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Tancred; Or, The New Crusade

by Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli · English · Gutenberg #20004 · 952,070 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Tancred; Or, The New Crusade

Author: Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli


        
Release date: December 3, 2006 [eBook #20004]
                Most recently updated: September 6, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20004

Credits: Produced by David Widger


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Produced by David Widger








TANCRED

OR

THE NEW CRUSADE

By Benjamin Disraeli

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CHAPTER I.

     _A Matter of Importance_

IN THAT part of the celebrated parish of St. George which is bounded on
one side by Piccadilly and on the other by Curzon Street, is a district
of a peculiar character. ‘Tis cluster of small streets of little houses,
frequently intersected by mews, which here are numerous, and sometimes
gradually, rather than abruptly, terminating in a ramification of those
mysterious regions. Sometimes a group of courts develops itself, and
you may even chance to find your way into a small market-place. Those,
however, who are accustomed to connect these hidden residences of
the humble with scenes of misery and characters of violence, need not
apprehend in this district any appeal to their sympathies, or any shock
to their tastes. All is extremely genteel; and there is almost as much
repose as in the golden saloons of the contiguous palaces. At any rate,
if there be as much vice, there is as little crime.

No sight or sound can be seen or heard at any hour, which could pain the
most precise or the most fastidious. Even if a chance oath may float on
the air from the stable-yard to the lodging of a French cook, ‘tis of
the newest fashion, and, if responded to with less of novel charm, the
repartee is at least conveyed in the language of the most polite of
nations. They bet upon the Derby in these parts a little, are interested
in Goodwood, which they frequent, have perhaps, in general, a weakness
for play, live highly, and indulge those passions which luxury and
refinement encourage; but that is all.

A policeman would as soon think of reconnoitring these secluded streets
as of walking into a house in Park Lane or Berkeley Square, to which,
in fact, this population in a great measure belongs. For here reside the
wives of house-stewards and of butlers, in tenements furnished by the
honest savings of their husbands, and let in lodgings to increase their
swelling incomes; here dwells the retired servant, who now devotes
his practised energies to the occasional festival, which, with his
accumulations in the three per cents., or in one of the public-houses of
the quarter, secures him at the same time an easy living, and the casual
enjoyment of that great world which lingers in his memory. Here may be
found his grace’s coachman, and here his lordship’s groom, who keeps a
book and bleeds periodically too speculative footmen, by betting odds
on his master’s horses. But, above all, it is in this district that
the cooks have ever sought a favourite and elegant abode. An air of
stillness and serenity, of exhausted passions and suppressed emotion,
rather than of sluggishness and of dullness, distinguishes this quarter
during the day.

When you turn from the vitality and brightness of Piccadilly, the
park, the palace, the terraced mansions, the sparkling equipages, the
cavaliers cantering up the hill, the swarming multitude, and enter
the region of which we are speaking, the effect is at first almost
unearthly. Not a carriage, not a horseman, scarcely a passenger; there
seems some great and sudden collapse in the metropolitan system, as if
a pest had been announced, or an enemy were expected in alarm by a
vanquished capital. The approach from Curzon Street has not this effect.
Hyde Park has still about it something of Arcadia. There are woods and
waters, and the occasional illusion of an illimitable distance of sylvan
joyance. The spirit is allured to gentle thoughts as we wander in what
is still really a lane, and, turning down Stanhope Street, behold that
house which the great Lord Chesterfield tells us, in one of his letters,
he was ‘building among the fields.’ The cawing of the rooks in his
gardens sustains the tone of mind, and Curzon Street, after a long,
straggling, sawney course, ceasing to be a thoroughfare, and losing
itself in the gardens of another palace, is quite in keeping with all
the accessories.

In the night, however, the quarter of which we are speaking is alive.
The manners of the population follow those of their masters. They keep
late hours. The banquet and the ball dismiss them to their homes at a
time when the trades of ordinary regions move in their last sleep, and
dream of opening shutters and decking the windows of their shops.

At night, the chariot whirls round the frequent corners of these little
streets, and the opening valves of the mews vomit forth their legion
of broughams. At night, too, the footman, taking advantage of a ball
at Holdernesse, or a concert at Lansdowne House, and knowing that,
in either instance, the link-boy will answer when necessary for his
summoned name, ventures to look in at his club, reads the paper, talks
of his master or his mistress, and perhaps throws a main. The shops of
this district, depending almost entirely for their custom on the classes
we have indicated, and kept often by their relations, follow the order
of the place, and are most busy when other places of business are
closed.

A gusty March morning had subsided into a sunshiny afternoon, nearly two
years ago, when a young man, slender, above the middle height, with a
physiognomy thoughtful yet delicate, his brown hair worn long, slight
whiskers, on his chin a tuft, knocked at the door of a house in
Carrington Street, May Fair. His mien and his costume denoted a
character of the class of artists. He wore a pair of green trousers,
braided with a black stripe down their sides, puckered towards the
waist, yet fitting with considerable precision to the boot of French
leather that enclosed a well-formed foot. His waistcoat was of maroon
velvet, displaying a steel watch-chain of refined manufacture, and a
black satin cravat, with a coral brooch. His bright blue frockcoat was
frogged and braided like his trousers. As the knocker fell from the
primrose-coloured glove that screened his hand, he uncovered, and
passing his fingers rapidly through his hair, resumed his new silk hat,
which he placed rather on one side of his head.

‘Ah! Mr. Leander, is it you?’ exclaimed a pretty girl, who opened the
door and blushed.

‘And how is the good papa, Eugenie? Is he at home? For I want to see him
much.’

‘I will show you up to him at once, Mr. Leander, for he will be very
happy to see you. We have been thinking of hearing of you,’ she added,
talking as she ushered her guest up the narrow staircase. ‘The good papa
has a little cold: ‘tis not much, I hope; caught at Sir Wallinger’s, a
large dinner; they would have the kitchen windows open, which spoilt all
the entrées, and papa got a cold; but I think, perhaps, it is as much
vexation as anything else, you know if anything goes wrong, especially
with the entrées------’

‘He feels as a great artist must,’ said Leander, finishing her sentence.
‘However, I am not sorry at this moment to find him a prisoner, for I
am pressed to see him. It is only this morning that I have returned from
Mr. Coningsby’s at Hellingsley: the house full, forty covers every
day, and some judges. One does not grudge one’s labour if we are
appreciated,’ added Leander; ‘but I have had my troubles. One of my
marmitons has disappointed me: I thought I had a genius, but on the
third day he lost his head; and had it not been---- Ah! good papa,’
he exclaimed, as the door opened, and he came forward and warmly shook
the hand of a portly man, advanced in middle life, sitting in an easy
chair, with a glass of sugared water by his side, and reading a French
newspaper in his chamber robe, and with a white cotton nightcap on his
head.

‘Ah! my child,’ said Papa Prevost, ‘is it you? You see me a prisoner;
Eugenie has told you; a dinner at a merchant’s; dressed in a draught;
everything spoiled, and I------’ and sighing, Papa Prevost sipped his
_eau sucrée_.

‘We have all our troubles,’ said Leander, in a consoling tone; ‘but
we will not speak now of vexations. I have just come from the country;
Daubuz has written to me twice; he was at my house last night; I found
him on my steps this morning. There is a grand affair on the tapis.
The son of the Duke of Bellamont comes of age at Easter; it is to be a
business of the thousand and one nights; the whole county to be feasted.
Camacho’s wedding will do for the peasantry; roasted oxen, and a
capon in every platter, with some fountains of ale and good Porto. Our
marmitons, too, can easily serve the provincial noblesse; but there is
to be a party at the Castle, of double cream; princes of the blood,
high relatives and grandees of the Golden Fleece. The duke’s cook is not
equal to the occasion. ‘Tis an hereditary chef who gives dinners of the
time of the continental blockade. They have written to Daubuz to send
them the first artist of the age,’ said Leander; ‘and,’ added he, with
some hesitation, ‘Daubuz has written to me.’

‘And he did quite right, my child,’ said Prevost, ‘for there is not a
man in Europe that is your equal. What do they say? That Abreu rivals
you in flavour, and that Gaillard has not less invention. But who can
combine _goût_ with new combinations? ‘Tis yourself, Leander; and there
is no question, though you have only twenty-five years, that you are the
chef of the age.’

‘You are always very good to me, sir,’ said Leander, bending his head
with great respect; ‘and I will not deny that to be famous when you are
young is the fortune of the gods. But we must never forget that I had an
advantage which Abreu and Gaillard had not, and that I was your pupil.’

‘I hope that I have not injured you,’ said Papa Prevost, with an air of
proud self-content. ‘What you learned from me came at least from a good
school. It is something to have served under Napoleon,’ added Prevost,
with the grand air of the Imperial kitchen. ‘Had it not been for
Waterloo, I should have had the cross. But the Bourbons and the cooks
of the Empire never could understand each other: They brought over an
emigrant chef, who did not comprehend the taste of the age. He wished to
bring everything back to the time of the _oeil de bouf_. When Monsieur
passed my soup of Austerlitz untasted, I knew the old family was doomed.
But we gossip. You wished to consult me?’

‘I want not only your advice but your assistance. This affair of the
Duke of Bellamont requires all our energies. I hope you will accompany
me; and, indeed, we must muster all our forces. It is not to be denied
that there is a want, not only of genius, but of men, in our art. The
cooks are like the civil engineers: since the middle class have taken to
giving dinners, the demand exceeds the supply.’

‘There is Andrien,’ said Papa Prevost; ‘you had some hopes of him?’

‘He is too young; I took him to Hellingsley, and he lost his head on
the third day. I entrusted the soufflées to him, and, but for the most
desperate personal exertions, all would have been lost. It was an affair
of the bridge of Areola.’

‘Ah! _mon Dieu!_ those are moments!’ exclaimed Prevost. ‘Gaillard and
Abreu will not serve under you, eh? And if they would, they could not be
trusted. They would betray you at the tenth hour.’

‘What I want are generals of division, not commanders-in-chief. Abreu is
sufficiently _bon garçon_, but he has taken an engagement with Monsieur
de Sidonia, and is not permitted to go out.’

‘With Monsieur de Sidonia! You once thought of that, my Leander. And
what is his salary?’

‘Not too much; four hundred and some perquisites. It would not suit me;
besides, I will take no engagement but with a crowned head. But Abreu
likes travelling, and he has his own carriage, which pleases him.’

‘There are Philippon and Dumoreau,’ said Prevost; ‘they are very safe.’

‘I was thinking of them,’ said Leander, ‘they are safe, under you.
And there is an Englishman, Smit, he is chef at Sir Stanley’s, but his
master is away at this moment. He has talent.’

‘Yourself, four chefs, with your marmitons; it would do,’ said Prevost.

‘For the kitchen,’ said Leander; ‘but who is to dress the tables?’

‘A-h!’ exclaimed Papa Prevost, shaking his head.

‘Daubuz’ head man, Trenton, is the only one I could trust; and he wants
fancy, though his style is broad and bold. He made a pyramid of pines
relieved with grapes, without destroying the outline, very good, this
last week, at Hellingsley. But Trenton has been upset on the railroad,
and much injured. Even if he recover, his hand will tremble so for the
next month that! could have no confidence in him.’

‘Perhaps you might find some one at the Duke’s?’

‘Out of the question!’ said Leander; ‘I make it always a condition
that the head of every department shall be appointed by myself. I take
Pellerini with me for the confectionery. How often have I seen the
effect of a first-rate dinner spoiled by a vulgar dessert! laid flat on
the table, for example, or with ornaments that look as if they had been
hired at a pastrycook’s: triumphal arches, and Chinese pagodas, and
solitary pines springing up out of ice-tubs surrounded with peaches, as
if they were in the window of a fruiterer of Covent Garden.’

‘Ah! it is incredible what uneducated people will do,’ said Prevost.
‘The dressing of the tables was a department of itself in the Imperial
kitchen.’

‘It demands an artist of a high calibre,’ said Leander. ‘I know only
one man who realises my idea, and he is at St. Petersburg. You do not
know Anastase? There is a man! But the Emperor has him secure. He can
scarcely complain, however, since he is decorated, and has the rank of
full colonel.’

‘Ah!’ said Prevost, mournfully, ‘there is no recognition of genius in
this country. What think you of Vanesse, my child? He has had a regular
education.’

‘In a bad school: as a pis aller one might put up with him. But his
eternal tiers of bonbons! As if they were ranged for a supper of the
Carnival, and my guests were going to pelt each other! No, I could not
stand Vanesse, papa.’

‘The dressing of the table: ‘tis a rare talent,’ said Prevost,
mournfully, ‘and always was. In the Imperial kitchen------’

‘Papa,’ said Eugenie, opening the door, and putting in her head, ‘here
is Monsieur Vanillette just come from Brussels. He has brought you a
basket of truffles from Ardennes. I told him you were on business, but
to-night, if you be at home, he could come.’

‘Vanillette!’ exclaimed Prevost, starting in his chair, ‘our little
Vanillette! There is your man, Le-ander. He was my first pupil, as you
were my last, my child. Bring up our little Vanillette, Eugenie. He is
in the household of King Leopold, and his forte is dressing the table!’




CHAPTER II.

     _The House of Bellamont_

THE Duke of Bellamont was a personage who, from his rank, his blood, and
his wealth, might almost be placed at the head of the English nobility.
Although the grandson of a mere country gentleman, his fortunate
ancestor, in the decline of the last century, had captivated the heiress
of the Montacutes, Dukes of Bellamont, a celebrated race of the times
of the Plantagenets. The bridegroom, at the moment of his marriage,
had adopted the illustrious name of his young and beautiful wife. Mr.
Montacute was by nature a man of energy and of an enterprising spirit.
His vast and early success rapidly developed his native powers. With the
castles and domains and boroughs of the Bellamonts, he resolved also to
acquire their ancient baronies and their modern coronets. The times were
favourable to his projects, though they might require the devotion of
a life. He married amid the disasters of the American war. The king and
his minister appreciated the independent support afforded them by Mr.
Montacute, who represented his county, and who commanded five votes
in the House besides his own. He was one of the chief pillars of their
cause; but he was not only independent, he was conscientious and had
scruples. Saratoga staggered him. The defection of the Montacute votes,
at this moment, would have at once terminated the struggle between
England and her colonies. A fresh illustration of the advantages of
our parliamentary constitution! The independent Mr. Montacute, however,
stood by his sovereign; his five votes continued to cheer the noble lord
in the blue ribbon, and their master took his seat and the oaths in the
House of Lords, as Earl of Bellamont and Viscount Montacute. This might
be considered sufficiently well for one generation; but the silver spoon
which some fairy had placed in the cradle of the Earl of Bellamont was
of colossal proportions. The French Revolution succeeded the American
war, and was occasioned by it. It was but just, therefore, that it also
should bring its huge quota to the elevation of the man whom a colonial
revolt had made an earl. Amid the panic of Jacobinism, the declamations
of the friends of the people, the sovereign having no longer Hanover for
a refuge, and the prime minister examined as a witness in favour of the
very persons whom he was trying for high treason, the Earl of Bellamont
made a calm visit to Downing Street, and requested the revival of all
the honours of the ancient Earls and Dukes of Bellamont in his own
person. Mr. Pitt, who was far from favourable to the exclusive character
which distinguished the English peerage in the last century, was
himself not disinclined to accede to the gentle request of his powerful
supporter; but the king was less flexible. His Majesty, indeed, was on
principle not opposed to the revival of titles in families to whom the
domains without the honours of the old nobility had descended; and he
recognised the claim of the present Earls of Bellamont eventually to
regain the strawberry leaf which had adorned the coronet of the father
of the present countess. But the king was of opinion that this supreme
distinction ought only to be conferred on the blood of the old house,
and that a generation, therefore, must necessarily elapse before a
Duke of Bellamont could again figure in the golden book of the English
aristocracy.

But George the Third, with all his firmness, was doomed to frequent
discomfiture. His lot was cast in troubled waters, and he had often to
deal with individuals as inflexible as himself. Benjamin Franklin was
not more calmly contumacious than the individual whom his treason had
made an English peer. In that age of violence, change and panic, power,
directed by a clear brain and an obdurate spirit, could not fail of its
aim; and so it turned out, that, in the very teeth of the royal will,
the simple country gentleman, whose very name was forgotten, became,
at the commencement of this century, Duke of Bellamont, Marquis of
Montacute, Earl of Bellamont, Dacre, and Villeroy, with all the baronies
of the Plantagenets in addition. The only revenge of the king was, that
he never would give the Duke of Bellamont the garter. It was as well
perhaps that there should be something for his son to desire.

The Duke and Duchess of Bellamont were the handsomest couple in England,
and devoted to each other, but they had only one child. Fortunately,
that child was a son. Precious life! The Marquis of Montacute was
married before he was of age. Not a moment was to be lost to find heirs
for all these honours. Perhaps, had his parents been less precipitate,
their object might have been more securely obtained. The union’ was not
a happy one. The first duke had, however, the gratification of dying a
grandfather. His successor bore no resemblance to him, except in that
beauty which became a characteristic of the race. He was born to enjoy,
not to create. A man of pleasure, the chosen companion of the Regent in
his age of riot, he was cut off in his prime; but he lived long enough
to break his wife’s heart and his son’s spirit; like himself, too, an
only child.

The present Duke of Bellamont had inherited something of the clear
intelligence of his grandsire, with the gentle disposition of his
mother. His fair abilities, and his benevolent inclinations, had been
cultivated. His mother had watched over the child, in whom she found
alike the charm and consolation of her life. But, at a certain period of
youth, the formation of character requires a masculine impulse, and that
was wanting. The duke disliked his son; in time he became even jealous
of him. The duke had found himself a father at too early a period of
life. Himself in his lusty youth, he started with alarm at the form that
recalled his earliest and most brilliant hour, and who might prove a
rival. The son was of a gentle and affectionate nature, and sighed for
the tenderness of his harsh and almost vindictive parent. But he had not
that passionate soul which might have appealed, and perhaps not in vain,
to the dormant sympathies of the being who had created him. The young
Montacute was by nature of an extreme shyness, and the accidents of his
life had not tended to dissipate his painful want of self-confidence.
Physically courageous, his moral timidity was remarkable. He alternately
blushed or grew pale in his rare interviews with his father, trembled
in silence before the undeserved sarcasm, and often endured the unjust
accusation without an attempt to vindicate himself. Alone, and in
tears alike of woe and indignation, he cursed the want of resolution or
ability which had again missed the opportunity that, both for his mother
and himself, might have placed affairs in a happier position. Most
persons, under these circumstances, would have become bitter, but
Montacute was too tender for malice, and so he only turned melancholy.
On the threshold of manhood, Montacute lost his mother, and this seemed
the catastrophe of his unhappy life. His father neither shared his
grief, nor attempted to alleviate it. On the contrary, he seemed to
redouble his efforts to mortify his son. His great object was to prevent
Lord Montacute from entering society, and he was so complete a master
of the nervous temperament on which he was acting that there appeared
a fair chance of his succeeding in his benevolent intentions. When his
son’s education was completed, the duke would not furnish him with the
means of moving in the world in a becoming manner, or even sanction his
travelling. His Grace was resolved to break his son’s spirit by keeping
him immured in the country. Other heirs apparent of a rich seignory
would soon have removed these difficulties. By bill or by bond, by
living usury, or by post-obit liquidation, by all the means that private
friends or public offices could supply, the sinews of war would have
been forthcoming. They would have beaten their fathers’ horses at
Newmarket, eclipsed them with their mistresses, and, sitting for their
boroughs, voted against their party. But Montacute was not one of those
young heroes who rendered so distinguished the earlier part of this
century. He had passed his life so much among women and clergymen that
he had never emancipated himself from the old law that enjoined him
to honour a parent. Besides, with all his shyness and timidity, he was
extremely proud. He never forgot that he was a Montacute, though he had
forgotten, like the world in general, that his grandfather once bore a
different and humbler name. All merged in the great fact, that he was
the living representative of those Montacutes of Bellamont, whose wild
and politic achievements, or the sustained splendour of whose stately
life had for seven hundred years formed a stirring and superb portion
of the history and manners of our country. Death was preferable, in
his view, to having such a name soiled in the haunts of jockeys and
courtesans and usurers; and, keen as was the anguish which the conduct
of the duke to his mother or himself had often occasioned him, it
was sometimes equalled in degree by the sorrow and the shame which he
endured when he heard of the name of Bellamont only in connection with
some stratagem of the turf or some frantic revel. Without a friend,
almost without an acquaintance, Montacute sought refuge in love. She who
shed over his mournful life the divine ray of feminine sympathy was
his cousin, the daughter of his mother’s brother, an English peer, but
resident in the north of Ireland, where he had vast possessions. It was
a family otherwise little calculated to dissipate the reserve and gloom
of a depressed and melancholy youth; puritanical, severe and formal in
their manners, their relaxations a Bible Society, or a meeting for the
conversion of the Jews. But Lady Katherine was beautiful, and all were
kind to one to whom kindness was strange, and the soft pathos of whose
solitary spirit demanded affection.

Montacute requested his father’s permission to marry his cousin, and was
immediately refused. The duke particularly disliked his wife’s family;
but the fact is, he had no wish that his son should ever marry. He meant
to perpetuate his race himself, and was at this moment, in the midst of
his orgies, meditating a second alliance, which should compensate him
for his boyish blunder. In this state of affairs, Montacute, at length
stung to resistance, inspired by the most powerful of passions, and
acted upon by a stronger volition than his own, was planning a marriage
in spite of his father (love, a cottage by an Irish lake, and seven
hundred a-year) when intelligence arrived that his father, whose
powerful frame and vigorous health seemed to menace a patriarchal term,
was dead.

The new Duke of Bellamont had no experience of the world; but, though
long cowed by his father, he had a strong character. Though the circle
of his ideas was necessarily contracted, they were all clear and firm.
In his moody youth he had imbibed certain impressions and arrived at
certain conclusions, and they never quitted him. His mother was his
model of feminine perfection, and he had loved his cousin because she
bore a remarkable resemblance to her aunt. Again, he was of opinion
that the tie between the father and the son ought to be one of intimate
confidence and refined tenderness, and he resolved that, if Providence
favoured him with offspring, his child should ever find in him absolute
devotion of thought and feeling.

A variety of causes and circumstances had impressed him with a
conviction that what is called fashionable life was a compound of
frivolity and fraud, of folly and vice; and he resolved never to enter
it. To this he was, perhaps, in some degree unconsciously prompted by
his reserved disposition, and by his painful sense of inexperience, for
he looked forward to this world with almost as much of apprehension
as of dislike. To politics, in the vulgar sense of the word, he had an
equal repugnance. He had a lofty idea of his duty to his sovereign and
his country, and felt within him the energies that would respond to a
conjuncture. But he acceded to his title in a period of calmness, when
nothing was called in question, and no danger was apprehended; and as
for the fights of factions, the duke altogether held himself aloof from
them; he wanted nothing, not even the blue ribbon which he was soon
obliged to take. Next to his domestic hearth, all his being was
concentrated in his duties as a great proprietor of the soil. On
these he had long pondered, and these he attempted to fulfil. That
performance, indeed, was as much a source of delight to him as of
obligation. He loved the country and a country life. His reserve seemed
to melt away the moment he was on his own soil. Courteous he ever
was, but then he became gracious and hearty. He liked to assemble ‘the
county’ around him; to keep ‘the county’ together; ‘the county’ seemed
always his first thought; he was proud of ‘the county,’ where he reigned
supreme, not more from his vast possessions than from the influence of
his sweet yet stately character, which made those devoted to him who
otherwise were independent of his sway.

From straitened circumstances, and without having had a single fancy of
youth gratified, the Duke of Bellamont had been suddenly summoned to
the lordship of an estate scarcely inferior in size and revenue to
some continental principalities; to dwell in palaces and castles, to
be surrounded by a disciplined retinue, and to find every wish and want
gratified before they could be expressed or anticipated. Yet he showed
no elation, and acceded to his inheritance as serene as if he had never
felt a pang or proved a necessity. She whom in the hour of trial he had
selected for the future partner of his life, though a remarkable woman,
by a singular coincidence of feeling, for it was as much from her
original character as from sympathy with her husband, confirmed him in
all his moods.

Katherine, Duchess of Bellamont, was beautiful: small and delicate in
structure, with a dazzling complexion, and a smile which, though rare,
was of the most winning and brilliant character. Her rich brown hair
and her deep blue eye might have become a dryad; but her brow denoted
intellect of a high order, and her mouth spoke inexorable resolution.
She was a woman of fixed opinions, and of firm and compact prejudices.
Brought up in an austere circle, where on all matters irrevocable
judgment had been passed, which enjoyed the advantages of knowing
exactly what was true in dogma, what just in conduct, and what correct
in manners, she had early acquired the convenient habit of decision,
while her studious mind employed its considerable energies in mastering
every writer who favoured those opinions which she had previously
determined were the right ones.

The duchess was deep in the divinity of the seventeenth century. In the
controversies between the two churches, she could have perplexed St.
Omers or Maynooth. Chillingworth might be found her boudoir. Not that
her Grace’s reading was confined to divinity; on the contrary, it was
various and extensive. Puritan in religion, she was precisian in morals;
but in both she was sincere. She was so in all things. Her nature was
frank and simple; if she were inflexible, she at least wished to be
just; and though very conscious of the greatness of her position, she
was so sensible of its duties that there was scarcely any exertion which
she would evade, or any humility from which she would shrink, if she
believed she were doing her duty to her God or to her neighbour.

It will be seen, therefore, that the Duke of Bellamont found no obstacle
in his wife, who otherwise much influenced his conduct, to the plans
which he had pre-conceived for the conduct of his life after marriage.
The duchess shrank, with a feeling of haughty terror from that world of
fashion which would have so willingly greeted her. During the greater
part of the year, therefore, the Bellamonts resided in their magnificent
castle, in their distant county, occupied with all the business and
the pleasures of the provinces. While the duke, at the head of the
magistracy, in the management of his estates, and in the sports of which
he was fond, found ample occupation, his wife gave an impulse to the
charity of the county, founded schools, endowed churches, received
their neighbours, read her books, and amused herself in the creation of
beautiful gardens, for which she had a passion.

After Easter, Parliament requiring their presence, the courtyard of one
of the few palaces in London opened, and the world learnt that the Duke
and Duchess of Bellamont had arrived at Bellamont House, from Montacute
Castle. During their stay in town, which they made as brief as they
well could, and which never exceeded three months, they gave a series
of great dinners, principally attended by noble relations and those
families of the county who were so fortunate as to have also a residence
in London. Regularly every year, also, there was a grand banquet
given to some members of the royal family by the Duke and Duchess of
Bellamont, and regularly every year the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont
had the honour of dining at the palace. Except at a ball or concert
under the royal roof, the duke and duchess were never seen anywhere
in the evening. The great ladies indeed, the Lady St. Julians and the
Marchionesses of Deloraine, always sent them invitations, though they
were ever declined. But the Bellamonts maintained a sort of
traditional acquaintance with a few great houses, either by the ties
of relationship, which, among the aristocracy, are very ramified, or
by occasionally receiving travelling magnificoes at their hospitable
castle.

To the great body, however, of what is called ‘the world,’ the world
that lives in St. James’ Street and Pall Mall, that looks out of a club
window, and surveys mankind as Lucretius from his philosophic tower; the
world of the Georges and the Jemmys; of Mr. Cassilis and Mr. Melton; of
the Milfords and the Fitz-Herons, the Berners and the Egertons, the Mr.
Ormsbys and the Alfred Mountchesneys, the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont
were absolutely unknown.

All that the world knew was, that there was a great peer who was called
Duke of Bellamont; that there was a great house in London, with a
courtyard, which bore his name; that he had a castle in the country,
which was one of the boasts of England; and that this great duke had a
duchess; but they never met them anywhere, nor did their wives and their
sisters, and the ladies whom they admired, or who admired them,
either at ball or at breakfast, either at morning dances or at evening
déjeuners. It was clear, therefore, that the Bellamonts might be very
great people, but they were not in ‘society.’

It must have been some organic law, or some fate which uses structure
for its fulfilment, but again it seemed that the continuance of the
great house of Montacute should depend upon the life of a single being.
The duke, like his father and his grandfather, was favoured only with
one child, but that child was again a son. From the moment of his birth,
the very existence of his parents seemed identified with his welfare.
The duke and his wife mutually assumed to each other a secondary
position, in comparison with that occupied by their offspring. From the
hour of his birth to the moment when this history opens, and when he was
about to complete his majority, never had such solicitude been lavished
on human being as had been continuously devoted to the life of the young
Lord Montacute. During his earlier education he scarcely quitted
home. He had, indeed, once been shown to Eton, surrounded by faithful
domestics, and accompanied by a private tutor, whose vigilance would
not have disgraced a superintendent of police; but the scarlet fever
happened to break out during his first half, and Lord Montacute was
instantly snatched away from the scene of danger, where he was never
again to appear. At eighteen he went to Christ-church. His mother, who
had nursed him herself, wrote to him every day; but this was not found
sufficient, and the duke hired a residence in the neighourhood of the
university, in order that they might occasionally see their son during
term.




CHAPTER III.

     _A Discussion about Money_

‘SAW Eskdale just now,’ said Mr. Cassilis, at White’s, ‘going down to
the Duke of Bellamont’s. Great doings there: son comes of age at Easter.
Wonder what sort of fellow he is? Anybody know anything about him?’

‘I wonder what his father’s rent-roll is?’ said Mr. Ormsby.

‘They say it is quite clear,’ said Lord Fitz-Heron. ‘Safe for that,’
said Lord Milford; ‘and plenty of ready money, too, I should think, for
one never heard of the present duke doing anything.’

‘He does a good deal in his county,’ said Lord Valentine.

‘I don’t call that anything,’ said Lord Milford; ‘but I mean to say he
never played, was never seen at Newmarket, or did anything which anybody
can remember. In fact, he is a person whose name you never by any chance
hear mentioned.’

‘He is a sort of cousin of mine,’ said Lord Valentine; ‘and we are all
going down to the coming of age: that is, we are asked.’ ‘Then you can
tell us what sort of fellow the son is.’

‘I never saw him,’ said Lord Valentine; ‘but I know the duchess told
my mother last year, that Montacute, throughout his life, had never
occasioned her a single moment’s pain.’

Here there was a general laugh.

‘Well, I have no doubt he will make up for lost time,’ said Mr. Ormsby,
demurely.

‘Nothing like mamma’s darling for upsetting a coach,’ said Lord Milford.
‘You ought to bring your cousin here, Valentine; we would assist the
development of his unsophisticated intelligence.’

‘If I go down, I will propose it to him.’

‘Why if?’ said Mr. Cassilis; ‘sort of thing I should like to see once
uncommonly: oxen roasted alive, old armour, and the girls of the village
all running about as if they were behind the scenes.’

‘Is that the way you did it at your majority, George?’ said Lord
Fitz-Heron.

‘Egad! I kept my arrival at years of discretion at Brighton. I believe
it was the last fun there ever was at the Pavilion. The poor dear king,
God bless him! proposed my health, and made the devil’s own speech; we
all began to pipe. He was Regent then. Your father was there, Valentine;
ask him if he remembers it. That was a scene! I won’t say how it ended;
but the best joke is, I got a letter from my governor a few days after,
with an account of what they had all been doing at Brandingham, and
rowing me for not coming down, and I found out I had kept my coming of
age the wrong day.’

‘Did you tell them?’

‘Not a word: I was afraid we might have had to go through it over
again.’

‘I suppose old Bellamont is the devil’s own screw,’ said Lord Milford.
‘Rich governors, who have never been hard up, always are.’

‘No: I believe he is a very good sort of fellow,’ said Lord Valentine;
‘at least my people always say so. I do not know much about him, for
they never go anywhere.’

‘They have got Leander down at Montacute,’ said Mr. Cassilis. ‘Had
not such a thing as a cook in the whole county. They say Lord Eskdale
arranged the cuisine for them; so you will feed well, Valentine.’

‘That is something: and one can eat before Easter; but when the balls
begin----’

‘Oh! as for that, you will have dancing enough at Montacute; it is
expected on these occasions: Sir Roger de Coverley, tenants’ daughters,
and all that sort of thing. Deuced funny, but I must say, if I am to
have a lark, I like Vauxhall.’

‘I never met the Bellamonts,’ said Lord Milford, musingly. ‘Are there
any daughters?’

‘None.’

‘That is a bore. A single daughter, even if there be a son, may be made
something of; because, in nine cases out of ten, there is a round sum in
the settlements for the younger children, and she takes it all.’

‘That is the case of Lady Blanche Bickerstaffe,’ said Lord Fitz-Heron.
‘She will have a hundred thousand pounds.’

‘You don’t mean that!’ said Lord Valentine; ‘and she is a very nice
girl, too.’

‘You are quite wrong about the hundred thousand, Fitz,’ said Lord
Milford; ‘for I made it my business to inquire most particularly into
the affair: it is only fifty.’

‘In these cases, the best rule is only to believe half,’ said Mr.
Ormsby.

‘Then you have only got twenty thousand a-year, Ormsby,’ said Lord
Milford, laughing, ‘because the world gives you forty.’

‘Well, we must do the best we can in these hard times,’ said Mr. Ormsby,
with an air of mock resignation. ‘With your Dukes of Bellamont and all
these grandees on the stage, we little men shall be scarcely able to
hold up our heads.’

‘Come, Ormsby,’ said Lord Milford; ‘tell us the amount of your income
tax.’

‘They say Sir Robert quite blushed when he saw the figure at which you
were sacked, and declared it was downright spoliation.’

‘You young men are always talking about money,’ said Mr. Ormsby, shaking
his head; ‘you should think of higher things.’

‘I wonder what young Montacute will be thinking of this time next year,’
said Lord Fitz-Heron.

‘There will be plenty of people thinking of him,’ said Mr. Cassilis.
‘Egad! you gentlemen must stir yourselves, if you mean to be turned off.
You will have rivals.’

‘He will be no rival to me,’ said Lord Milford; ‘for I am an avowed
fortune-hunter, and that you say he does not care for, at least, at
present.’

‘And I marry only for love,’ said Lord Valentine, laughing; ‘and so we
shall not clash.’

‘Ay, ay; but if he will not go to the heiresses, the heiresses will go
to him,’ said Mr. Ormsby. ‘I have seen a good deal of these things, and
I generally observe the eldest son of a duke takes a fortune out of the
market. Why, there is Beaumanoir, he is like Valentine; I suppose
he intends to marry for love, as he is always in that way; but the
heiresses never leave him alone, and in the long run you cannot
withstand it; it is like a bribe; a man is indignant at the bare
thought, refuses the first offer, and pockets the second.’

‘It is very immoral, and very unfair,’ said Lord Milford, ‘that any man
should marry for tin who does not want it.’




CHAPTER IV.

     _Montacute  Castle_

THE forest of Montacute, in the north of England, is the name given to
an extensive district, which in many parts offers no evidence of the
propriety of its title. The land, especially during the last century,
has been effectively cleared, and presents, in general, a champaign
view; rich and rural, but far from picturesque. Over a wide expanse, the
eye ranges on cornfields and rich hedgerows, many a sparkling spire, and
many a merry windmill. In the extreme distance, on a clear day, may
be discerned the blue hills of the Border, and towards the north the
cultivated country ceases, and the dark form of the old forest spreads
into the landscape. The traveller, however, who may be tempted to
penetrate these sylvan recesses, will find much that is beautiful, and
little that is savage. He will be struck by the capital road that winds
among the groves of ancient oak, and the turfy and ferny wilderness
which extends on each side, whence the deer gaze on him with haughty
composure, as if conscious that he was an intruder into their kingdom of
whom they need have no fear. As he advances, he observes the number of
cross routes which branch off from the main road, and which, though of
less dimensions, are equally remarkable for their masterly structure and
compact condition.

Sometimes the land is cleared, and he finds himself by the homestead
of a forest farm, and remarks the buildings, distinguished not only by
their neatness, but the propriety of their rustic architecture. Still
advancing, the deer become rarer, and the road is formed by an avenue
of chestnuts; the forest, on each side, being now transformed into
vegetable gardens. The stir of the population is soon evident. Persons
are moving to and fro on the side path of the road. Horsemen and carts
seem returning from market; women with empty baskets, and then the rare
vision of a stage-coach. The postilion spurs his horses, cracks his
whip, and dashes at full gallop into the town of Montacute, the capital
of the forest.

It is the prettiest little town in the world, built entirely of hewn
stone, the well-paved and well-lighted streets as neat as a Dutch
village. There are two churches: one of great antiquity, the other
raised by the present duke, but in the best style of Christian
architecture. The bridge that spans the little but rapid river Belle,
is perhaps a trifle too vast and Roman for its site; but it was built
by the first duke of the second dynasty, who was always afraid of
underbuilding his position. The town was also indebted to him for their
hall, a Palladian palace. Montacute is a corporate town, and, under
the old system, returned two members to Parliament. The amount of
its population, according to the rule generally observed, might have
preserved it from disfranchisement, but, as every house belonged to
the duke, and as he was what, in the confused phraseology of the
revolutionary war, was called a Tory, the Whigs took care to put
Montacute in Schedule A.

The town-hall, the market-place, a literary institution, and the new
church, form, with some good houses of recent erection, a handsome
square, in which there is a fountain, a gift to the town from the
present duchess.

At the extremity of the town, the ground rises, and on a woody steep,
which is in fact the termination of a long range of tableland, may be
seen the towers of the outer court of Montacute Castle. The principal
building, which is vast and of various ages, from the Plantagenets to
the Guelphs, rises on a terrace, from which, on the side opposite to the
town, you descend into a well-timbered inclosure, called the Home Park.
Further on, the forest again appears; the deer again crouch in their
fern, or glance along the vistas; nor does this green domain terminate
till it touches the vast and purple moors that divide the kingdoms of
Great Britain.

It was on an early day of April that the duke was sitting in his private
room, a pen in one hand, and looking up with a face of pleasurable
emotion at his wife, who stood by his side, her right arm sometimes on
the back of his chair, and sometimes on his shoulder, while with her
other hand, between the intervals of speech, she pressed a handkerchief
to her eyes, bedewed with the expression of an affectionate excitement.

‘It is too much,’ said her Grace.

‘And done in such a handsome manner!’ said the duke.

‘I would not tell our dear child of it at this moment,’ said the
duchess; ‘he has so much to go through!’

‘You are right, Kate. It will keep till the celebration is over. How
delighted he will be!’

‘My dear George, I sometimes think we are too happy.’

‘You are not half as happy as you deserve to be,’ replied her husband,
looking up with a smile of affection; and then he finished his reply to
the letter of Mr. Hungerford, one of the county members, informing
the duke, that now Lord Montacute was of age, he intended at once to
withdraw from Parliament, having for a long time fixed on the majority
of the heir of the house of Bellamont as the signal for that event. ‘I
accepted the post,’ said Mr. Hungerford, ‘much against my will. Your
Grace behaved to me at the time in the handsomest manner, and, indeed,
ever since, with respect to this subject. But a Marquis of Montacute is,
in my opinion, and, I believe I may add, in that of the whole county,
our proper representative; besides, we want young blood in the House.’

‘It certainly is done in the handsomest manner,’ said the duke.

‘But then you know, George, you behaved to him in the handsomest manner;
he says so, as you do indeed to everybody; and this is your reward.’

‘I should be very sorry, indeed, if Hungerford did not withdraw with
perfect satisfaction to himself, and his family too,’ urged the duke;
‘they are most respectable people, one of the most respectable families
in the county; I should be quite grieved if this step were taken without
their entire and hearty concurrence.’

‘Of course it is,’ said the duchess, ‘with the entire and hearty
concurrence of every one. Mr. Hungerford says so. And I must say that,
though few things could have gratified me more, I quite agree with Mr.
Hungerford that a Lord Montacute is the natural member for the county;
and I have no doubt that if Mr. Hungerford, or any one else in his
position, had not resigned, they never could have met our child without
feeling the greatest embarrassment.’

‘A man though, and a man of Hungerford’s position, an old family in
the county, does not like to figure as a warming-pan,’ said the duke,
thoughtfully. ‘I think it has been done in a very handsome manner.’

‘And we will show our sense of it,’ said the duchess. ‘The Hungerfords
shall feel, when they come here on Thursday, that they are among our
best friends.’

‘That is my own Kate! Here is a letter from your brother. They will be
here to-morrow. Eskdale cannot come over till Wednesday. He is at home,
but detained by a meeting about his new harbour.’

‘I am delighted that they will be here to-morrow,’ said the duchess. ‘I
am so anxious that he should see Kate before the castle is full, when he
will have a thousand calls upon his time! I feel persuaded that he will
love her at first sight. And as for their being cousins, why, we were
cousins, and that did not hinder us from loving each other.’

‘If she resemble you as much as you resembled your aunt ----’ said the
duke, looking up.

‘She is my perfect image, my very self, Harriet says, in disposition, as
well as face and form.’

‘Then our son has a good chance of being a very happy man,’ said the
duke.

‘That he should come of age, enter Parliament, and marry in the same
year! We ought to be very thankful. What a happy year!’

‘But not one of these events has yet occurred,’ said the duke, smiling.

‘But they all will,’ said the duchess, ‘under Providence.’

‘I would not precipitate marriage.’

‘Certainly not; nor should I wish him to think of it before the autumn.
I should like him to be married on our wedding-day.’




CHAPTER V.

     _The Heir Comes of Age_

THE sun shone brightly, there was a triumphal arch at every road;
the market-place and the town-hall were caparisoned like steeds for a
tournament, every house had its garland; the flags were flying on every
tower and steeple. There was such a peal of bells you could scarcely
hear your neighbour’s voice; then came discharges of artillery, and then
bursts of music from various bands, all playing different tunes. The
country people came trooping in, some on horseback, some in carts, some
in procession. The Temperance band made an immense noise, and the
Odd Fellows were loudly cheered. Every now and then one of the duke’s
yeomanry galloped through the town in his regimentals of green and
silver, with his dark flowing plume and clattering sabre, and with an
air of business-like desperation, as if he were carrying a message from
the commander-in-chief in the thickest of the fight.

Before the eventful day of which this, merry morn was the harbinger, the
arrivals of guests at the castle had been numerous and important. First
came the brother of the duchess, with his countess, and their fair
daughter the Lady Katherine, whose fate, unconsciously to herself, had
already been sealed by her noble relatives. She was destined to be the
third Katherine of Bellamont that her fortunate house had furnished to
these illustrious walls. Nor, if unaware of her high lot, did she seem
unworthy of it. Her mien was prophetic of the state assigned to her.
This was her first visit to Montacute since her early childhood, and she
had not encountered her cousin since their nursery days. The day after
them, Lord Eskdale came over from his principal seat in the contiguous
county, of which he was lord-lieutenant. He was the first cousin of the
duke, his father and the second Duke of Bellamont having married two
sisters, and of course intimately related to the duchess and her family.
Lord Eskdale exercised a great influence over the house of Montacute,
though quite unsought for by him. He was the only man of the world
whom they knew, and they never decided upon anything out of the limited
circle of their immediate experience without consulting him. Lord
Eskdale had been the cause of their son going to Eton; Lord Eskdale had
recommended them to send him to Christ-church. The duke had begged his
cousin to be his trustee when he married; he had made him his executor,
and had intended him as the guardian of his son. Although, from the
difference of their habits, little thrown together in their earlier
youth, Lord Eskdale had shown, even then, kind consideration for his
relative; he had even proposed that they should travel together, but
the old duke would not consent to this. After his death, however, being
neighbours as well as relatives, Lord Eskdale had become the natural
friend and counsellor of his Grace.

The duke deservedly reposed in him implicit confidence, and entertained
an almost unbounded admiration of his cousin’s knowledge of mankind. He
was scarcely less a favourite or less an oracle with the duchess, though
there were subjects on which she feared Lord Eskdale did not entertain
views as serious as her own; but Lord Eskdale, with an extreme
carelessness of manner, and an apparent negligence of the minor arts
of pleasing, was a consummate master of the feminine idiosyncrasy, and,
from a French actress to an English duchess, was skilled in guiding
women without ever letting the curb be felt. Scarcely a week elapsed,
when Lord Eskdale was in the country, that a long letter of difficulties
was not received by him from Montacute, with an earnest request for his
immediate advice. His lordship, singularly averse to letter writing, and
especially to long letter writing, used generally in reply to say that,
in the course of a day or two, he should be in their part of the world,
and would talk the matter over with them.

And, indeed, nothing was more amusing than to see Lord Eskdale,
imperturbable, yet not heedless, with his peculiar calmness, something
between that of a Turkish pasha and an English jockey, standing up
with his back to the fire and his hands in his pockets, and hearing the
united statement of a case by the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont;
the serious yet quiet and unexaggerated narrative of his Grace, the
impassioned interruptions, decided opinions, and lively expressions
of his wife, when she felt the duke was not doing justice to the
circumstances, or her view of them, and the Spartan brevity with which,
when both his clients were exhausted, their counsel summed up the whole
affair, and said three words which seemed suddenly to remove all
doubts, and to solve all difficulties. In all the business of life, Lord
Eskdale, though he appreciated their native ability, and respected
their considerable acquirements, which he did not share, looked upon his
cousins as two children, and managed them as children; but he was really
attached to them, and the sincere attachment of such a character is
often worth more than the most passionate devotion. The last great
domestic embarrassment at Montacute had been the affair of the cooks.
Lord Eskdale had taken this upon his own shoulders, and, writing to
Daubuz, had sent down Leander and his friends to open the minds and
charm the palates of the north.

Lord Valentine and his noble parents, and their daughter, Lady
Florentina, who was a great horsewoman, also arrived. The countess, who
had once been a beauty with the reputation of a wit, and now set up for
being a wit on the reputation of having been a beauty, was the lady of
fashion of the party, and scarcely knew anybody present, though there
were many who were her equals and some her superiors in rank. Her way
was to be a little fine, always smiling and condescendingly amiable;
when alone with her husband shrugging her shoulders somewhat, and vowing
that she was delighted that Lord Eskdale was there, as she had somebody
to speak to. It was what she called ‘quite a relief.’ A relief, perhaps,
from Lord and Lady Mountjoy, whom she had been avoiding all her life;
unfortunate people, who, with a large fortune, lived in a wrong square,
and asked to their house everybody who was nobody; besides, Lord
Mountjoy was vulgar, and laughed too loud, and Lady Mountjoy called you
‘my dear,’ and showed her teeth. A relief, perhaps, too, from the Hon.
and Rev. Montacute Mountjoy, who, with Lady Eleanor, four daughters
and two sons, had been invited to celebrate the majority of the future
chieftain of their house. The countess had what is called ‘a horror of
those Mountjoys, and those Montacute Mountjoys,’ and what added to her
annoyance was, that Lord Valentine was always flirting with the Misses
Montacute Mountjoy.

The countess could find no companions in the Duke and Duchess of
Clanronald, because, as she told her husband, as they could not speak
English and she could not speak Scotch, it was impossible to exchange
ideas. The bishop of the diocese was there, toothless and tolerant,
and wishing to be on good terms with all sects, provided they pay
church-rates, and another bishop far more vigorous and of greater fame.
By his administration the heir of Bellamont had entered the Christian
Church, and by the imposition of his hands had been confirmed in it. His
lordship, a great authority with the duchess, was specially invited to
be present on the interesting occasion, when the babe that he had held
at the font, and the child that he had blessed at the altar, was about
thus publicly to adopt and acknowledge the duties and responsibility of
a man. But the countess, though she liked bishops, liked them, as she
told her husband, ‘in their place.’ What that exactly was, she did not
define; but probably their palaces or the House of Lords.

It was hardly to be expected that her ladyship would find any relief
in the society of the Marquis and Marchioness of Hampshire; for his
lordship passed his life in being the President of scientific and
literary societies, and was ready for anything from the Royal, if his
turn ever arrived, to opening a Mechanics’ Institute in his neighbouring
town. Lady Hampshire was an invalid; but her ailment was one of those
mysteries which still remained insoluble, although, in the most liberal
manner, she delighted to afford her friends all the information in her
power. Never was a votary endowed with a faith at once so lively and
so capricious. Each year she believed in some new remedy, and announced
herself on the eve of some miraculous cure. But the saint was scarcely
canonised before his claims to beatitude were impugned. One year Lady
Hampshire never quitted Leamington; another, she contrived to combine
the infinitesimal doses of Hahnemann with the colossal distractions
of the metropolis. Now her sole conversation was the water cure. Lady
Hampshire was to begin immediately after her visit to Montacute, and she
spoke in her sawney voice of factitious enthusiasm, as if she pitied the
lot of all those who were not about to sleep in wet sheets.

The members for the county, with their wives and daughters, the
Hungerfords and the Ildertons, Sir Russell Malpas, or even Lord Hull,
an Irish peer with an English estate, and who represented one of the
divisions, were scarcely a relief. Lord Hull was a bachelor, and had
twenty thousand a year, and would not have been too old for Florentina,
if Lord Hull had only lived in ‘society,’ learnt how to dress and how
to behave, and had avoided that peculiar coarseness of manners and
complexion which seem the inevitable results of a provincial life. What
are forty-five or even forty-eight years, if a man do not get up too
early or go to bed too soon, if he be dressed by the right persons, and,
early accustomed to the society of women, he possesses that flexibility
of manner and that readiness of gentle repartee which a feminine
apprenticeship can alone confer? But Lord Hull was a man with a red face
and a grey head on whom coarse indulgence and the selfish negligence of
a country life had already conferred a shapeless form; and who,
dressed something like a groom, sat at dinner in stolid silence by Lady
Hampshire, who, whatever were her complaints, had certainly the art,
if only from her questions, of making her neighbours communicative. The
countess examined Lord Hull through her eye-glass with curious pity at
so fine a fortune and so good a family being so entirely thrown away.
Had he been brought up in a civilised manner, lived six months in May
Fair, passed his carnival at Paris, never sported except in Scotland,
and occasionally visited a German bath, even Lord Hull might have ‘fined
down.’ His hair need not have been grey if it had been attended to; his
complexion would not have been so glaring; his hands never could have
grown to so huge a shape.

What a party, where the countess was absolutely driven to speculate on
the possible destinies of a Lord Hull! But in this party there was not a
single young man, at least not a single young man one had ever heard
of, except her son, and he was of no use. The Duke of Bellamont knew
no young men; the duke did not even belong to a club; the Duchess of
Bellamont knew no young men; she never gave and she never attended an
evening party. As for the county youth, the young Hungerfords and the
young Ildertons, the best of them formed part of the London crowd.

Some of them, by complicated manouvres, might even have made their way
into the countess’s crowded saloons on a miscellaneous night. She knew
the length of their tether. They ranged, as the Price Current says, from
eight to three thousand a year. Not the figure that purchases a Lady
Florentina!

There were many other guests, and some of them notable, though not
of the class and character to interest the fastidious mother of Lord
Valentine; but whoever and whatever they might be, of the sixty
or seventy persons who were seated each day in the magnificent
banqueting-room of Montacute Castle, feasting, amid pyramids of gold
plate, on the masterpieces of Leander, there was not a single individual
who did not possess one of the two great qualifications: they were all
of them cousins of the Duke of Bellamont, or proprietors in his county.

But we must not anticipate, the great day of the festival having hardly
yet commenced.




CHAPTER VI.

     _A Festal Day_

IN THE Home Park was a colossal pavilion, which held more than two
thousand persons, and in which the townsfolk of Montacute were to dine;
at equal distances were several smaller tents, each of different colours
and patterns, and each bearing on a standard the name of one of the
surrounding parishes which belonged to the Duke of Bellamont, and to
the convenience and gratification of whose inhabitants these tents were
to-day dedicated. There was not a man of Buddleton or Fuddleton; not a
yeoman or peasant of Montacute super Mare or Montacute Abbotts, nor
of Percy Bellamont nor Friar’s Bellamont, nor Winch nor Finch, nor of
Mandeville Stokes nor Mandeville Bois; not a goodman true of Carleton
and Ingleton and Kirkby and Dent, and Gillamoor and Padmore and Hutton
le Hale; not a stout forester from the glades of Thorp, or the sylvan
homes of Hurst Lydgate and Bishopstowe, that knew not where foamed and
flowed the duke’s ale, that was to quench the longings of his thirsty
village. And their wives and daughters were equally welcome. At the
entrance of each tent, the duke’s servants invited all to enter,
supplied them with required refreshments, or indicated their appointed
places at the approaching banquet. In general, though there were many
miscellaneous parties, each village entered the park in procession, with
its flag and its band.

At noon the scene presented the appearance of an immense but
well-ordered fair. In the background, men and boys climbed poles or
raced in sacks, while the exploits of the ginglers, their mischievous
manoeuvres and subtle combinations, elicited frequent bursts of
laughter. Further on, two long-menaced cricket matches called forth all
the skill and energy of Fuddleton and Buddleton, and Winch and Finch.
The great throng of the population, however, was in the precincts of the
terrace, where, in the course of the morning, it was known that the duke
and duchess, with the hero of the day and all their friends, were to
appear, to witness the sports of the people, and especially the feats
of the morrice-dancers, who were at this moment practising before a
very numerous and delighted audience. In the meantime, bells, drums, and
trumpets, an occasional volley, and the frequent cheers and laughter
of the multitude, combined with the brilliancy of the sun and the
brightness of the ale to make a right gladsome scene.

‘It’s nothing to what it will be at night,’ said one of the duke’s
footmen to his family, his father and mother, two sisters and a young
brother, listening to him with open mouths, and staring at his state
livery with mingled feelings of awe and affection. They had come over
from Bellamont Friars, and their son had asked the steward to give him
the care of the pavilion of that village, in order that he might
look after his friends. Never was a family who esteemed themselves so
fortunate or felt so happy. This was having a friend at court, indeed.

‘It’s nothing to what it will be at night,’ said Thomas. ‘You will have
“Hail, star of Bellamont!” and “God save the Queen!” a crown, three
stars,’ four flags, and two coronets, all in coloured lamps, letters six
feet high, on the castle. There will be one hundred beacons lit over
the space of fifty miles the moment a rocket is shot off from the
Round Tower; and as for fireworks, Bob, you’ll see them at last. Bengal
lights, and the largest wheels will be as common as squibs and crackers;
and I have heard say, though it is not to be mentioned----’ And he
paused.

‘We’ll not open our mouths,’ said his father, earnestly.

‘You had better not tell us,’ said his mother, in a nervous paroxysm;
‘for I am in such a fluster, I am sure I cannot answer for myself, and
then Thomas may lose his place for breach of conference.’

‘Nonsense, mother,’ said his sisters, who snubbed their mother almost as
readily as is the gracious habit of their betters. ‘Pray tell us, Tom.’

‘Ay, ay, Tom,’ said his younger brother.

‘Well,’ said Tom, in a confidential whisper, ‘won’t there be a
transparency! I have heard say the Queen never had anything like it. You
won’t be able to see it for the first quarter of an hour, there will be
such a blaze of fire and rockets; but when it does come, they say it’s
like heaven opening; the young markiss on a cloud, with his hand on his
heart, in his new uniform.’

‘Dear me!’ said the mother. ‘I knew him before he was weaned. The
duchess suckled him herself, which shows her heart is very true; for
they may say what they like, but if another’s milk is in your child’s
veins, he seems, in a sort of way, as much her bairn as your own.’

‘Mother’s milk makes a true born Englishman,’ said the father; ‘and I
make no doubt our young markiss will prove the same.’

‘How I long to see him!’ exclaimed one of the daughters.

‘And so do I!’ said her sister; ‘and in his uniform! How beautiful it
must be!’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the mother; ‘and perhaps you will laugh at me
for saying so, but after seeing my Thomas in his state livery, I don’t
care much for seeing anything else.’

‘Mother, how can you say such things? I am afraid the crowd will be very
great at the fireworks. We must try to get a good place.’

‘I have arranged all that,’ said Thomas, with a triumphant look. ‘There
will be an inner circle for the steward’s friends, and you will be let
in.’

‘Oh!’ exclaimed his sisters.

‘Well, I hope I shall get through the day,’ said his mother; ‘but it’s
rather a trial, after our quiet life.’

‘And when will they come on the terrace, Thomas?’

‘You see, they are waiting for the corporation, that’s the mayor and
town council of Montacute; they are coming up with an address. There! Do
you hear that? That’s the signal gun. They are leaving the town-hall at
this same moment. Now, in three-quarters of an hour’s time or so, the
duke and duchess, and the young markiss, and all of them, will come on
the terrace. So you be alive, and draw near, and get a good place. I
must look after these people.’

About the same time that the cannon announced that the corporation
had quitted the town-hall, some one tapped at the chamber-door of Lord
Eskdale, who was sealing a letter in his private room.

‘Well, Harris?’ said Lord Eskdale, looking up, and recognising his
valet.

‘His Grace has been inquiring for your lordship several times,’ replied
Mr. Harris, with a perplexed air.

‘I shall be with him in good time,’ replied his lordship, again looking
down.

‘If you could manage to come down at once, my lord,’ said Mr. Harris.

‘Why?’

‘Mr. Leander wishes to see your lordship very much.’

‘Ah! Leander!’ said Lord Eskdale, in a more interested tone. ‘What does
he want?’

‘I have not seen him,’ said Mr. Harris; ‘but Mr. Prevost tells me that
his feelings are hurt.’

‘I hope he has not struck,’ said Lord Eskdale, with a comical glance.

‘Something of that sort,’ said Mr. Harris, very seriously.

Lord Eskdale had a great sympathy with artists; he was well acquainted
with that irritability which is said to be the characteristic of the
creative power; genius always found in him an indulgent arbiter. He was
convinced that if the feelings of a rare spirit like Leander were hurt,
they were not to be trifled with. He felt responsible for the presence
of one so eminent in a country where, perhaps, he was not properly
appreciated; and Lord Eskdale descended to the steward’s room with the
consciousness of an important, probably a difficult, mission.

The kitchen of Montacute Castle was of the old style, fitted for
baronial feasts. It covered a great space, and was very lofty. Now
they build them in great houses on a different system; even more
distinguished by height, but far more condensed in area, as it is
thought that a dish often suffers from the distances which the cook
has to move over in collecting its various component parts. The new
principle seems sound; the old practice, however, was more picturesque.
The kitchen at Montacute was like the preparation for the famous wedding
feast of Prince Riquet with the Tuft, when the kind earth opened, and
revealed that genial spectacle of white-capped cooks, and endless stoves
and stewpans. The steady blaze of two colossal fires was shrouded by
vast screens. Everywhere, rich materials and silent artists; business
without bustle, and the all-pervading magic of method. Philippon was
preparing a sauce; Dumoreau, in another quarter of the spacious chamber,
was arranging some truffles; the Englishman, Smit, was fashioning
a cutlet. Between these three generals of division aides-de-camp
perpetually passed, in the form of active and observant marmitons, more
than one of whom, as he looked on the great masters around him, and
with the prophetic faculty of genius surveyed the future, exclaimed to
himself, like Cor-reggio, ‘And I also will be a cook.’

In this animated and interesting scene was only one unoccupied
individual, or rather occupied only with his own sad thoughts. This was
Papa Prevost, leaning against rather than sitting on a dresser, with his
arms folded, his idle knife stuck in his girdle, and the tassel of his
cap awry with vexation. His gloomy brow, however, lit up as Mr. Harris,
for whom he was waiting with anxious expectation, entered, and summoned
him to the presence of Lord Eskdale, who, with a shrewd yet lounging
air, which concealed his own foreboding perplexity, said, ‘Well,
Prevost, what is the matter? The people here been impertinent?’

Prevost shook his head. ‘We never were in a house, my lord, where they
were more obliging. It is something much worse.’

‘Nothing wrong about your fish, I hope? Well, what is it?’

‘Leander, my lord, has been dressing dinners for a week: dinners, I will
be bound to say, which were never equalled in the Imperial kitchen,
and the duke has never made a single observation, or sent him a single
message. Yesterday, determined to outdo even himself, he sent up some
_escalopes de laitances de carpes à la Bellamont_. In my time I have
seen nothing like it, my lord. Ask Philippon, ask Dumoreau, what they
thought of it! Even the Englishman, Smit, who never says anything,
opened his mouth and exclaimed; as for the marmitons, they were
breathless, and I thought Achille, the youth of whom I spoke to you, my
lord, and who appears to me to be born with the true feeling, would have
been overcome with emotion. When it was finished, Leander retired to
his room--I attended him--and covered his face with his hands. Would you
believe it, my lord! Not a word; not even a message. All this morning
Leander has waited in the last hope. Nothing, absolutely nothing! How
can he compose when he is not appreciated? Had he been appreciated, he
would to-day not only have repeated the _escalopes à la Bellamont_, but
perhaps even invented what might have outdone it. It is unheard of,
my lord. The late lord Monmouth would have sent for Leander the very
evening, or have written to him a beautiful letter, which would have
been preserved in his family; M. de Sidonia would have sent him a
tankard from his table. These things in themselves are nothing; but they
prove to a man of genius that he is understood. Had Leander been in the
Imperial kitchen, or even with the Emperor of Russia, he would have been
decorated!’

‘Where is he?’ said Lord Eskdale.

‘He is alone in the cook’s room.’

‘I will go and say a word to him.’

Alone, in the cook’s room, gazing in listless vacancy on the fire,
that fire which, under his influence, had often achieved so many
master-works, was the great artist who was not appreciated. No longer
suffering under mortification, but overwhelmed by that exhaustion which
follows acute sensibility and the over-tension of the creative faculty,
he looked round as Lord Eskdale entered, and when he perceived who was
his visitor, he rose immediately, bowed very low, and then sighed.

‘Prevost thinks we are not exactly appreciated here,’ said Lord Eskdale.

Leander bowed again, and still sighed.

‘Prevost does not understand the affair,’ continued Lord Eskdale. ‘Why
I wished you to come down here, Leander, was not to receive the applause
of my cousin and his guests, but to form their taste.’

Here was a great idea; exciting and ennobling. It threw quite a new
light upon the position of Leander. He started; his brow seemed to
clear. Leander, then, like other eminent men, had duties to perform as
well as rights to enjoy; he had a right to fame, but it was also his
duty to form and direct public taste. That then was the reason he
was brought down to Bellamont Castle; because some of the greatest
personages in England, who never had eaten a proper dinner in their
lives, would have an opportunity, for the first time, of witnessing art.
What could the praise of the Duke of Clanronald, or Lord Hampshire,
or Lord Hull, signify to one who had shared the confidence of a Lord
Monmouth, and whom Sir Alexander Grant, the first judge in Europe,
had declared the only man of genius of the age? Leander erred too
in supposing that his achievements had been lost upon the guests at
Bellamont. Insensibly his feats had set them a-thinking. They had been
like Cossacks in a picture-gallery; but the Clanronalds, the Hampshires,
the Hulls, would return to their homes impressed with a great truth,
that there is a difference between eating and dining. Was this nothing
for Leander to have effected? Was it nothing, by this development of
taste, to assist in supporting that aristocratic influence which he
wished to cherish, and which can alone encourage art? If anything can
save the aristocracy in this levelling age, it is an appreciation of men
of genius. Certainly it would have been very gratifying to Leander
if his Grace had only sent him a message, or if Lord Montacute had
expressed a wish to see him. He had been long musing over some dish
_à la Montacute_ for this very day. The young lord was reputed to have
talent; this dish might touch his fancy; the homage of a great artist
flatters youth; this offering of genius might colour his destiny. But
what, after all, did this signify? Leander had a mission to perform.

‘If I were you, I would exert myself, Leander,’ said Lord Eskdale.

‘Ah! my lord, if all men were like you! If artists were only sure of
being appreciated; if we were but understood, a dinner would become a
sacrifice to the gods, and a kitchen would be Paradise.’

In the meantime, the mayor and town-councillors of Montacute, in their
robes of office, and preceded by their bedels and their mace-bearer,
have entered the gates of the castle. They pass into the great hall,
the most ancient part of the building, with its open roof of Spanish
chestnut, its screen and gallery and dais, its painted windows and
marble floor. Ascending the dais, they are ushered into an antechamber,
the first of that suite of state apartments that opens on the terrace.
Leaving on one side the principal dining-room and the library, they
proceeded through the green drawing-room, so called from its silken
hangings, the red drawing-room, covered with ruby velvet, and both
adorned, but not encumbered, with pictures of the choicest art, into the
principal or duchesses’ drawing-room, thus entitled from its complete
collection of portraits of Duchesses of Bellamont. It was a spacious and
beautifully proportioned chamber, hung with amber satin, its ceiling by
Zucchero, whose rich colours were relieved by the burnished gilding.
The corporation trod tremblingly over the gorgeous carpet of Axminster,
which displayed, in vivid colours and colossal proportions, the shield
and supporters of Bellamont, and threw a hasty glance at the vases of
porphyry and malachite, and mosaic tables covered with precious toys,
which were grouped about.

Thence they were ushered into the Montacute room, adorned, among many
interesting pictures, by perhaps the finest performance of Lawrence,
a portrait of the present duke, just after his marriage. Tall and
graceful, with a clear dark complexion, regular features, eyes of liquid
tenderness, a frank brow, and rich clustering hair, the accomplished
artist had seized and conveyed the character of a high-spirited but
gentle-hearted cavalier. From the Montacute chamber they entered
the ball-room; very spacious, white and gold, a coved ceiling, large
Venetian lustres, and the walls of looking-glass, enclosing friezes of
festive sculpture. Then followed another antechamber, in the centre
of which was one of the masterpieces of Canova. This room, lined with
footmen in state liveries, completed the suite that opened on the
terrace. The northern side of this chamber consisted of a large door,
divided, and decorated in its panels with emblazoned shields of arms.

The valves being thrown open, the mayor and town-council of Montacute
were ushered into a gallery one hundred feet long, and which occupied
a great portion of the northern side of the castle. The panels of this
gallery enclosed a series of pictures in tapestry, which represented the
principal achievements of the third crusade. A Montacute had been one
of the most distinguished knights in that great adventure, and had saved
the life of Cour de Lion at the siege of Ascalon. In after-ages a Duke
of Bellamont, who was our ambassador at Paris, had given orders to
the Gobelins factory for the execution of this series of pictures from
cartoons by the most celebrated artists of the time. The subjects of the
tapestry had obtained for the magnificent chamber, which they adorned
and rendered so interesting, the title of ‘The Crusaders’ Gallery.’

At the end of this gallery, surrounded by their guests, their relatives,
and their neighbours; by high nobility, by reverend prelates, by the
members and notables of the county, and by some of the chief tenants of
the duke, a portion of whom were never absent from any great carousing
or high ceremony that occurred within his walls, the Duke and Duchess
of Bellamont and their son, a little in advance of the company, stood
to receive the congratulatory addresses of the mayor and corporation
of their ancient and faithful town of Montacute; the town which their
fathers had built and adorned, which they had often represented in
Parliament in the good old days, and which they took care should then
enjoy its fair proportion of the good old things; a town, every house in
which belonged to them, and of which there was not an inhabitant who, in
his own person or in that of his ancestry, had not felt the advantages
of the noble connection.

The duke bowed to the corporation, with the duchess on his left hand;
and on his right there stood a youth, above the middle height and of a
frame completely and gracefully formed. His dark brown hair, in those
hyacinthine curls which Grecian poets have celebrated, and which Grecian
sculptors have immortalised, clustered over his brow, which,
however, they only partially concealed. It was pale, as was his whole
countenance, but the liquid richness of the dark brown eye, and the
colour of the lip, denoted anything but a languid circulation. The
features were regular, and inclined rather to a refinement which might
have imparted to the countenance a character of too much delicacy, had
it not been for the deep meditation of the brow, and for the lower part
of the visage, which intimated indomitable will and an iron resolution.

Placed for the first time in his life in a public position, and under
circumstances which might have occasioned some degree of embarrassment
even to those initiated in the world, nothing was more remarkable in the
demeanour of Lord Montacute than his self-possession; nor was there
in his carriage anything studied, or which had the character of being
preconceived. Every movement or gesture was distinguished by what may be
called a graceful gravity. With a total absence of that excitement which
seemed so natural to his age and situation, there was nothing in his
manner which approached to nonchalance or indifference. It would
appear that he duly estimated the importance of the event they were
commemorating, yet was not of a habit of mind that overestimated
anything.




CHAPTER VII.

     _A Strange Proposal_

THE week of celebration was over: some few guests remained, near
relatives, and not very rich, the Montacute Mountjoys, for example.
They came from a considerable distance, and the duke insisted that they
should remain until the duchess went to London, an event, by-the-bye,
which was to occur very speedily. Lady Eleanor was rather agreeable, and
the duchess a little liked her; there were four daughters, to be sure,
and not very lively, but they sang in the evening.

It was a bright morning, and the duchess, with a heart prophetic of
happiness, wished to disburthen it to her son; she meant to propose to
him, therefore, to be her companion in her walk, and she had sent to his
rooms in vain, and was inquiring after him, when she was informed that
‘Lord Montacute was with his Grace.’

A smile of satisfaction flitted over her face, as she recalled the
pleasant cause of the conference that was now taking place between the
father and the son.

Let us see how it advanced.

The duke is in his private library, consisting chiefly of the statutes
at large, Hansard, the Annual Register, Parliamentary Reports, and legal
treatises on the powers and duties of justices of the peace. A portrait
of his mother is over the mantel-piece: opposite it a huge map of the
county. His correspondence on public business with the secretary of
state, and the various authorities of the shire, is admirably arranged:
for the duke was what is called an excellent man of business, that is
to say, methodical, and an adept in all the small arts of routine. These
papers were deposited, after having been ticketed with a date and a
summary of their contents, and tied with much tape, in a large cabinet,
which occupied nearly one side of the room, and on the top of which were
busts in marble of Mr. Pitt, George III., and the Duke of Wellington.

The duke was leaning back in his chair, which it seemed, from his air
and position, he had pushed back somewhat suddenly from his writing
table, and an expression of painful surprise, it cannot be denied, dwelt
on his countenance. Lord Montacute was on his legs, leaning with his
left arm on the chimney-piece, very serious, and, if possible, paler
than usual.

‘You take me quite by surprise,’ said the duke; ‘I thought it was an
arrangement that would have deeply gratified you.’

Lord Montacute slightly bowed his head, but said nothing. His father
continued.

‘Not wish to enter Parliament at present! Why, that is all very well,
and if, as was once the case, we could enter Parliament when we liked,
and how we liked, the wish might be very reasonable. If I could ring my
bell, and return you member for Montacute with as much ease as I could
send over to Bellamont to engage a special train to take us to town, you
might be justified in indulging a fancy. But how and when, I should like
to know, are you to enter Parliament now? This Parliament will last:
it will go on to the lees. Lord Eskdale told me so not a week ago. Well
then, at any rate, you lose three years: for three years you are an
idler. I never thought that was your character. I have always had an
impression you would turn your mind to public business, that the county
might look up to you. If you have what are called higher views, you
should not forget there is a great opening now in public life, which
may not offer again. The Duke is resolved to give the preference, in
carrying on the business of the country, to the aristocracy. He believes
this is our only means of preservation. He told me so himself. If it be
so, I fear we are doomed. I hope we may be of some use to our country
without being ministers of state. But let that pass. As long as the
Duke lives, he is omnipotent, and will have his way. If you come into
Parliament now, and show any disposition for office, you may rely upon
it you will not long be unemployed. I have no doubt I could arrange that
you should move the address of next session. I dare say Lord Eskdale
could manage this, and, if he could not, though I abhor asking a
minister for anything, I should, under the circumstances, feel perfectly
justified in speaking to the Duke on the subject myself, and,’ added his
Grace, in a lowered tone, but with an expression of great earnestness
and determination, ‘I flatter myself that if the Duke of Bellamont
chooses to express a wish, it would not be disregarded.’

Lord Montacute cast his dark, intelligent eyes upon the floor, and
seemed plunged in thought.

‘Besides,’ added the duke, after a moment’s pause, and inferring, from
the silence of his son, that he was making an impression, ‘suppose
Hungerford is not in the same humour this time three years which he is
in now. Probably he may be; possibly he may not. Men do not like to
be baulked when they think they are doing a very kind and generous and
magnanimous thing. Hungerford is not a warming-pan; we must remember
that; he never was originally, and if he had been, he has been member
for the county too long to be so considered now. I should be placed in
a most painful position, if, this time three years, I had to withdraw my
support from Hungerford, in order to secure your return.’

‘There would be no necessity, under any circumstances, for that, my dear
father,’ said Lord Montacute, looking up, and speaking in a voice which,
though somewhat low, was of that organ that at once arrests attention; a
voice that comes alike from the brain and from the heart, and seems made
to convey both profound thought and deep emotion. There is no index of
character so sure as the voice. There are tones, tones brilliant and
gushing, which impart a quick and pathetic sensibility: there are others
that, deep and yet calm, seem the just interpreters of a serene and
exalted intellect. But the rarest and the most precious of all voices
is that which combines passion and repose; and whose rich and restrained
tones exercise, perhaps, on the human frame a stronger spell than even
the fascination of the eye, or that bewitching influence of the hand,
which is the privilege of the higher races of Asia.

‘There would be no necessity, under any circumstances, for that, my dear
father,’ said Lord Montacute, ‘for, to be frank, I believe I should feel
as little disposed to enter Parliament three years hence as now.’

The duke looked still more surprised. ‘Mr. Fox was not of age when he
took his seat,’ said his Grace. ‘You know how old Mr. Pitt was when
he was a minister. Sir Robert, too, was in harness very early. I have
always heard the good judges say, Lord Esk-dale, for example, that a man
might speak in Parliament too soon, but it was impossible to go in too
soon.’

‘If he wished to succeed in that assembly,’ replied Lord Montacute,
‘I can easily believe it. In all things an early initiation must be of
advantage. But I have not that wish.’

‘I don’t like to see a man take his seat in the House of Lords who has
not been in the House of Commons. He seems to me always, in a manner,
unfledged.’

‘It will be a long time, I hope, my dear father, before I take my seat
in the House of Lords,’ said Lord Montacute, ‘if, indeed, I ever do.’

‘In the course of nature ‘tis a certainty.’

‘Suppose the Duke’s plan for perpetuating an aristocracy do not
succeed,’ said Lord Montacute, ‘and our house ceases to exist?’

His father shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is not our business to suppose
that. I hope it never will be the business of any one, at least
seriously. This is a great country, and it has become great by its
aristocracy.’

‘You think, then, our sovereigns did nothing for our greatness,--Queen
Elizabeth, for example, of whose visit to Montacute you are so proud?’

‘They performed their part.’

‘And have ceased to exist. We may have performed our part, and may meet
the same fate.’

‘Why, you are talking liberalism!’

‘Hardly that, my dear father, for I have not expressed an opinion.’

‘I wish I knew what your opinions were, my dear boy, or even your
wishes.’

‘Well, then, to do my duty.’

‘Exactly; you are a pillar of the State; support the State.’

‘Ah! if any one would but tell me what the State is,’ said Lord
Montacute, sighing. ‘It seems to me your pillars remain, but they
support nothing; in that case, though the shafts may be perpendicular,
and the capitals very ornate, they are no longer props, they are a
ruin.’

‘You would hand us over, then, to the ten-pounders?’

‘They do not even pretend to be a State,’ said Lord Montacute; ‘they do
not even profess to support anything; on the contrary, the essence of
their philosophy is, that nothing is to be established, and everything
is to be left to itself.’

‘The common sense of this country and the fifty pound clause will carry
us through,’ said the duke.

‘Through what?’ inquired his son.

‘This--this state of transition,’ replied his father.

‘A passage to what?’

‘Ah! that is a question the wisest cannot answer.’

‘But into which the weakest, among whom I class myself, have surely a
right to inquire.’

‘Unquestionably; and I know nothing that will tend more to assist you in
your researches than acting with practical men.’

‘And practising all their blunders,’ said Lord Montacute. ‘I can
conceive an individual who has once been entrapped into their haphazard
courses, continuing in the fatal confusion to which he has contributed
his quota; but I am at least free, and I wish to continue so.’

‘And do nothing?’

‘But does it follow that a man is infirm of action because he declines
fighting in the dark?’

‘And how would you act, then? What are your plans? Have you any?’

‘I have.’

‘Well, that is satisfactory,’ said the duke, with animation. ‘Whatever
they are, you know you may count upon my doing everything that is
possible to forward your wishes. I know they cannot be unworthy ones,
for I believe, my child, you are incapable of a thought that is not good
or great.’

‘I wish I knew what was good and great,’ said Lord Montacute; ‘I would
struggle to accomplish it.’

‘But you have formed some views; you have some plans. Speak to me of
them, and without reserve; as to a friend, the most affectionate, the
most devoted.’

‘My father,’ said Lord Montacute, and moving, he drew a chair to the
table, and seated himself by the duke, ‘you possess and have a right to
my confidence. I ought not to have said that I doubted about what was
good; for I know you.’

‘Sons like you make good fathers.’

‘It is not always so,’ said Lord Montacute; ‘you have been to me more
than a father, and I bear to you and to my mother a profound and fervent
affection; an affection,’ he added, in a faltering tone, ‘that is rarer,
I believe, in this age than it was in old days. I feel it at this moment
more deeply,’ he continued, in a firmer tone, ‘because I am about to
propose that we should for a time separate.’

The duke turned pale, and leant forward in his chair, but did not speak.

‘You have proposed to me to-day,’ continued Lord Montacute, after a
momentary pause, ‘to enter public life. I do not shrink from its duties.
On the contrary, from the position in which I am born, still more from
the impulse of my nature, I am desirous to fulfil them. I have meditated
on them, I may say, even for years. But I cannot find that it is part of
my duty to maintain the order of things, for I will not call it system,
which at present prevails in our country. It seems to me that it cannot
last, as nothing can endure, or ought to endure, that is not founded
upon principle; and its principle I have not discovered. In nothing,
whether it be religion, or government, or manners, sacred or political
or social life, do I find faith; and if there be no faith, how can there
be duty? Is there such a thing as religious truth? Is there such a thing
as political right? Is there such a thing as social propriety? Are these
facts, or are they mere phrases? And if they be facts, where are they
likely to be found in England? Is truth in our Church? Why, then, do
you support dissent? Who has the right to govern? The monarch? You have
robbed him of his prerogative. The aristocracy? You confess to me that
we exist by sufferance. The people? They themselves tell you that they
are nullities. Every session of that Parliament in which you wish to
introduce me, the method by which power is distributed is called in
question, altered, patched up, and again impugned. As for our morals,
tell me, is charity the supreme virtue, or the greatest of errors? Our
social system ought to depend on a clear conception of this point. Our
morals differ in different counties, in different towns, in different
streets, even in different Acts of Parliament. What is moral in London
is immoral in Montacute; what is crime among the multitude is only vice
among the few.’

‘You are going into first principles,’ said the duke, much surprised.

‘Give me then second principles,’ replied his son; ‘give me any.’

‘We must take a general view of things to form an opinion,’ said his
father, mildly. ‘The general condition of England is superior to that of
any other country; it cannot be denied that, on the whole, there is more
political freedom, more social happiness, more sound religion, and more
material prosperity among us, than in any nation in the world.’

‘I might question all that,’ said his son; ‘but they are considerations
that do not affect my views. If other States are worse than we are, and
I hope they are not, our condition is not mended, but the contrary, for
we then need the salutary stimulus of example.’

‘There is no sort of doubt,’ said the duke, ‘that the state of England
at this moment is the most flourishing that has ever existed, certainly
in modern times. What with these railroads, even the condition of the
poor, which I admit was lately far from satisfactory, is infinitely
improved. Every man has work who needs it, and wages are even high.’

‘The railroads may have improved, in a certain sense, the condition of
the working classes almost as much as that of members of Parliament.
They have been a good thing for both of them. And if you think that more
labour is all that is wanted by the people of England, we may be
easy for a time. I see nothing in this fresh development of material
industry, but fresh causes of moral deterioration. You have announced to
the millions that there welfare is to be tested by the amount of their
wages. Money is to be the cupel of their worth, as it is of all other
classes. You propose for their conduct the least ennobling of all
impulses. If you have seen an aristocracy invariably become degraded
under such influence; if all the vices of a middle class may be traced
to such an absorbing motive; why are we to believe that the people
should be more pure, or that they should escape the catastrophe of the
policy that confounds the happiness with the wealth of nations?’

The duke shook his head and then said, ‘You should not forget we live in
an artificial state.’

‘So I often hear, sir,’ replied his son; ‘but where is the art? It seems
to me the very quality wanting to our present condition. Art is order,
method, harmonious results obtained by fine and powerful principles. I
see no art in our condition. The people of this country have ceased to
be a nation. They are a crowd, and only kept in some rude provisional
discipline by the remains of that old system which they are daily
destroying.’

‘But what would you do, my dear boy?’ said his Grace, looking up
very distressed. ‘Can you remedy the state of things in which we find
ourselves?’

‘I am not a teacher,’ said Lord Montacute, mournfully; ‘I only ask you,
I supplicate you, my dear father, to save me from contributing to this
quick corruption that surrounds us.’

‘You shall be master of your own actions. I offer you counsel, I give no
commands; and, as for the rest, Providence will guard us.’

‘If an angel would but visit our house as he visited the house of Lot!’
said Montacute, in a tone almost of anguish.

‘Angels have performed their part,’ said the duke. ‘We have received
instructions from one higher than angels. It is enough for all of us.’

‘It is not enough for me,’ said Lord Montacute, with a glowing cheek,
and rising abruptly. ‘It was not enough for the Apostles; for though
they listened to the sermon on the mount, and partook of the first
communion, it was still necessary that He should appear to them
again, and promise them a Comforter. I require one,’ he added, after
a momentary pause, but in an agitated voice. ‘I must seek one. Yes! my
dear father, it is of this that I would speak to you; it is this which
for a long time has oppressed my spirit, and filled me often with
intolerable gloom. We must separate. I must leave you, I must leave
that dear mother, those beloved parents, in whom are concentred all
my earthly affections; but I obey an impulse that I believe comes
from above. Dearest and best of men, you will not thwart me; you will
forgive, you will aid me!’ And he advanced and threw himself into the
arms of his father.

The duke pressed Lord Montacute to his heart, and endeavoured, though
himself agitated and much distressed, to penetrate the mystery of this
ebullition. ‘He says we must separate,’ thought the duke to himself.
‘Ah! he has lived too much at home, too much alone; he has read and
pondered too much; he has moped. Eskdale was right two years ago. I wish
I had sent him to Paris, but his mother was so alarmed; and, indeed,
‘tis a precious life! The House of Commons would have been just the
thing for him. He would have worked on committees and grown practical.
But something must be done for him, dear child! He says we must
separate; he wants to travel. And perhaps he ought to travel. But a life
on which so much depends! And what will Katherine say? It will kill her.
I could screw myself up to it. I would send him well attended. Brace
should go with him; he understands the Continent; he was in the
Peninsular war; and he should have a skilful physician. I see how it is;
I must act with decision, and break it to his mother.’

These ideas passed through the duke’s mind during the few seconds
that he embraced his son, and endeavoured at the same time to convey
consolation by the expression of his affection, and his anxiety at all
times to contribute to his child’s happiness.

‘My dear son,’ said the duke, when Lord Montacute had resumed his seat,
‘I see how it is; you wish to travel?’

Lord Montacute bent his head, as if in assent.

‘It will be a terrible blow to your mother; I say nothing of myself.
You know what I feel for you. But neither your mother nor myself have a
right to place our feelings in competition with any arrangement for your
welfare. It would be in the highest degree selfish and unreasonable;
and perhaps it will be well for you to travel awhile; and, as for
Parliament, I am to see Hungerford this morning at Bellamont. I will try
and arrange with him to postpone his resignation until the autumn,
or, if possible, for some little time longer. You will then have
accomplished your purpose. It will do you a great deal of good. You will
have seen the world, and you can take your seat next year.’

The duke paused. Lord Montacute looked perplexed and distressed; he
seemed about to reply, and then, leaning on the table, with his face
concealed from his father, he maintained his silence. The duke rose,
looked at his watch, said he must be at Bellamont by two o’clock,
hoped that Brace would dine at the castle to-day, thought it not at
all impossible Brace might, would send on to Montacute for him, perhaps
might meet him at Bellamont. Brace understood the Continent, spoke
several languages, Spanish among them, though it was not probable his
son would have any need of that, the present state of Spain not being
very inviting to the traveller.

‘As for France,’ said the duke, ‘France is Paris, and I suppose that
will be your first step; it generally is. We must see if your cousin,
Henry Howard, is there. If so, he will put you in the way of everything.
With the embassy and Brace, you would manage very well at Paris. Then, I
suppose, you would like to go to Italy; that, I apprehend, is your great
point. Your mother will not like your going to Rome. Still, at the same
time, a man, they say, should see Rome before he dies. I never did. I
have never crossed the sea except to go to Ireland. Your grandfather
would never let me travel; I wanted to, but he never would. Not,
however, for the same reasons which have kept you at home. Suppose you
even winter at Rome, which I believe is the right thing, why, you might
very well be back by the spring. However, we must manage your mother a
little about remaining over the winter, and, on second thoughts, we will
get Bernard to go with you, as well as Brace and a physician, and then
she will be much more easy. I think, with Brace, Bernard, and a medical
man whom we can really trust, Harry Howard at Paris, and the best
letters for every other place, which we will consult Lord Eskdale about,
I think the danger will not be extreme.’

‘I have no wish to see Paris,’ said Lord Montacute, evidently
embarrassed, and making a great effort to relieve his mind of some
burthen. ‘I have no wish to see Paris.’

‘I am very glad to hear that,’ said his father, eagerly.

‘Nor do I wish either to go to Rome,’ continued his son.

‘Well, well, you have taken a load off my mind, my dear boy. I would not
confess it, because I wish to save you pain; but really, I believe
the idea of your going to Rome would have been a serious shock to your
mother. It is not so much the distance, though that is great, nor the
climate, which has its dangers, but, you understand, with her peculiar
views, her very strict----’ The duke did not care to finish his
sentence.

‘Nor, my dear father,’ continued Lord Montacute, ‘though I did not like
to interrupt you when you were speaking with so much solicitude and
consideration for me, is it exactly travel, in the common acceptation of
the term, that I feel the need of. I wish, indeed, to leave England; I
wish to make an expedition; a progress to a particular point; without
wandering, without any intervening residence. In a word, it is the Holy
Land that occupies my thought, and I propose to make a pilgrimage to the
sepulchre of my Saviour.’

The duke started, and sank again into his chair. ‘The Holy Land! The
Holy Sepulchre!’ he exclaimed, and repeated to himself, staring at his
son.

‘Yes, sir, the Holy Sepulchre,’ repeated Lord Mon-tacute, and now
speaking with his accustomed repose. ‘When I remember that the Creator,
since light sprang out of darkness, has deigned to reveal Himself to His
creature only in one land, that in that land He assumed a manly form,
and met a human death, I feel persuaded that the country sanctified by
such intercourse and such events must be endowed with marvellous and
peculiar qualities, which man may not in all ages be competent
to penetrate, but which, nevertheless, at all times exercise an
irresistible influence upon his destiny. It is these qualities that many
times drew Europe to Asia during the middle centuries. Our castle has
before this sent forth a De Montacute to Palestine. For three days and
three nights he knelt at the tomb of his Redeemer. Six centuries and
more have elapsed since that great enterprise. It is time to restore and
renovate our communications with the Most High. I, too, would kneel at
that tomb; I, too, surrounded by the holy hills and sacred groves of
Jerusalem, would relieve my spirit from the bale that bows it down;
would lift up my voice to heaven, and ask, What is duty, and what is
faith? What ought I to do, and what ought I to believe?’

The Duke of Bellamont rose from his seat, and walked up and down the
room for some minutes, in silence and in deep thought. At length,
stopping and leaning against the cabinet, he said, ‘What has occurred
to-day between us, my beloved child, is, you may easily believe, as
strange to me as it is agitating. I will think of all you have said;
I will try to comprehend all you mean and wish. I will endeavour to do
that which is best and wisest; placing above all things your happiness,
and not our own. At this moment I am not competent to the task: I need
quiet, and to be alone. Your mother, I know, wishes to walk with you
this morning. She may be speaking to you of many things. Be silent upon
this subject, until I have communicated with her. At present I will ride
over to Bellamont. I must go; and, besides, it will do me good. I never
can think very well except in the saddle. If Brace comes, make him dine
here. God bless you.’

The duke left the room; his son remained in meditation. The first step
was taken. He had poured into the interview of an hour the results of
three years of solitary thought. A sound roused him; it was his mother.
She had only learnt casually that the duke was gone; she was surprised
he had not come into her room before he went; it seemed the first time
since their marriage that the duke had gone out without first coming to
speak to her. So she went to seek her son, to congratulate him on being
a member of Parliament, on representing the county of which they were
so fond, and of breaking to him a proposition which she doubted not he
would find not less interesting and charming. Happy mother, with her
only son, on whom she doted and of whom she was so justly proud, about
to enter public life in which he was sure to distinguish himself, and to
marry a woman who was sure to make him happy! With a bounding heart the
duchess opened the library door, where she had been informed she should
find Lord Montacute. She had her bonnet on, ready for the walk of
confidence, and, her face flushed with delight, she looked even
beautiful. ‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, ‘I have been looking for you, Tancred!’

[Illustration: frontis-p72]


CHAPTER VIII.

     _The Decision_

THE duke returned rather late from Bellamont, and went immediately to
his dressing-room. A few minutes before dinner the duchess knocked at
his door and entered. She seemed disconcerted, and reminded him, though
with great gentleness, that he had gone out to-day without first bidding
her adieu; she really believed it was the only time he had done so since
their marriage. The duke, who, when she entered, anticipated something
about their son, was relieved by her remark, embraced her, and would
have affected a gaiety which he did not really feel.

‘I am glad to hear that Brace dines here to-day, Kate, for I
particularly wanted to see him.’

The duchess did not reply, and seemed absent; the duke, to say
something, tying his cravat, kept harping upon Brace.

‘Never mind Brace, George,’ said the duchess; ‘tell me what is this
about Tancred? Why is his coming into Parliament put off?’

The duke was perplexed; he wished to know how far at this moment his
wife was informed upon the matter; the feminine frankness of the
duchess put him out of suspense. ‘I have been walking with Tancred,’
she continued, ‘and intimated, but with great caution, all our plans and
hopes. I asked him what he thought of his cousin; he agrees with us
she is by far the most charming girl he knows, and one of the
most agreeable. I impressed upon him how good she was. I wished to
precipitate nothing. I never dreamed of their marrying until late in the
autumn. I wished him to become acquainted with his new life, which would
not prevent him seeing a great deal of Katherine in London, and then to
visit them in Ireland, as you visited us, George; and then, when I was
settling everything in the most delightful manner, what he was to do
when he was kept up very late at the House, which is the only part I
don’t like, and begging him to be very strict in making his servant
always have coffee ready for him, very hot, and a cold fowl too, or
something of the sort, he tells me, to my infinite astonishment, that
the vacancy will not immediately occur, that he is not sorry for it, as
he thinks it may be as well that he should go abroad. What can all this
mean? Pray tell me; for Tancred has told me nothing, and, when I pressed
him, waived the subject, and said we would all of us consult together.’

‘And so we will, Kate,’ said the duke, ‘but hardly at this moment, for
dinner must be almost served. To be brief,’ he added, speaking in a
light tone, ‘there are reasons which perhaps may make it expedient that
Hungerford should not resign at the present moment; and as Tancred has a
fancy to travel a little, it may be as well that we should take it into
consideration whether he might not profitably occupy the interval in
this manner.’

‘Profitably!’ said the duchess. ‘I never can understand how going
to Paris and Rome, which young men always mean when they talk of
travelling, can be profitable to him; it is the very thing which, all my
life, I have been endeavouring to prevent. His body and his soul will be
both imperilled; Paris will destroy his constitution, and Rome, perhaps,
change his faith.’

‘I have more confidence in his physical power and his religious
principle than you, Kate,’ said the duke, smiling. ‘But make yourself
easy on these heads; Tancred told me this morning that he had no wish to
visit either Rome or Paris.’

‘Well!’ exclaimed the duchess, somewhat relieved, ‘if he wants to make
a little tour in Holland, I think I could bear it; it is a Protestant
country, and there are no vermin. And then those dear Disbrowes, I am
sure, would take care of him at The Hague.’

‘We will talk of all this to-night, my love,’ said the duke; and
offering his arm to his wife, who was more composed, if not more
cheerful, they descended to their guests.

Colonel Brace was there, to the duke’s great satisfaction. The colonel
had served as a cornet in a dragoon regiment in the last campaign of
the Peninsular war, and had marched into Paris. Such an event makes an
indelible impression on the memory of a handsome lad of seventeen, and
the colonel had not yet finished recounting his strange and fortunate
adventures.

He was tall, robust, a little portly, but, well buckled, still presented
a grand military figure. He was what you call a fine man; florid, with
still a good head of hair though touched with grey, splendid moustaches,
large fat hands, and a courtly demeanour not unmixed with a slight
swagger. The colonel was a Montacute man, and had inherited a large
house in the town and a small estate in the neighbourhood. Having
sold out, he had retired to his native place, where he had become a
considerable personage. The duke had put him in the commission, and
he was the active magistrate of the district; he had reorganised the
Bellamont regiment of yeomanry cavalry, which had fallen into sad
decay during the late duke’s time, but which now, with Brace for its
lieutenant-colonel, was second to none in the kingdom. Colonel Brace was
one of the best shots in the county; certainly the boldest rider among
the heavy weights; and bore the palm from all with the rod, in a county
famous for its feats in lake and river.

The colonel was a man of great energy, of good temper, of ready
resource, frank, a little coarse, but hearty and honest. He adored the
Duke and Duchess of Bellamont. He was sincere; he was not a parasite;
he really believed that they were the best people in the world, and I am
not sure that he had not some foundation for his faith. On the whole,
he might be esteemed the duke’s right-hand man. His Grace generally
consulted the colonel on county affairs; the command of the yeomanry
alone gave him a considerable position; he was the chief also of the
militia staff; could give his opinion whether a person was to be made a
magistrate or not; and had even been called into council when there was
a question of appointing a deputy-lieutenant. The colonel, who was a
leading member of the corporation of Montacute, had taken care to be
chosen mayor this year; he had been also chairman of the Committee of
Management during the celebration of Tancred’s majority; had had the
entire ordering of the fireworks, and was generally supposed to have
given the design, or at least the leading idea, for the transparency.

We should notice also Mr. Bernard, a clergyman, and recently the private
tutor of Lord Montacute, a good scholar; in ecclesiastical opinions,
what is called high and dry. He was about five-and-thirty; well-looking,
bashful. The duke intended to prefer him to a living when one was
vacant; in the meantime he remained in the family, and at present
discharged the duties of chaplain and librarian at Montacute, and
occasionally assisted the duke as private secretary. Of his life, one
third had been passed at a rural home, and the rest might be nearly
divided between school and college.

These gentlemen, the distinguished and numerous family of the Montacute
Mountjoys, young Hunger-ford, whom the duke had good-naturedly brought
over from Bellamont for the sake of the young ladies, the duke and
duchess, and their son, formed the party, which presented rather a
contrast, not only in its numbers, to the series of recent banquets.
They dined in the Montacute chamber. The party, without intending
it, was rather dull and silent. The duchess was brooding over the
disappointment of the morning; the duke trembled for the disclosures
of the morrow. The Misses Mountjoy sang better than they talked; their
mother, who was more lively, was seated by the duke, and confined her
powers of pleasing to him. The Honourable and Reverend Montacute himself
was an epicure, and disliked conversation during dinner. Lord Montacute
spoke to Mr. Hungerford across the table, but Mr. Hungerford was
whispering despairing nothings in the ear of Arabella Mountjoy, and
replied to his question without originating any in return, which of
course terminates talk.

When the second course had arrived, the duke, who wanted a little more
noise and distraction, fired off in despair a shot at Colonel Brace,
who was on the left hand of the duchess, and set him on his yeomanry
charger. From this moment affairs improved. The colonel made continual
charges, and carried all before him. Nothing could be more noisy in a
genteel way. His voice sounded like the bray of a trumpet amid the din
of arms; it seemed that the moment he began, everybody and everything
became animated and inspired by his example. All talked; the duke set
them the fashion of taking wine with each other; Lord Montacute managed
to entrap Arminta Mountjoy into a narrative in detail of her morning’s
ride and adventures; and, affecting scepticism as to some of the
incidents, and wonder at some of the feats, produced a considerable
addition to the general hubbub, which he instinctively felt that his
father wished to encourage.

‘I don’t know whether it was the Great Western or the South Eastern,’
continued Colonel Brace; ‘but I know his leg is broken.’

‘God bless me!’ said the duke; ‘and only think of my not hearing of it
at Bellamont to-day!’

‘I don’t suppose they know anything about it,’ replied the colonel. ‘The
way I know it is this: I was with Roby to-day, when the post came in,
and he said to me, “Here is a letter from Lady Malpas; I hope nothing
is the matter with Sir Russell or any of the children.” And then it all
came out. The train was blown up behind; Sir Russell was in a centre
carriage, and was pitched right into a field. They took him into an inn,
put him to bed, and sent for some of the top-sawyers from London, Sir
Benjamin Brodie, and that sort of thing; and the moment Sir Russell came
to himself, he said, “I must have Roby, send for Roby, Roby knows my
constitution.” And they sent for Roby. And I think he was right. The
quantity of young officers I have seen sent rightabout in the Peninsula,
because they were attended by a parcel of men who knew nothing of their
constitution! Why, I might have lost my own leg once, if I had not been
sharp. I got a scratch in a little affair at Almeidas, charging the
enemy a little too briskly; but we really ought not to speak of these
things before the ladies----’

‘My dear colonel,’ said Lord Montacute, ‘on the contrary, there
is nothing more interesting to them. Miss Mountjoy was saying only
yesterday, that there was nothing she found so difficult to understand
as the account of a battle, and how much she wished to comprehend it.’

‘That is because, in general, they are not written by soldiers,’ said
the colonel; ‘but Napier’s battles are very clear. I could fight every
one of them on this table. That’s a great book, that history of Napier;
it has faults, but they are rather omissions than mistakes. Now that
affair of Almeidas of which I was just speaking, and which nearly cost
me my leg, it is very odd, but he has omitted mentioning it altogether.’

‘But you saved your leg, colonel,’ said the duke.

‘Yes, I had the honour of marching into Paris, and that is an event
not very easy to be forgotten, let me tell your Grace. I saved my leg
because I knew my constitution. For the very same reason by which I hope
Sir Russell Malpas will save his leg. Because he will be attended by
a person who knows his constitution. He never did a wiser thing than
sending for Roby. For my part, if I were in garrison at Gibraltar
to-morrow, and laid up, I would do the same; I would send for Roby. In
all these things, depend upon it, knowing the constitution is half the
battle.’

All this time, while Colonel Brace was indulging in his garrulous
comments, the Duke of Bellamont was drawing his moral. He had a great
opinion of Mr. Roby, who was the medical attendant of the castle, and an
able man. Mr. Roby was perfectly acquainted with the constitution of
his son; Mr. Roby must go to the Holy Sepulchre. Cost what it might, Mr.
Roby must be sent to Jerusalem. The duke was calculating all this time
the income that Mr. Roby made. He would not put it down at more than
five hundred pounds per annum, and a third of that was certainly
afforded by the castle. The duke determined to offer Roby a thousand and
his expenses to attend Lord Montacute. He would not be more than a
year absent, and his practice could hardly seriously suffer while away,
backed as he would be, when he returned, by the castle. And if it did,
the duke must guarantee Roby against loss; it was a necessity, absolute
and of the first class, that Tancred should be attended by a medical man
who knew his constitution. The duke agreed with Colonel Brace that it
was half the battle.




CHAPTER IX.

     _Tancred, the New Crusader_

‘MISERABLE mother that I am!’ exclaimed the duchess, and she clasped her
hands in anguish.

‘My dearest Katherine!’ said the duke, ‘calm yourself.’

‘You ought to have prevented this, George; you ought never to have let
things come to this pass.’

‘But, my dearest Katherine, the blow was as unlooked-for by me as by
yourself. I had not, how could I have, a remote suspicion of what was
passing through his mind?’

‘What, then, is the use of your boasted confidence with your child,
which you tell me you have always cultivated? Had I been his father, I
would have discovered his secret thoughts.’

‘Very possibly, my dear Katherine; but you are at least his mother,
tenderly loving him, and tenderly loved by him. The intercourse between
you has ever been of an extreme intimacy, and especially on the subjects
connected with this fancy of his, and yet, you see, even you are
completely taken by surprise.’ ‘I once had a suspicion he was inclined
to the Puseyite heresy, and I spoke to Mr. Bernard on the subject, and
afterwards to him, but I was convinced that I was in error. I am sure,’
added the duchess, in a mournful tone, ‘I have lost no opportunity of
instilling into him the principles of religious truth. It was only
last year, on his birthday, that I sent him a complete set of the
publications of the Parker Society, my own copy of Jewel, full of
notes, and my grandfather, the primate’s, manuscript commentary on
Chillingworth; a copy made purposely by myself.’

‘I well know,’ said the duke, ‘that you have done everything for his
spiritual welfare which ability and affection combined could suggest.’

‘And it ends in this!’ exclaimed the duchess. ‘The Holy Land! Why, if he
even reach it, the climate is certain death. The curse of the Almighty,
for more than eighteen centuries, has been on that land. Every year
it has become more sterile, more savage, more unwholesome, and more
unearthly. It is the abomination of desolation. And now my son is to go
there! Oh! he is lost to us for ever!’

‘But, my dear Katherine, let us consult a little.’ ‘Consult! Why should
I consult? You have settled everything, you have agreed to everything.
You do not come here to consult me; I understand all that; you come here
to break a foregone conclusion to a weak and miserable woman.’

‘Do not say such things, Katherine!’ ‘What should I say? What can I
say?’ ‘Anything but that. I hope that nothing will be ever done in this
family without your full sanction.’ I Rest assured, then, that I will
never sanction the departure of Tancred on this crusade.’

‘Then he will never go, at least, with my consent,’ said the duke; ‘but
Katherine, assist me, my dear wife. All shall be, shall ever be, as
you wish; but I shrink from being placed, from our being placed, in
collision with our child. The mere exercise of parental authority is a
last resource; I would appeal first, rather to his reason, to his heart;
your arguments, his affection for us, may yet influence him.’ ‘You tell
me you have argued with him,’ said the duchess in a melancholy tone.

‘Yes, but you know so much more on these subjects than I do, indeed,
upon all subjects; you are so clever, that I do not despair, my dear
Katherine, of your producing an impression on him.’

‘I would tell him at once,’ said the duchess, firmly, ‘that the
proposition cannot be listened to.’

The duke looked very distressed. After a momentary pause, he said, ‘If,
indeed, you think that the best; but let us consult before we take that
step, because it would seem to terminate all discussion, and discussion
may yet do good. Besides, I cannot conceal from myself that Tancred in
this affair is acting under the influence of very powerful motives; his
feelings are highly strung; you have no idea, you can have no idea from
what we have seen of him hitherto, how excited he is. I had no idea of
his being capable of such excitement. I always thought him so very calm,
and of such a quiet turn. And so, in short, my dear Katherine, were we
to be abrupt at this moment, peremptory, you understand, I--I should not
be surprised, were Tancred to go without our permission.’

‘Impossible!’ exclaimed the duchess, starting in her chair, but with
as much consternation as confidence in her countenance. ‘Throughout his
life he has never disobeyed us.’

‘And that is an additional reason,’ said the duke, quietly, but in his
sweetest tone, ‘why we should not treat as a light ebullition this
first instance of his preferring his own will to that of his father and
mother.’

‘He has been so much away from us these last three years,’ said the
duchess in a tone of great depression, ‘and they are such important
years in the formation of character! But Mr. Bernard, he ought to have
been aware of all this; he ought to have known what was passing through
his pupil’s mind; he ought to have warned us. Let us speak to him;
let us speak to him at once. Ring, my dear George, and request the
attendance of Mr. Bernard.’

That gentleman, who was in the library, kept them waiting but a few
minutes. As he entered the room, he perceived, by the countenances
of his noble patrons, that something remarkable, and probably not
agreeable, had occurred. The duke opened the case to Mr. Bernard with
calmness; he gave an outline of the great catastrophe; the duchess
filled up the parts, and invested the whole with a rich and even
terrible colouring.

Nothing could exceed the astonishment of the late private tutor of
Lord Montacute. He was fairly overcome; the communication itself was
startling, the accessories overwhelmed him. The unspoken reproaches
that beamed from the duke’s mild eye; the withering glance of maternal
desolation that met him from the duchess; the rapidity of her anxious
and agitated questions; all were too much for the simple, though
correct, mind of one unused to those passionate developments which are
commonly called scenes. All that Mr. Bernard for some time could do
was to sit with his eyes staring and mouth open, and repeat, with a
bewildered air, ‘The Holy Land, the Holy Sepulchre!’ No, most certainly
not; most assuredly; never in any way, by any word or deed, had Lord
Montacute ever given him reason to suppose or imagine that his lordship
intended to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, or that he was
influenced by any of those views and opinions which he had so strangely
and so uncompromisingly expressed to his father.

‘But, Mr. Bernard, you have been his companion, his instructor, for many
years,’ continued the duchess, ‘for the last three years especially,
years so important in the formation of character. You have seen much
more of Montacute than we have. Surely you must have had some idea of
what was passing in his mind; you could not help knowing it; you ought
to have known it; you ought to have warned, to have prepared us.’

‘Madam,’ at length said Mr. Bernard, more collected, and feeling the
necessity and excitement of self-vindication, ‘Madam, your noble son,
under my poor tuition, has taken the highest honours of his university;
his moral behaviour during that period has been immaculate; and as for
his religious sentiments, even this strange scheme proves that they are,
at any rate, of no light and equivocal character.’

‘To lose such a son!’ exclaimed the duchess, in a tone of anguish, and
with streaming eyes.

The duke took her hand, and would have soothed her; and then, turning to
Mr. Bernard, he said, in a lowered tone, ‘We are very sensible how much
we owe you; the duchess equally with myself. All we regret is, that some
of us had not obtained a more intimate acquaintance with the character
of my son than it appears we have acquired.’

‘My lord duke,’ said Mr. Bernard, ‘had yourself or her Grace ever spoken
to me on this subject, I would have taken the liberty of expressing what
I say now. I have ever found Lord Montacute inscrutable. He has formed
himself in solitude, and has ever repelled any advance to intimacy,
either from those who were his inferiors or his equals in station. He
has never had a companion. As for myself, during the ten years that I
have had the honour of being connected with him, I cannot recall a
word or a deed on his part which towards me has not been courteous and
considerate; but as a child he was shy and silent, and as a man, for I
have looked upon him as a man in mind for these four or even five years,
he has employed me as his machine to obtain knowledge. It is not very
flattering to oneself to make these confessions, but at Oxford he had
the opportunity of communicating with some of the most eminent men
of our time, and I have always learnt from them the same result. Lord
Montacute never disburthened. His passion for study has been ardent; his
power of application is very great; his attention unwearied as long
as there is anything to acquire; but he never seeks your opinions, and
never offers his own. The interview of yesterday with your Grace is the
only exception with which I am acquainted, and at length throws some
light on the mysteries of his mind.’

The duke looked sad; his wife seemed plunged in profound thought; there
was a silence of many moments. At length the duchess looked up, and
said, in a calmer tone, and with an air of great seriousness, ‘It seems
that we have mistaken the character of our son. Thank you very much for
coming to us so quickly in our trouble, Mr. Bernard. It was very kind,
as you always are.’ Mr. Bernard took the hint, rose, bowed, and retired.

The moment that he had quitted the room, the eyes of the Duke and
Duchess of Bellamont met. Who was to speak first? The duke had nothing
to say, and therefore he had the advantage: the duchess wished her
husband to break the silence, but, having something to say herself, she
could not refrain from interrupting it. So she said, with a tearful eye,
‘Well, George, what do you think we ought to do?’ The duke had a great
mind to propose his plan of sending Tancred to Jerusalem, with Colonel
Brace, Mr. Bernard, and Mr. Roby, to take care of him, but he hardly
thought the occasion was ripe enough for that; and so he suggested that
the duchess should speak to Tancred herself.

‘No,’ said her Grace, shaking her head, ‘I think it better for me to
be silent; at least at present. It is necessary, however, that the most
energetic means should be adopted to save him, nor is there a moment to
be lost. We must shrink from nothing for such an object. I have a plan.
We will put the whole matter in the hands of our friend, the bishop.
We will get him to speak to Tancred. I entertain not a doubt that the
bishop will put his mind all right; clear all his doubts; remove all his
scruples. The bishop is the only person, because, you see, it is a case
political as well as theological, and the bishop is a great statesman as
well as the first theologian of the age. Depend upon it, my dear George,
that this is the wisest course, and, with the blessing of Providence,
will effect our purpose. It is, perhaps, asking a good deal of the
bishop, considering his important and multifarious duties, to undertake
this office, but we must not be delicate when everything is at stake;
and, considering he christened and confirmed Tancred, and our long
friendship, it is quite out of the question that he can refuse. However,
there is no time to be lost. We must get to town as soon as possible;
tomorrow, if we can. I shall advance affairs by writing to the bishop
on the subject, and giving him an outline of the case, so that he may be
prepared to see Tancred at once on our arrival. What think you, George,
of my plan?’

‘I think it quite admirable,’ replied his Grace, only too happy that
there was at least the prospect of a lull of a few days in this great
embarrassment.




CHAPTER X.

     _A Visionary_

ABOUT the time of the marriage of the Duchess of Bellamont, her noble
family, and a few of their friends, some of whom also believed in the
millennium, were persuaded that the conversion of the Roman Catholic
population of Ireland to the true faith, which was their own, was at
hand. They had subscribed very liberally for the purpose, and formed an
amazing number of sub-committees. As long as their funds lasted, their
missionaries found proselytes. It was the last desperate effort of a
Church that had from the first betrayed its trust. Twenty years ago,
statistics not being so much in vogue, and the people of England being
in the full efflorescence of that public ignorance which permitted them
to believe themselves the most enlightened nation in the world, the
Irish ‘difficulty’ was not quite so well understood as at the present
day. It was then an established doctrine, and all that was necessary
for Ireland was more Protestantism, and it was supposed to be not more
difficult to supply the Irish with Protestantism than it had proved, in
the instance of a recent famine, 1822, to furnish them with potatoes.
What was principally wanted in both cases were subscriptions.

When the English public, therefore, were assured by their
co-religionists on the other side of St. George’s Channel, that at last
the good work was doing; that the flame spread, even rapidly; that
not only parishes but provinces were all agog, and that both town and
country were quite in a heat of proselytism, they began to believe that
at last the scarlet lady was about to be dethroned; they loosened
their purse-strings; fathers of families contributed their zealous five
pounds, followed by every other member of the household, to the babe
in arms, who subscribed its fanatical five shillings. The affair
looked well. The journals teemed with lists of proselytes and cases of
conversion; and even orderly, orthodox people, who were firm in their
own faith, but wished others to be permitted to pursue their errors in
peace, began to congratulate each other on the prospect of our at last
becoming a united Protestant people.

In the blaze and thick of the affair, Irish Protestants jubilant, Irish
Papists denouncing the whole movement as fraud and trumpery, John Bull
perplexed, but excited, and still subscribing, a young bishop rose in
his place in the House of Lords, and, with a vehemence there unusual,
declared that he saw ‘the finger of God in this second Reformation,’
and, pursuing the prophetic vein and manner, denounced ‘woe to those who
should presume to lift up their hands and voices in vain and impotent
attempts to stem the flood of light that was bursting over Ireland.’

In him, who thus plainly discerned ‘the finger of God’ in transactions
in which her family and feelings were so deeply interested, the young
and enthusiastic Duchess of Bellamont instantly recognised the ‘man of
God;’ and from that moment the right reverend prelate became, in all
spiritual affairs, her infallible instructor, although the impending
second Reformation did chance to take the untoward form of the
emancipation of the Roman Catholics, followed in due season by the
destruction of Protestant bishoprics, the sequestration of Protestant
tithes, and the endowment of Maynooth.

In speculating on the fate of public institutions and the course of
public affairs, it is important that we should not permit our attention
to be engrossed by the principles on which they are founded and the
circumstances which they present, but that we should also remember
how much depends upon the character of the individuals who are in the
position to superintend or to direct them.

The Church of England, mainly from its deficiency of oriental knowledge,
and from a misconception of the priestly character which has been the
consequence of that want, has fallen of late years into great straits;
nor has there ever been a season when it has more needed for its guides
men possessing the higher qualities both of intellect and disposition.
About five-and-twenty years ago, it began to be discerned that the time
had gone by, at least in England, for bishoprics to serve as appanages
for the younger sons of great families. The Arch-Mediocrity who
then governed this country, and the mean tenor of whose prolonged
administration we have delineated in another work, was impressed with
the necessity of reconstructing the episcopal bench on principles of
personal distinction and ability. But his notion of clerical capacity
did not soar higher than a private tutor who had suckled a young noble
into university honours; and his test of priestly celebrity was the
decent editorship of a Greek play. He sought for the successors of the
apostles, for the stewards of the mysteries of Sinai and of Calvary,
among third-rate hunters after syllables.

These men, notwithstanding their elevation, with one exception, subsided
into their native insignificance; and during our agitated age, when the
principles of all institutions, sacred and secular, have been called
in question; when, alike in the senate and the market-place, both the
doctrine and the discipline of the Church have been impugned, its power
assailed, its authority denied, the amount of its revenues investigated,
their disposition criticised, and both attacked; not a voice has been
raised by these mitred nullities, either to warn or to vindicate; not a
phrase has escaped their lips or their pens, that ever influenced public
opinion, touched the heart of nations, or guided the conscience of a
perplexed people. If they were ever heard of it was that they had been
pelted in a riot.

The exception which we have mentioned to their sorry careers was that
of the too adventurous prophet of the second Reformation; the _ductor
dubitantium_ appealed to by the Duchess of Bellamont, to convince her
son that the principles of religious truth, as well as of political
justice, required no further investigation; at least by young
marquesses.

The ready audacity with which this right reverend prelate had stood
sponsor for the second Reformation is a key to his character. He
combined a great talent for action with very limited powers of thought.

Bustling, energetic, versatile, gifted with an indomitable perseverance,
and stimulated by an ambition that knew no repose, with a capacity for
mastering details and an inordinate passion for affairs, he could
permit nothing to be done without his interference, and consequently
was perpetually involved in transactions which were either failures or
blunders. He was one of those leaders who are not guides. Having little
real knowledge, and not endowed with those high qualities of intellect
which permit their possessor to generalise the details afforded by study
and experience, and so deduce rules of conduct, his lordship, when he
received those frequent appeals which were the necessary consequence
of his officious life, became obscure, confused, contradictory,
inconsistent, illogical. The oracle was always dark.

Placed in a high post in an age of political analysis, the bustling
intermeddler was unable to supply society with a single solution.
Enunciating secondhand, with characteristic precipitation, some big
principle in vogue, as if he were a discoverer, he invariably shrank
from its subsequent application the moment that he found it might be
unpopular and inconvenient. All his quandaries terminated in the same
catastrophe; a compromise. Abstract principles with him ever ended
in concrete expediency. The aggregate of circumstances outweighed the
isolated cause. The primordial tenet, which had been advocated with
uncompromising arrogance, gently subsided into some second-rate measure
recommended with all the artifice of an impenetrable ambiguity.

Beginning with the second Reformation, which was a little rash but
dashing, the bishop, always ready, had in the course of his episcopal
career placed himself at the head of every movement in the Church which
others had originated, and had as regularly withdrawn at the right
moment, when the heat was over, or had become, on the contrary,
excessive. Furiously evangelical, soberly high and dry, and fervently
Puseyite, each phasis of his faith concludes with what the Spaniards
term a ‘transaction.’ The saints are to have their new churches, but
they are also to have their rubrics and their canons; the universities
may supply successors to the apostles, but they are also presented
with a church commission; even the Puseyites may have candles on their
altars, but they must not be lighted.

It will be seen, therefore, that his lordship was one of those
characters not ill-adapted to an eminent station in an age like the
present, and in a country like our own; an age of movement, but of
confused ideas; a country of progress, but too rich to risk much change.
Under these circumstances, the spirit of a period and a people seeks a
safety-valve in bustle. They do something, lest it be said that they
do nothing. At such a time, ministers recommend their measures as
experiments, and parliaments are ever ready to rescind their votes.
Find a man who, totally destitute of genius, possesses nevertheless
considerable talents; who has official aptitude, a volubility of routine
rhetoric, great perseverance, a love of affairs; who, embarrassed
neither by the principles of the philosopher nor by the prejudices of
the bigot, can assume, with a cautious facility, the prevalent tone, and
disembarrass himself of it, with a dexterous ambiguity, the moment it
ceases to be predominant; recommending himself to the innovator by his
approbation of change ‘in the abstract,’ and to the conservative by his
prudential and practical respect for that which is established; such
a man, though he be one of an essentially small mind, though his
intellectual qualities be less than moderate, with feeble powers of
thought, no imagination, contracted sympathies, and a most loose public
morality; such a man is the individual whom kings and parliaments
would select to govern the State or rule the Church. Change, ‘in the
abstract,’ is what is wanted by a people who are at the same time
inquiring and wealthy. Instead of statesmen they desire shufflers; and
compromise in conduct and ambiguity in speech are, though nobody will
confess it, the public qualities now most in vogue.

Not exactly, however, those calculated to meet the case of Tancred.
The interview was long, for Tan-cred listened with apparent respect
and deference to the individual under whose auspices he had entered the
Church of Christ; but the replies to his inquiries, though more adroit
than the duke’s, were in reality not more satisfactory, and could not,
in any way, meet the inexorable logic of Lord Montacute. The bishop
was as little able as the duke to indicate the principle on which the
present order of things in England was founded; neither faith nor
its consequence, duty, was at all illustrated or invigorated by his
handling. He utterly failed in reconciling a belief in ecclesiastical
truth with the support of religious dissent. When he tried to define
in whom the power of government should repose, he was lost in a maze of
phrases, and afforded his pupil not a single fact.

‘It cannot be denied,’ at length said Tancred, with great calmness,
‘that society was once regulated by God, and that now it is regulated by
man. For my part, I prefer divine to self-government, and I wish to know
how it is to be attained.’

‘The Church represents God upon earth,’ said the bishop.

‘But the Church no longer governs man,’ replied Tancred.

‘There is a great spirit rising in the Church,’ observed the bishop,
with thoughtful solemnity; ‘a great and excellent spirit. The Church of
1845 is not the Church of 1745. We must remember that; we know not what
may happen. We shall soon see a bishop at Manchester.’

‘But I want to see an angel at Manchester.’

‘An angel!’

‘Why not? Why should there not be heavenly messengers, when heavenly
messages are most wanted?’

‘We have received a heavenly message by one greater than the angels,’
said the bishop. ‘Their visits to man ceased with the mightier advent.’

‘Then why did angels appear to Mary and her companions at the holy
tomb?’ inquired Tancred.

The interview from which so much was anticipated was not satisfactory.
The eminent prelate did not realise Tancred’s ideal of a bishop, while
his lordship did not hesitate to declare that Lord Montacute was a
visionary.




CHAPTER XI.

     _Advice from a Man of the World_

WHEN the duchess found that the interview with the bishop had been
fruitless of the anticipated results, she was staggered, disheartened;
but she was a woman of too high a spirit to succumb under a first
defeat. She was of opinion that his lordship had misunderstood the case,
or had mismanaged it; her confidence in him, too, was not so illimitable
since he had permitted the Puseyites to have candles on their altars,
although he had forbidden their being lighted, as when he had declared,
twenty years before, that the finger of God was about to protestantise
Ireland. His lordship had said and had done many things since that
time which had occasioned the duchess many misgivings, although she had
chosen that they should not occur to her recollection until he failed in
convincing her son that religious truth was to be found in the parish
of St. James, and political justice in the happy haunts of Montacute
Forest.

The Bishop had voted for the Church Temporalities’ Bill in 1833, which
at one swoop had suppressed ten Irish episcopates. This was a queer
suffrage for the apostle of the second Reformation. True it is that
Whiggism was then in the ascendant, and two years afterwards, when
Whiggism had received a heavy blow and great discouragement; when we had
been blessed in the interval with a decided though feeble Conservative
administration, and were blessed at the moment with a strong though
undecided Conservative opposition; his lordship, with characteristic
activity, had galloped across country into the right line again,
denounced the Appropriation Clause in a spirit worthy of his earlier
days, and, quite forgetting the ten Irish bishoprics, that only
four-and-twenty months before he had doomed to destruction, was all for
proselytising Ireland again by the efficacious means of Irish Protestant
bishops.

‘The bishop says that Tancred is a visionary,’ said the duchess to her
husband, with an air of great displeasure. ‘Why, it is because he is
a visionary that we sent him to the bishop. I want to have his false
imaginings removed by one who has the competent powers of learning and
argument, and the authority of a high and holy office. A visionary,
indeed! Why, so are the Puseyites; they are visionaries, and his
lordship has been obliged to deal with them; though, to be sure, if he
spoke to Tancred in a similar fashion, I am not surprised that my son
has returned unchanged! This is the most vexatious business that ever
occurred to us. Something must be done; but what to fix on? What do
you think, George? Since speaking to the bishop, of which you so much
approved, has failed, what do you recommend?’

While the duchess was speaking, she was seated in her boudoir, looking
into the Green Park; the duke’s horses were in the courtyard, and he was
about to ride down to the House of Lords; he had just looked in, as was
his custom, to say farewell till they met again.

‘I am sorry that the interview with the bishop has failed,’ said the
duke, in a hesitating tone, and playing with his riding-stick; and then
walking up to the window and looking into the Park, he said, apparently
after reflection, ‘I always think the best person to deal with a
visionary is a man of the world.’

‘But what can men of the world know of such questions?’ said the
duchess, mournfully.

‘Very little,’ said her husband, ‘and therefore they are never betrayed
into arguments, which I fancy always make people more obstinate, even if
they are confuted. Men of the world have a knack of settling everything
without discussion; they do it by tact. It is astonishing how many
difficulties I have seen removed--by Eskdale, for example--which it
seemed that no power on earth could change, and about which we had been
arguing for months. There was the Cheadle churches case, for example; it
broke up some of the oldest friendships in the county; even Hungerford
and Ilderton did not speak. I never had a more anxious time of it; and,
as far as I was personally concerned, I would have made any sacrifice
to keep a good understanding in the county. At last I got the business
referred to Eskdale, and the affair was ultimately arranged to
everybody’s satisfaction. I don’t know how he managed: it was quite
impossible that he could have offered any new arguments, but he did it
by tact. Tact does not remove difficulties, but difficulties melt away
under tact.’

‘Heigho!’ sighed the duchess. ‘I cannot understand how tact can tell
us what is religious truth, or prevent my son from going to the Holy
Sepulchre.’

‘Try,’ said the duke.

‘Shall you see our cousin to-day, George?’

‘He is sure to be at the House,’ replied the duke, eagerly. ‘I tell you
what I propose, Kate: Tancred is gone to the House of Commons to hear
the debate on Maynooth; I will try and get our cousin to come home and
dine with us, and then we can talk over the whole affair at once. What
say you?’

‘Very well.’

‘We have failed with a bishop; we will now try a man of the world; and
if we are to have a man of the world, we had better have a firstrate
one, and everybody agrees that our cousin----’

‘Yes, yes, George,’ said the duchess, ‘ask him to come; tell him it is
very urgent, that we must consult him immediately; and then, if he be
engaged, I dare say he will manage to come all the same.’

Accordingly, about half-past eight o’clock, the two peers arrived at
Bellamont House together. They were unexpectedly late; they had been
detained at the House. The duke was excited; even Lord Esk-dale looked
as if something had happened. Something had happened; there had been a
division in the House of Lords. Rare and startling event! It seemed
as if the peers were about to resume their functions. Divisions in
the House of Lords are now-a-days so thinly scattered, that, when one
occurs, the peers cackle as if they had laid an egg. They are quite
proud of the proof of their still procreative powers. The division
to-night had not been on a subject of any public interest or importance;
but still it was a division, and, what was more, the Government had been
left in a minority. True, the catastrophe was occasioned by a mistake.
The dictator had been asleep during the debate, woke suddenly from a
dyspeptic dream, would make a speech, and spoke on the wrong side.
A lively colleague, not yet sufficiently broken in to the frigid
discipline of the High Court of Registry, had pulled the great man once
by his coat-tails, a House of Commons practice, permitted to the Cabinet
when their chief is blundering, very necessary sometimes for a lively
leader, but of which Sir Robert highly disapproves, as the arrangement
of his coat-tails, next to beating the red box, forms the most important
part of his rhetorical accessories. The dictator, when he at length
comprehended that he had made a mistake, persisted in adhering to it;
the division was called, some of the officials escaped, the rest were
obliged to vote with their ruthless master; but his other friends, glad
of an opportunity of asserting their independence and administering to
the dictator a slight check in a quiet inoffensive way, put him in a
minority; and the Duke of Bellamont and Lord Eskdale had contributed to
this catastrophe.

Dinner was served in the library; the conversation during it was chiefly
the event of the morning. The duchess, who, though not a partisan, was
something of a politician, thought it was a pity that the dictator had
ever stepped out of his military sphere; her husband, who had never
before seen a man’s coat-tails pulled when he was speaking, dilated much
upon the singular circumstance of Lord Spur so disporting himself on the
present occasion; while Lord Eskdale, who had sat for a long time in
the House of Commons, and who was used to everything, assured his cousin
that the custom, though odd, was by no means irregular. ‘I remember,’
said his lordship, ‘seeing Ripon, when he was Robinson, and Huskisson,
each pulling one of Canning’s coat-tails at the same time.’

Throughout dinner not a word about Tancred. Lord Eskdale neither asked
where he was nor how he was. At length, to the great relief of the
duchess, dinner was finished; the servants had disappeared. The duke
pushed away the table; they drew their chairs round the hearth; Lord
Eskdale took half a glass of Madeira, then stretched his legs a little,
then rose, stirred the fire, and then, standing with his back to it
and his hands in his pockets, said, in a careless tone approaching to a
drawl, ‘And so, duchess, Tancred wants to go to Jerusalem?’

‘George has told you, then, all our troubles?’ ‘Only that; he left the
rest to you, and I came to hear it.’

Whereupon the duchess went off, and spoke for a considerable time
with great animation and ability, the duke hanging on every word with
vigilant interest, Lord Eskdale never interrupting her for an instant;
while she stated the case not only with the impassioned feeling of
a devoted mother, but occasionally with all the profundity of a
theologian. She did not conceal from him the interview between Tancred
and the bishop; it was her last effort, and had failed; and so, ‘after
all our plans,’ she ended, ‘as far as I can form an opinion, he is
absolutely more resolved than ever to go to Jerusalem.’

‘Well,’ said his lordship, ‘it is at least better than going to the
Jews, which most men do at his time of life.’

‘I cannot agree even to that,’ said the duchess; ‘for I would rather
that he should be ruined than die.’

‘Men do not die as they used,’ said his lordship. ‘Ask the annuity
offices; they have all raised their rates.’

‘I know nothing about annuity offices, but I know that almost everybody
dies who goes to those countries; look at young Fernborough, he was just
Tancred’s age; the fevers alone must kill him.’

‘He must take some quinine in his dressing-case,’ said Lord Eskdale.

‘You jest, Henry,’ said the duchess, disappointed, ‘when I am in
despair.’

‘No,’ said Lord Eskdale, looking up to the ceiling, ‘I am thinking how
you may prevent Tancred from going to Jerusalem, without, at the same
time, opposing his wishes.’

‘Ay, ay,’ said the duke, ‘that is it.’ And he looked triumphantly to
his wife, as much as to say, ‘Now you see what it is to be a man of the
world.’

‘A man cannot go to Jerusalem as he would to Birmingham, by the next
train,’ continued his lordship; ‘he must get something to take him; and
if you make the sacrifice of consenting to his departure, you have a
right to stipulate as to the manner in which he should depart. Your son
ought to travel with a suite; he ought to make the voyage in his own
yacht. Yachts are not to be found like hack cabs, though there are
several for sale now; but then they are not of the admeasurement of
which you approve for such a voyage and such a sea. People talk very
lightly of the Mediterranean, but there are such things as white
squalls. Anxious parents, and parents so fond of a son as you are, and a
son whose life for so many reasons is so precious, have a right to make
it a condition of their consent to his departure, that he should embark
in a vessel of considerable tonnage. He will find difficulty in buying
one second-hand; if he finds one it will not please him. He will get
interested in yacht-building, as he is interested now about Jerusalem:
both boyish fancies. He will stay another year in England to build a
yacht to take him to the Holy Land; the yacht will be finished this time
twelvemonths; and, instead of going to Palestine, he will go to Cowes.’

‘That is quite my view of the case,’ said the duke.

‘It never occurred to me,’ said the duchess.

Lord Eskdale resumed his seat, and took another half-glass of Madeira.

‘Well, I think it is very satisfactory, Katherine,’ said the duke, after
a short pause.

‘And what do you recommend us to do first?’ said the duchess to Lord
Eskdale.

‘Let Tancred go into society: the best way for him to forget Jerusalem
is to let him see London.’

‘But how can I manage it?’ said the duchess. ‘I never go anywhere;
nobody knows him, and he does not wish to know anybody.’

‘I will manage it, with your permission; ‘tis not difficult; a young
marquess has only to evince an inclination, and in a week’s time he will
be everywhere. I will tell Lady St. Julians and the great ladies to send
him invitations; they will fall like a snow-storm. All that remains is
for you to prevail upon him to accept them.’

‘And how shall I contrive it?’ said the duchess.

‘Easily,’ said Lord Eskdale. ‘Make his going into society, while his
yacht is preparing, one of the conditions of the great sacrifice you are
making. He cannot refuse you: ‘tis but the first step. A youth feels a
little repugnance to launching into the great world: ‘tis shyness; but
after the plunge, the great difficulty is to restrain rather than to
incite. Let him but once enter the world, and be tranquil, he will soon
find something to engage him.’

‘As long as he does not take to play,’ said the duke, ‘I do not much
care what he does.’

‘My dear George!’ said the duchess, ‘how can you say such things! I was
in hopes,’ she added, in a mournful tone, ‘that we might have settled
him, without his entering what you call the world, Henry. Dearest child!
I fancy him surrounded by pitfalls.’




CHAPTER XII.

     _The Dreamer Enters Society_

AFTER this consultation with Lord Eskdale, the duchess became easier in
her mind. She was of a sanguine temper, and with facility believed what
she wished. Affairs stood thus: it was agreed by all that Tancred should
go to the Holy Land, but he was to go in his own yacht; which yacht
was to be of a firstrate burthen, and to be commanded by an officer in
H.M.S.; and he was to be accompanied by Colonel Brace, Mr. Bernard, and
Mr. Roby; and the servants were to be placed entirely under the control
of some trusty foreigner accustomed to the East, and who was to be
chosen by Lord Eskdale. In the meantime, Tancred had acceded to the wish
of his parents, that until his departure he should mix much in society.
The duchess calculated that, under any circumstances, three months
must elapse before all the arrangements were concluded; and she felt
persuaded that, during that period, Tancred must become enamoured of his
cousin Katherine, and that the only use of the yacht would be to take
them all to Ireland. The duke was resolved only on two points: that his
son should do exactly as his son liked, and that he himself would never
take the advice, on any subject, of any other person than Lord Eskdale.

In the meantime Tancred was launched, almost unconsciously, into the
great world. The name of the Marquess of Montacute was foremost in those
delicate lists by which an eager and admiring public is apprised who,
among their aristocracy, eat, drink, dance, and sometimes pray. From the
saloons of Bel-grave and Grosvenor Square to the sacred recesses of
the Chapel Royal, the movements of Lord Montacute were tracked and
registered, and were devoured every morning, oftener with a keener
relish than the matin meal of which they formed a regular portion.
England is the only country which enjoys the unspeakable advantage of
being thus regularly, promptly, and accurately furnished with catalogues
of those favoured beings who are deemed qualified to enter the houses of
the great. What condescension in those who impart the information! What
indubitable evidence of true nobility! What superiority to all petty
vanity! And in those who receive it, what freedom from all little
feelings! No arrogance on one side; on the other, no envy. It is only
countries blessed with a free press that can be thus favoured. Even a
free press is not alone sufficient. Besides a free press, you must have
a servile public.

After all, let us be just. The uninitiated world is apt to believe that
there is sometimes, in the outskirts of fashion, an eagerness, scarcely
consistent with self-respect, to enter the mansions of the great. Not at
all: few people really want to go to their grand parties. It is not the
charms of conversation, the flash of wit or the blaze of beauty, the
influential presence of the powerful and celebrated, all the splendour
and refinement, which, combined, offer in a polished saloon so much
to charm the taste and satisfy the intellect, that the mass of social
partisans care anything about. What they want is, not so much to be
in her ladyship’s house as in her ladyship’s list. After the party at
Coningsby Castle, our friend, Mrs. Guy Flouncey, at length succeeded
in being asked to one of Lady St. Julians’ assemblies. It was a great
triumph, and Mrs. Guy Flouncey determined to make the most of it. She
was worthy of the occasion. But alas! next morning, though admitted to
the rout, Mrs. Guy Flouncey was left out of the list! It was a severe
blow! But Mrs. Guy Flouncey is in every list now, and even strikes
out names herself. But there never was a woman who advanced with such
dexterity.

Lord Montacute was much shocked, when, one morning, taking up a journal,
he first saw his name in print. He was alone, and he blushed; felt,
indeed, extremely distressed, when he found that the English people were
formally made acquainted with the fact that he had dined on the previous
Saturday with the Earl and Countess of St. Julians; ‘a grand banquet,’
of which he was quite unconscious until he read it; and that he was
afterwards ‘observed’ at the Opera.

He found that he had become a public character, and he was not by any
means conscious of meriting celebrity. To be pointed at as he walked
the streets, were he a hero, or had done, said, or written anything that
anybody remembered, though at first painful and embarrassing, for he was
shy, he could conceive ultimately becoming endurable, and not without a
degree of excitement, for he was ambitious; but to be looked at because
he was a young lord, and that this should be the only reason why the
public should be informed where he dined, or where he amused himself,
seemed to him not only vexatious but degrading. When he arrived,
however, at a bulletin of his devotions, he posted off immediately to
the Surrey Canal to look at a yacht there, and resolved not to lose
unnecessarily one moment in setting off for Jerusalem.

He had from the first busied himself about the preparations for his
voyage with all the ardour of youth; that is, with all the energy of
inexperience, and all the vigour of simplicity. As everything seemed
to depend upon his obtaining a suitable vessel, he trusted to no third
person; had visited Cowes several times; advertised in every paper;
and had already met with more than one yacht which at least deserved
consideration. The duchess was quite frightened at his progress. ‘I
am afraid he has found one,’ she said to Lord Eskdale; ‘he will be off
directly.’

Lord Eskdale shook his head. ‘There are always things of this sort in
the market. He will inquire before he purchases, and he will find that
he has got hold of a slow coach.’

‘A slow coach!’ said the duchess, looking inquiringly. ‘What is that?’

‘A tub that sails like a collier, and which, instead of taking him to
Jerusalem, will hardly take him to Newcastle.’

Lord Eskdale was right. Notwithstanding all his ardour, all his
inquiries, visits to Cowes and the Surrey Canal, advertisements and
answers to advertisements, time flew on, and Tancred was still without a
yacht.

In this unsettled state, Tancred found himself one evening at Deloraine
House. It was not a ball, it was only a dance, brilliant and select;
but, all the same, it seemed to Tancred that the rooms could not be
much more crowded. The name of the Marquess of Montacute, as it was sent
along by the servants, attracted attention. Tancred had scarcely entered
the world, his appearance had made a sensation, everybody talked of him,
many had not yet seen him.

‘Oh! that is Lord Montacute,’ said a great lady, looking through her
glass; ‘very distinguished!’

‘I tell you what,’ whispered Mr. Ormsby to Lord Valentine, ‘you young
men had better look sharp; Lord Montacute will cut you all out!’

‘Oh! he is going to Jerusalem,’ said Lord Valentine.

‘Jerusalem!’ said Mr. Ormsby, shrugging his shoulders. ‘What can he find
to do at Jerusalem?’

‘What, indeed,’ said Lord Milford. ‘My brother was there in ‘39; he got
leave after the bombardment of Acre, and he says there is absolutely no
sport of any kind.’

‘There used to be partridges in the time of Jeremiah,’ said Mr. Ormsby;
‘at least they told us so at the Chapel Royal last Sunday, where,
by-the-bye, I saw Lord Montacute for the first time; and a deuced
good-looking fellow he is,’ he added, musingly.

‘Well, there is not a bird in the whole country now,’ said Lord Milford.

‘Montacute does not care for sport,’ said Lord Valentine.

‘What does he care for?’ asked Lord Milford. ‘Because, if he wants any
horses, I can let him have some.’

‘He wants to buy a yacht,’ said Lord Valentine; ‘and that reminds me
that I heard to-day Exmouth wanted to get rid of “The Flower of Yarrow,”
 and I think it would suit my cousin. I’ll tell him of it.’ And he
followed Tancred.

‘You and Valentine must rub up your harness, Milford,’ said Mr.
Ormsby; ‘there is a new champion in the field. We are talking of Lord
Montacute,’ continued Mr. Ormsby, addressing himself to Mr. Melton, who
joined them; ‘I tell Milford he will cut you all out.’

‘Well,’ said Mr. Melton, ‘for my part I have had so much success, that I
have no objection, by way of change, to be for once eclipsed.’

‘Well done, Jemmy,’ said Lord Milford.

‘I see, Melton,’ said Mr. Ormsby, ‘you are reconciled to your fate like
a philosopher.’

‘Well, Montacute,’ said Lord St. Patrick, a good-tempered, witty
Milesian, with a laughing eye, ‘when are you going to Jericho?’

‘Tell me,’ said Tancred, in reply, and rather earnestly, ‘who is that?’
And he directed the attention of Lord St. Patrick to a young lady,
rather tall, a brilliant complexion, classic features, a profusion of
light brown hair, a face of intelligence, and a figure rich and yet
graceful.

‘That is Lady Constance Rawleigh; if you like, I will introduce you to
her. She is my cousin, and deuced clever. Come along!’

In the meantime, in the room leading to the sculpture gallery where they
are dancing, the throng is even excessive. As the two great divisions,
those who would enter the gallery and those who are quitting it,
encounter each other, they exchange flying phrases as they pass.

‘They told me you had gone to Paris! I have just returned. Dear me,
how time flies! Pretty dance, is it not? Very. Do you know whether the
Madlethorpes mean to come up this year? I hardly know; their little girl
is very ill. Ah! so I hear; what a pity, and such a fortune! Such a pity
with such a fortune! How d’ye do? Mr. Coningsby here? No; he’s at the
House. They say he is a very close attendant. It interests him. Well,
Lady Florentina, you never sent me the dances. Pardon, but you will find
them when you return. I lent them to Augusta, and she would copy them.
Is it true that I am to congratulate you? Why? Lady Blanche? Oh! that is
a romance of Easter week. Well, I am really delighted; I think such an
excellent match for both; exactly suited to each other. They think so.
Well, that is one point. How well Lady Everingham is looking! She is
quite herself again. Quite. Tell me, have you seen M. de Talleyrand
here? I spoke to him but this moment. Shall you be at Lady Blair’s
to-morrow? No; I have promised to go to Mrs. Guy Flouncey’s. She has
taken Craven Cottage, and is to be at home every Saturday. Well, if you
are going, I think I shall. I would; everybody will be there.’

Lord Montacute had conversed some time with Lady Constance; then he had
danced with her; he had hovered about her during the evening. It was
observed, particularly by some of the most experienced mothers. Lady
Constance was a distinguished beauty of two seasons; fresh, but adroit.
It was understood that she had refused offers of a high calibre; but
the rejected still sighed about her, and it was therefore supposed that,
though decided, she had the art of not rendering them desperate. One
at least of them was of a rank equal to that of Tancred. She had the
reputation of being very clever, and of being able, if it pleased her,
to breathe scorpions as well as brilliants and roses. It had got about
that she admired intellect, and, though she claimed the highest social
position, that a booby would not content her, even if his ears were
covered with strawberry leaves.

In the cloak-room, Tancred was still at her side, and was presented to
her mother, Lady Charmouth.

‘I am sorry to separate,’ said Tancred.

‘And so am I,’ said Lady Constance, smiling; ‘but one advantage of this
life is, we meet our friends every day.’

‘I am not going anywhere to-morrow, where I shall meet you,’ said
Tancred, ‘unless you chance to dine at the Archbishop of York’s.’

‘I am not going to dine with the Archbishop of York,’ said Lady
Constance, ‘but I am going, where everybody else is going, to breakfast
with Mrs. Guy Flouncey, at Craven Cottage. Why, will not you be there?’

‘I have not the honour of knowing her,’ said Tancred.

‘That is not of the slightest consequence; she will be very happy to
have the honour of knowing you. I saw her in the dancing-room, but it
is not worth while waiting to speak to her now. You shall receive an
invitation the moment you are awake.’

‘But to-morrow I have an engagement. I have to look at a yacht.’

‘But that you can look at on Monday; besides, if you wish to know
anything about yachts, you had better speak to my brother, Fitz-Heron,
who has built more than any man alive.’

‘Perhaps he has one that he wishes to part with?’ said Tancred.

‘I have no doubt of it. You can ask him tomorrow at Mrs. Guy
Flouncey’s.’

‘I will. Lady Charmouth’s carriage is called. May I have the honour?’
said Tancred, offering his arm.




CHAPTER XIII.

     _A Feminine Diplomatist_

THERE is nothing so remarkable as feminine influence. Although the
character of Tancred was not completely formed--for that result depends,
in some degree, upon the effect of circumstances at a certain time of
life, as well as on the impulse of a natural bent--still the temper of
his being was profound and steadfast. He had arrived, in solitude and
by the working of his own thought, at a certain resolution, which had
assumed to his strong and fervent imagination a sacred character, and
which he was determined to accomplish at all costs. He had brought
himself to the point that he would not conceive an obstacle that should
baulk him. He had acceded to the conditions which had been made by his
parents, for he was by nature dutiful, and wished to fulfil his-purpose,
if possible, with their sanction.

Yet he had entered society with repugnance, and found nothing in its
general tone with which his spirit harmonised. He was alone in the
crowd; silent, observing, and not charmed. There seemed to him generally
a want of simplicity and repose; too much flutter, not a little
affectation. People met in the thronged chambers, and interchanged brief
words, as if they were always in a hurry. ‘Have you been here long?
Where are you going next?’ These were the questions which seemed to form
the staple of the small talk of a fashionable multitude. Why, too,
was there a smile on every countenance, which often also assumed the
character of a grin? No error so common or so grievous as to suppose
that a smile is a necessary ingredient of the pleasing. There are few
faces that can afford to smile. A smile is sometimes bewitching, in
general vapid, often a contortion. But the bewitching smile usually
beams from the grave face. It is then irresistible. Tancred, though he
was unaware of it, was gifted with this rare spell. He had inherited
it from his mother; a woman naturally earnest and serious, and of a
singular simplicity, but whose heart when pleased spoke in the dimpling
sunshine of her cheek with exquisite beauty. The smiles of the Duchess
of Bellamont, however, were like her diamonds, brilliant, but rarely
worn.

Tancred had not mounted the staircase of Deloraine House with any
anticipation of pleasure. His thoughts were far away amid cities of the
desert, and by the palmy banks of ancient rivers. He often took refuge
in these exciting and ennobling visions, to maintain himself when he
underwent the ceremony of entering a great house. He was so shy in
little things, that to hear his name sounded from servant to servant,
echoing from landing-place to landing-place, was almost overwhelming.
Nothing but his pride, which was just equal to his reserve, prevented
him from often turning back on the stairs and precipitately retreating.
And yet he had not been ten minutes in Deloraine House, before he had
absolutely requested to be introduced to a lady. It was the first time
he had ever made such a request.

He returned home, softly musing. A tone lingered in his ear; he recalled
the countenance of one absent. In his dressing-room he lingered
before he retired, with his arm on the mantel-piece, and gazing with
abstraction on the fire.

When his servant called him, late in the morning, he delivered to him a
card from Mrs. Guy Flouncey, inviting him on that day to Craven Cottage,
at three o’clock: ‘déjeûner at four o’clock precisely.’ Tancred took the
card, looked at it, and the letters seemed to cluster together and form
the countenance of Lady Constance. ‘It will be a good thing to go,’ he
said, ‘because I want to know Lord Fitz-Heron; he will be of great use
to me about my yacht.’ So he ordered his carriage at three o’clock.

The reader must not for a moment suppose that Mrs. Guy Flouncey, though
she was quite as well dressed, and almost as pretty, as she was when at
Coningsby Castle in 1837, was by any means the same lady who then strove
to amuse and struggled to be noticed. By no means. In 1837, Mrs. Guy
Flouncey was nobody; in 1845, Mrs. Guy Flouncey was somebody, and
somebody of very great importance. Mrs. Guy Flouncey had invaded
society, and had conquered it, gradually, but completely, like the
English in India. Social invasions are not rare, but they are seldom
fortunate, or success, if achieved, is partial, and then only sustained
at immense cost, like the French in Algiers.

The Guy Flounceys were not people of great fortune. They had a good
fortune; seven or eight thousand a year. But then, with an air of great
expenditure, even profusion, there was a basis of good management. And a
good fortune with good management, and without that equivocal luxury, a
great country-house, is almost equal to the great fortune of a peer.
But they not only had no country-house, they had no children. And a good
fortune, with good management, no country-house, and no children, is
Aladdin’s lamp.

Mr. Guy Flouncey was a sporting character. His wife had impressed upon
him that it was the only way in which he could become fashionable and
acquainted with ‘the best men.’ He knew just enough of the affair not
to be ridiculous; and, for the rest, with a great deal of rattle and
apparent heedlessness of speech and deed, he was really an extremely
selfish and sufficiently shrewd person, who never compromised himself.
It is astonishing with what dexterity Guy Flouncey could extricate
himself from the jaws of a friend, who, captivated by his thoughtless
candour and ostentatiously good heart, might be induced to request Mr.
Flouncey to lend him a few hundreds, only for a few months, or, more
diplomatically, might beg his friend to become his security for a few
thousands, for a few years.

Mr. Guy Flouncey never refused these applications; they were exactly
those to which it delighted his heart to respond, because nothing
pleased him more than serving a friend. But then he always had to write
a preliminary letter of preparation to his banker, or his steward, or
his confidential solicitor; and, by some contrivance or other,
without offending any one, rather with the appearance of conferring an
obligation, it ended always by Mr. Guy Flouncey neither advancing the
hundreds, nor guaranteeing the thousands. He had, indeed, managed,
like many others, to get the reputation of being what is called ‘a good
fellow;’ though it would have puzzled his panegyrists to allege a single
act of his that evinced a good heart. This sort of pseudo reputation,
whether for good or for evil, is not uncommon in the world. Man is
mimetic; judges of character are rare; we repeat without thought the
opinions of some third person, who has adopted them without inquiry;
and thus it often happens that a proud, generous man obtains in time the
reputation of being ‘a screw,’ because he has refused to lend money
to some impudent spendthrift, who from that moment abuses him; and a
cold-hearted, civil-spoken personage, profuse in costless services, with
a spice of the parasite in him, or perhaps hospitable out of vanity,
is invested with all the thoughtless sympathies of society, and passes
current as that most popular of characters, ‘a good fellow.’

Guy Flouncey’s dinners began to be talked of among men: it became a
sort of fashion, especially among sporting men, to dine with Mr. Guy
Flouncey, and there they met Mrs. Guy Flouncey. Not an opening ever
escaped her. If a man had a wife, and that wife was a personage, sooner
or later, much as she might toss her head at first, she was sure to
visit Mrs. Guy Flouncey, and, when she knew her, she was sure to like
her. The Guy Flounceys never lost a moment; the instant the season was
over, they were at Cowes, then at a German bath, then at Paris, then at
an English country-house, then in London.

Seven years, to such people, was half a century of social experience.
They had half a dozen seasons in every year. Still, it was hard work,
and not rapid. At a certain point they stuck, as all do. Most people,
then, give it up; but patience, Buffon tells us, is genius, and Mrs.
Guy Flouncey was, in her way, a woman of genius. Their dinners were, in
a certain sense, established: these in return brought them to a certain
degree into the dinner world; but balls, at least balls of a high
calibre, were few, and as for giving a ball herself, Mrs. Guy Flouncey
could no more presume to think of that than of attempting to prorogue
Parliament. The house, however, got really celebrated for ‘the best
men.’ Mrs. Guy Flouncey invited all the young dancing lords to dinner.
Mothers will bring their daughters where there are young lords. Mrs. Guy
Flouncey had an opera-box in the best tier, which she took only to lend
to her friends; and a box at the French play, which she took only to
bribe her foes. They were both at everybody’s service, like Mr. Guy
Flouncey’s yacht, provided the persons who required them were members
of that great world in which Mrs. Guy Flouncey had resolved to plant
herself.

Mrs. Guy Flouncey was pretty; she was a flirt on principle; thus she had
caught the Marquess of Beaumanoir, who, if they chanced to meet,
always spoke to her, which gave Mrs. Guy Flouncey fashion. But Mrs. Guy
Flouncey was nothing more than a flirt. She never made a mistake; she
was born with strong social instincts. She knew that the fine ladies
among whom, from the first, she had determined to place herself, were
moral martinets with respect to any one not born among themselves.
That which is not observed, or, if noticed, playfully alluded to in
the conduct of a patrician dame, is visited with scorn and contumely if
committed by some ‘shocking woman,’ who has deprived perhaps a countess
of the affections of a husband who has not spoken to her for years.
But if the countess is to lose her husband, she ought to lose him to a
viscountess, at least. In this way the earl is not lost to ‘society.’

A great nobleman met Mrs. Guy Flouncey at a country-house, and was
fairly captivated by her. Her pretty looks, her coquettish manner, her
vivacity, her charming costume, above all, perhaps, her imperturbable
good temper, pierced him to the heart. The great nobleman’s wife had the
weakness to be annoyed. Mrs. Guy Flouncey saw her opportunity. She threw
over the earl, and became the friend of the countess, who could never
sufficiently evince her gratitude to the woman who would not make love
to her husband. This friendship was the incident for which Mrs. Guy
Flouncey had been cruising for years. Men she had vanquished; they had
given her a sort of _ton_ which she had prudently managed. She had not
destroyed herself by any fatal preference. Still, her fashion among men
necessarily made her unfashionable among women, who, if they did not
absolutely hate her, which they would have done had she had a noble
lover, were determined not to help her up the social ladder. Now she had
a great friend, and one of the greatest of ladies. The moment she had
pondered over for years had arrived. Mrs. Guy Flouncey determined at
once to test her position. Mrs. Guy Flouncey resolved on giving a ball.

But some of our friends in the country will say, ‘Is that all? Surely
it required no very great resolution, no very protracted pondering, to
determine on giving a ball! Where is the difficulty? The lady has but to
light up her house, hire the fiddlers, line her staircase with American
plants, perhaps enclose her balcony, order Mr. Gunter to provide plenty
of the best refreshments, and at one o’clock a superb supper, and, with
the company of your friends, you have as good a ball as can be desired
by the young, or endured by the old.’

Innocent friends in the country! You might have all these things. Your
house might be decorated like a Russian palace, blazing with the most
brilliant lights and breathing the richest odours; you might have
Jullien presiding over your orchestra, and a banquet worthy of the
Romans. As for your friends, they might dance until daybreak, and agree
that there never was an entertainment more tasteful, more sumptuous,
and, what would seem of the first importance, more merry. But, having
all these things, suppose you have not a list? You have given a ball,
you have not a list. The reason is obvious: you are ashamed of your
guests. You are not in ‘society.’

But even a list is not sufficient for success. You must also get a
day: the most difficult thing in the world. After inquiring among your
friends, and studying the columns of the _Morning Post_, you discover
that, five weeks hence, a day is disengaged. You send out your cards;
your house is dismantled; your lights are arranged; the American plants
have arrived; the band, perhaps two bands, are engaged. Mr. Gunter has
half dressed your supper, and made all your ice, when suddenly, within
eight-and-forty hours of the festival which you have been five weeks
preparing, the Marchioness of Deloraine sends out cards for a ball in
honour of some European sovereign who has just alighted on our isle, and
means to stay only a week, and at whose court, twenty years ago, Lord
Deloraine was ambassador. Instead of receiving your list, you are
obliged to send messengers in all directions to announce that your
ball is postponed, although you are perfectly aware that not a single
individual would have been present whom you would have cared to welcome.

The ball is postponed; and next day the _Morning Post_ informs us it is
postponed to that day week; and the day after you have circulated this
interesting intelligence, you yourself, perhaps, have the gratification
of receiving an invitation, for the same day, to Lady St. Julians’: with
‘dancing’ neatly engraved in the corner. You yield in despair; and
there are some ladies who, with every qualification for an excellent
ball-guests, Gunter, American plants, pretty daughters have been
watching and waiting for years for an opportunity of giving it; and at
last, quite hopeless, at the end of the season, expend their funds in
a series of Greenwich banquets, which sometimes fortunately produce the
results expected from the more imposing festivity.

You see, therefore, that giving a ball is not that matter-of-course
affair you imagined; and that for Mrs. Guy Flouncey to give a ball and
succeed, completely, triumphantly to succeed, was a feat worthy of that
fine social general. Yet she did it. The means, like everything that is
great, were simple. She induced her noble friend to ask her guests. Her
noble friend canvassed for her as if it were a county election of the
good old days, when the representation of a shire was the certain
avenue to a peerage, instead of being, as it is now, the high road to a
poor-law commissionership.

Many were very glad to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Guy Flouncey; many
only wanted an excuse to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Guy Flouncey;
they went to her party because they were asked by their dear friend,
Lady Kingcastle. As for the potentates, there is no disguise on these
subjects among them. They went to Mrs. Guy Flouncey’s ball because one
who was their equal, not only in rank, but in social influence, had
requested it as a personal favour, she herself, when the occasion
offered, being equally ready to advance their wishes. The fact was, that
affairs were ripe for the recognition of Mrs. Guy Flouncey as a member
of the social body. Circumstances had been long maturing. The Guy
Flounceys, who, in the course of their preparatory career, had hopped
from Park Crescent to Portman Square, had now perched upon their
‘splendid mansion’ in Belgrave Square. Their dinners were renowned. Mrs.
Guy Flouncey was seen at all the ‘best balls,’ and was always surrounded
by the ‘best men.’ Though a flirt and a pretty woman, she was a discreet
parvenue, who did not entrap the affections of noble husbands. Above
all, she was the friend of Lady Kingcastle, who called her and her
husband ‘those good Guy Flounceys.’

The ball was given; you could not pass through Belgrave Square that
night. The list was published; it formed two columns of the Morning
Post. Lady Kingcastle was honoured by the friendship of a royal duchess.
She put the friendship to the proof, and her royal highness was seen at
Mrs. Guy Flouncey’s ball. Imagine the reception, the canopy, the scarlet
cloth, the ‘God save the King’ from the band of the first guards,
bivouacked in the hall, Mrs. Guy Flouncey herself performing her part
as if she had received princesses of the blood all her life; so reverent
and yet so dignified, so very calm and yet with a sort of winning,
sunny innocence. Her royal highness was quite charmed with her hostess,
praised her much to Lady Kingcastle, told her that she was glad that she
had come, and even stayed half an hour longer than Mrs. Guy Flouncey
had dared to hope. As for the other guests, the peerage was gutted.
The Dictator himself was there, and, the moment her royal highness had
retired, Mrs. Guy Flouncey devoted herself to the hero. All the great
ladies, all the ambassadors, all the beauties, a full chapter of the
Garter, a chorus among the ‘best men’ that it was without doubt the
‘best ball’ of the year, happy Mrs. Guy Flouncey! She threw a glance at
her swing-glass while Mr. Guy Flouncey, who ‘had not had time to get
anything the whole evening,’ was eating some supper on a tray in her
dressing-room at five o’clock in the morning, and said, ‘We have done it
at last, my love!’

She was right; and from that moment Mrs. Guy Flouncey was asked to all
the great houses, and became a lady of the most unexceptionable _ton_.

But all this time we are forgetting her _déjeûner_, and that Tancred
is winding his way through the garden lanes of Fulham to reach Craven
Cottage.




CHAPTER XIV.

     _The Coningsbys_

THE day was brilliant: music, sunshine, ravishing bonnets, little
parasols that looked like large butterflies. The new phaetons glided
up, then carriages-and-four swept by; in general the bachelors were
ensconced in their comfortable broughams, with their glasses down and
their blinds drawn, to receive the air and to exclude the dust; some
less provident were cavaliers, but, notwithstanding the well-watered
roads, seemed a little dashed as they cast an anxious glance at the
rose which adorned their button-hole, or fancied that they felt a flying
black from a London chimney light upon the tip of their nose.

Within, the winding walks dimly echoed whispering words; the lawn was
studded with dazzling groups; on the terrace by the river a dainty
multitude beheld those celebrated waters which furnish flounders to
Richmond and whitebait to Blackwall.

‘Mrs. Coningsby shall decide,’ said Lord Beaumanoir.

Edith and Lady Theresa Lyle stood by a statue that glittered in the sun,
surrounded by a group of cavaliers; among them Lord Beaumanoir, Lord
Mil-ford, Lord Eugene de Vere. Her figure was not less lithe and
graceful since her marriage, a little more voluptuous; her rich
complexion, her radiant and abounding hair, and her long grey eye, now
melting with pathos, and now twinkling with mockery, presented one of
those faces of witchery which are beyond beauty.

‘Mrs. Coningsby shall decide.’

‘It is the very thing,’ said Edith, ‘that Mrs. Coningsby will never do.
Decision destroys suspense, and suspense is the charm of existence.’

‘But suspense may be agony,’ said Lord Eugene de Vere, casting a glance
that would read the innermost heart of Edith.

‘And decision may be despair,’ said Mrs. Coningsby.

‘But we agreed the other night that you were to decide everything for
us,’ said Lord Beaumanoir; ‘and you consented.’

‘I consented the other night, and I retract my consent to-day; and I am
consistent, for that is indecision.’

‘You are consistent in being charming,’ said Lord Eugene.

‘Pleasing and original!’ said Edith. ‘By-the-bye, when I consented that
the melancholy Jaques should be one of my aides-de-camp I expected him
to maintain his reputation, not only for gloom but wit. I think you had
better go back to the forest, Lord Eugene, and see if you cannot
stumble upon a fool who may drill you in repartee. How do you do, Lady
Riddlesworth?’ and she bowed to two ladies who seemed inclined to stop,
but Edith added, ‘I heard great applications for you this moment on the
terrace.’

‘Indeed!’ exclaimed the ladies; and they moved on.

‘When Lady Riddlesworth joins the conversation it is like a stoppage in
the streets. I invented a piece of intelligence to clear the way, as
you would call out Fire! or The queen is coming! There used to be things
called _vers de société_, which were not poetry; and I do not see why
there should not be social illusions which are not fibs.’

‘I entirely agree with you,’ said Lord Milford; ‘and I move that we
practise them on a large scale.’

‘Like the verses, they might make life more light,’ said Lady Theresa.

‘We are surrounded by illusions,’ said Lord Eugene, in a melancholy
tone.

‘And shams of all descriptions,’ said Edith; ‘the greatest, a man who
pretends he has a broken heart when all the time he is full of fun.’

‘There are a great many men who have broken hearts,’ said Lord
Beaumanoir, smiling sorrowfully.

‘Cracked heads are much commoner,’ said Edith, ‘you may rely upon it.
The only man I really know with a broken heart is Lord Fitz-Booby. I do
think that paying Mount-Dullard’s debts has broken his heart. He takes
on so; ‘tis piteous. “My dear Mrs. Coningsby,” he said to me last night,
“only think what that young man might have been; he might have been a
lord of the treasury in ‘35; why, if he had had nothing more in ‘41,
why, there’s a loss of between four and five thousand pounds; but with
my claims--Sir Robert, having thrown the father over, was bound on
his own principle to provide for the son--he might have got something
better; and now he comes to me with his debts, and his reason for paying
his debts, too, Mrs. Coningsby, because he is going to be married; to
be married to a woman who has not a shilling. Why, if he had been in
office, and only got 1,500L. a year, and married a woman with only
another 1,500L., he would have had 3,000L. a year, Mrs. Coningsby; and
now he has nothing of his own except some debts, which he wants me to
pay, and settle 3,000L. a year on him besides.”’

They all laughed.

‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Coningsby, with a resemblance which made all start, ‘you
should have heard it with the Fitz-Booby voice.’

The character of a woman rapidly develops after marriage, and sometimes
seems to change, when in fact it is only complete. Hitherto we have
known Edith only in her girlhood, bred up in a life of great simplicity,
and under the influence of a sweet fancy, or an absorbing passion.
Coningsby had been a hero to her before they met, the hero of nursery
hours and nursery tales. Experience had not disturbed those dreams.
From the moment they encountered each other at Millbank, he assumed that
place in her heart which he had long occupied in her imagination; and,
after their second meeting at Paris, her existence was merged in love.
All the crosses and vexations of their early affection only rendered
this state of being on her part more profound and engrossing.

But though Edith was a most happy wife, and blessed with two children
worthy of their parents, love exercises quite a different influence
upon a woman when she has married, and especially when she has assumed
a social position which deprives life of all its real cares. Under any
circumstances, that suspense, which, with all its occasional agony, is
the great spring of excitement, is over; but, generally speaking, it
will be found, notwithstanding the proverb, that with persons of a noble
nature, the straitened fortunes which they share together, and
manage, and mitigate by mutual forbearance, are more conducive to the
sustainment of a high-toned and romantic passion, than a luxurious
prosperity.

The wife of a man of limited fortune, who, by contrivance, by the
concealed sacrifice of some necessity of her own, supplies him with some
slight enjoyment which he has never asked, but which she fancies he may
have sighed for, experiences, without doubt, à degree of pleasure far
more ravishing than the patrician dame who stops her barouche at Storr
and Mortimer’s, and out of her pin-money buys a trinket for the husband
whom she loves, and which he finds, perhaps, on his dressing-table, on
the anniversary of their wedding-day. That’s pretty too and touching,
and should be encouraged; but the other thrills, and ends in an embrace
that is still poetry.

The Coningsbys shortly after their marriage had been called to the
possession of a great fortune, for which, in every sense, they were well
adapted. But a great fortune necessarily brings with it a great change
of habits. The claims of society proportionately increase with your
income. You live less for yourselves. For a selfish man, merely looking
to his luxurious ease, Lord Eskdale’s idea of having ten thousand a
year, while the world suppose you have only five, is the right thing.
Coningsby, however, looked to a great fortune as one of the means,
rightly employed, of obtaining great power. He looked also to his wife
to assist him in this enterprise.

Edith, from a native impulse, as well as from love for him, responded
to his wish. When they were in the country, Hellingsley was a perpetual
stream and scene of splendid hospitality; there the flower of London
society mingled with all the aristocracy of the county. Leander was
often retained specially, like a Wilde or a Kelly, to renovate the
genius of the habitual chief: not of the circuit, but the kitchen.
A noble mansion in Park Lane received them the moment Parliament
assembled. Coningsby was then immersed in affairs, and counted entirely
on Edith to cherish those social influences which in a public career
are not less important than political ones. The whole weight of the
management of society rested on her. She had to cultivate his alliances,
keep together his friends, arrange his dinner-parties, regulate his
engagements. What time for romantic love? They were never an hour alone.
Yet they loved not less; but love had taken the character of enjoyment
instead of a wild bewitchment; and life had become an airy bustle,
instead of a storm, an agony, a hurricane of the heart.

In this change in the disposition, not in the degree, of their
affection, for there was the same amount of sweet solicitude, only it
was duly apportioned to everything that interested them, instead of
being exclusively devoted to each other, the character of Edith, which
had been swallowed up by the absorbing passion, rapidly developed itself
amid the social circumstances. She was endued with great vivacity, a
sanguine and rather saucy spirit, with considerable talents, and a large
share of feminine vanity: that divine gift which makes woman charming.
Entirely sympathising with her husband, labouring with zeal to advance
his views, and living perpetually in the world, all these qualities
came to light. During her first season she had been very quiet, not less
observant, making herself mistress of the ground. It was prepared
for her next campaign. When she evinced a disposition to take a lead,
although found faultless the first year, it was suddenly remembered that
she was a manufacturer’s daughter; and she was once described by a great
lady as ‘that person whom Mr. Coningsby had married, when Lord Monmouth
cut him off with a shilling.’

But Edith had anticipated these difficulties, and was not to be daunted.
Proud of her husband, confident in herself, supported by a great
establishment, and having many friends, she determined to exchange
salutes with these social sharp-shooters, who are scarcely as courageous
as they are arrogant. It was discovered that Mrs. Coningsby could be
as malicious as her assailants, and far more epigrammatic. She could
describe in a sentence and personify in a phrase. The _mot_ was
circulated, the _nom de nique_ repeated. Surrounded by a brilliant
band of youth and wit, even her powers of mimickry were revealed to the
initiated. More than one social tyrant, whom all disliked, but whom
none had ventured to resist, was made ridiculous. Flushed by success and
stimulated by admiration, Edith flattered herself that she was assisting
her husband while she was gratifying her vanity. Her adversaries soon
vanished, but the powers that had vanquished them were too choice to
be forgotten or neglected. The tone of raillery she had assumed for
the moment, and extended, in self-defence, to persons, was adopted as a
habit, and infused itself over affairs in general.

Mrs. Coningsby was the fashion; she was a wit as well as a beauty; a
fascinating droll; dazzling and bewitching, the idol of every youth.
Eugene de Vere was roused from his premature exhaustion, and at last
found excitement again. He threw himself at her feet; she laughed at
him. He asked leave to follow her footsteps; she consented. He was
only one of a band of slaves. Lord Beaumanoir, still a bachelor, always
hovered about her, feeding on her laughing words with a mild melancholy,
and sometimes bandying repartee with a kind of tender and stately
despair. His sister, Lady Theresa Lyle, was Edith’s great friend. Their
dispositions had some resemblance. 

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