Читать книгу The Divine Lady - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 7

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The letter reached Greville at the stately house of her Grace the Duchess of Argyll and was delivered into his hand as he sat with two ladies so beautiful at their different ages that Paris might sooner have devoured his apple, gold though it was, than run the risk of mistake in awarding it to one or the other.

And lest it be believed that the romancer dresses all his ladies in rainbow glories, I point out that the elder was the famous Elizabeth Gunning—the double Duchess, as they called her—who had risen from direst poverty by the victorious attack of her loveliness on the embattled world, to be successively Duchess of Hamilton and Duchess of Argyll, and the younger was Mrs. Crewe, that most fashionable of all beauties, of whom it was said (in a world which knew not Emma!) that she alone equalled or excelled the perfections of Elizabeth Gunning in the days when she took the town by storm; a sweet, sleepy-eyed beauty, gentle persuasion in every look, and a little delicate malice to season the honey with ginger.

The ladies were dressed for a Court and were splendid in satins and jewels. Greville, very much at home in that house, was festooning a chain of diamonds to better advantage about Mrs. Crewe’s shoulders when the letter made its appearance, the Duchess commenting on his fine taste.

“There’s no man I know like you for taste, Greville,” says her gracious Grace. “The Hamiltons are like that. How is it you pick up all these notions? No wonder you’re fastidious.”

He put the letter carefully in his pocket with a spasm of anger that she should dare pursue him there, and stood back to view his work.

“Mrs. Crewe sets it off even better than she did the other fashion. As to my taste, ’tis formed on the antique, and what I’ve done is by no means original. Thus the Roman Empress Faustina disposed her jewels to catch the eyes of her gladiator lovers when she wearied of her philosophic husband! Ah, madam, are not women the same in all ages?”

“They suit themselves to the men, who also don’t change, for all I see. And if the Emperor was as dull as our philosophers to-day, I excuse her Majesty.” Thus the Duchess.

“One may be dull without the excuse of philosophy to advertise it,” replied Mrs. Crewe at the mirror, looking at her long swan’s throat, glorious with diamonds. “Do but think of the Duke of Devonshire. It gives me an indigestion to look at him. It runs in families. ’Tis because Mr. Greville is half Hamilton that he’s such highly instructive company.”

She shot a little ironic glance at him from under long lashes. The lady knew very well that here was one who “could gaze without madness on Amoret’s eyes”—eyes which had settled the fate of not lovers only but of more than one contested election, for she had but to smile upon the happy voters and they were won. Greville hated political women, and she knew it. Hence the little scratch, a pat with velvet paw. But he was stirred to discomfort nevertheless, for Mrs. Crewe was a thermometer for measuring the liking of society, and had a smile graduated to its exact temperature. Could it be possible the great world began to find him a little tedious, a little arrièré? He was born older than any of them to begin with and had relished a fossil when others were gambling, tripping and soaking, and it was not always easy to conceal that their amusements palled on him. And for the last three years he had permitted himself to drop rather more into obscurity with his delightful pupil than his reason could approve. She was troublesome sometimes, but yet her amazing progress in the graces and accomplishments she owed him and the masters he provided was a daily amusement and interest. And the little house in Edgware Row was absolute comfort. The dish, chosen by himself, and cooked perfectly to his taste, suited his liking and health better than the sumptuous banquets of the great houses, and Emma’s company, which required no tip-toe courtesy or courting, allowed him to stand at ease in a way impossible with the fashionable ladies who welcomed him, perhaps a shade more coldly than formerly. But—if he were dropping out? To be forgotten is a much less easy process than forgetting, and Mr. Greville must be received with acclaim wherever he deigned to show himself. Was his season slipping by? He winced. She was not worth it. No! not a day, not an hour should she stand in his light if he were once persuaded of that. And economize as she would, still his taste for the antique led him into irretrievable expense. That matter, too, was becoming urgent.

He must control his tendency to pontificate. Sir William had warned him of it once half jesting—Sir William, who was twenty years younger for all the remorseless parish register.

He broke up his collegiate calm into smiles on the very fear of disapproval, and executed a little adoration of Mrs. Crewe, yet not enough to compel the Duchess to recall her own age. They discussed the company to appear at the Court, and Mrs. Crewe flung another softly feathered dart.

“Miss Middleton will be there,” says she. “I met Lady Middleton this afternoon—a woman I swallow with difficulty. She detained me a whole ten minutes to hear the story of the latest heart Miss Middleton has strung with the other scalps at her girdle. ‘A most desirable prospect, my dear’—she mimicked the proud mother—‘wealth, devotion; everything but family. The father is Wade, the successful Irish merchant.’ Lord! says I, what signifies family nowadays? If money is not worth a little wading in the mud, what is?”

Greville laughed to hide discomfort. He knew perfectly well what was in the air. He, the fastidious, the condescending, had distinguished Miss Middleton with languid attentions. Of all the heiresses he had scanned during the past three years, she appeared the most desirable, and marriage with her the least unpleasant alternative. And the so-called friends of his circle knew this perfectly and waited expectant, though it would be decidedly more amusing (they owned) to see the gold cup slip from his lip and my fastidious gentleman left in the lurch, if the luck should turn that way.

“I dine there to-morrow and shall hear the news,” he said easily. “Lord, how well you mimic Lady Middleton, madam! Had she no more news for you?”

“Not that will interest you, sir. Why, yes, now I think of it! I had forgot, but no doubt you know it. She said she had met Gavin Hamilton, suddenly back from Italy, and he told her Sir William will be returning shortly. His wife’s death two years ago has given him things to look into here. But no doubt you know this.”

“I shall by next mail, madam, but not yet. Very likely Gavin has a letter in hand for me.”

“ ’Twill be agreeable to see Sir William again,” said the Duchess. “I ever liked him best of my Hamilton relations. He will be well received at Court too. The King never forgets his foster brother.”

She alluded to the fact that Lady Archibald Hamilton, Sir William’s mother, had been maîtresse en titre to Frederick, Prince of Wales, George III’s father, a circumstance which had much advantaged Sir William in life.

“I know no one with more agreeable manners,” she added. “In society he has all the graces of a young man, and yet the savants are at home with him. I hope with all my heart he finds a charming wife awaiting him in England. He wants an Ambassadress in that big villa in Naples, and I know no man who could make a more agreeable husband to a sensible woman. He can’t expect to find a saint like your late aunt, Greville, but not many women would refuse a man of his temper. Indeed, I have one in my mind—”

Greville, quivering with uneasiness, begged to hear the name, but she shook her head, laughing.

“No, no. These things are spoiled if told, but I shall throw them together with all the art I can muster.”

“What her Grace decrees is done!” Mr. Greville said, bowing gallantly. “My uncle will be infinitely indebted.”

He waited until the ladies graciously dismissed him, and then betook himself to his club, so lost in thought that Emma’s letter lay totally forgotten in his pocket.

Sir William coming home! Certainly he would be glad personally, but yet the thought was full of unpleasant possibilities. He sat down in a quiet corner as far removed from acquaintances as possible, and classified his thoughts in his own methodic manner.

Lady Hamilton, his aunt, was now two years dead, and in one sense Greville had never since known a perfectly unanxious moment. A saint, as the Duchess said so lightly, she had much to complain of in her gay husband’s gaieties, yet never had complained but bore all with an undeviating sweetness. But he was not the man to be spurred to any emulation by sainthood and in his own heart half blamed her piety for forcing him to seek outside recreation.

It was even more easily found in Naples than elsewhere and especially in a political backwater, as it was at that time, which left even an Ambassador of Great Britain much at a loss to fill up the lazy delicious days of sweet do-nothingness. But there were plenty to help him; a charming and artistic English society; wandering sirens (like my Lady Craven, the delight and ridicule of Horace Walpole) too numerous and worthless to be listed. Nay, it was whispered that the Queen herself, Marie Caroline, sister of the unhappy Marie Antoinette of France, had found Sir William more agreeable than even ambassadors are wont to be to the sovereigns to whom they are accredited.

And this state of affairs suited Greville excellently well. He was attached to his uncle and wished him amusement in all sincerity. His own position was secure in Sir William’s marriage, for it was childless, and Lady Hamilton, his aunt, so deeply attached to himself that with Sir William’s own affection his certainty of heirship to all the couple had to leave was complete. Indeed, Sir William spoke of it openly and gave Greville leave to mention it as a settled fact to any careful father whose heiress he might ask in marriage. And then Lady Hamilton died.

It was a disagreeable shock to Greville in more ways than one. Sir William, little over fifty, handsome, pleasing in the highest degree, hospitable, open-handed, was once more in the market—but there needs no expatiation. The case speaks for itself. And now he was returning to London, the high position of an ambassadress in his hand to offer, the loveliest land on earth as a home, and the rumour of a queen’s love to intensify his fascinations. Why, what young fellow in London could stand against him and his court favour? He would be married and done for, and a little heir next year and more to follow, and he, Greville, would sink into a young-elderly neglected man about town, too poor to keep up with the great steeplechase of fashion, unless—

Unless? Two things. A rich marriage for himself, and decorous or indecorous widowerhood for Sir William. He knew the town quite well enough to know that his chances of the first were diminished instantly an inclination of his uncle’s to marriage became known. Then what and where was the solution of the difficulty? Miss Middleton? That subject next passed in review. He knew that his advances had not been too warmly received, and though it was incredible that any rumour of the Edgware Row establishment could disturb Lord Middleton’s mind, women took fanciful views and a whisper in Lady or Miss Middleton’s ear might have done much harm there. He began to feel very strongly that Emma was a disadvantage, that he had been drifting, that if he desired a wealthy marriage he must return to a handsome house in London and bury himself and his advantages no longer in obscurity. In short, that he must make a complete change in his life. To this must be added the fact that he felt he had amply redeemed his pledges to Emma, and that, though she had become a delightful household companion in many ways, her temper was still troublesome; her tastes, through all the veneer, still apt to be unexpectedly coarse in grain here and there; and last, but far from least, that even such beauty may pall, and that he began to be somewhat tired of her.

Of course there would be difficulties with Emma, serious ones, but here he by no means despaired. His own calm good sense and Sir William’s counsel would carry him through and dispose of her comfortably. All justice should be done her short of the unreason of injuring his own career.

This was a matter which he could discuss freely with Sir William and there could be no doubt what his advice would be. The means were the only difficult question, and those could be arranged if two men of experience put their heads together.

All this dismissed, he took out her letter and read it carefully. It did not move him. He thought her bursts of repentance as facile as her tempers. The fact was, and he often reproached her for it, she had too much imagination, and, to Greville, imagination was the last folly, almost the last crime. It meant the unpleasant faculty of seeing things as they are not, of exaggerating every emotion, of leaving the straight highway of fact for endless and perplexing aerial flights that ended in cloud-land and involved unpleasant drops to earth, and bruised every relation in life hopelessly. If she had but plodding good sense Emma would be irresistible. Alas, no!—she would not be Emma.

He tore the letter into small bits for the waste-paper basket, disposed of it, and entered into easy talk with an acquaintance. He would not go home. She needed a lesson and should have it.

As a matter of fact, he neither returned nor wrote for a week, and Emma was seriously frightened. The excuse was simple enough, a letter from Sir William announcing his return and asking Greville to attend to some business connected with his Welsh estates. It could have been done as well from Edgware Row, but for the need of administering a sound lesson, but Greville always pursued his settled way without flinching. Also, there was a dinner at the Middletons.

She was in a state of abject submission when he got back, pale with watching. Indeed, but for Romney’s upholding and the certainty which he gained for her that Greville was still in town, she would have been inclined to tear through the streets to find him anywhere, anyhow, and it took all Romney’s persuasion to induce her to wait quietly.

She sank into a chair pale and sighing, as he entreated her—a deep patient sigh. She was A Forsaken Lady in Dejection at the moment, with drooped head and hanging hands.

“Ah, Mr. Romney, this is the reward for a most tender and passionate love. You know how I have given my whole heart, my whole life; and no woman ever did this but met her reward in cruelty.”

“I thought,” says Romney, blundering, “that you owed him much kindness. Could you not, my dear, fix your mind on that rather than on anger which you yourself owned deserved t’other day, and which I am certain will soon pass?”

“Kindness!” she cried, the blood flowing crimson into lips and cheeks with a sudden return to energy. “Kindness? That’s the way a huckster would calculate it. Food, clothes, and lessons—lessons that I might sing and draw for his diversion. That’s his kindness! And I’ve given him in return beauty not thought despicable, and the love and tender devotion of a true heart. When he had an oppression on the chest, didn’t I poultice him and sit up near a week till I looked like a hag of thirty? Didn’t I cook his broths with my own hands and wouldn’t let my mother touch ’em; didn’t I run his errands and fetch and carry and sweep his room and—”

She flung up her arms with an inspired gesture as she poured on and became a denouncing goddess. Romney stared at her all unconscious of the words, seeing only the Juno look, the offended majesty of the noble attitude. What did it matter what she said so long as she could look like that? He snatched charcoal and paper, and began with swift lines to perpetuate the pose.

Enraged, she darted on the helpless man and seized the paper and tore it across, glaring at him, a beautiful Fury.

“You too!” she cried. “Where’s your sympathy? I that have sat for you hundreds of times and you never asked if I was weary, not so much as once. Men are all the same; a woman’s not flesh and blood to feel and suffer, she’s but a pastime or a slave; or a dog to be driven from the door. Oh, the cruel, hateful world! Some day I’ll stick a knife into my heart and make an end of it.”

Here a sob sent her back to the first pose because she could no longer orate comfortably. She sank again into her chair, and Romney, all trembling sympathetic fear, put out his delicate fibrous hand and clutched hers softly yet strongly, and yearned over her and consoled her with clumsy tenderness and bid her take courage, for though Greville could never, never love her as he loved his child, his inspiration, yet no man having tasted her beauty could ever cast his eye on another. She herself was her security.

“But go back,” he entreated, “and vex him no more, my beloved lady. For sure it only recoils on yourself. For my part, I can love Greville because he brought you to me and so flooded my life with sunshine. ’Tis my belief that one day he’ll marry you if you do but govern yourself. Now be good and go home to be there when he comes, as I swear he will and must.”

So he coaxed and wheedled her and got her back to the normal and into a hackney coach, and so saw her depart; and not an hour too soon, for Greville came back that day, and if all had not been ready for him it would have been a coolness to start with.

But all was in apple-pie order, and she so sweetly humble, with her white dress and soft submissive eyes, that what could he do but open his arms and forgive her, and the more readily because the room was perfumed with flowers, a blanquette of veal done to perfection for his dinner, with a morsel of fine old cheese to follow and a glass of Sir William’s fine sparkling Burgundy to finish with the biscuits. And Mrs. Cadogan had been at her polishing, and the silver on the table (for Mr. Greville could eat in nothing meaner) was black velvet in the bowls of the spoons and curves of the dish, and the glass sparkled like frost crystals to the summer sunshine outside; and when Emma had cleared the table, mellowed with comfort, he cried.

“I’ll take you to Ranelagh for an evening’s enjoyment. Put on your prettiest gown and your blue hat, and my girl shall see the world and the world see her.”

She flew upstairs, when the time came, all fire and joy, for this was a rare treat and proved her fully restored to favour. It was the golden sceptre extended to the fainting Esther. It cannot be said she made herself beautiful, for God had done that for her once and for all, but Greville exclaimed at her charming air as she came downstairs in a considered hat that made her eyes look dark azure and her cheeks pink carnations. Mrs. Cadogan, too, clasped her hands in delight and, being accommodated with a glass of port, watched them smiling out of sight.

Yet it had been better if that enchanting pleasure had never been embarked on, for look what happened!

Ranelagh, dim and beautiful save where earthly lights matched their rose and golden jewels against the silver flood of moonlight; Ranelagh, with shy secret walks where beauties far from shy might wander with happy lovers and exchange a perilous kiss ere they came upon another pair similarly engaged round the corner; Ranelagh, with gay little tables set in open boxes so brilliantly lit that here the moonlight was vanquished and a torrent of rainbow light poured upon the handsomest toilettes available and the bright eyes and laughing lips of the London ladies.

They toured the gardens with all the discretion of a long married couple observing the indiscretions of less fortunate people, and Greville turned a neat point or two for her consideration as to the good breeding of reserve in public, and then having engaged a box for supper, left her, thinking he caught sight of the artist Gavin Hamilton and resolved to introduce him to the Secret Beauty and have the usual congratulations on his good fortune. Who but Emma! Giddy with the lights and music, the just finished song of the prima donna of the evening, the softly muted notes of the string orchestra, she sat well forward in the box to survey the passing crowd in its gay kaleidoscope of colour. She leaned her arms on the edge, she turned her face this way and that, looking for Greville, wondering what kept him, and fully conscious that many faces turned in her direction, and men and women alike looked up at the lovely stranger—alone, equivocal, surely approachable! At least it could be hoped so. The orchestra struck up again, this time in the gay strain “Batti, batti,” her last lesson, her latest triumph. Heavens, what a coincidence! Irresistible! Leaning out still, she began to sing, softly at first, terrified at her own daring and the listening faces, then louder, clearer, clearer, as the conductor caught the bright soprano and, beckoning the orchestra with his stick, sent them back to the accompaniment. Instantly she saw his intention and sprang to her feet on the impulse, ardent and flushed. She that had never sung with an orchestra before! She whose sole audience had been Greville, Romney, her master, or a chance friend. And now, now, London was listening, or so it seemed to her excited fancy. She could hear her own voice mounting, soaring divinely in the delicious music. Louder, louder, clearer, clearer, sure that silver note touched the very stars, and the people were still as death to hear this new nightingale and the orchestra softened and softened to give her room, and—Greville returned.

On the last phrase, and as the listeners broke out in thunders of clapping, he returned, little guessing what voice embroidered the night with silver. And as he looked at the box it was Emma, crimsoning to the plaudits, bowing as though to the manner born, her fair hands crossed on her heart.

In a pale fury that subdued him to the utmost deliberation he walked into the box and beckoned her to come to the back.

“Let us instantly go away,” said he.

Conscious of her enormities, she faltered.

“Did I do wrong, Greville? I didn’t know. I thought to see you pleased with my success.”

“Pleased!” Not another word did he utter. Supper was served and he cast not a glance upon it, but paid the bill and walked out with Emma trembling at his heels, leaving who would to eat it.

It was a descent from such Olympian dignity that later he must needs explain how she had erred, for it was impossible for her to see it without assistance. To her it was as natural to break into song as it is to a bird, and enchanting to enchant others. What? Surely God made beautiful voices and beautiful faces for the common joy. “And I knew I could do it better than Ceritelli!” she added, quaking.

“You acted with your usual want of consideration—your usual lack of taste and breeding.” His words were drops of sleet on a hot cheek. “It convinces me, what I have long since thought, that there is not nor ever can be any community of feeling between us. I have trained you now for near four years, and yet the moment I leave you you can expose yourself to the public view in a place where any woman with a rag of decency left must be circumspect. And there you draw every eye upon you and make yourself a spectacle for every coarse fellow or bad woman that cares to look and listen. If your own good feeling don’t show you the horror of such a proceeding I may talk for ever in vain. So I shall say no more. I despair of you.”

Later, when cowed, she besought his forgiveness, he accorded it dangerously.

“I forgive you because you are so coarse in fibre that you can never learn. I do but waste breath. It is not your fault; after a fashion. Yes. I forgive you. But to say that I can forget is impossible. These things shape my view of your character, in which I own myself mistaken from the beginning.”

She dared say no more, and the episode passed into silence, but it is not too much to say that from that hour Emma’s fate was fixed, though her lord and master would take his own time to announce his decision. And as little did she think as he that Sir William Hamilton, whose coming now drew near, was to be the very arbiter of that fate.