CHAPTER XVI

Fairly, Lord Elling's seat in Hampshire, lay over the Warbeach river; a

white mansion among great oaks, in view of the summer sails and winter

masts of the yachting squadron. The house was ruled, during the

congregation of the Christmas guests, by charming Mrs. Lovell, who

relieved the invalid Lady of the house of the many serious cares

attending the reception of visitors, and did it all with ease. Under her

sovereignty the place was delightful, and if it was by repute pleasanter

to young men than to any other class, it will be admitted that she

satisfied those who are loudest in giving tongue to praise.

Edward and Algernon journeyed down to Fairly together, after the

confidence which the astute young lawyer had been compelled to repose in

his cousin. Sir William Blancove was to be at Fairly, and it was at his

father's pointed request that Edward had accepted Mrs. Lovell's

invitation. Half in doubt as to the lady's disposition toward him, Edward

eased his heart with sneers at the soft, sanguinary graciousness they

were to expect, and racked mythology for spiteful comparisons; while

Algernon vehemently defended her with a battering fire of British

adjectives in superlative. He as much as hinted, under instigation, that

he was entitled to defend her; and his claim being by-and-by yawningly

allowed by Edward, and presuming that he now had Edward in his power and

need not fear him, he exhibited his weakness in the guise of a costly

gem, that he intended to present to Mrs. Lovell--an opal set in a cross

pendant from a necklace; a really fine opal, coquetting with the lights

of every gem that is known: it shot succinct red flashes, and green, and

yellow; the emerald, the amethyst, the topaz lived in it, and a remote

ruby; it was veined with lightning hues, and at times it slept in a milky

cloud, innocent of fire, quite maidenlike.

"That will suit her," was Edward's remark.

"I didn't want to get anything common," said Algernon, making the gem

play before his eyes.

"A pretty stone," said Edward.

"Do you think so?"

"Very pretty indeed."

"Harlequin pattern."

"To be presented to Columbine!"

"The Harlequin pattern is of the best sort, you know. Perhaps you like

the watery ones best? This is fresh from Russia. There's a set I've my

eye on. I shall complete it in time. I want Peggy Lovell to wear the

jolliest opals in the world. It's rather nice, isn't it?"

"It's a splendid opal," said Edward.

"She likes opals," said Algernon.

"She'll take your meaning at once," said Edward.

"How? I'll be hanged if I know what my meaning is, Ned."

"Don't you know the signification of your gift?"

"Not a bit."

"Oh! you'll be Oriental when you present it."

"The deuce I shall!"

"It means, 'You're the prettiest widow in the world.'"

"So she is. I'll be right there, old boy."

"And, 'You're a rank, right-down widow, and no mistake; you're everything

to everybody; not half so innocent as you look: you're green as jealousy,

red as murder, yellow as jaundice, and put on the whiteness of a virgin

when you ought to be blushing like a penitent.' In short, 'You have no

heart of your own, and you pretend to possess half a dozen: you're devoid

of one steady beam, and play tricks with every scale of colour: you're an

arrant widow, and that's what you are.' An eloquent gift, Algy."

"Gad, if it means all that, it'll be rather creditable to me," said

Algernon. "Do opals mean widows?"

"Of course," was the answer.

"Well, she is a widow, and I suppose she's going to remain one, for she's

had lots of offers. If I marry a girl I shall never like her half as much

as Peggy Lovell. She's done me up for every other woman living. She never

lets me feel a fool with her; and she has a way, by Jove, of looking at

me, and letting me know she's up to my thoughts and isn't angry. What's

the use of my thinking of her at all? She'd never go to the Colonies, and

live in a log but and make cheeses, while I tore about on horseback

gathering cattle."

"I don't think she would," observed Edward, emphatically; "I don't think

she would."

"And I shall never have money. Confound stingy parents! It's a question

whether I shall get Wrexby: there's no entail. I'm heir to the governor's

temper and his gout, I dare say. He'll do as he likes with the estate. I

call it beastly unfair."

Edward asked how much the opal had cost.

"Oh, nothing," said Algernon; "that is, I never pay for jewellery."

Edward was curious to know how he managed to obtain it.

"Why, you see," Algernon explained, "they, the jewellers--I've got two or

three in hand--the fellows are acquainted with my position, and they

speculate on my expectations. There is no harm in that if they like it. I

look at their trinkets, and say, 'I've no money;' and they say, 'Never

mind;' and I don't mind much. The understanding is, that I pay them when

I inherit."

"In gout and bad temper?"

"Gad, if I inherit nothing else, they'll have lots of that for

indemnification. It's a good system, Ned; it enables a young fellow like

me to get through the best years of his life--which I take to be his

youth--without that squalid poverty bothering him. You can make presents,

and wear a pin or a ring, if it takes your eye. You look well, and you

make yourself agreeable; and I see nothing to complain of in that."

"The jewellers, then, have established an institution to correct one of

the errors of Providence."

"Oh! put it in your long-winded way, if you like," said Algernon; "all I

know is, that I should often have wanted a five-pound note, if--that is,

if I hadn't happened to be dressed like a gentleman. With your prospects,

Ned, I should propose to charming Peggy tomorrow morning early. We

mustn't let her go out of the family. If I can't have her, I'd rather you

would."

"You forget the incumbrances on one side," said Edward, his face

darkening.

"Oh! that's all to be managed," Algernon rallied him. "Why, Ned, you'll

have twenty thousand a-year, if you have a penny; and you'll go into

Parliament, and give dinners, and a woman like Peggy Lovell 'd intrigue

for you like the deuce."

"A great deal too like," Edward muttered.

"As for that pretty girl," continued Algernon; but Edward peremptorily

stopped all speech regarding Dahlia. His desire was, while he made

holiday, to shut the past behind a brazen gate; which being communicated

sympathetically to his cousin, the latter chimed to it in boisterous

shouts of anticipated careless jollity at Fairly Park, crying out how

they would hunt and snap fingers at Jews, and all mortal sorrows, and

have a fortnight, or three weeks, perhaps a full month, of the finest

life possible to man, with good horses, good dinners, good wines, good

society, at command, and a queen of a woman to rule and order everything.

Edward affected a disdainful smile at the prospect; but was in reality

the weaker of the two in his thirst for it.

They arrived at Fairly in time to dress for dinner, and in the

drawing-room Mrs. Lovell sat to receive them. She looked up to Edward's

face an imperceptible half-second longer than the ordinary form of

welcome accords--one of the looks which are nothing at all when there is

no spiritual apprehension between young people, and are so much when

there is. To Algernon, who was gazing opals on her, she simply gave her

fingers. At her right hand, was Sir John Capes, her antique devotee; a

pure milky-white old gentleman, with sparkling fingers, who played Apollo

to his Daphne, and was out of breath. Lord Suckling, a boy with a

boisterous constitution, and a guardsman, had his place near her left

hand, as if ready to seize it at the first whisper of encouragement or

opportunity. A very little lady of seventeen, Miss Adeline Gosling,

trembling with shyness under a cover of demureness, fell to Edward's lot

to conduct down to dinner, where he neglected her disgracefully. His

father, Sir William, was present at the table, and Lord Elling, with whom

he was in repute as a talker and a wit. Quickened with his host's

renowned good wine (and the bare renown of a wine is inspiriting), Edward

pressed to be brilliant. He had an epigrammatic turn, and though his mind

was prosaic when it ran alone, he could appear inventive and fanciful

with the rub of other minds. Now, at a table where good talking is cared

for, the triumphs of the excelling tongue are not for a moment to be

despised, even by the huge appetite of the monster Vanity. For a year,

Edward had abjured this feast. Before the birds appeared and the

champagne had ceased to make its circle, he felt that he was now at home

again, and that the term of his wandering away from society was one of

folly. He felt the joy and vigour of a creature returned to his element.

Why had he ever quitted it? Already he looked back upon Dahlia from a

prodigious distance. He knew that there was something to be smoothed

over; something written in the book of facts which had to be smeared out,

and he seemed to do it, while he drank the babbling wine and heard

himself talk. Not one man at that table, as he reflected, would consider

the bond which held him in any serious degree binding. A lady is one

thing, and a girl of the class Dahlia had sprung from altogether another.

He could not help imagining the sort of appearance she would make there;

and the thought even was a momentary clog upon his tongue. How he used to

despise these people! Especially he had despised the young men as

brainless cowards in regard to their views of women and conduct toward

them. All that was changed. He fancied now that they, on the contrary,

would despise him, if only they could be aware of the lingering sense he

entertained of his being in bondage under a sacred obligation to a

farmer's daughter.

But he had one thing to discover, and that was, why Sir William had made

it a peculiar request that he should come to meet him here. Could the

desire possibly be to reconcile him with Mrs. Lovell? His common sense

rejected the idea at once: Sir William boasted of her wit and tact, and

admired her beauty, but Edward remembered his having responded tacitly to

his estimate of her character, and Sir William was not the man to court

the alliance of his son with a woman like Mrs. Lovell. He perceived that

his father and the fair widow frequently took counsel together. Edward

laughed at the notion that the grave senior had himself become

fascinated, but without utterly scouting it, until he found that the

little lady whom he had led to dinner the first day, was an heiress; and

from that, and other indications, he exactly divined the nature of his

father's provident wishes. But this revelation rendered Mrs. Lovell's

behaviour yet more extraordinary. Could it be credited that she was

abetting Sir William's schemes with all her woman's craft? "Has she,"

thought Edward, "become so indifferent to me as to care for my welfare?"

He determined to put her to the test. He made love to Adeline Gosling.

Nothing that he did disturbed the impenetrable complacency of Mrs.

Lovell. She threw them together as she shuffled the guests. She really

seemed to him quite indifferent enough to care for his welfare. It was a

point in the mysterious ways of women, or of widows, that Edward's

experience had not yet come across. All the parties immediately concerned

were apparently so desperately acquiescing in his suit, that he soon grew

uneasy. Mrs. Lovell not only shuffled him into places with the raw

heiress, but with the child's mother; of whom he spoke to Algernon as of

one too strongly breathing of matrimony to appease the cravings of an

eclectic mind.

"Make the path clear for me, then," said Algernon, "if you don't like the

girl. Pitch her tales about me. Say, I've got a lot in me, though I don't

let it out. The game's up between you and Peggy Lovell, that's clear. She

don't forgive you, my boy."

"Ass!" muttered Edward, seeing by the light of his perception, that he

was too thoroughly forgiven.

A principal charm of the life at Fairly to him was that there was no one

complaining. No one looked reproach at him. If a lady was pale and

reserved, she did not seem to accuse him, and to require coaxing. All

faces here were as light as the flying moment, and did not carry the

shadowy weariness of years, like that burdensome fair face in the London

lodging-house, to which the Fates had terribly attached themselves. So,

he was gay. He closed, as it were, a black volume, and opened a new and a

bright one. Young men easily fancy that they may do this, and that when

the black volume is shut the tide is stopped. Saying, "I was a fool,"

they believe they have put an end to the foolishness. What father teaches

them that a human act once set in motion flows on for ever to the great

account? Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are.

Comfortable Youth thinks otherwise.

The days at a well-ordered country-house, where a divining lady rules,

speed to the measure of a waltz, in harmonious circles, dropping like

crystals into the gulfs of Time, and appearing to write nothing in his

book. Not a single hinge of existence is heard to creak. There is no

after-dinner bill. You are waited on, without being elbowed by the

humanity of your attendants. It is a civilized Arcadia. Only, do not

desire, that you may not envy. Accept humbly what rights of citizenship

are accorded to you upon entering. Discard the passions when you cross

the threshold. To breathe and to swallow merely, are the duties which

should prescribe your conduct; or, such is the swollen condition of the

animal in this enchanted region, that the spirit of man becomes

dangerously beset.

Edward breathed and swallowed, and never went beyond the prescription,

save by talking. No other junior could enter the library, without

encountering the scorn of his elders; so he enjoyed the privilege of

hearing all the scandal, and his natural cynicism was plentifully fed. It

was more of a school to him than he knew.

These veterans, in their arm-chairs, stripped the bloom from life, and

showed it to be bare bones: They took their wisdom for an experience of

the past: they were but giving their sensations in the present. Not to

perceive this, is Youth's, error when it hears old gentlemen talking at

their ease.

On the third morning of their stay at Fairly, Algernon came into Edward's

room with a letter in his hand.

"There! read that!" he said. "It isn't ill-luck; it's infernal

persecution! What, on earth!--why, I took a close cab to the station. You

saw me get out of it. I'll swear no creditor of mine knew I was leaving

London. My belief is that the fellows who give credit have spies about at

every railway terminus in the kingdom. They won't give me three days'

peace. It's enough to disgust any man with civilized life; on my soul, it

is!"

Edward glanced at the superscription of the letter. "Not posted," he

remarked.

"No; delivered by some confounded bailiff, who's been hounding me."

"Bailiffs don't generally deal in warnings."

"Will you read it!" Algernon shouted.

The letter ran thus:--

"Mr. Algernon Blancove,--

"The writer of this intends taking the first opportunity of meeting

you, and gives you warning, you will have to answer his question

with a Yes or a No; and speak from your conscience. The

respectfulness of his behaviour to you as a gentleman will depend

upon that."

Algernon followed his cousin's eye down to the last letter in the page.

"What do you think of it?" he asked eagerly.

Edward's broad thin-lined brows were drawn down in gloom. Mastering some

black meditation in his brain, he answered Algernon's yells for an

opinion,--

"I think--well, I think bailiffs have improved in their manners, and show

you they are determined to belong to the social march in an age of

universal progress. Nothing can be more comforting."

"But, suppose this fellow comes across me?"

"Don't know him."

"Suppose he insists on knowing me?"

"Don't know yourself."

"Yes; but hang it! if he catches hold of me?"

"Shake him off."

"Suppose he won't let go?"

"Cut him with your horsewhip."

"You think it's about a debt, then?"

"Intimidation, evidently."

"I shall announce to him that the great Edward Blancove is not to be

intimidated. You'll let me borrow your name, old Ned. I've stood by you

in my time. As for leaving Fairly, I tell you I can't. It's too

delightful to be near Peggy Lovell."

Edward smiled with a peculiar friendliness, and Algernon went off, very

well contented with his cousin.