sellers are absurdly ignorant of what is good and anonymous. At all events, they will interest me, as a memorial of to-night. Will you give them to me? I will promise not to be too critical."
He drew the roll out of her hand as he spoke, replacing it by his note-case; and before she could open it or make any objection, he followed Mohun (for they had reached the artist's door by this time), first raising his hat to her in adieu as courteously as he would have done to a reigning archduchess.
How much did the case contain? Guy himself could hardly have told you. But be sure the Recorder of his many misdeeds knew, and reckoned it to the uttermost farthing when he wrote down that one kind action on the credit side.
"Philanthropic, for a change!" Mohun remarked, when his companion joined him. "Well, it's not worse than many of your vagaries. We shall have you founding an asylum next, I suppose."
In his heart the savage old cynic approved, but, for the life of him, he could not check the sneer.
Livingstone made no reply. It was a habit of his very often not to answer Ralph, and the latter did not mind it in the least. In a few moments they reached Guy's apartments, where they found about a dozen men—French and English—awaiting their arrival to begin an unbridled lansquenet. It was a favorite rendezvous for this purpose. The thoroughbred gamblers preferred it to the brilliant entertainments of the Quartier Brèda. They liked to court or fight Fortune by themselves, without being congratulated in success or compassionated in defeat by the fair Phrynes and Aspasias, whose sympathy was somewhat expansive, inasmuch as they always would borrow from the heap whenever any one won, repaying the loan in kind by smiles and caresses, which cost the happy recipient about fifteen Napoleons apiece. Here was an Eden from which Eves were excluded; and on the nights of the Mercurialia, the brightest Peri that ever wore camellias might have knocked at the gate disconsolately, but in vain.
While the tables were being prepared, Guy began to tell his late adventure. He spoke of it very lightly, but he thought, if he passed it over altogether, Mohun would probably betray him.
Immediately there was a great cry for a sight of the performances of the unknown genius.
Livingstone looked over the drawings himself carefully, and then passed them to the man who sat nearest him. "I have seen worse," he said. "There is no signature, and I shall not give you the address. You are none of you just the patrons she would fancy. You don't care much for high art."
Among the guests was Horace Levinge, a pale, dark man, with a face that was decidedly handsome, in spite of its Jewish contour, and the excessive fullness of the scarlet, sensual lips. His grandfather, report said, had been a prize-fighting Israelite, and afterward a celebrated betting-man—equally eminent in either ring for an unscrupulous scoundrelism which made his fortune. His father had added to the family treasure and importance by cautious usury and adventurous stock-jobbing. Horace himself was a gentleman at large, with no other profession than the consistent pursuit of all kinds of debauchery. He was calculating even in his pleasures, and, they say, kept a regular ledger and daybook of the moneys disbursed in his vices.
When the drawings came to him, he glanced at them for a moment, and then threw them down with a little contemptuous laugh.
"I am sorry to spoil your romance, Livingstone, but I have a pretty good right to recognize the artist's touch. You know her, some of you; it is Fanny Challoner."
"What! the girl you sent away about three weeks ago?" some one asked. "Poor thing! she was not sorry, I should think. She had a hard time of it before she left you."
"Precisely," Levinge replied. "Her modesty and high moral principles, which I never could quite subdue, gave a zest to the thing at first. You understand?—a sort of caviare flavor. But at last it bored me horribly. I really believe she had a conscience. Can you conceive any thing so out of place? I did offer her a little money when she went away, but she would not take any, and said she would try to maintain herself honestly. Bah! I defy her. She was a governess, you know, when I took her first, so she is trying some of the old accomplishments. I wish you joy of your protégée, Livingstone; and as for her address, if any of you want it, I will give it you to-morrow."
Before Guy could reply Mohun broke in. While Levinge had been speaking, the colonel's face had grown very dark and threatening.
"Did her father live near Walmer? And was he a half-pay officer?"
"Quite correct," was the answer. "He died about eighteen months before I met Fanny. You knew him, perhaps? How interesting! Excuse my emotion."
"I did know him," Ralph said. "He was a gentleman, and well born. Perhaps that was the reason you could not get on long with his daughter?"
It is a popular error that a bully is always a coward. Certainly Horace was an exception to the rule, if such exists. Nothing could be more calmly insolent than his tone as he answered deliberately,
"How admirable to find Colonel Mohun in the character of the Censor! A Clodius come to judgment. I should hardly have expected it, from his past life, either."
The reply came from the depths of Ralph's chest, very distinct, but with a strange effect of distance and echo, as if the words had been spoken under the vault of some vast dome.
"You will leave my past life alone, if you are wise. I don't preach against immorality; it is only brutality that I find simply disgusting."
"Bah!" the other retorted; "it comes to the same thing. I should have thought Lady Caroline Mannering might have taught you to be less critical."
The Cuirassier rose from his seat and strode a pace forward, the gray hair bristling round his savage face like a wild-boar's at bay.
"If you dare to breathe that name again, except with respect and honor, I'll cram the words down your throat, by the eternal God!"
Levinge crimsoned with passion. The brutal blood of the dead prize-fighter, who, when he "crossed" a fight, lost it ever by a foul blow, was boiling in his descendant. He had been drinking too, and, as the French say—avait le vin mauvais—so he answered coolly and slowly, letting the syllables fall one by one, like drops of hail,
"I shall mention it just as often as it pleases me, and with just so much respect as is due to Mannering's cast-off wife and your—"
The foul word that was on his lips never left them, for Mohun's threat was literally fulfilled. His right hand shot out from the shoulder with a sudden impulse that seemed rather mechanical than an action of the will, and, catching the speaker full in the mouth, laid him on the carpet senseless and streaming with blood.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The dead silence that ensued was broken first by Guy Livingstone. "It was well done! I say it and maintain it; Mohun, I envy you that blow!" He looked round as if to challenge contradiction; but evidently the general opinion was that Levinge had only got his deserts. By this time the fallen man had recovered his consciousness, and struggled up, first into a sitting posture, then to his feet; he stood leaning against a table, swaying to and fro, and staring about him with wild eyes half glazed. At last he spoke in a thick, faint voice, stanching all the while the gushing blood with his handkerchief.
"Will any one here be my second, or must I look for a friend elsewhere?"
There was a pause, and then from the circle stepped forth Camille de Rosny. He did not like Levinge, and thought in the present instance he had behaved infamously, but it was the fashion hereditary in his gallant house to back the losing side; so, when he saw every one else shrink from the appeal, he bowed gravely and said,
"I shall have that honor, if you will permit me. In an hour I shall be at the orders of M. le Colonel's second. Where shall I find him?"
"Here," replied Livingstone. "I think no one will contest my right to see my old friend through this quarrel."
Mohun grasped his hand. "I would have chosen you among a thousand. You understand me, and know what I wish."
"Then I shall expect you, De Rosny," Guy went on. The Frenchman assented courteously, and then, turning to his principal,
"Let us go," he said. "My coupé is at your disposition, M. Levinge. Messieurs, au plaisir."
Horace followed him with a step that was still faltering and uncertain; but at the door he turned, and, straightening himself up, faced his adversary with such a look as few human countenances have ever worn. There was more in it than mortal hatred: it expressed a sort of devilish satisfaction and anticipation, as if he knew that his revenge was secured.
Mohun read all this as plainly as if it had been written down in so many words; but he only smiled as he seated himself and lighted a cigar.
There was an end of lansquenet for that night. An ordinary quarrel would have made little impression on those reckless spirits, who had, most of them, at one time or another, "been out" themselves; but they felt that what they had witnessed now was the prologue to a certain tragedy; there was a savor of death in the air; so they dropped off one by one, leaving Guy and Ralph alone; not before the latter had expressed, with much politeness, "his desolation at having been compelled to interrupt a partie, which he trusted was only deferred till the morrow."
Before long De Rosny returned. The preliminaries were soon arranged. Pistols were necessarily to be the weapons, for Levinge had seldom touched a foil; and, as the Frenchman said with a bow that made his objection a compliment, "Colonel Mohun's reputation as a swordsman was European." An early hour next morning was fixed for the venue, in the Pré aux Clercs of the nineteenth century—the Bois de Boulogne.
When they were alone again Guy turned gravely to his companion. "It is a bad business, I fear, though you could not have acted otherwise; but I would rather your adversary were any other than Levinge. It is a murderous, unscrupulous scoundrel as ever lived. He can shoot—that's nothing; so can you, better than most men—but, mark me, Ralph, he has been out twice, and hit his man each time, the last mortally; but on neither occasion was his fire returned. Men say he has an awkward knack of pulling the trigger half a second too soon. I don't know if this is true, but I do know that Seymour, who seconded him at Florence when he killed O'Neill, has been more than cool to him ever since."
"Faith, I can well believe it," Mohun answered, quietly, "and it is very probable I may get hard hit to-morrow; but of killing him I feel morally certain. Do you believe in presentiments? I do. Before that drunken brute had half done speaking, I saw imminent death written in his face as plainly as if I had possessed the Highland second-sight. I think I could almost tell you how it will look after my shot. Well, we must talk of business. My arrangements won't take me long. I have very little to dispose of; it is almost all entailed property. I shall leave you the choice of any thing among my goods and chattels. You will find some arms that you may fancy. But if my pistols fail me to-morrow, so that Levinge lives over it, do me the favor to throw them into the Seine; they deserve nothing better. As for the ready-money I have with me, and some more at my banker's—" he hesitated, and then went on in a gentler voice, "I should like it to go to that poor child whom we met to-night. If I live I will take care she is settled in England, where some one will be kind to her. Her father was a good soldier and a true-hearted gentleman. And, Guy, I am sorry that I sneered at you to-night; I hardly meant it when I said it."
This was a great concession from Mohun, and his hearer thought so as he wrung his hand hard and replied,
"Don't think of that again. I did you justice an hour ago."
There was this peculiarity about Ralph; he was not only insensible to danger, like other men, but he absolutely seemed to revel in it. The genial side of his character came out at the approach of deadly peril, just as some morose natures will soften and brighten temporarily under the influence of strong wine.
His mood seemed to change, however, suddenly; and when, after a long pause, he spoke again, it was in a low, broken voice, as if to himself.
"'Be sure your sin will find you out.' It is thirty years since I heard that text; I forgot it the same day, and never thought of it again till now. There may be truth in that. It hunted her to her grave, and it will not leave her in peace even there. And yet she suffered enough to make atonement. She tried not to let me see how much, but I did see it; I watched her dying for a year and more. I am sure she is an angel now. I like to think so, though I shall never see her again. I would not believe otherwise if a thousand priests said it and swore it; for I never moved from her side, after she was dead, till I saw the smile come on her face. She must have been happy then; do you not think so? They would hardly have gone on punishing her forever. It was all my fault, you know."
He gazed at Livingstone anxiously, almost timidly. Guy bowed his head in assent, but he could not find words to answer just then. There was something very terrible in that opening of the flood-gates when a life's pent-up remorse broke forth.
"I think you will end better than I have done," Mohun went on, "though you are going down-hill fast now. But I have no right even to warn you. Only take care—" He broke off suddenly, and roused himself with an effort. "I shall go home and dress now, and get through what little I have to write, and then lie down for an hour or two. Nothing makes the hand shake like a sleepless night. I'll call for you in good time." So he went away.
Livingstone sat thinking, without ever closing his eyes, till Mohun returned. The latter looked fresh and alert; he had slept for the time he had allotted to himself quite calmly and comfortably; the old habits of picket-duty had taught him to watch or sleep at pleasure.
After Guy had made a careful toilette, at the special request of his principal they started, and in forty minutes were on the ground. Levinge and his second, with the surgeon, arrived almost immediately; the former stood somewhat apart, keeping the lower part of his face carefully muffled.
It was a dull, chill morning; the sky of a steely-gray, without a promise of a gleam from the sun, which had risen somewhere, but was reserving himself for better times. There was a sort of desultory wind blowing, just strong enough at intervals to bring the moist brown leaves sullenly down.
After the pistols had been scientifically loaded, the seconds placed their men fifteen yards apart—with such known shots it was not worth while shortening the distance.
The sensations of ordinary mortals under such circumstances are somewhat curious. Very few are afraid, I think; but one has an impression that one's own proportions are becoming sensibly developed—"swelling wisibly," in fact, like the lady at the Pickwickian tea-fight—while those of our adversary diminish in a like ratio, so that he does not appear near so fair a mark as he did a few minutes ago. But, with all this, there is a quickening of the pulse not unpleasurable—something like the excitement of the "four to the seven" chance at hazard, when you are backing the In for a large stake.
I do not believe Mohun felt any thing of this sort. It was not his own life, but his adversary's death he was playing for; the other was busy, too, with still darker thoughts and purposes.
"Listen," Guy said in French; "M. de Rosny gives the signal, un, deux, trois; if either fires before the last is fully pronounced, it is murder." He looked sharply at Levinge, but the latter seemed studiously to avoid meeting his eye. Guy felt very uncomfortable and very savage.
The men stood opposite to one another like black marble statues, neither showing a speck of color which might serve as a point de mire, each turning only a side-front to his opponent.
De Rosny pronounced the two first words of the signal in a clear, deliberate voice; the last left his lips almost in a shriek, for, before it was half syllabled, his principal fired.
Quick as the movement was, it was anticipated; as Levinge's hand stirred, Mohun made a half-face to the right, and looked his enemy straight between the eyes. That sudden change of position, or the consciousness of detection, probably unsettled the practiced aim, for the ball, that would have drilled Ralph through the heart, only scored a deep furrow in his side.
No one could have guessed that he was touched; he brought his pistol to the level just as coolly as he would have done in the shooting-gallery, and, after the discharge, dropped his hand with measured deliberation. Before the smoke had curled a yard upward, Horace Levinge sprang into the air, and, with out-stretched arms, fell crashing down upon the grass—a bullet through his brain.
They turned him over on his back. It was a ghastly sight; the ball had penetrated just below the arch of the right eyebrow, and all the lower features were swollen and distorted with the blow of last night, adding to the hideous disfigurement.
Is that the face on which the dead man used to spend hours, tending it, like an ancient coquette, with washes and cosmetics, dreading the faintest freckle or sunburn which might mar the smoothness of the delicate skin? No need of the surgeon there. Cover it up quickly. The mother that bore him, if she should recognize him, would recoil in disgust and loathing.
"C'en est fini," Livingstone said to De Rosny, who stood by shuddering in horror, not at the death, but at the treachery which had preceded it.
None but a Frenchman could have given such an accent to the low, hissing reply, "Je l'espére."
Then they looked to Mohun's wound; it was nothing serious: there were a dozen deeper on the warworn body and limbs. Indeed, I imagine his general health was materially benefited by the blood-letting. The first remark he made was when he was depositing his pistol in its case—tenderly as you would lay a child in its cradle—"Do you believe in presentiments now, Guy?"
The sullen sun broke out just as they turned to go, and peered curiously through the boughs, till it found out and lighted on the angular ominous heap, shrouded with a cloak, that, ten minutes ago, was a strong, hot-blooded man.
There the garde soon after discovered Horace Levinge; and, when he had been owned, they buried him in Père la Chaise. Such events were common then, and the police gave themselves no trouble to trace who had slain the stranger. Among his tribes-men and kinsfolk in Houndsditch and the Minories there was great joy at first, and afterward bitter, endless litigation. They screamed and battled over the heritage like vultures over a mighty carrion, tearing it at length piecemeal. He did not keep a pet dog, and so no living creature regretted him, unless it were the thin, delicate girl, with white cheeks and hollow eyes, who came once, and knelt to pray by his grave for hours, her tears falling fast.
Hard as they may find it to observe other precepts of the Great Master, this one, at least, most women have practiced easily and naturally for eighteen hundred years: "Forgive, until seventy times seven." The acts of some of these—how they warred with their husbands and were worsted; how they provoked the presiding Draco, and stultified the attesting policeman by obstinately ignoring their injuries, written legibly in red, and black, and blue; how they interceded with many sobs for the aggressor—are they not written in the book of the chronicles of Bow-street and Clerkenwell?
This propensity leads them into scrapes, it is true, for our world, in its wisdom, will take advantage of such weakness. Perhaps the next will make them some amends.
But the mourner strewed no flowers on the grave. It would have been too bitter a mockery; for, if there were sympathy in sweet roses and pure white lilies, on no other spot of God's earth would they have withered so soon: she hung up no wreath of immortelles; for, if such things could be, the dearest wish one could have formed for the dead man's soul would have been swift, utter annihilation.
Yet Fanny Challoner would scarcely have accepted Mohun's good offices if she had guessed that the blood of her seducer and tyrant was on his hand. She never suspected it, and so went gratefully to the home he found for her; and there she lives yet, tranquil and contented, though always sad and humble, among people who know nothing of her history and love her dearly, trying her best to be useful in her generation—alone in her cottage, that nestles under a sunny cliff, just above the white spray-line of the Irish Sea.