CHAPTER VI

A CONSULTATION: WITH OPINIONS UPON WELSHWOMEN AND THE CAMBRIAN RACE

Later in the day she heard that he was out scouring the country on one of

her uncle's horses. She had too many distressing matters to think of for

so singular a young man to have any other place than that which is given

to the fantastical in a troubled and serious mind. He danced there like

the whimsy sunbeam of a shaken water below. What would be his opinion of

Adiante if he knew of her determination to sell the two fair estates she

inherited from a grandmother whom she had venerated; that she might

furnish arms to her husband to carry out an audacious enterprise likely

to involve both of them in blood and ruin? Would he not bound up aloft

and quiver still more wildly? She respected, quaint though it was, his

imaginative heat of feeling for Adiante sufficiently to associate him

with her so far; and she lent him in fancy her own bewilderment and grief

at her cousin's conduct, for the soothing that his exaggeration of them

afforded her. She could almost hear his outcry.

The business of the hour demanded more of her than a seeking for

refreshment. She had been invited to join the consultation of her uncle

with his lawyer. Mr. Adister tossed her another letter from Vienna, of

that morning's delivery. She read it with composure. It became her task

to pay no heed to his loss of patience, and induce him to acquiesce in

his legal adviser's view which was, to temporise further, present an

array of obstacles, and by all possible suggestions induce the princess

to come over to England, where her father's influence with her would have

a chance of being established again; and it might then be hoped that she,

who had never when under sharp temptation acted disobediently to his

wishes at home, and who certainly would not have dreamed of contracting

the abhorred alliance had she been breathing the air of common sense

peculiar to her native land, would see the prudence, if not the solemn

obligation, of retaining to herself these family possessions. Caroline

was urgent with her uncle to act on such good counsel. She marvelled at

his opposition, though she detected the principal basis of it.

Mr. Adister had no ground of opposition but his own intemperateness. The

Welsh grandmother's legacy of her estates to his girl, overlooking her

brothers, Colonel Arthur and Captain David, had excessively vexed him,

despite the strong feeling he entertained for Adiante; and not simply

because of the blow he received in it unexpectedly from that old lady, as

the last and heaviest of the long and open feud between them, but also,

chiefly, that it outraged and did permanent injury to his ideas of the

proper balance of the sexes. Between himself and Mrs. Winnion Rhys the

condition of the balance had been a point of vehement disputation, she

insisting to have it finer up to equality, and he that the naturally

lighter scale should continue to kick the beam. Behold now the

consequence of the wilful Welshwoman's insanest of legacies! The estates

were left to Adiante Adister for her sole use and benefit, making almost

a man of her, and an unshackled man, owing no dues to posterity. Those

estates in the hands of a woman are in the hands of her husband; and the

husband a gambler and a knave, they are in the hands of the Jews--or gone

to smoke. Let them go. A devilish malignity bequeathed them: let them go

back to their infernal origin. And when they were gone, his girl would

soon discover that there was no better place to come to than her home;

she would come without an asking, and alone, and without much prospect of

the intrusion of her infamous Hook-nose in pursuit of her at Earlsfont.

The money wasted, the wife would be at peace. Here she would have leisure

to repent of all the steps she had taken since that fatal one of the

acceptance of the invitation to the Embassy at Vienna. Mr. Adister had

warned her both against her going and against the influence of her friend

Lady Wenchester, our Ambassadress there, another Welsh woman, with the

weathervane head of her race. But the girl would accept, and it was not

for him to hold out. It appeared to be written that the Welsh,

particularly Welsh women, were destined to worry him up to the end of his

days. Their women were a composition of wind and fire. They had no

reason, nothing solid in their whole nature. Englishmen allied to them

had to learn that they were dealing with broomstick witches and

irresponsible sprites. Irishwomen were models of propriety beside them:

indeed Irishwomen might often be patterns to their English sisterhood.

Mr. Adister described the Cambrian ladies as a kind of daughters of the

Fata Morgana, only half human, and deceptive down to treachery, unless

you had them fast by their spinning fancy. They called it being romantic.

It was the ante-chamber of madness. Mad, was the word for them. You

pleased them you knew not how, and just as little did you know how you

displeased them. And you were long hence to be taught that in a certain

past year, and a certain month, and on a certain day of the month, not

forgetting the hour of the day to the minute of the hour, and attendant

circumstances to swear loud witness to it, you had mortally offended

them. And you receive your blow: you are sure to get it: the one passion

of those women is for vengeance. They taste a wound from the lightest

touch, and they nurse the venom for you. Possibly you may in their

presence have had occasion to praise the military virtues of the builder

of Carnarvon Castle. You are by and by pierced for it as hard as they can

thrust. Or you have incidentally compared Welsh mutton with

Southdown:--you have not highly esteemed their drunken Bards:--you have

asked what the Welsh have done in the world; you are supposed to have

slighted some person of their family--a tenth cousin!--anything turns

their blood. Or you have once looked straight at them without speaking,

and you discover years after that they have chosen to foist on you their

idea of your idea at the moment; and they have the astounding presumption

to account this misreading of your look to the extent of a full

justification, nothing short of righteous, for their treachery and your

punishment! O those Welshwomen!

The much-suffering lord of Earlsfont stretched forth his open hand, palm

upward, for a testifying instrument to the plain truth of his catalogue

of charges. He closed it tight and smote the table. 'Like mother--and

grandmother too--like daughter!' he said, and generalised again to

preserve his dignity: 'They're aflame in an instant. You may see them

quiet for years, but it smoulders. You dropped the spark, and they time

the explosion.'

Caroline said to Mr. Camminy: 'You are sure you can give us the day?'

'All of it,' he replied, apologising for some show of restlessness. 'The

fact is, Miss Adister, I married a lady from over the borders, and though

I have never had to complain of her yet, she may have a finale in store.

It's true that I love wild Wales.'

'And so do I' Caroline raised her eyes to imagined mountains.

'You will pardon me, Camminy,' said Mr. Adister.

The lawyer cracked his back to bow to the great gentleman so

magnanimously humiliating himself. 'Sir! Sir!' he said. 'Yes, Welsh blood

is queer blood, I own. They find it difficult to forgive; and trifles

offend; and they are unhappily just as secretive as they are sensitive.

The pangs we cause them, without our knowing it, must be horrible. They

are born, it would seem, with more than the common allowance of kibes for

treading on: a severe misfortune for them. Now for their merits: they

have poetry in them; they are valiant; they are hospitable to teach the

Arab a lesson: I do believe their life is their friend's at

need--seriously, they would lay it down for him: or the wherewithal,

their money, their property, excepting the three-stringed harp of three

generations back, worth now in current value sixpence halfpenny as a

curiosity, or three farthings for firewood; that they'll keep against

their own desire to heap on you everything they have--if they love you,

and you at the same time have struck their imaginations. Offend them,

however, and it's war, declared or covert. And I must admit that their

best friend can too easily offend them. I have lost excellent clients, I

have never understood why; yet I respect the remains of their literature,

I study their language, I attend their gatherings and subscribe the

expenses; I consume Welsh mutton with relish; I enjoy the Triads, and can

come down on them with a quotation from Catwg the Wise: but it so chanced

that I trod on a kibe, and I had to pay the penalty. There's an Arabian

tale, Miss Adister, of a peaceful traveller who ate a date in the desert

and flung away the stone, which hit an invisible son of a genie in the

eye, and the poor traveller suffered for it. Well, you commit these

mortal injuries to the invisible among the Welsh. Some of them are hurt

if you call them Welsh. They scout it as the original Saxon title for

them. No, they are Cymry, Cambrians! They have forgiven the Romans. Saxon

and Norman are still their enemies. If you stir their hearts you find it

so. And, by the way, if King Edward had not trampled them into the mire

so thoroughly, we should hear of it at times even now. Instead of

penillions and englyns, there would be days for fiery triplets. Say the

worst of them, they are soundheaded. They have a ready comprehension for

great thoughts. The Princess Nikolas, I remember, had a special fondness

for the words of Catwg the Wise.'

'Adiante,' had murmured Caroline, to correct his indiscretion.

She was too late.

'Nikolas!' Mr. Adister thundered. 'Hold back that name in this house,

title and all, if you speak of my daughter. I refuse admission to it

here. She has given up my name, and she must be known by the one her

feather-brained grandmother proposed for her, to satisfy her pleasure in

a fine sound. English Christian names are my preference. I conceded

Arthur to her without difficulty. She had a voice in David, I recollect;

with very little profit to either of the boys. I had no voice in Adiante;

but I stood at my girl's baptism, and Adiante let her be. At least I

saved the girl from the addition of Arianrod. It was to have been Adiante

Arianrod. Can you credit it? Prince-pah! Nikolas? Have you a notion of

the sort of prince that makes an English lady of the best blood of

England his princess?'

The lawyer had a precise notion of the sort of prince appearing to Mr.

Adister in the person of his foreign son-in-law. Prince Nikolas had been

described to him before, with graphic touches upon the quality of the

reputation he bore at the courts and in the gambling-saloons of Europe.

Dreading lest his client's angry heat should precipitate him on the

prince again, to the confusion of a lady's ears, Mr. Camminy gave an

emphatic and short affirmative.

'You know what he is like?' said Mr. Adister, with a face of disgust

reflected from the bare thought of the hideous likeness.

Mr. Camminy assured him that the description of the prince's lineaments

would not be new. It was, as he was aware, derived from a miniature of

her husband, transmitted by the princess, on its flight out of her

father's loathing hand to the hearthstone and under his heel.

Assisted by Caroline, he managed to check the famous delineation of the

adventurer prince in which a not very worthy gentleman's chronic fever of

abomination made him really eloquent, quick to unburden himself in the

teeth of decorum.

'And my son-in-law! My son-in-law!' ejaculated Mr. Adister, tossing his

head higher, and so he stimulated his amazement and abhorrence of the

portrait he rather wondered at them for not desiring to have sketched for

their execration of it, alluringly foul as it was: while they in concert

drew him back to the discussion of his daughter's business, reiterating

prudent counsel, with a knowledge that they had only to wait for the

ebbing of his temper.

'Let her be informed, sir, that by coming to England she can settle the

business according to her wishes in one quarter of the time it would take

a Commission sent out to her--if we should be authorised to send out

one,' said Mr. Camminy. 'By committing the business to you, I fancy I

perceive your daughter's disposition to consider your feelings: possibly

to a reluctance to do the deed unsanctioned by her father. It would

appear so to a cool observer, notwithstanding her inattention to your

remonstrances.'

The reply was: 'Dine here and sleep here. I shall be having more of these

letters,' Mr. Adister added, profoundly sighing.

Caroline slipped away to mark a conclusion to the debate; and Mr. Camminy

saw his client redden fast and frown.

'Besides,' he spoke in a husky voice, descending upon a subject hateful,

'she tells me to-day she is not in a state to travel! Do you hear? Make

what you can of it.'

The proud and injured gentleman had the aspect of one who receives a blow

that it is impossible for him to resent. He could not speak the shame he

felt: it was literally in his flesh. But the cause had been sufficiently

hinted to set the lawyer staring as men do when they encounter situations

of grisly humour, where certain of the passions of man's developed nature

are seen armed and furious against our mild prevailing ancient mother

nature; and the contrast is between our utter wrath and her simple

exposition of the circumstances and consequences forming her laws. There

are situations which pass beyond the lightly stirred perceptive wits to

the quiet court of the intellect, to be received there as an addition to

our acquaintance with mankind. We know not of what substance to name

them. Humour in its intense strain has a seat somewhere about the mouth

of tragedy, giving it the enigmatical faint wry pull at a corner visible

at times upon the dreadful mask.

That Mr. Adister should be astonished at such a communication from the

princess, after a year of her marriage: and that he should take it for a

further outrage of his paternal sentiments, should actually redden and be

hoarse in alluding to it: the revelation of such points in our human

character set the humane old lawyer staring at the reserve space within

himself apart from his legal being, whereon he by fits compared his own

constitution with that of the individuals revealed to him by their acts

and confidential utterances. For him, he decided that he would have

rejoiced at the news.

Granting the prince a monster, however, as Mr. Adister unforcedly

considered him, it was not so cheering a piece of intelligence that

involved him yet closer with that man's rank blood: it curdled his own.

The marriage had shocked and stricken him, cleaving, in his love for his

daughter, a goodly tree and withering many flowers. Still the marriage

was but Adiante's gulf: he might be called father-in-law of her spangled

ruffian; son-in-law, the desperado-rascal would never be called by him.

But the result of the marriage dragged him bodily into the gulf: he

became one of four, numbering the beast twice among them. The subtlety of

his hatred so reckoned it; for he could not deny his daughter in the

father's child; he could not exclude its unhallowed father in the

mother's: and of this man's child he must know and own himself the

grandfather. If ever he saw the child, if drawn to it to fondle it, some

part of the little animal not his daughter's would partake of his

embrace. And if neither of his boys married, and his girl gave birth to a

son! darkness rolled upon that avenue of vision. A trespasser and

usurper-one of the demon's brood chased his very name out of Earlsfont!

'Camminy, you must try to amuse yourself,' he said briskly. 'Anything you

may be wanting at home shall be sent for. I must have you here to make

sure that I am acting under good advice. You can take one of the keepers

for an hour or two of shooting. I may join you in the afternoon. You will

find occupation for your gun in the north covers.'

He wandered about the house, looking into several rooms, and only

partially at rest when he discovered Caroline in one, engaged upon some

of her aquarelle sketches. He asked where the young Irishman was.

'Are you in search of him?' said she. 'You like him, uncle? He is out

riding, they tell me.'

'The youngster is used to south-western showers in that climate of his,'

Mr. Adister replied. 'I dare say we could find the Jesuit in him

somewhere. There's the seed. His cousin Con O'Donnell has filled him with

stuff about Ireland and England: the man has no better to do than to

train a parrot. What do you think of him, my love?'

The judgement was not easily formed for expression. 'He is not quite like

what I remember of his brother Philip. He talks much more, does he not?

He seems more Irish than his brother. He is very strange. His feelings

are strong; he has not an idea of concealing them. For a young man

educated by the Jesuits, he is remarkably open.'

'The Jesuits might be of service to me just now!' Mr. Adister addressed

his troubled soul, and spoke upon another conception of them: 'How has he

shown his feelings?'

Caroline answered quickly: 'His love of his brother. Anything that

concerns his brother moves him; it is like a touch on a musical

instrument. Perhaps I should say a native one.'

'Concerns his brother?' Mr. Adister inquired, and his look requesting

enlightenment told her she might speak.

'Adiante,' she said softly. She coloured.

Her uncle mused awhile in a half-somnolent gloom. 'He talks of this at

this present day?'

'It is not dead to him. He really appears to have hoped . . . he is

extraordinary. He had not heard before of her marriage. I was a witness

of the most singular scene this morning, at the piano. He gathered it

from what he had heard. He was overwhelmed by it. I could not exaggerate.

It was impossible to help being a little touched, though it was curious,

very strange.'

Her uncle's attentiveness incited her to describe the scene, and as it

visibly relieved his melancholy, she did it with a few vivid indications

of the quaint young Irishman's manner of speech. She concluded: 'At last

he begged to see a portrait of her husband.'

'Not of her?' said Mr. Adister abruptly.

'No; only of her husband.'

'Show him her portrait.'

A shade of surprise was on Caroline's forehead. 'Shall I?' She had a dim

momentary thought that the sight of the beautiful face would not be good

for Patrick.

'Yes; let him see the woman who could throw herself away on that branded

villain called a prince, abjuring her Church for a little fouler than

hangman to me and every gentleman alive. I desire that he should see it.

Submission to the demands of her husband's policy required it of her, she

says! Show it him when he returns; you have her miniature in your

keeping. And to-morrow take him to look at the full-length of her before

she left England and ceased to be a lady of our country. I will order it

to be placed in the armoury. Let him see the miniature of her this day.'

Mr. Adister resolved at the same time that Patrick should have his

portrait of the prince for a set-off to the face of his daughter. He

craved the relief it would be to him to lay his colours on the prince for

the sparkling amazement of one whom, according to Caroline's description,

he could expect to feel with him acutely, which neither his niece nor his

lawyer had done: they never did when he painted the prince. He was

unstrung, heavily plunged in the matter of his chagrin and grief: his

unhealed wound had been scraped and strewn with salt by his daughter's

letter; he had a thirst for the kind of sympathy he supposed he would

find in the young Irishman's horror at the husband of the incomparable

beauty now past redemption degraded by her hideous choice; lost to

England and to her father and to common respect. For none, having once

had the picture of the man, could dissociate them; they were like heaven

and its reverse, everlastingly coupled in the mind by their opposition of

characters and aspects. Her father could not, and he judged of others by

himself. He had been all but utterly solitary since her marriage, brooded

on it until it saturated him; too proud to speak of the thing in sadness,

or claim condolence for this wound inflicted on him by the daughter he

had idolised other than through the indirect method of causing people to

wonder at her chosen yoke-fellow. Their stupefaction refreshed him. Yet

he was a gentleman capable of apprehending simultaneously that he sinned

against his pride in the means he adopted to comfort his nature. But the

wound was a perpetual sickness needing soul-medicine. Proud as he was,

and unbending, he was not stronger than his malady, and he could

disguise, he could not contain, the cry of immoderate grief. Adiante had

been to him something beyond a creature beloved; she had with her

glorious beauty and great-heartedness been the sole object which had ever

inspirited his imagination. He could have thought no man, not the most

illustrious, worthy of her. And there she was, voluntarily in the hands

of a monster! 'Husband!' Mr. Adister broke away from Caroline, muttering:

'Her husband's policy!'

She was used to his interjections; she sat thinking more of the strange

request to her to show Mr. O'Donnell the miniature of Adiante. She had

often thought that her uncle regretted his rejection of Philip. It

appeared so to her now, though not by any consecutive process of

reasoning. She went to fetch the miniature, and gazing on it, she tried

to guess at Mr. O'Donnell's thoughts when doing the same; for who so

inflammable as he? And who, woman or man, could behold this lighted face,

with the dark raised eyes and abounding auburn tresses, where the

contrast of colours was in itself thrilling, and not admire, or more,

half worship, or wholly worship? She pitied the youth: she fancied that

he would not continue so ingenuously true to his brother's love of

Adiante after seeing it; unless one might hope that the light above

beauty distinguishing its noble classic lines, and the energy of

radiance, like a morning of chivalrous promise, in the eyes, would subdue

him to distant admiration. These were her flitting thoughts under the

spell of her queenly cousin's visage. She shut up the miniature-case, and

waited to hand it to young Mr. O'Donnell.