CHAPTER VII

The total disappearance of the pair of heroes who had been the latest

in the conspiracy to vex his delicate charge, gave Mr. Beamish a high

opinion of Caseldy as an assistant in such an office as he held. They

had gone, and nothing more was heard of them. Caseldy confined his

observations on the subject to the remark that he had employed the best

means to be rid of that kind of worthies; and whether their souls had

fled, or only their bodies, was unknown. But the duchess had quiet

promenades with Caseldy to guard her, while Mr. Beamish counted the

remaining days of her visit with the impatience of a man having cause to

cast eye on a clock. For Duchess Susan was not very manageable now; she

had fits of insurgency, and plainly said that her time was short, and

she meant to do as she liked, go where she liked, play when she liked,

and be an independent woman--if she was so soon to be taken away and

boxed in a castle that was only a bigger sedan.

Caseldy protested he was as helpless as the beau. He described the

annoyance of his incessant running about at her heels in all directions

amusingly, and suggested that she must be beating the district to

recover her ‘strange cavalier,’ of whom, or of one that had ridden

beside her carriage half a day on her journey to the Wells, he said she

had dropped a sort of hint. He complained of the impossibility of his

getting an hour in privacy with his Chloe.

‘And I, accustomed to consult with her, see too little of her,’ said Mr.

Beamish. ‘I shall presently be seeing nothing, and already I am sensible

of my loss.’

He represented his case to Duchess Susan:--that she was for ever driving

out long distances and taking Chloe from him, when his occupation

precluded his accompanying them; and as Chloe soon was to be lost to him

for good, he deeply felt her absence.

The duchess flung him enigmatical rejoinders: ‘You can change all that,

Mr. Beamish, if you like, and you know you can. Oh, yes, you can. But

you like being a butterfly, and when you’ve made ladies pale you’re

happy: and there they’re to stick and wither for you. Never!--I’ve that

pride. I may be worried, but I’ll never sink to green and melancholy for

a man.’

She bridled at herself in a mirror, wherein not a sign of paleness was

reflected.

Mr. Beamish meditated, and he thought it prudent to speak to Caseldy

manfully of her childish suspicions, lest she should perchance in like

manner perturb the lover’s mind.

‘Oh, make your mind easy, my dear sir, as far as I am concerned,’ said

Caseldy. ‘But, to tell you the truth, I think I can interpret her creamy

ladyship’s innuendos a little differently and quite as clearly. For

my part, I prefer the pale to the blowsy, and I stake my right hand

on Chloe’s fidelity. Whatever harm I may have the senseless

cruelty--misfortune, I may rather call it--to do that heavenly-minded

woman in our days to come, none shall say of me that I was ever for an

instant guilty of the baseness of doubting her purity and constancy.

And, sir, I will add that I could perfectly rely also on your honour.’

Mr. Beamish bowed. ‘You do but do me justice. But, say, what

interpretation?’

‘She began by fearing you,’ said Caseldy, creating a stare that was

followed by a frown. ‘She fancies you neglect her. Perhaps she has a

woman’s suspicion that you do it to try her.’

Mr. Beamish frenetically cited his many occupations. ‘How can I be ever

dancing attendance on her?’ Then he said, ‘Pooh,’ and tenderly fingered

the ruffles of his wrist. ‘Tush, tush,’ said he, ‘no, no: though if

it came to a struggle between us, I might in the interests of my old

friend, her lord, whom I have reasons for esteeming, interpose an

influence that would make the exercise of my authority agreeable.

Hitherto I have seen no actual need of it, and I watch keenly. Her eye

has been on Colonel Poltermore once or twice his on her. The woman is

a rose in June, sir, and I forgive the whole world for looking--and for

longing too. But I have observed nothing serious.’

‘He is of our party to the beacon-head to-morrow,’ said Caseldy. ‘She

insisted that she would have him; and at least it will grant me furlough

for an hour.’

‘Do me the service to report to me,’ said Mr. Beamish.

In this fashion he engaged Caseldy to supply him with inventions, and

prepared himself to swallow them. It was Poltermore and Poltermore, the

Colonel here, the Colonel there until the chase grew so hot that Mr.

Beamish could no longer listen to young Mr. Camwell’s fatiguing drone

upon his one theme of the double-dealing of Chloe’s betrothed. He became

of her way of thinking, and treated the young gentleman almost as coldly

as she. In time he was ready to guess of his own acuteness that the

‘strange cavalier’ could have been no other than Colonel Poltermore.

When Caseldy hinted it, Mr. Beamish said, ‘I have marked him.’ He added,

in highly self-satisfied style, ‘With all your foreign training, my

friend, you will learn that we English are not so far behind you in the

art of unravelling an intrigue in the dark.’ To which Caseldy replied,

that the Continental world had little to teach Mr. Beamish.

Poor Colonel Poltermore, as he came to be called, was clearly a victim

of the sudden affability of Duchess Susan. The transformation of a stiff

military officer into a nimble Puck, a runner of errands and a sprightly

attendant, could not pass without notice. The first effect of her

discriminating condescension on this unfortunate gentleman was to make

him the champion of her claims to breeding. She had it by nature, she

was Nature’s great lady, he would protest to the noble dames of the

circle he moved in; and they admitted that she was different in every

way from a bourgeoise elevated by marriage to lofty rank: she was not

vulgar. But they remained doubtful of the perfect simplicity of a young

woman who worked such changes in men as to render one of the famous

conquerors of the day her agitated humble servant. By rapid degrees the

Colonel had fallen to that. When not by her side, he was ever marching

with sharp strides, hurrying through rooms and down alleys and groves

until he had discovered and attached himself to her skirts. And,

curiously, the object of his jealousy was the devoted Alonzo! Mr.

Beamish laughed when he heard of it. The lady’s excitement and giddy

mien, however, accused Poltermore of a stage of success requiring to be

combated immediately. There was mention of Duchess Susan’s mighty wish

to pay a visit to the popular fortune-teller of the hut on the heath,

and Mr. Beamish put his veto on the expedition. She had obeyed him by

abstaining from play of late, so he fully expected, that his interdict

would be obeyed; and besides the fortune-teller was a rogue of a sham

astrologer known to have foretold to certain tender ladies things

they were only too desirous to imagine predestined by an extraordinary

indication of the course of planets through the zodiac, thus causing

them to sin by the example of celestial conjunctions--a piece of wanton

impiety. The beau took high ground in his objections to the adventure.

Nevertheless, Duchess Susan did go. She drove to the heath at an early

hour of the morning, attended by Chloe, Colonel Poltermore, and Caseldy.

They subsequently breakfasted at an inn where gipsy repasts were

occasionally served to the fashion, and they were back at the wells as

soon as the world was abroad. Their surprise then was prodigious when

Mr. Beamish, accosting them full in assembly, inquired whether they

were satisfied with the report of their fortunes, and yet more when he

positively proved himself acquainted with the fortunes which had been

recounted to each of them in privacy.

‘You, Colonel Poltermore, are to be in luck’s way up to the tenth

milestone,--where your chariot will overset and you will be lamed for

life.’

‘Not quite so bad,’ said the Colonel cheerfully, he having been informed

of much better.

‘And you, Count Caseldy, are to have it all your own way with good

luck, after committing a deed of slaughter, with the solitary penalty of

undergoing a visit every night from the corpse.’

‘Ghost,’ Caseldy smilingly corrected him.

‘And Chloe would not have her fortune told, because she knew it!’ Mr.

Beamish cast a paternal glance at her. ‘And you, madam,’ he bent his

brows on the duchess, ‘received the communication that “All for Love”

will sink you as it raised you, put you down as it took you up, furnish

the feast to the raven gentleman which belongs of right to the golden

eagle?’

‘Nothing of the sort! And I don’t believe in any of their stories,’

cried the duchess, with a burning face.

‘You deny it, madam?’

‘I do. There was never a word of a raven or an eagle, that I’ll swear,

now.’

‘You deny that there was ever a word of “All for Love”? Speak, madam.’

‘Their conjuror’s rigmarole!’ she murmured, huffing. ‘As if I listened

to their nonsense!’

‘Does the Duchess of Dewlap dare to give me the lie?’ said Mr. Beamish.

‘That’s not my title, and you know it,’ she retorted.

‘What’s this?’ the angry beau sang out. ‘What stuff is this you wear?’

He towered and laid hand on a border of lace of her morning dress, tore

it furiously and swung a length of it round him: and while the duchess

panted and trembled at an outrage that won for her the sympathy of every

lady present as well as the championship of the gentlemen, he tossed the

lace to the floor and trampled on it, making his big voice intelligible

over the uproar: ‘Hear what she does! ‘Tis a felony! She wears the stuff

with Betty Worcester’s yellow starch on it for mock antique! And let

who else wears it strip it off before the town shall say we are

disgraced--when I tell you that Betty Worcester was hanged at Tyburn

yesterday morning for murder!’

There were shrieks.

Hardly had he finished speaking before the assembly began to melt; he

stood in the centre like a pole unwinding streamers, amid a confusion of

hurrying dresses, the sound and whirl and drift whereof was as that of

the autumnal strewn leaves on a wind rising in November. The troops of

ladies were off to bereave themselves of their fashionable imitation

old lace adornment, which denounced them in some sort abettors and

associates of the sanguinary loathed wretch, Mrs. Elizabeth Worcester,

their benefactress of the previous day, now hanged and dangling on the

gallows-tree.

Those ladies who wore not imitation lace or any lace in the morning,

were scarcely displeased with the beau for his exposure of them that

did. The gentlemen were confounded by his exhibition of audacious power.

The two gentlemen nighest upon violently resenting his brutality to

Duchess Susan, led her from the room in company with Chloe.

‘The woman shall fear me to good purpose,’ Mr. Beamish said to himself.