"Too clever by half, my boy, or I'm very much mistaken. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred are natural-born angels, but the hundredth is a devil incarnate, and _that's_ her number, Charlie, you may take my word for it!"

And now a strange movement rises in that crowded a.s.sembly. A buzz of voices is heard--lower, but more marked than the ordinary hum of conversation. Something seems to have happened. A lady has fainted, or an apoplectic general been taken suddenly ill, or a candelabrum has fallen, and the magnificent hotel is even now on fire? None of these casualties, however, have occurred. Voices rise higher in question and reply. "Is it true?"--"I can't believe it!"--"They knew nothing of it to-day on the Bourse."--"Another stock-jobbing report."--"Immense loss on both sides." These are the disjointed sentences that reach the ear, mingled with such terms as the Malakhoff--the Redan--the north side--General Pelissier, etc. etc. English and French diplomatists exchange curious glances, and at length rumour takes a definite form, and it is boldly a.s.serted that intelligence has that day arrived of the fall of Sebastopol.

Tongues are loosened now. Surmise and speculation are rife upon future events. Men speak as they wish, and notwithstanding the presence of Monsieur Stein and several other secret agents of police, many a bold opinion is hazarded as to the intentions of the Government and the issues of the great contest. Princess Vocqsal scarcely breathes while she listens. If, indeed, this should lead to peace, her large investments will realise golden profits. She feels all the palpitating excitement of the gambler, yet does the hue not deepen on her cheek, nor the l.u.s.tre kindle brighter in her eye. Monsieur Stein, who alone knows her secrets, as it is his business to know the secrets of every one, feels his very soul stirred within him at such n.o.ble self-command.

For a moment he thinks that were he capable of human weaknesses he could _love_ that woman; and in pure admiration, as one who would fain prove still further a beautiful piece of mechanism, he steps up to the Princess, and informs her that "Now, indeed, doubt is at an end, for reliable intelligence has arrived that Sebastopol has fallen!"

"Sebastopol has fallen," she repeats with her silver laugh; "then the war has at last really begun!"

Her audience applaud once more. "_Ma foi, ce n'est pas mal_," says the French Minister, and Monsieur Stein is on the verge of adoration; but there is by this time a general move towards the door: carriages are being called, and it is time to go away, the departure of the guests being somewhat accelerated by the important news which has just been made public. Victor is still lingering on the staircase. Many a bright eye looks wistfully on his handsome form, many a soft heart would willingly waken an interest in the charming young Count de Rohan, but the Hungarian has caught the malady in its deadliest form--the "love fever," as his own poets term it, is wasting his heart to the core, and for him, alas! there is but one woman on earth, and she is coming downstairs at this moment, attended by the best-dressed and best-looking _attache_ of the French Legation.

Somewhat to this young gentleman's disgust, she sends him to look for her carriage, and taking Victor's arm, which he is too proud to offer, she bids him lead her to the cloak-room, and shawl her as he used to do with such tender care.

He relents at once. What _is_ there in this woman that she can thus turn and twist him at her will? She likes him best thus--when he is haughty and rebellious, and she fears that at last she may have driven him too far and have lost him altogether; the uncertainty creates an interest and excitement, which is pleasure akin to pain, but it is so delightful to win him back again,--_such_ a triumph to own him and tyrannise over him once more! It is at moments of reconciliation such as these that the Princess vindicates her woman-nature, and becomes a very woman to the heart.

"You are angry with me, Victor," she whispers, leaning heavily on his arm, and looking downwards as she speaks; "angry with me, and without a cause. You would not listen to me an hour ago, you were so cross and impatient. Will you listen to me now?"

The tears were standing in the strong man's eyes. "Speak on," he said; "you do with me what you like, I could listen to you for ever."

"You were irritated because I told you I was about to leave Vienna. You have avoided me the whole evening, and left me to be bored and annoyed by that wearisome tribe of diplomatists, with their flat witticisms and their eternal politics. Why did you not stay to hear me out? Victor, it is true I go to-morrow, but I go to the Waldenberg."

How changed his face was now; his eye sparkled and his whole countenance lightened up. He looked like a different man. He could only press the arm that clung to his own; he could not speak.

"Will you continue to _bouder_ me?" proceeded the Princess in a playful, half-malicious tone; "or will you forgive me and be friends for that which is, after all, your own fault? Oh, you men! how hasty and violent you are; it is lucky we are so patient and so good-tempered. The Waldenberg is not so very far from Edeldorf. You might ask me there for your _jour de fete_. I have not forgotten it, you see. Not a word more, Count de Rohan; I must leave you now. Here is my carriage.

Adieu,--no, not adieu, _mon ami, au revoir_!"

Why was it such a different world to Victor from what it had been ten short minutes ago, from what it would a.s.suredly be the next time they met, and her caprice and _coquetterie_ were again exhibited to drive him wild? Was it worth all these days of uncertainty and anxious longing; all these fits of jealousy and agonies of self-reproach; to be deliriously happy every now and then for a short ten minutes? Was any woman on earth worthy of all that Victor de Rohan sacrificed for the indulgence of his guilty love? Probably not, but it would have been hard to convince him. He was not as wise as Solomon; yet Solomon, with all his wisdom, seems to have delivered himself up a willing captive to disgrace and bondage--fettered by a pair of white arms--held by a thread of silken hair. Oh, vanity of vanities! "_this is_ also vanity and vexation of spirit."

CHAPTER XLII

"TOO LATE"

For a wounded campaigner on crutches, or a wasted convalescent slowly recovering from an attack of Crimean fever, there are few better places for the re-establishment of health than the hotel at Therapia. It is refreshing to hear the ripple of the Bosphorus not ten feet distant from one's bedroom window; it is life itself to inhale the invigorating breeze that sweeps down, unchecked and uncontaminated, from the Black Sea; it is inspiriting to gaze upon the gorgeous beauty of the Asiatic coast, another continent not a mile away. And then the smaller accessories of comfortable apartments, good dinners, civilised luxuries, and European society, form no unwelcome contrast to the Crimean tent, the soldier's rations, and the wearisome routine of daily and hourly duty.

But a few days after the taking of Sebastopol, I was once more in Turkey. Ropsley, the man of iron nerves and strong will--the man whom danger had spared, and sickness had hitherto pa.s.sed by, was struck down by fever--that wasting, paralysing disease so common to our countrymen in an Eastern climate--and was so reduced and helpless as to be utterly incapable of moving without a.s.sistance. He had many friends, for Ropsley was popular in his regiment and respected throughout the army; but none were so thoroughly disengaged as I; it seemed as if I could now be of little use in any capacity, and to my lot it fell to place my old school-fellow on board ship, and accompany him to Therapia, _en route_ for England on sick leave.

My own affairs, too, required that I should revisit Somersetshire before long. The wreck of my father's property, well nursed and taken care of by a prudent man of business, had increased to no contemptible provision for a nameless child. If I chose to return to England, I should find myself a landed proprietor of no inconsiderable means, should be enabled to a.s.sume a position such as many a man now fighting his way in the world would esteem the acme of human felicity, and for me it would be but dust and ashes! What cared I for broad acres, local influence, good investments, and county respectability--all the outward show and empty shadows for which people are so apt to sacrifice the real blessings of life? What was it to me that I might look round from my own dining-room on my own domain, with my own tenants waiting to see me in the hall? An empty heart can have no possessions; a broken spirit is but a beggar in the midst of wealth, whilst the whole universe, with all its glories, belongs alone to him who is at peace with himself. I often think how many a man there is who lives out his three-score years and ten, and never knows what _real_ life is, after all. A boyhood pa.s.sed in vain aspirations--a manhood spent in struggling for the impossible--an old age wasted in futile repinings, such is the use made by how many of our fellow-creatures of that glorious streak of light which we call existence, that intervenes between the eternity which hath been, and the eternity which shall be? Oh! to lie down and rest, and look back upon the day's hard labour, and feel that something has been wrought--that something has been _won!_ and so to sleep--happy here--happy for evermore. Well, on some natures happiness smiles even here on earth--G.o.d forbid it should be otherwise!--and some must content themselves with duty instead. Who knows which shall have the best of it when all is over? For me, it was plain at this period that I must do my _devoir_, and leave all to Time, the great restorer in the moral, as he is the great destroyer in the physical, world. The years of excitement (none know how strong) that I had lately pa.s.sed, followed by a listless, hopeless inactivity, had produced a reaction on my spirits which it was necessary to conquer and shake off. I resolved to return to England, to set my house in order--to do all the good in my power, and first of all, strenuously to commence with that which lay nearest my hand, although it was but the humble task of nursing my old school-fellow through an attack of low fever.

My patient possessed one of those strong and yet elastic natures which even sickness seems unable thoroughly to subdue. The Ropsley on a couch of suffering and la.s.situde, was the same Ropsley that confronted the enemy's fire so coolly in the Crimea, and sneered at the follies of his friends so sarcastically in St. James's street. Ill as he was, and utterly prostrated in body, he was clear-headed and ready-witted as ever. With the help of a wretchedly bad grammar, he was rapidly picking up Turkish, by no means an easy language for a beginner; and, taking advantage of my society, was actually entering upon the rudiments of Hungarian, a tongue which it is next to impossible for any one to acquire who has not spoken it, as I had done, in earliest childhood. He was good-humoured and patient, too, far more than I should have expected, and was never anxious or irritable, save about his letters. I have seen him, however, turn away from a negative to the eager inquiry "Any letters for me?" with an expression of heart-sick longing that it pained me to witness on that usually haughty and somewhat sneering countenance.

But it came at last. Not many mornings after our arrival at Therapia there was a letter for Ropsley, which seemed to afford him unconcealed satisfaction, and from that day the Guardsman mended rapidly, and began to talk of getting up and packing his things, and starting westward once more.

So it came to pa.s.s that, with the help of his servant, I got him out of bed and dressed him, and laid him on the sofa at the open window, where he could see the light caques dancing gaily on the waters, and the restless sea-fowl flitting eternally to and fro, and could hear the shouts of the Turkish boatmen, adjuring each other, very unnecessarily, not to be too hasty; and the discordant cries of the Greek population scolding, and cheating, and vociferating on the quay.

We talked of Hungary. I loved to talk of it now, for was it not _her_ country of whom I must think no more? And Ropsley's manner was kinder, and his voice softer, than I had ever thought it before. Poor fellow!

he was weak with his illness, perhaps, yet hitherto I had remarked no alteration in his cold, impa.s.sible demeanour.

At last he took my hand, and in a hollow voice he said--"Vere, you have returned me good for evil. You have behaved to me like a brother.

Vere, I believe you really are a Christian!"

"I hope so," I replied quietly, for what had I but that?

"Yes," he resumed, "but I don't mean conventionally, because your G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers at your baptism said you were--I mean _really_. I don't believe there is a particle of _humbug_ about you.

Can you forgive your enemies?"

"I have already told you so," I answered; "don't you remember that night in the trenches? besides, Ropsley, I shall never consider you my enemy."

"That is exactly what cuts me to the heart," he replied, flushing up over his wan, wasted face. "I have injured you more deeply than any one on earth, and I have received nothing but kindness in return. Often and often I have longed to tell you all--how I had wronged you, and how I had repented, but my pride forbade me till to-day. It is dreadful to think that I might have died, and never confessed to you how hard and how unfeeling I have been. Listen to me, and then forgive me if you can. Oh, Vere, Vere! had it not been for me and my selfishness, you might have married Constance Beverley!"

I felt I was trembling all over; I covered my face with my hands and turned away, but I bade him go on.

"Her father was never averse to you from the first. He liked you, Vere, personally, and still more for the sake of your father, his old friend.

There was but one objection. I need not dwell upon it; and even that he could have got over, for he was most anxious to see his daughter married, and to one with whom he could have made his own terms. He was an unscrupulous man, Sir Harry, and dreadfully pressed for money. When in that predicament people will do things that at other times they would be ashamed of, as I know too well. And the girl too, Vere, she loved you--I am sure of it--she loved you, poor girl, with all her heart and soul."

I looked him straight in the face--"Not a word of _her_, Ropsley, as you are a gentleman!" I said. Oh, the agony of that moment! and yet it was not all pain.

"Well," he proceeded, "Sir Harry consulted me about the match. You know how intimate we were, you know what confidence he had in my judgment.

If I had been generous and honourable, if I had been such a man as _you_, Vere, how much happier we should all be now; but no, I had my own ends in view, and I determined to work out my own purpose, without looking to the right or left, without turning aside for friend or foe.

Besides, I hardly knew you then, Vere. I did not appreciate your good qualities. I did not know your courage, and constancy, and patience, and kindliness. I did not know yours was just the clinging, womanly nature, that would never get over the crushing of its best affections--and I know it now too well. Oh, Vere, you never can forgive me! And yet," he added, musingly, more to himself than to me,--"and yet, even had I known all this, had you been my own brother, I fear my nature was then so hard, so pitiless, so uncompromising, that I should have gone straight on towards my aim, and blasted your happiness without scruple or remorse. _Remorse_," and the old look came over him, the old sneering look, that wreathed those handsome features in the wicked smile of a fallen angel--"if a man means to _repent_ of what he has done, he had better not _do it_. My maxim has always been, 'never look back,'--'_vestigia, nulla retrorsum_'--and yet to-day I cannot help retracing, ay, and bitterly _regretting_, the past.

"I have told you I had my own ends in view. I wished to marry the heiress myself. Not that I loved her, Vere--do not be angry with me for the confession--I never loved her the least in the world. She was far too placid, too conventional, too like other girls, to make the slightest impression on me. My ideal of a woman is, a bold, strong nature, a keen intellect, a daring mind, and a dazzling beauty that others must fall down and worship. I never was one of your sentimentalists. A violet may be a very pretty flower, and smell very sweet, but I like a camellia best, and all the better because you require a hothouse to raise it in. But, if I did not care for Miss Beverley, I cared a good deal for Beverley Manor, and I resolved that, come what might, Beverley Manor should one day be mine. The young lady I looked upon as an enc.u.mbrance that must necessarily accompany the estate. You know how intimate I became with her father, you know the trust he reposed in me, and the habit into which he fell, of doing nothing without my advice. That trust, I now acknowledge to you, I abused shamefully; of that habit I took advantage, solely to further my own ends, totally irrespective of my friend. He confided to me in very early days his intention of marrying his daughter to the son of his old friend. He talked it over with me as a scheme on which he had set his heart, and, above all, insisted on the advantage to himself of making, as he called it, his own terms with you about settlements, etc. I have already told you he was involved in difficulties, from which his daughter's marriage could alone free him, with the consent of her husband. I need not enter into particulars. I have the deeds and law papers at my fingers' ends, for I like to understand a business thoroughly if I embark on it at all, but it is no question of such matters now. Well, Vere, at first I was too prudent to object overtly to the plan. Sir Harry, as you know, was an obstinate, wilful man, and such a course would have been the one of all others most calculated to wed him more firmly than ever to his original intention; but I weighed the matter carefully with him day by day, now bringing forward arguments in favour of it, now starting objections, till I had insensibly accustomed him to consider it by no means as a settled affair. Then I tried all my powers upon the young lady, and there, I confess to you freely, Vere, I was completely foiled. She never liked me even as an acquaintance, and she took no pains to conceal her aversion. How angry she used to make me sometimes!--I _hated_ her so, that I longed to make her mine, if it were only to humble her, as much as if I had loved her with all my heart and soul. Many a time I used to grind my teeth and mutter to myself, 'Ah! my fair enemy, I shall live to make you rue this treatment;' and I swore a great oath that, come what might, she should never belong to Vere Egerton. I even tried to create an interest in her mind for Victor de Rohan, but the girl was as true as steel. I have been accustomed to read characters all my life, women's as well as men's, it is part of my profession;" and Ropsley laughed once more his bitter laugh; "and many a trifling incident showed me that Constance Beverley cared for n.o.body on earth but you. This only made me more determined not to be beat; and little by little, with hints here and whispers there, a.s.sisted by your own strange, solitary habits, and the history of your poor father's life and death, I persuaded Sir Harry that there was madness in your family, and that you had inherited the curse.

From the day on which he became convinced of this, I felt I had won my race. No power on earth would then have induced him to let you marry his daughter, and the excuse that he made you on that memorable afternoon, when you had so gallantly rescued her from death, was but a gentlemanlike way of getting out of his difficulty about telling you the real truth. Vere, that girl's courage is wonderful. She came down to dinner that night with the air of an empress, but with a face like marble, and a dull, stony look in her eyes that made even me almost rue what I had done. She kept her room for a fortnight afterwards, and I cannot help feeling she has never looked as bright since.

"When you went away I acknowledge I thought the field was my own. In consideration of my almost ruining myself to preserve him from shame, Sir Harry promised me his daughter if I could win her consent, and you may depend upon it I tried hard to do so. It was all in vain; the girl hated me more and more, and when we all met so unexpectedly in Vienna, I saw that my chance of Beverley Manor was indeed a hopeless one. Sir Harry, too, was getting very infirm. Had he died before his daughter's marriage, his bills for the money I had lent him were not worth the stamps on which they were drawn. My only chance was her speedy union with some one rich enough to make the necessary sacrifices, and again I picked out Victor de Rohan as the man. We all thought then you were engaged to his sister Valerie."

Ropsley blushed scarlet as he mentioned that name.

"And it was not my part to conceal the surmise from Miss Beverley. 'She was _so_ glad, she was _so_ thankful,' she said, 'she was _so_ happy, for Vere's sake'; and a month afterwards she was Countess de Rohan, with the handsomest husband and the finest place in Hungary. It was a _mariage de convenance_, I fear, on both sides. I know now, what I allow I did not dream of then, that Victor himself was the victim of an unfortunate attachment at the time, and that he married the beautiful Miss Beverley out of pique. Sir Harry died, as you know, within three months. I have saved myself from ruin, and I have destroyed the happiness on earth of three people that never did me the slightest harm.

Vere, I do not deserve to be forgiven, I do not deserve ever to rise again from this couch; and yet there is _one_ for whose sake I would fain get well--_one_ whom I _must_ see yet again before I die."

He burst into tears as he spoke. Good heaven! this man was mortal after all--an erring, sinful mortal, like the rest of us, with broken pride, heartfelt repentance, thrilling hopes and fears. Another bruised reed, though he had stood so defiant and erect, confronting the whirlwind and the thunderbolt, but shivered up, and cowering at the whisper of the "still small voice." Poor fellow! poor Ropsley! I pitied him from my heart, while he hid his face in his hands, and the big tears forced themselves through his wasted fingers; freely I forgave him, and freely I told him so.

After a time he became more composed, and then, as if ashamed of his weakness, a.s.sumed once more the cold satirical manner, half sarcasm, half pleasantry, which has become the conventional disguise of the world in which such men as Ropsley delight to live. Little by little he confided to me the rise and progress of his attachment to Valerie--at which I had already partly guessed--acknowledged how, for a long time, he had imagined that I was again a favoured rival, destined ever to stand in his way; how my sudden departure from Vienna and her incomprehensible indifference to that hasty retreat had led him to believe that she had entertained nothing but a girl's pa.s.sing inclination for her brother's comrade; and how, before he reached his regiment in the Crimea, she had promised to be his on the conclusion of the war. "I never cared for any other woman on earth," said Ropsley, once more relapsing into the broken accents of real, deep feeling. "I never reflected till I knew her, what a life mine has been. G.o.d forgive me, Vere; if we had met earlier, I should have been a different man. I have received a letter from her to-day. I shall be well enough to move by the end of the week. Vere, I _must_ go through Hungary, and stop at Edeldorf on my way to England!"

As I walked out to inhale the evening breeze and indulge my own thoughts in solitude by the margin of the peaceful Bosphorus, I felt almost stunned, like a man who has sustained a severe fall, or one who wakes suddenly from an astounding dream. And yet I might have guessed long ago at the purport of Ropsley's late revelations. Diffident as I was of my own merits, there had been times when my heart told me, with a voice there was no disputing, that I was beloved by Constance Beverley; and now it was with something like a feeling of relief and exhilaration that I recalled the a.s.surance of that fact from one himself so interested and so difficult to deceive as Ropsley. "And she loved me all along," I thought, with a thrill of pleasure, sadly dashed with pain. "She was true and pure, as I always thought her; and even now, though she is wedded to another, though she never can be mine on earth, perhaps--"

And here I stopped, for the cold, sickening impossibility chilled me to the marrow, and an insurmountable barrier seemed to rise up around me and hem me in on every side. It was sin to love her, it was sin to think of her now. Oh! misery! misery! and yet I would give my life to see her once more! So my good angel whispered in my ear, "You must never look on her again; for the rest of your time you must tread the weary path alone, and learn to be kindly, and pure, and holy for _her_ sake." And self muttered, "Where would be the harm of seeing her just once again?--of satisfying yourself with your own eyes that she is happy?--of learning at once to be indifferent to her presence? You _must_ go home. Edeldorf lies in your direct road to England; you cannot abandon Ropsley in his present state, with no one to nurse and take care of him. Victor is your oldest friend, he would be hurt if you did not pay him a visit. It would be more courageous to face the Countess at once, and get it over." And I listened now to one and now to the other, and the struggle raged and tore within me the while I paced sadly up and down "by the side of the sounding sea."

"Egerton! how goes it? Let me present to you my friends," exclaimed a voice I recognised on the instant, as, with lowered head and dreamy vision, I walked right into the centre of a particularly smart party, and was "brought up," as the sailors say, "all standing," by a white silk parasol and a ma.s.s of flounces that almost took my breath away.

When you most require solitude, it generally happens that you find yourself forced into society, and with all my regard for our _ci-devant_ usher, I never met Manners, now a jolly Colonel of Bashi-Bazouks, with so little gratification as at this moment. I am bound to admit, however, that on his side all was cordiality and delight. Dressed out to the utmost magnificence of his gorgeous uniform, spurs clanking, and sabretasche jingling, his person stouter, his beard more exuberant, his face more florid and prosperous than ever, surrounded, too, by a bevy of ladies of French extraction and Pera manners, the "soldier of fortune,"

for such he might fairly be called, was indeed in his glory. With many flourishes and compliments in bad French, I was presented successively to Mesdemoiselles Philippine, and Josephine, and Seraphine, all dark-eyed, black-haired, sallow-faced, but by no means bad-looking, young ladies, all apparently bent upon the capture and destruction of anything and everything that came within range of their artillery, and all apparently belonging equally to my warlike and fortunate friend. He then took me by the arm, and dropping behind the three graces aforesaid, informed me, in tones of repressed exultation, how his fortune was made at last, how he now commanded (the dearest object of his ambition) a regiment of actual cavalry, and how he was on the eve of marriage with one of the young ladies in front of us, with a dowry of a hundred thousand francs, who loved him to distraction, and was willing to accompany him to Shumla, there to take the lead in society, and help him to civilise his regiment of Bashi-Bazouks.

"I always told you I was fit for something, Egerton," said Lieutenant-Colonel Manners, with a glow of exultation on his simple face; "and I have made my own way at last, in despite of all obstacles.

It's pluck, sir, that makes the man! pluck and _muscle_," doubling his arm as he spoke, in the old Everdon manner. "I have done it at last, and you'll see, my dear Egerton, I shall live to be a general."