Jack Hinton Part 17

'Is Miss Bellew at home?'

'Yes, sir,' said the servant, who stood waiting to precede me upstairs, and announce me.

'Mr. Hinton,' said the man; and the words echoed in the empty drawing-room, as he closed the door behind me. The next moment I heard the rustle of a silk dress, and Miss Bellew came out of the boudoir and walked towards me. Contrary to her usual habit--which was to hold out her hand to me--she now came timidly, hesitatingly forward, her eyes downcast, and her whole air and appearance indicating, not only the traces of sorrow, but of physical suffering.

'Mr. Hinton,' said she, in a voice every accent of which vibrated on my heart, 'I have taken the liberty to ask a few moments' interview with you; for, although it is not only probable, but almost certain, we shall not meet again, yet I wish to explain certain portions of my conduct, and, indeed, to make them the reason of a favour I have to ask at your hands.'

'Permit me to interrupt you for a moment,' said I. 'It is evident how painful the matter you would speak of is to you; you have no need of explanation, least of all to me. By accident, I overheard that which, however high my esteem for Miss Bellew before, could but elevate her in my eyes. Pa.s.s then at once, I beseech you, to what you call a favour; there is no service you can seek for----'

'I thank you,' replied she, in a voice scarcely articulate; 'you have, indeed, spared me much in not asking me to speak of what it is misery enough to remember. But it is not the first time my unprotected position in this house has exposed me to outrage: though a.s.suredly it shall be the last.' The tone of indignation she spoke in supplied her with energy, as she hurriedly continued: 'Already, Mr. Hinton, persons have dared to build a scandal upon the frail foundation of this insolent wager. Your name has been mixed up with it in such a way that no possible intercourse could exist between us without being construed into evidence of a falsehood; therefore, I have made up my mind to ask you to discontinue your visits here, for the few days I may yet remain. I have already written home; the answer may arrive the day after to-morrow; and, while I feel that I but ill repay the hospitality and kindness I have received, and have met with, in closing the door to a most valued guest, I am a.s.sured you will understand and approve my motives, and not refuse me my request.'

Delighted at the prospect of being in some way engaged in a service, I had listened with a throbbing heart, up to the moment she concluded.

Nothing could so completely overthrow all my hopes as these last few words. Seeing my silence and my confusion--for I knew not what to say --she added, in a slightly tremulous voice--

'I am sorry, Mr. Hinton, that my little knowledge of the world should have led me into this indiscretion. I perceive from your manner that I have asked a sacrifice you are unwilling to make. I ought to have known that habits have their influence, as well as inclinations; and that this house, being the resort of your friends----'

'Oh, how much, how cruelly you have mistaken me! Not on this account, not for such reasons as you suppose did I hesitate in my reply; far from it. Indeed, the very cause which made me a frequent visitor of this house, is that which now renders me unable to answer you.' A slight flush upon her cheek and a tremulous motion of her lip, prevented my adding more. 'Fear not, Miss Bellew,' said I, 'fear not from me; however different the feeling that would prompt it, no speech of mine shall cause you pain to listen to, however the buried thought may rack my own bosom. You shall have your request; good-bye.'

'Nay, nay, not so,' said she, as she raised her handkerchief to her eyes, and gave a soft but sickly smile; 'you mustn't go without my thanking you for all your kindness. It may so chance that one day or other you will visit the wild west; if so, pray don't forget that my father, of whom you have heard me speak so much, would be but too happy to thank one who has been so kind to his daughter. And, if that day should come'--here a slight gleam of animation shot across her features--' I beseech you not to think, from what you will see of me there, that I have forgotten all your good teaching, and all your lessons about London manners, though I sadly fear that neither my dress nor deportment will testify in my favour; and so, good-bye.'

She drew her glove from her hand as she spoke. I raised the taper fingers, respectfully, to my lips, and, without venturing another look, muttered 'good-bye,' and left the room.

As step by step I loitered on the stairs, I struggled with myself against the rising temptation to hurry back to her presence, and tell her that, although hitherto the fancied security of meeting her every day had made me a stranger to my own emotions, the hour of parting had dispelled the illusion; the thought of separation had unveiled the depth of my heart, and told me that I loved her. Was this true?

CHAPTER XV. THE LETTER FROM HOME

Feigning illness to O'Grady as the reason of my not going to the Rooneys, I kept my quarters for several days, during which time it required all my resolution to enable me to keep my promise; and scarcely an hour of the day went over without my feeling tempted to mount my horse and try if, perchance, I could not catch even a pa.s.sing look at her once more. Miss Bellew was the first woman who had ever treated me as a man; this, in itself, had a strong hold on my feelings; for after all, what flattery is there so artful as that which invests us with a character to which we feel in our hearts our pretension is doubtful? Why has college life, why has the army, such a claim upon our grat.i.tude at our outset in the world? Is it not the acknowledgment of our manhood?

And for the same reason the man who first accepts our bill, and the woman who first receives our addresses, have an unqualified right to our regard for evermore.

It is the sense of what we seem to others that moulds and fas.h.i.+ons us through life; and how many a character that seems graven in letters of adamant took its type, after all, from some chance or casual circ.u.mstance, some pa.s.sing remark, some hazarded expression! We begin by simulating a part, and we end by dovetailing it into our nature; thence the change which a first pa.s.sion works in every young mind. The ambition to be loved and the desire to win affection teach us those ways of pleasing, which, whether real or affected, become part and parcel of ourselves. Little know we that in the pa.s.sion we believe to be the most disinterested how much of pure egoism is mixed up; and well is it for us that such is the case. The imaginary standard we set up before ourselves is a goal to strive for, an object of high hope before us; and few, if any, of our bolder enterprises in after-life have not their birth in the cradle of first love. The accolade, that in olden days by its magic touch converted the humble squire into the spurred and belted knight, had no such charm as the first beam from a bright eye, when, falling upon the hidden depths of our heart, it has shown us a mine of rich thoughts, of dazzling hopes, of bright desires. This indeed is a change; and who is there, having felt it, has not walked forth a prouder and a n.o.bler spirit?

Thoughts like these came rus.h.i.+ng on my mind as I reflected on my pa.s.sion for Louisa Bellew; and as I walked my room my heart bounded with elation, and my step grew firm in its tread, for I felt that already a new influence was beaming on me, a new light was s.h.i.+ning upon my path in life. Musing thus, I paid but little attention to my servant who had just left a letter upon my table; my eye, at length, glanced at the address, which I perceived was in my mother's handwriting. I opened it somewhat carelessly, for somehow my dear mother's letters had gradually decreased in their interest as my anti-Irish prejudices grew weaker by time; her exclusively English notions I could no longer respond to so freely as before; and as I knew the injustice of some of her opinions, I felt proportionably dispose to mistrust the truth of many others.

The letter, as usual, was crossed and recrossed; for nothing, after all, was so thorough a criterion of fas.h.i.+on as a penurious avoidance of postage, and in consequence scarcely a portion of the paper was uncovered by ink. The detail of b.a.l.l.s and dinners, the gossip of the town, the rumoured changes in the ministry--who was to come in and who to go out; whether Lord Arthur got a regiment, or Lady Mary a son--had all become comparatively uninteresting to me. What we know and what we live in, is the world to us; and the arrival of a new bear is as much a matter of interest in the prairies of the far west as the first night of a new ballet in the circles of Paris. In all probability, therefore, after satisfying myself that my friends were well, I should have been undutiful enough to put my mother's letter to bed in a card-rack without any very immediate intention of disturbing its slumbers, when suddenly the word 'Rooney' attracted my eye, and at once awakened my curiosity.

How the name of these people should have come to my mother's aristocratic ears I could not conceive; for although I had myself begun a letter about them, yet, on second thoughts, I deemed it better to consign it to destruction than risk a discovery, by no means necessary.

I now sat patiently down before the fire, resolved to spell over the letter from beginning to end, and suffer nothing to escape me. All her letters, like the preamble of a deed, began with a certain formula---a species of lamentation over her wretched health; the difficulty of her case, which, consisting in the absence of all symptoms, had puzzled the Faculty for years long; the inclemency of the weather, which by some fatality of fortune was sure to be rainy when Dr. Y------ said it ought to be fine, and oppressively hot when he a.s.sured her she required a bracing element; besides, it was evident the medical men mistook her case, and what chance had she, with Providence and the College of Physicians against her! Then every one was unkind--n.o.body believed her sick, or thought her valuable life in danger, although from four o'clock in the afternoon to the same hour the next morning she was continually before their eyes, driving in the park, visiting, dining, and even dancing, too; in fact, exerting herself in every imaginable shape and form for the sake of an ungrateful world that had nothing but hollow civilities to show her, instead of tears for her sufferings. Skimming my eye rapidly over this, I came at length to the well-known paragraph which always concluded this exordium, and which I could have repeated by heart--the purport of it being simply a prophetic menace of what would be the state, and what the feelings, of various persons unknown, when at her demise they discovered how unjustly, how ungenerously, how cruelly, they had once or twice complimented her upon her health and looks, during her lifetime. The undying remorse of those unfeeling wretches, among whom it was very plain my father was numbered, was expatiated upon with much force and Christian charity; for as certain joint-stock companies contrive in their advertis.e.m.e.nts to give an apparent stability to their firm, by quoting some well-known Coutts or Drummond as their banker, so my poor mother, by simply introducing the word 'Providence'

into all her worldly transactions, thought she was discharging the most rigid of Christian duties, and securing a happy retreat for herself when that day should arrive when neither rouge nor false hair would supply the deficiencies of youth, and death should unlock the jaw the dentist had furnished.

After this came the column of court gossip, the last pun of the prince, and a _mot_ of Mr. Canning. 'We hope,' continued she, 'poor Somerset will go to Madrid as amba.s.sador: to refuse him would be a great cruelty, as he has been ordered by his medical men to try a southerly climate.'

Hum; ah!--'Lady Jane to replace Miss Barclay with the Landgravine.' Very stupid all this. But come, here we have it, the writing too changes as if a different spirit had dictated it.

'_Two o'clock_. I've just returned from the Grevilles, seriously ill from the effect of the news that has reached me. Wretched boy! what have you done? What frightful career of imprudence have you entered upon?

Write to me at once; for although I shall take immediate steps for your recall, I shall be in a fever of impatience till you tell me all about it. Poor dear Lord Dudley de Vere, how I love him for the way he speaks of you! for although, evidently, your conduct to him has been something very gross, yet his language respecting you is marked not only by forbearance, but by kindness. Indeed, he attributes the spirit you have manifested to the instigation of another member of the staff, whose name, with his habitual delicacy, we could not prevail upon him to disclose. His account of that wretched country is distressing indeed; the frightful state of society, the barbarism of the natives, and the frequency of bloodshed. I shall not close my eyes to-night thinking of you; though he has endeavoured to rea.s.sure me, by telling us, that as the Castle is a strong place, and a considerable military force always there, you are in comparative safety. But, my dear child, who are these frightful Rooneys, with the odious house where all this gambling and ruin goes forward? How feelingly poor Lord Dudley spoke of the trials young men are exposed to! His parents have indeed a treasure in him.

Rooney appears to be a money-lender, a usurer--most probably a Jew.

His wretched wife, what can she be? And that designing minx, niece, daughter, or whatever this Miss Belloo--what a shocking name!--may be?

To think you should have fallen among such people! Lord George's debts are, they say, very considerable, all owing, as he a.s.sures me, to his unfortunate acquaintance with this Rooney, with whom he appears to have had bill transactions for some time past. If your difficulties were only on the score of money I should think little of it; but a quarrelsome, rancorous spirit, a taste for low company, and vulgar a.s.sociates, and a tendency to drink--these, indeed, are very shocking features, and calculated to inflict much misery on your parents.

'However, let us, as far as possible, endeavour to repair the mishap.

I write by this post to this Mr. Rooney, requesting him to send in his account to your father, and that in future any dinners, or wine, you may have at his house will not be paid for, as you are under age. I shall also let him know that the obscurity of his rank in life, and the benighted state of the country he lives in, shall prove no safeguard to him from our vigilance; and as the chancellor dines with us to-morrow, I think of asking him if he couldn't be punished some way. Transportation, they tell me, has already nearly got rid of the gypsies. As for yourself, make your arrangements to return immediately; for, although your father knows nothing about it, I intend to ask Sir Henry Gordon to call on the Duke of York, and contrive an exchange for you. How I hate this secret adviser of yours! how I detest the Rooneys! how I abhor the Iris.h.!.+ You have only to come back with long hair, and the frightful accent, to break the heart of your affectionate but afflicted mother.

'Your cousin Julia desires her regards. I must say she has not shown a due respect to my feelings since the arrival of this sad intelligence; it is only this minute she has finished a caricature of you making love to a wild Irish girl with wings. This is not only cruel towards me, but an unbecoming sarcasm towards a wretched people, to whom the visitations of Providence should not be made matters of reproach.'

Thus concluded this famous epistle, at which, notwithstanding that every line offended me deeply, I could not refrain from bursting into laughter. My opinion of Lord Dudley had certainly not been of the highest; but yet was I totally unprepared for the apparent depth of villainy his character possessed. But I knew not, then, how strong an alloy of cunning exists in every fool; and how, almost invariably, a narrow intellect and a malevolent disposition are a.s.sociated in the same individual.

There is no prejudice more popular, nor is there any which is better worth refuting, than that which attributes to folly certain good qualities of heart, as a kind of compensation for the deficiency in those of the head. Now, although there are of course instances to the contrary, yet will the fact be found generally true, that mediocrity of mind has its influence in producing a mischievous disposition. Unable to carry on any lengthened chain of reasoning, the man of narrow intellect looks for some immediate result; and in his anxiety to attain his object, forgetful of the value of both character and credit, he is prepared to sacrifice the whole game of life, provided he secure but the odd trick. Besides, the very insufficiency of his resources leads him out of himself for his enjoyments and his occupations. Watching, therefore, the game of life, he gradually acquires a certain low and underhand cunning, which, being mistaken by himself for ability, he omits no occasion to display; and hence begins the petty warfare of malice he wages against the world with all the spiteful ingenuity and malevolence of a monkey.

I could trace through all my mother's letter the dexterity with which Lord Dudley avoided committing himself respecting me, while his delicacy regarding O'Grady's name was equally conspicuous to a certain extent. He might have been excused if he bore no good-will to one or other of us; but what could palliate his ingrat.i.tude to the Rooneys? What could gloss over the base return he made them for all their hospitalities and attention? for nothing was more clear than that the light in which he represented them to my mother made them appear as low and intriguing adventurers.

This was all bad enough; but what should I say of the threatened letter to them? In what a position would it place _me_, before those who had been uniformly kind and good-natured towards me! The very thought of this nearly drove me to distraction, and I confess it was in no dutiful mood I crushed up the epistle in my hand, and walked my room in an agony of shame and vexation.

CHAPTER XVI. A MORNING IN TOWN

The morning after the receipt of the letter, the contents of which I have in part made known to the reader, O'Grady called on me to accompany him into the city.

'I am on a borrowing expedition, Jack,' cried he; 'and there's nothing like having a new face with one. Cavendish, Hopeton, and the rest of them, are so well known, it's of no use having them. But you, my boy, you 're fresh; your smooth chin does not look like a protested bill, and you've got a _degage_, careless manner, a kind of unsuspicious look about you, a man never has, after a bailiff has given him an epaulette of five dirty fingers.'

'But, Phil,' said I, 'if you really want money----'

'My very excellent young friend,' interrupted he, in a kind of sermon voice, 'don't finish it, I beseech you; that is the very last thing in the way of exchequer a gentleman is ever driven to--borrowing from a friend. Heaven forbid! But even supposing the case that one's friend has money, why, the presumption is, that he must have borrowed it himself; so that you are sponging upon his ingenuity, not his income. Besides, why riddle one's own s.h.i.+ps, while there is an enemy before us to fight?

Please to remember the money-lenders, the usurers, the stockbroking knaves at fifty per cent, that the world is glutted with; these are the true game for a sporting gentleman, who would rather harpoon a shark any day, than spear a salmon.'

'But what's become of Paul? Is he not available.'

'Don't you know what has happened there? But I was forgetting you 've kept the house this week past. In the first place, La Belle Louise has gone home, Paul has taken his departure for the circuit, and Mrs. Paul, after three days' sharp hysterics, has left town for her villa, near Bray--old Harvey finding it doubtless more convenient to visit her there, with twenty guineas for his fee, than to receive one for his call at Stephen's Green.'

'And what is supposed to be the cause of all this?' said I, scarce able to conceal my agitation.

'The report goes,' replied he, 'that some bank has broke in Calcutta or the Caucasus, or somewhere, or that some gold-mine in Peru, in which Paul had a share, has all turned out to be only plated goods; for it was on the receipt of a letter, on the very morning of Paul's departure, that she took so dangerously ill; and as Paul, in his confusion, brought the attorney, instead of the surgeon-general, the case became alarming, and they gave her so much ether and sal-volatile that it required the united strength of the family to keep her from ascending like a balloon.

However, the worst of it all is, the house is shut, the windows closed, and where lately on the door-steps a pair of yellow plush breeches figured bright and splendent as the glorious sun, a dusky-looking planet in threadbare black now informs you that the family are from home, and not expected back for the summer.'

'Perhaps I can explain the mystery,' said I, as a blush of shame burned on my cheek. Read this.'

So saying, I handed O'Grady the letter, doubled down at the part where Lord Dudley's mention of the Rooneys began. Grieved as I felt thus to expose the absurd folly of my mother's conduct, yet I felt the necessity of having at least one friend to advise with, and that, to render his counsel of any value, a perfect candour on my part was equally imperative.

While his eye glanced over the lines, I walked towards the window, expecting at each moment some open burst of indignation would escape him--some outbreak of pa.s.sionate warmth, at the cold-blooded ingrat.i.tude and malevolence of one whom previously we had regarded but as a fool.

Not so; on the contrary, he read the letter to the end with an unchanged countenance, folded it up with great composure, and then turning his back to the fire, he burst out into a fit of the most immoderate laughter.

'Look ye, Jack,' cried he, in a voice almost suffocated with the emotion, 'I am a poor man, have scarcely a guinea I can call my own, yet I 'd have given the best hack in my stable to have seen the Rooneys reading that letter. There, there! don't talk to me, boy, about villainy, ingrat.i.tude, and so forth. The fun of it, man, covers all the rest. Only to think of Mr. Paul Rooney, the Amphytrion of viceroys, chancellors, bishops, major-generals, and lord mayors, asked for his bill--to score up all your champagne and your curacoa, your turtle, your devilled kidneys; all the heavy brigade of your grand dinners, and all the light infantry of luncheons, breakfasts, grilled bones, and sandwiches! The Lord forgive your mother for putting it in his head!

_My_ chalk would be a fearful one, not to speak of the ugly item of "cash advanced." Oh, it 'll kill me, I know that! Don't look so serious, man; you may live fifty years, and never have so good a joke to laugh at. Tell me, Jack, do you think your mother has kept a copy of the letter? I would give my right eye for it. What a fearful temper Paul will be in, on circuit! and as to Mrs. Rooney, it will go hard with her but she cuts the whole aristocracy for at least a week. There never was anything like it. To hint at transporting the Princess O'Toole, whose ancestor was here in the time of Moses. Ah, Jack, how little respect your mother appears to have for an old family! She evidently has no cla.s.sical a.s.sociations to hallow her memory withal.'

'I confess,' said I, somewhat tartly, 'had I antic.i.p.ated the spirit with which you have taken up this matter, I doubt whether I should have shown you the letter.'