CHAPTER II

A certain time after the marriage, his Grace alighted at the Wells,

and did himself the honour to call on Mr. Beamish. Addressing that

gentleman, to whom he was no stranger, he communicated the purport of

his visit.

‘Sir, and my very good friend,’ he said, ‘first let me beg you to abate

the severity of your countenance, for if I am here in breach of your

prohibition, I shall presently depart in compliance with it. I could

indeed deplore the loss of the passion for play of which you effectually

cured me. I was then armed against a crueller, that allows of no

interval for a man to make his vow to recover!’

‘The disease which is all crisis, I apprehend,’ Mr. Beamish remarked.

‘Which, sir, when it takes hold of dry wood, burns to the last splinter.

It is now’--the duke fetched a tender groan--‘three years ago that I had

a caprice to marry a grandchild!’

‘Of Adam’s,’ Mr. Beamish said cheerfully. ‘There was no legitimate bar

to the union.’

‘Unhappily none. Yet you are not to suppose I regret it. A most

admirable creature, Mr. Beamish, a real divinity! And the better known,

the more adored. There is the misfortune. At my season of life, when the

greater and the minor organs are in a conspiracy to tell me I am mortal,

the passion of love must be welcomed as a calamity, though one would not

be free of it for the renewal of youth. You are to understand, that with

a little awakening taste for dissipation, she is the most innocent of

angels. Hitherto we have lived... To her it has been a new world. But

she is beginning to find it a narrow one. No, no, she is not tired of my

society. Very far from that. But in her present station an inclination

for such gatherings as you have here, for example, is like a desire to

take the air: and the healthy habits of my duchess have not accustomed

her to be immured. And in fine, devote ourselves as we will, a term

approaches when the enthusiasm for serving as your wife’s playfellow all

day, running round tables and flying along corridors before a knotted

handkerchief, is mightily relaxed. Yet the dread of a separation from

her has kept me at these pastimes for a considerable period beyond my

relish of them. Not that I acknowledge fatigue. I have, it seems, a

taste for reflection; I am now much disposed to read and meditate, which

cannot be done without repose. I settle myself, and I receive a worsted

ball in my face, and I am expected to return it. I comply; and then you

would say a nursery in arms. It would else be the deplorable spectacle

of a beautiful young woman yawning.’

‘Earthquake and saltpetre threaten us less terribly,’ said Mr. Beamish.

‘In fine, she has extracted a promise that ‘this summer she shall visit

the Wells for a month, and I fear I cannot break my pledge of my word; I

fear I cannot.’

‘Very certainly I would not,’ said Mr. Beamish.

The duke heaved a sigh. ‘There are reasons, family reasons, why my

company and protection must be denied to her here. I have no wish...

indeed my name, for the present, until such time as she shall have

found her feet... and there is ever a penalty to pay for that. Ah, Mr.

Beamish, pictures are ours, when we have bought them and hung them up;

but who insures us possession of a beautiful work of Nature? I have

latterly betaken me to reflect much and seriously. I am tempted to side

with the Divines in the sermons I have read; the flesh is the habitation

of a rebellious devil.’

‘To whom we object in proportion as we ourselves become quit of him,’

Mr. Beamish acquiesced.

‘But this mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure, is one

of the wonders. It does not pall on them; they are insatiate.’

‘There is the cataract, and there is the cliff. Potentate to potentate,

duke--so long as you are on my territory, be it understood. Upon my way

to a place of worship once, I passed a Puritan, who was complaining of

a butterfly that fluttered prettily abroad in desecration of the Day of

Rest. “Friend,” said I to him, “conclusively you prove to me that you

are not a butterfly.” Surly did no more than favour me with the anathema

of his countenance.’

‘Cousin Beamish, my complaint of these young people is, that they miss

their pleasure in pursuing it. I have lectured my duchess--’

‘Ha!’

‘Foolish, I own,’ said the duke. ‘But suppose, now, you had caught your

butterfly, and you could neither let it go nor consent to follow its

vagaries. That poses you.’

‘Young people,’ said Mr. Beamish, ‘come under my observation in this

poor realm of mine--young and old. I find them prodigiously alike in

their love of pleasure, differing mainly in their capacity to satisfy

it. That is no uncommon observation. The young, have an edge which they

are desirous of blunting; the old contrariwise. The cry of the young for

pleasure is actually--I have studied their language--a cry for burdens.

Curious! And the old ones cry for having too many on their shoulders:

which is not astonishing. Between them they make an agreeable concert

both to charm the ears and guide the steps of the philosopher, whose

wisdom it is to avoid their tracks.’

‘Good. But I have asked you for practical advice, and you give me an

essay.’

‘For the reason, duke, that you propose a case that suggests hanging.

You mention two things impossible to be done. The alternative is, a

garter and the bedpost. When we have come upon crossways, and we can

decide neither to take the right hand nor the left, neither forward nor

back, the index of the board which would direct us points to itself, and

emphatically says, Gallows.’

‘Beamish, I am distracted. If I refuse her the visit, I foresee

dissensions, tears, games at ball, romps, not one day of rest remaining

to me. I could be of a mind with your Puritan, positively. If I allow

it, so innocent a creature in the atmosphere of a place like this must

suffer some corruption. You should know that the station I took her from

was ... it was modest. She was absolutely a buttercup of the fields. She

has had various masters. She dances... she dances prettily, I could say

bewitchingly. And so she is now for airing her accomplishments: such are

women!’

‘Have you heard of Chloe?’ said Mr. Beamish. ‘There you have an example

of a young lady uncorrupted by this place--of which I would only remark

that it is best unvisited, but better tasted than longed for.’

‘Chloe? A lady who squandered her fortune to redeem some ill-requiting

rascal: I remember to have heard of her. She is here still? And ruined,

of course?’

‘In purse.’

‘That cannot be without the loss of reputation.’

‘Chloe’s champion will grant that she is exposed to the evils of

improvidence. The more brightly shine her native purity, her goodness

of heart, her trustfulness. She is a lady whose exaltation glows in her

abasement.’

‘She has, I see, preserved her comeliness,’ observed the duke, with a

smile.

‘Despite the flying of the roses, which had not her heart’s patience.

‘Tis now the lily that reigns. So, then, Chloe shall be attached to the

duchess during her stay, and unless the devil himself should interfere,

I guarantee her Grace against any worse harm than experience; and that,’

Mr. Beamish added, as the duke raised his arms at the fearful word,

‘that shall be mild. Play she will; she is sure to play. Put it down

at a thousand. We map her out a course of permissible follies, and she

plays to lose the thousand by degrees, with as telling an effect upon a

connubial conscience as we can produce.’

‘A thousand,’ said the duke, ‘will be cheap indeed. I think now I have

had a description of this fair Chloe, and from an enthusiast; a brune?

elegantly mannered and of a good landed family; though she has thought

proper to conceal her name. And that will be our difficulty, cousin

Beamish.’

‘She was, under my dominion, Miss Martinsward,’ Mr. Beamish pursued.

‘She came here very young, and at once her suitors were legion. In the

way of women, she chose the worst among them; and for the fellow Caseldy

she sacrificed the fortune she had inherited of a maternal uncle. To

release him from prison, she paid all his debts; a mountain of bills,

with the lawyers piled above--Pelion upon Ossa, to quote our poets.

In fact, obeying the dictates of a soul steeped in generosity, she

committed the indiscretion to strip herself, scandalizing propriety.

This was immediately on her coming of age; and it was the death-blow to

her relations with her family. Since then, honoured even by rakes, she

has lived impoverished at the Wells. I dubbed her Chloe, and man

or woman disrespectful to Chloe packs. From being the victim of her

generous disposition, I could not save her; I can protect her from the

shafts of malice.’

‘She has no passion for play?’ inquired the duke.

‘She nourishes a passion for the man for whom she bled, to the exclusion

of the other passions. She lives, and I believe I may say that it is the

motive of her rising and dressing daily, in expectation of his advent.’

‘He may be dead.’

‘The dog is alive. And he has not ceased to be Handsome Caseldy, they

say. Between ourselves, duke, there is matter to break her heart. He has

been the Count Caseldy of Continental gaming tables, and he is recently

Sir Martin Caseldy, settled on the estate she made him free to take up

intact on his father’s decease.’

‘Pah! a villain!’

‘With a blacker brand upon him every morning that he looks forth across

his property, and leaves her to languish! She still--I say it to the

redemption of our sex--has offers. Her incomparable attractions of mind

and person exercise the natural empire of beauty. But she will none of

them. I call her the Fair Suicide. She has died for love; and she is a

ghost, a good ghost, and a pleasing ghost, but an apparition, a taper.

The duke fidgeted, and expressed a hope to hear that she was not of

melancholy conversation; and again, that the subject of her discourse

was not confined to love and lovers, happy or unhappy. He wished his

duchess, he said, to be entertained upon gayer topics: love being

a theme he desired to reserve to himself. ‘This month!’ he said,

prognostically shaking and moaning. ‘I would this month were over, and

that we were well purged of it.’

Mr. Beamish reassured him. The wit and sprightliness of Chloe were so

famous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged for

her company; she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played harp and

harpsichord divinely, and touched the guitar, and danced, danced like

the silvery moon on the waters of the mill pool. He concluded by saying

that she was both humane and wise, humble-minded and amusing, virtuous

yet not a Tartar; the best of companions for her Grace the young

duchess. Moreover, he boldly engaged to carry the duchess through the

term of her visit under a name that should be as good as a masquerade

for concealing his Grace’s, while giving her all the honours due to her

rank.

‘You strictly interpret my wishes,’ said the duke; ‘all honours, the

foremost place, and my wrath upon man or woman gainsaying them!’

‘Mine! if you please, duke,’ said Mr. Beamish.

‘A thousand pardons! I leave it to you, cousin. I could not be in safer

hands. I am heartily bounders to you. Chloe, then. By the way, she has a

decent respect for age?’

‘She is reverentially inclined.’

‘Not that. She is, I would ask, no wanton prattler of the charms and

advantages of youth?’

‘She has a young adorer that I have dubbed Alonzo, whom she scarce

notices.’

‘Nothing could be better. Alonzo: h’m! A faithful swain?’

‘Life is his tree, upon which unceasingly he carves his mistress’s

initials.’

‘She should not be too cruel. I recollect myself formerly: I was...

Young men will, when long slighted, transfer their affections, and be

warmer to the second flame than to the first. I put you on your guard.

He follows her much? These lovers’ paintings and puffings in the

neighbourhood of the most innocent of women are contagious.’

‘Her Grace will be running home all the sooner.’

‘Or off!--may she forgive me! I am like a King John’s Jew, forced to

lend his treasure without security. What a world is ours! Nothing,

Beamish, nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted! Catch a

prize, and you will find you are at war with your species. You have

to be on the defensive from that moment. There is no such thing as

peaceable procession on earth. Let it be a beautiful young woman!--Ah!’

Mr. Beamish replied bracingly, ‘The champion wrestler challenges all

comers while he wears the belt.’

The duke dejectedly assented. ‘True; or he is challenged, say. Is there

any tale we could tell her of this Alonzo? You could deport him for the

month, my dear Beamish.’

‘I commit no injustice unless with sufficient reason. It is an estimable

youth, as shown by his devotion to a peerless woman. To endow her with

his name and fortune is his only thought.’

‘I perceive; an excellent young fellow! I have an incipient liking

for this young Alonzo. You must not permit my duchess to laugh at him.

Encourage her rather to advance his suit. The silliness of a young man

will be no bad spectacle. Chloe, then. You have set my mind at rest,

Beamish, and it is but another obligation added to the heap; so, if I

do not speak of payment, the reason is that I know you would not have me

bankrupt.’

The remainder of the colloquy of the duke and Mr. Beamish referred to

the date of her Grace’s coming to the Wells, the lodgement she was

to receive, and other minor arrangements bearing upon her state and

comfort; the duke perpetually observing, ‘But I leave it all to you,

Beamish,’ when he had laid down precise instructions in these respects,

even to the specification of the shopkeepers, the confectioner and the

apothecary, who were to balance or cancel one another in the opposite

nature of their supplies, and the haberdasher and the jeweller, with

whom she was to make her purchases. For the duke had a recollection of

giddy shops, and of giddy shopmen too; and it was by serving as one for

a day that a certain great nobleman came to victory with a jealously

guarded dame beautiful as Venus. ‘I would have challenged the goddess!’

he cried, and subsided from his enthusiasm plaintively, like a weak wind

instrument. ‘So there you see the prudence of a choice of shops. But

I leave it to you, Beamish.’ Similarly the great military commander,

having done whatsoever a careful prevision may suggest to insure him

victory, casts himself upon Providence, with the hope of propitiating

the unanticipated and darkly possible.