'And you like Lachen?' asked Mrs. Dallington.

'Very much.'

'I formed her with great care, but you must keep her in good humour.'

'That is not difficult. _Elle est tres jolie_; and pretty women, like yourself, are always good-natured.'

'But has she really worked herself into the confidence of the virtuous Aphrodite?'

'Entirely. And the humour is, that Lachen has persuaded her that Lachen herself is on the best possible terms with my confidential valet, and can make herself at all times mistress of her master's secrets. So it is always in my power, apparently without taking the slightest interest in Afy's conduct, to regulate it as I will. At present she believes that my affairs are in a distracted state, and that I intend to reside solely on the Continent, and to bear her off from her Cupidon. This thought haunts her rest, and hangs heavy on her waking mind. I think it will do the business.'

'We have been too long absent. Let us return.'

'I accompany you, my charming friend. What should I do without such an ally? I only wish that I could a.s.sist you in a manner equally friendly.

Is there no obdurate hero who wants a confidential adviser to dilate upon your charms, or to counsel him to throw himself at your feet; or are that beautiful in face and lovely form, as they must always be, invincible?'

'I a.s.sure you quite disembarra.s.sed of any attentions whatever. But, I suppose, when I return to Athens, I must get Platonic again.'

'Let me be the philosopher!'

'No, no; we know each other too well. I have been free ever since that fatal affair of young Darrell, and travel has restored my spirits a little. They say his brother is just as handsome. He was expected at Vienna, but I could not meet him, although I suppose, as I made him a Viscount, I am rather popular than not with him.'

'Pooh! pooh! think not of this. No one blames you. You are still a universal favourite. But I would recommend you, nevertheless, to take me as your cavalier.'

'You are too generous, or too bold. No, man! I am tired of flirtation, and really think, for variety's sake, I must fall in love. After all, there is nothing like the delicious dream, though it be but a dream.

Spite of my discretion, I sometimes tremble lest I should end by making myself a fool, with some grand pa.s.sion. You look serious. Fear not for the young Duke. He is a dazzling gentleman, but not a hero exactly to my taste.'

CHAPTER VII.

_At Castle Dacre_

THE moment that was to dissolve the spell which had combined and enchanted so many thousands of human beings arrived. n.o.bles and n.o.bodies, beauties and blacklegs, dispersed in all directions. The Duke of Burlington carried off the French princes and the Protocolis, the Bloomerlys and the Vaticans, to his Paradise of Marringworth. The Fitz-pompeys cantered off with the Shropshires; omen of felicity to the enamoured St. Maurice and the enamouring Sophy. Annesley and Squib returned to their pates. Sir Lucius and Lady Aphrodite, neither of them with tempers like summer skies, betook their way to Cambridgeshire, like Adam and Eve from the glorious garden. The Duke of St. James, after a hurried visit to London, found himself, at the beginning of October, on his way to Dacre.

As his carriage rolled on he revelled in delicious fancies. The young Duke built castles not only at Hauteville, but in less substantial regions. Reverie, in the flush of our warm youth, generally indulges in the future. We are always antic.i.p.ating the next adventure and clothe the coming heroine with a rosy tint. When we advance a little on our limited journey, and an act or two of the comedy, the gayest in all probability, are over, the wizard Memory dethrones the witch Imagination, and 'tis the past on which the mind feeds in its musings. 'Tis then we ponder on each great result which has stolen on us without the labour of reflection; 'tis then we a.n.a.lyse emotions which, at the time, we could not comprehend, and probe the action which pa.s.sion inspired, and which prejudice has. .h.i.therto defended. Alas! who can strike these occasional balances in life's great ledger without a sigh! Alas! how little do they promise in favour of the great account! What whisperings of final bankruptcy! what a d.a.m.nable consciousness of present insolvency! My friends! what a blunder is youth! Ah! why does Truth light her torch but to illume the ruined temple of our existence! Ah! why do we know we are men only to be conscious of our exhausted energies!

And yet there is a pleasure in a deal of judgment which your judicious man alone can understand. It is agreeable to see some younkers falling into the same traps which have broken our own shins; and, shipwrecked on the island of our hopes, one likes to mark a vessel go down full in sight. 'Tis demonstration that we are not branded as Cains among the favoured race of man. Then giving advice: that _is_ delicious, and perhaps repays one all. It is a privilege your grey-haired signors solely can enjoy; but young men now-a-days may make some claims to it.

And, after all, experience is a thing that all men praise. Bards sing its glories, and proud Philosophy has long elected it her favourite child. 'Tis the '_r Kaxav_', in spite of all its ugliness, and the _elixir vitae_, though we generally gain it with a shattered pulse.

No more! no more! it is a bitter cheat, the consolation of blunderers, the last refuge of expiring hopes, the forlorn battalion that is to capture the citadel of happiness; yet, yet impregnable! Oh! what is wisdom, and what is virtue, without youth! Talk not to me of knowledge of mankind; give, give me back the sunshine of the breast which they o'erclouded! Talk not to me of proud morality; oh! give me innocence!

Amid the ruins of eternal Rome I scribble pages lighter than the wind, and feed with fancies volumes which will be forgotten ere I can hear that they are even published. Yet am I not one insensible to the magic of my memorable abode, and I could pour my pa.s.sion o'er the land; but I repress my thoughts, and beat their tide back to their hollow caves!

The ocean of my mind is calm, but dim, and ominous of storms that may arise. A cloud hangs heavy o'er the horizon's verge, and veils the future. Even now a star appears, steals into light, and now again 'tis gone! I hear the proud swell of the growing waters; I hear the whispering of the wakening winds; but reason lays her trident on the cresting waves, and all again is hushed.

For I am one, though young, yet old enough to know ambition is a demon; and I fly from what I fear. And fame has eagle wings, and yet she mounts not so high as man's desires. When all is gained, how little then is won! And yet to gain that little how much is lost! Let us once aspire and madness follows. Could we but drag the purple from the hero's heart; could we but tear the laurel from the poet's throbbing brain, and read their doubts, their dangers, their despair, we might learn a greater lesson than we shall ever acquire by musing over their exploits or their inspiration. Think of unrecognised Caesar, with his wasting youth, weeping over the Macedonian's young career! Could Pharsalia compensate for those withering pangs? View the obscure Napoleon starving in the streets of Paris! What was St. Helena to the bitterness of such existence? The visions of past glory might illumine even that dark-imprisonment; but to be conscious that his supernatural energies might die away without creating their miracles: can the wheel or the rack rival the torture of such a suspicion? Lo! Byron bending o'er his shattered lyre, with inspiration in his very rage. And the pert taunt could sting even this child of light! To doubt of the truth of the creed in which you have been nurtured is not so terrific as to doubt respecting the intellectual vigour on whose strength you have staked your happiness. Yet these were mighty ones; perhaps the records of the world will not yield us threescore to be their mates! Then tremble, ye whose cheek glows too warmly at their names! Who would be more than man should fear lest he be less.

Yet there is hope, there should be happiness, for them, for all. Kind Nature, ever mild, extends her fond arms to her truant children, and breathes her words of solace. As we weep on her indulgent and maternal breast, the exhausted pa.s.sions, one by one, expire like gladiators in yon huge pile that has made barbarity sublime. Yes! there is hope and joy; and it is here!

Where the breeze wanders through a perfumed sky, and where the beautiful sun illumines beauty.

On the poet's farm and on the conqueror's arch thy beam is lingering!

It lingers on the shattered porticoes that once shrouded from thy o'erpowering glory the lords of earth; it lingers upon the ruined temples that even in their desolation are yet sacred! 'Tis gone, as if in sorrow! Yet the woody lake still blushes with thy warm kiss; and still thy rosy light tinges the pine that breaks the farthest heaven!

A heaven all light, all beauty, and all love! What marvel men should worship in these climes? And lo! a small and single cloud is sailing in the immaculate ether, burnished with twilight, like an Olympian chariot from above, with the fair vision of some graceful G.o.d!

It is the hour that poets love; but I crush thoughts that rise from out my mind, like nymphs from out their caves, when sets the sun. Yes, 'tis a blessing here to breathe and muse. And cold his clay, indeed, who does not yield to thy Ausonian beauty! Clime where the heart softens and the mind expands! Region of mellowed bliss! O most enchanting land!

But we are at the park gates.

They whirled along through a park which would have contained half a hundred of those Patagonian paddocks of modern times which have usurped the name. At length the young Duke was roused from his reverie by Carlstein, proud of his previous knowledge, leaning over and announcing--

'Chateau de Dacre, your Grace!'

The Duke looked up. The sun, which had already set, had tinged with a dying crimson the eastern sky, against which rose a princely edifice.

Castle Dacre was the erection of Vanbrugh, an imaginative artist, whose critics we wish no bitterer fate than not to live in his splendid creations. A s.p.a.cious centre, richly ornamented, though broken, perhaps, into rather too much detail, was joined to wings of a corresponding magnificence by fanciful colonnades. A terrace, extending the whole front, was covered with orange trees, and many a statue, and many an obelisk, and many a temple, and many a fountain, were tinted with the warm twilight. The Duke did not view the forgotten scene of youth without emotion. It was a palace worthy of the heroine on whom he had been musing. The carriage gained the lofty portal. Luigi and Spiridion, who had preceded their master, were ready to receive the Duke, who was immediately ushered to the rooms prepared for his reception. He was later than he had intended, and no time was to be unnecessarily lost in his preparation for his appearance.

His Grace's toilet was already prepared: the magical dressing-box had been unpacked, and the shrine for his devotions was covered with richly-cut bottles of all sizes, arranged in all the elegant combinations which the picturesque fancy of his valet could devise, adroitly intermixed with the golden instruments, the china vases, and the ivory and rosewood brushes, which were worthy even of Delcroix's exquisite inventions.

The Duke of St. James was master of the art of dress, and consequently consummated that paramount operation with the decisive rapidity of one whose principles are settled. He was cognisant of all effects, could calculate in a second all consequences, and obtained his result with that prompt.i.tude and precision which stamp the great artist. For a moment he was plunged in profound abstraction, and at the same time stretched his legs after his drive. He then gave his orders with the decision of Wellington on the arrival of the Prussians, and the battle began.

His Grace had a taste for magnificence in costume; but he was handsome, young, and a duke. Pardon him. Yet to-day he was, on the whole, simple.

Confident in a complexion whose pellucid l.u.s.tre had not yielded to a season of dissipation, his Grace did not dread the want of relief which a white face, a white cravat, and a white waistcoat would seem to imply.

A hair chain set in diamonds, worn in memory of the absent Aphrodite, and to pique the present Dacre, is annexed to a gla.s.s, which reposes in the waistcoat pocket. This was the only weight that the Duke of St.

James ever carried. It was a bore, but it was indispensable.

It is done. He stops one moment before the long pier-gla.s.s, and shoots a glance which would have read the mind of Talleyrand. It will do.

He a.s.sumes the look, the air that befit the occasion: cordial, but dignified; sublime, but sweet. He descends like a deity from Olympus to a banquet of ill.u.s.trious mortals.

CHAPTER VIII.

_'Fair Women and Brave Men.'_

MR. DACRE received him with affection: his daughter with a cordiality which he had never yet experienced from her. Though more simply dressed than when she first met his ardent gaze, her costume again charmed his practised eye. 'It must be her shape,' thought the young Duke; 'it is magical!'

The rooms were full of various guests, and some of these were presented to his Grace, who was, of course, an object of universal notice, but particularly by those persons who pretended not to be aware of his entrance. The party a.s.sembled at Castle Dacre consisted of some thirty or forty persons, all of great consideration, but of a different character from any with whom the Duke of St. James had been acquainted during his short experience of English society. They were not what are called fashionable people. We have no princes and no amba.s.sadors, no duke who is a gourmand, no earl who is a jockey, no manoeuvring mothers, no flirting daughters, no gambling sons, for your entertainment. There is no superfine gentleman brought down specially from town to gauge the refinement of the manners of the party, and to prevent them, by his constant supervision and occasional sneer, from losing any of the beneficial results of their last campaign. We shall sadly want, too, a Lady Patroness to issue a decree or quote her code of consolidated etiquette. We are not sure that Almack's will ever be mentioned: quite sure that Maradan has never yet been heard of. The Jockey Club may be quoted, but Crockford will be a dead letter. As for the rest, Boodle's is all we can promise; miserable consolation for the bow-window. As for buffoons and artists, to amuse a vacant hour or sketch a vacant face, we must frankly tell you at once that there is not one. Are you frightened?

Will you go on? Will you trust yourself with these savages? Try. They are rude, but they are hospitable.

The party, we have said, were all persons of great consideration; some were n.o.ble, most were rich, all had ancestors. There were the Earl and Countess of Faulconcourt. He looked as if he were fit to reconquer Palestine, and she as if she were worthy to reward him for his valour.

Misplaced in this superior age, he was _sans peur_ and she _sans reproche_. There was Lord Mildmay, an English peer and a French colonel.

Methinks such an incident might have been a better reason for a late measure than an Irishman being returned a member of our Imperial Parliament. There was our friend Lord St. Jerome; of course his stepmother, yet young, and some sisters, pretty as nuns. There were some cousins from the farthest north, Northumbria's bleakest bound, who came down upon Yorkshire like the Goths upon Italy, and were revelling in what they considered a southern clime.

There was an M.P. in whom the Catholics had hopes. He had made a great speech; not only a great speech, but a great impression. His matter certainly was not new, but well arranged, and his images not singularly original, but appositely introduced; in short, a bore, who, speaking on a subject in which a new hand is indulged, and connected with the families whose cause he was pleading, was for once courteously listened to by the very men who determined to avenge themselves for their complaisance by a cough on the first opportunity. But the orator was prudent; he reserved himself, and the session closed with his fame yet full-blown.