"I can't tell. I'll try and show her the mischief it might bring upon you; and that now, standing high, as you do, in your father's favor, she would never forgive herself, if she were the cause of a change towards you. This consideration will have more weight with her than any that could touch herself personally."

"But it shall not," cried I, pa.s.sionately. "Nothing in _my_ fortune shall stand between my mother and her love for me."

She bent down and looked at me with an intensity in her stare that I cannot describe; it was as if, by actual steadfastness, she was able to fix me, and read me in my inmost heart.

"From which of your parents, Digby," said she, slowly, "do you derive this nature?"

"I do not know; papa always says I am very like him."

"And do you believe that papa is capable of great self-sacrifice? I mean, would he let his affections lead him against his interests?"

"That he would! He has told me over and over the head is as often wrong as right,--the heart only errs about once in five times." She fell on my neck and kissed me as I said this, with a sort of rapturous delight.

"Your heart will be always right, dear boy," said she; once more she bent down and kissed me, and then hurried away.

This scene must have worked more powerfully on my nerves than I felt, or was aware of, while it was pa.s.sing; at all events, it brought back my fever, and before night I was in wild delirium. Of the seven long weeks that followed, with all their alternations, I know nothing. My first consciousness was to know myself, as very weak and propped by pillows, in a half-darkened room, in which an old nurse-tender sat and mingled her heavy snorings with the ticking of the clock on the chimney. Thus drowsily pondering, with a debilitated brain, I used to fancy that I had pa.s.sed away into another form of existence, in which no sights or sounds should come but these dreary breathings, and that remorseless ticking that seemed to be spelling out "eternity."

Sometimes one, sometimes two or three persons would enter the room, approach the bed, and talk together in whispers, and I would languidly lift up my eyes and look at them, and though I thought they were not altogether unknown to me, the attempt at recognition would have been an effort so full of pain that I would, rather than make it, fall back again into apathy. The first moment of perfect consciousness--when I could easily follow all that I heard, and remember it afterwards--was one evening, when a faint but delicious air came in through the open window, and the rich fragrance of the garden filled the room. Captain Hotham and the doctor were seated on the balcony smoking and chatting.

"You 're sure the tobacco won't be bad for him?" asked Hotham.

"Nothing will be bad or good now," was the answer. "Effusion has set in."

"Which means, that it's all over, eh?"

"About one in a thousand, perhaps, rub through. My own experience records no instance of recovery."

"And you certainly did not take such a gloomy view of his case at first.

You told me that there were no vital parts touched?"

"Neither were there; the ribs had suffered no displacement, and as for a broken clavicle, I 've known a fellow get up and finish his race after it This boy was doing famously. I don't know that I ever saw a case going on better, when some of them here--it's not easy to say whom--sent off for his mother to come and see him. Of course, without Norcott's knowledge. It was a rash thing to do, and not well done either; for when the woman arrived, there was no preparation made, either with the boy or herself, for their meeting; and the result was that when she crossed the threshold and saw him she fainted away. The youngster tried to get to her and fainted too; a great hubbub and noise followed; and Norcott himself appeared. The scene that ensued must have been, from what I heard, terrific. He either ordered the woman out of the house, or he dragged her away,--it's not easy to say which; but it is quite clear that he went absolutely mad with pa.s.sion: some say that he told them to pack off the boy along with her, but, of course, this was sheer impossibility; the boy was insensible, and has been so ever since."

"I was at Namur that day, but they told me when I came back that Cleremont's wife had behaved so well; that she had the courage to face Norcott; and though I don't believe she did much by her bravery, she drove him off the field to his own room, and when his wife did leave the house for the railroad, it was in one of Norcott's carriages, and Madame herself accompanied her."

"Is she his wife? that's the question."

"There's not a doubt of it. Blenkworth of the Grays was at the wedding.

"If I were to be examined before a commission of lunacy to-morrow," said the doctor, solemnly, "I 'd call that man insane."

"And you'd shut him up?"

"I'd shut him up!"

"Then I 'm precious glad you are not called on to give an opinion, for you 'd shut up the best house in this quarter of Europe."

"And what security have you any moment that he won't make a clean sweep of it, and turn you all into the streets?"

"Yes; that's on the cards any day."

"He must have got through almost everything he had; besides, I never heard his property called six thousand a year, and I 'll swear twelve wouldn't pay his way here."

"What does he care! His father and he agreed to cut off the entail; and seeing the sort of marriage he made, he 'll not fret much at leaving the boy a beggar."

"But he likes him; if there's anything in the world he cares for, it's that boy!"

The other must have made some gesture of doubt or dissent, for the doctor quickly added, "No, no, I 'm right about that. It was only yesterday morning he said to me with a shake in the voice there's no mistaking, 'If you can come and tell me, doctor, that he's out of danger, I 'll give you a thousand pounds.'"

"Egad, I think I 'd have done it, even though I might have made a blunder."

"Ye 're no a doctor, sir, that's plain;" and in the emotion of the moment he spoke the words with a strong Scotch accent.

There was a silence of some minutes, and Hotham said, "That little Frenchwoman and I have no love lost between us, but I 'm glad she cut up so well."

"They 're strange natures, there 's no denying it They 'll do less from duty and more from impulse than any people in the world, and they 're never thoroughly proud of themselves except when they 're all wrong."

"That's a neat character for Frenchwomen," said Hotham, laughing.

"I think Norcott will be looking out for his whist by this time," said the other; and they both arose, and pa.s.sing noiselessly through the room, moved away.

I had enough left me to think over, and I did think over it till I fell asleep.

CHAPTER IX. MADAME CLEREMONT

From that day forth I received no tidings of my mother. Whether my own letters reached her or not, I could not tell; and though I entreated Madame Cleremont, who was now my confidante in everything, to aid me in learning where my mother was, she declared that the task was beyond her; and at last, as time went over, my anxieties became blunted and my affections dulled. The life I was leading grew to have such a hold upon me, and was so full of its own varied interests, that--with shame I say it--I actually forgot the very existence of her to whom I owed any trace of good or honest or truthful that was in me.

The house in which I was living was a finishing school for every sort of dissipation, and all who frequented it were people who only lived for pleasure. Play of the highest kind went on unceasingly, and large sums were bandied about from hand to hand as carelessly as if all were men of fortune and indifferent to heavy losses.

A splendid mode of living, sumptuous dinners, a great retinue, and perfect liberty to the guests, drew around us that cla.s.s who, knowing well that they have no other occupation than self-indulgence, throw an air of languid elegance over vice, which your vulgar sinner, who has only intervals of wickedness, knows nothing of; and this, be it said pa.s.singly, is, of all sections of society, the most seductive and dangerous to the young: for there are no outrages to taste amongst these people, they violate no decencies, they shock no principles. If they smash the tables of the law, it is in kid-gloves, and with a delicious odor of Ess bouquet about them. The Cleremonts lived at the Villa.

Cleremont managed the household, and gave the orders for everything.

Madame received the company, and did the honors; my father lounging about like an unoccupied guest, and actually amused, as it seemed, by his own unimportance. Hotham had gone to sea; but Eccles remained, in name, as my tutor; but we rarely met, save at meal-times, and his manner to me was almost slavish in subserviency, and with a habit of flattery that, even young as I was, revolted me.

"Isn't that your charge, Eccles?" I once heard an old gentleman ask him; and he replied, "Yes, my Lord; but Madame Cleremont has succeeded me. It is _she_ is finishing him."

And they both laughed heartily at the joke. There was, however, this much of truth in the speech, that I lived almost entirely in her society. We sang together; she called me Cherubino, and taught me all the page's songs in Mozart or Rossini; and we rode out together, or read or walked in company. Nor was her influence over me such as might effeminate me. On the contrary, it was ever her aim to give me manly tastes and ambitions. She laid great stress on my being a perfect swordsman and a pistol-shot, over and over telling me that a conscious skill in arms gives a man immense coolness in every question of difference with other men; and she would add, "Don't fall into that John Bull blunder of believing that duelling is gone out because they dislike the practice in England. The world is happily larger than the British Islands."

Little sneers like this at England, sarcasms on English prudery, English reserve, or English distrustfulness, were constantly dropping from her, and I grew up to believe that while genuine sentiment and unselfish devotion lived on one side of the Channel, a decorous hypocrisy had its home on the other.

Now she would contrast the women 'of Balzac's novels with the colder nonent.i.ties of English fiction; and now she would dwell on traits of fascination in the s.e.x which our writers either did not know of or were afraid to touch on. "It is entirely the fault of your Englishwomen," she would say, "that the men invariably fall victims to foreign seductions.

Circe always sings with a bronchitis in the North;" and though I but dimly saw what she pointed at then, I lived to perceive her meaning more fully.

As for my father, I saw little of him, but in that little he was always kind and good-natured with me. He would quiz me about my lessons, as though I were the tutor, and Ecoles the pupil; and ask me how he got on with his Aristophanes or his Homer? He talked to me freely about the people who came to the house, and treated me almost as an equal.

All this time he behaved to Madame with a reserve that was perfectly chilling, so that it was the rarest thing in the world for the three of us to be together.

"I don't think you like papa," said I once to her, in an effusion of confidence. "I am sure you don't like him!"

"And why do you think so?" asked she, with the faintest imaginable flush on her pale cheek.