My Novel Part 124

But by-and-by a still greater capitalist than d.i.c.k Avenel, finding out that Screwstown was at the mouth of a coal mine, and that d.i.c.k's profits were great, erected a still uglier edifice, with a still taller chimney.

And having been brought up to the business, and making his residence in the town, while d.i.c.k employed a foreman and flourished in London, this infamous compet.i.tor so managed, first to share, and then gradually to sequester, the profits which d.i.c.k had hitherto monopolized, that no wonder Mr. Avenel thought compet.i.tion should have its limits. "The tongue touches where the tooth aches," as Dr. Riccabocca would tell us. By little and little our Juvenile Talleyrand (I beg the elder great man's pardon) wormed out from d.i.c.k this grievance, and in the grievance discovered the origin of d.i.c.k's connection with the money-lender.

"But Levy," said Avenel, candidly, "is a decentish chap in his way,--friendly too. Mrs. A. finds him useful; brings some of your young highflyers to her soirees. To be sure, they don't dance,--stand all in a row at the door, like mutes at a funeral. Not but what they have been uncommon civil to me lately, Spendquick particularly. By-the-by, I dine with him to-morrow. The aristocracy are behindhand,--not smart, sir, not up to the march; but when a man knows how to take 'em, they beat the New Yorkers in good manners. I'll say that for them. I have no prejudice."

"I never saw a man with less; no prejudice even against Levy."

"No, not a bit of it! Every one says he's a Jew; he says he's not. I don't care a b.u.t.ton what he is. His money is English,--that's enough for any man of a liberal turn of mind. His charges, too, are moderate. To be sure, he knows I shall pay them; only what I don't like in him is a sort of way he has of mon-cher-ing and my-good-fellow-ing one, to do things quite out of the natural way of that sort of business. He knows I have got parliamentary influence. I could return a couple of members for Screwstown, and one, or perhaps two, for Lansmere, where I have of late been cooking up an interest; and he dictates to--no, not dictates--but tries to humbug me into putting in his own men. However, in one respect, we are likely to agree. He says you want to come into parliament. You seem a smart young fellow; but you must throw over that stiff red-tapist of yours, and go with Public Opinion, and--Myself."

"You are very kind, Avenel; perhaps when we come to compare opinions we may find that we agree entirely. Still, in Egerton's present position, delicacy to him--However, we'll not discuss that now. But you really think I might come in for Lansmere,--against the L'Estrange interest, too, which must be strong there?"

"It was very strong, but I've smashed it, I calculate."

"Would a contest there cost very much?"

"Well, I guess you must come down with the ready. But, as you say, time enough to discuss that when you have squared your account with 'delicacy;' come to me then, and we'll go into it."

Randal, having now squeezed his orange dry, had no desire to waste his time in brus.h.i.+ng up the rind with his coat-sleeve, so he unhooked his arm from Avenel's, and, looking at his watch, discovered he should be just in time for an appointment of the most urgent business,--hailed a cab, and drove off.

d.i.c.k looked hipped and disconsolate at being left alone; he yawned very loud, to the astonishment of three prim old maiden Belgravians who were pa.s.sing that way; and then his mind began to turn towards his factory at Screwstown, which had led to his connection with the baron; and he thought over a letter he had received from his foreman that morning, informing him that it was rumoured at Screwstown that Mr. Dyce, his rival, was about to have new machinery on an improved principle; and that Mr. Dyce had already gone up to town, it was supposed, with the intention of concluding a purchase for a patent discovery to be applied to the new machinery, and which that gentleman had publicly declared in the corn-market "would shut up Mr. Avenel's factory before the year was out." As this menacing epistle recurred to him, d.i.c.k felt his desire to yawn incontinently checked. His brow grew very dark; and he walked, with restless strides, on and on, till he found himself in the Strand. He then got into an omnibus, and proceeded to the city, wherein he spent the rest of the day looking over machines and foundries, and trying in vain to find out what diabolical invention the over-compet.i.tion of Mr.

Dyce had got hold of. "If," said d.i.c.k Avenel to himself, as he returned fretfully homeward--"if a man like me, who has done so much for British industry and go-a-head principles, is to be catawampously champed up by a mercenary, selfish cormorant of a capitalist like that interloping blockhead in drab breeches, Tom Dyce, all I can say is, that the sooner this cursed old country goes to the dogs, the better pleased I shall be.

I wash my hands of it."

CHAPTER XXI.

Randal's mind was made up. All he had learned in regard to Levy had confirmed his resolves or dissipated his scruples. He had started from the improbability that Pesehiera would offer, and the still greater improbability that Peschiera would pay him, L10,000 for such information or aid as he could bestow in furthering the count's object. But when Levy took such proposals entirely on himself, the main question to Randal became this,--could it be Levy's interest to make so considerable a sacrifice? Had the baron implied only friendly sentiments as his motives, Randal would have felt sure he was to be taken in; but the usurer's frank a.s.surance that it would answer to him in the long-run to concede to Randal terms so advantageous, altered the case, and led our young philosopher to look at the affair with calm, contemplative eyes.

Was it sufficiently obvious that Levy counted on an adequate return?

Might he calculate on reaping help by the bushel if he sowed it by the handful? The result of Randal's cogitations was that the baron might fairly deem himself no wasteful sower. In the first place, it was clear that Levy, not without reasonable ground, believed that he could soon replace, with exceeding good interest, any sum he might advance to Randal, out of the wealth which Randal's prompt information might bestow on Levy's client, the count; and secondly, Randal's self-esteem was immense, and could he but succeed in securing a pecuniary independence on the instant, to free him from the slow drudgery of the Bar, or from a precarious reliance on Audley Egerton, as a politician out of power, his convictions of rapid triumph in public life were as strong as if whispered by an angel or promised by a fiend. On such triumphs, with all the social position they would secure, Levy might well calculate for repayment by a thousand indirect channels. Randal's sagacity detected that, through all the good-natured or liberal actions ascribed to the usurer, Levy had steadily pursued his own interests, he saw that Levy meant to get him into his power, and use his abilities as instruments for digging new mines, in which Baron Levy would claim the right of large royalties. But at that thought Randal's pale lip curled disdainfully; he confided too much in his own powers not to think that he could elude the grasp of the usurer, whenever it suited him to do so. Thus, on a survey, all conscience hushed itself; his mind rushed buoyantly on to antic.i.p.ations of the future. He saw the hereditary estates regained,--no matter how mortgaged,--for the moment still his own, legally his own, yielding for the present what would suffice for competence to one of few wants, and freeing his name from that t.i.tle of Adventurer, which is so prodigally given in rich old countries to those who have no estates but their brains. He thought of Violante but as the civilized trader thinks of a trifling coin, of a gla.s.s bead, which he exchanges with some barbarian for gold dust; he thought of Frank Hazeldean married to the foreign woman of beggared means, and repute that had known the breath of scandal,--married, and living on post-obit instalments of the Casino property; he thought of the poor squire's resentment; his avarice swept from the lands annexed to Rood on to the broad fields of Hazeldean; he thought of Avenel, of Lansmere, of parliament; with one hand he grasped fortune, with the next power. "And yet I entered on life with no patrimony (save a ruined hall and a barren waste),--no patrimony but knowledge. I have but turned knowledge from books to men; for books may give fame after death, but men give us power in life." And all the while he thus ruminated, his act was speeding his purpose. Though it was but in a miserable hack-cab that he erected airy scaffoldings round airy castles, still the miserable hack-cab was flying fast, to secure the first foot of solid ground whereon to transfer the mental plan of the architect to foundations of positive slime and clay. The cab stopped at the door of Lord Lansmere's house. Randal had suspected Violante to be there: he resolved to ascertain. Randal descended from his vehicle and rang the bell. The lodge-keeper opined the great wooden gates.

"I have called to see the young lady staying here,--the foreign young lady."

Lady Lansmere had been too confident of the security of her roof to condescend to give any orders to her servants with regard to her guest, and the lodge-keeper answered directly,--

"At home, I believe, sir. I rather think she is in the garden with my lady."

"I see," said Randal; and he did see the form of Violante at a distance.

"But, since she is walking, I will not disturb her at present. I will call another day."

The lodge-keeper bowed respectfully, Randal jumped into his cab: "To Curzon Street,--quick!"

CHAPTER XXII.

Harley had made one notable oversight in that appeal to Beatrice's better and gentler nature, which he entrusted to the advocacy of Leonard,--a scheme in itself very characteristic of Harley's romantic temper, and either wise or foolish, according as his indulgent theory of human idiosyncrasies in general, and of those peculiar to Beatrice di Negra in especial, was the dream of an enthusiast, or the inductive conclusion of a sound philosopher.

Harley had warned Leonard not to fall in love with the Italian,--he had forgotten to warn the Italian not to fall in love with Leonard; nor had he ever antic.i.p.ated the probability of that event. This is not to be very much wondered at; for if there be anything on which the most sensible men are dull-eyed, where those eyes are not lighted by jealousy, it is as to the probabilities of another male creature being beloved. All, the least vain of the whiskered gender, think it prudent to guard themselves against being too irresistible to the fair s.e.x; and each says of his friend, "Good fellow enough, but the last man for that woman to fall in love with!"

But certainly there appeared on the surface more than ordinary cause for Harley's blindness in the special instance of Leonard.

Whatever Beatrice's better qualities, she was generally esteemed worldly and ambitious. She was pinched in circ.u.mstances, she was luxuriant and extravagant; how was it likely that she could distinguish any aspirant of the humble birth and fortunes of the young peasant-author? As a coquette, she might try to win his admiration and attract his fancy; but her own heart would surely be guarded in the triple mail of pride, poverty, and the conventional opinions of the world in which she lived.

Had Harley thought it possible that Madame di Negra could stoop below her station, and love, not wisely, but too well, he would rather have thought that the object would be some brilliant adventurer of fas.h.i.+on, some one who could turn against herself all the arts of deliberate fascination, and all the experience bestowed by frequent conquest. One so simple as Leonard, so young and so new! Harley L'Estrange would have smiled at himself, if the idea of that image subjugating the ambitious woman to the disinterested love of a village maid had once crossed his mind. Nevertheless, so it was, and precisely from those causes which would have seemed to Harley to forbid the weakness.

It was that fresh, pure heart, it was that simple, earnest sweetness, it was that contrast in look, in tone, in sentiment, and in reasonings, to all that had jaded and disgusted her in the circle of her admirers,--it was all this that captivated Beatrice at the first interview with Leonard. Here was what she had confessed to the sceptical Randal she had dreamed and sighed for. Her earliest youth had pa.s.sed into abhorrent marriage, without the soft, innocent crisis of human life,--virgin love.

Many a wooer might have touched her vanity, pleased her fancy, excited her ambition--her heart had never been awakened; it woke now. The world, and the years that the world had wasted, seemed to fleet away as a cloud. She was as if restored to the blush and the sigh of youth,--the youth of the Italian maid. As in the restoration of our golden age is the spell of poetry with us all, so such was the spell of the poet himself on her.

Oh, how exquisite was that brief episode in the life of the woman palled with the "hack sights and sounds" of worldly life! How strangely happy were those hours, when, lured on by her silent sympathy, the young scholar spoke of his early struggles between circ.u.mstance and impulse, musing amidst the flowers, and hearkening to the fountain; or of his wanderings in the desolate, lamp-lit streets, while the vision of Chatterton's glittering eyes shone dread through the friendless shadows.

And as he spoke, whether of his hopes or his fears, her looks dwelt fondly on the young face, that varied between pride and sadness,--pride ever so gentle, and sad ness ever so n.o.bly touching. She was never weary of gazing on that brow, with its quiet power; but her lids dropped before those eyes, with their serene, unfathomable pa.s.sion. She felt, as they haunted her, what a deep and holy thing love in such souls must be. Leonard never spoke to her of Helen--that reserve every reader can comprehend. To natures like his, first love is a mystery; to confide it is to profane. But he fulfilled his commission of interesting her in the exile and his daughter, and his description of them brought tears to her eyes. She inly resolved not to aid Peschiera in his designs on Violante.

She forgot for the moment that her own fortune was to depend on the success of those designs. Levy had arranged so that she was not reminded of her poverty by creditors,--she knew not how. She knew nothing of business. She gave herself up to the delight of the present hour, and to vague prospects of a future a.s.sociated with that young image,--with that face of a guardian angel that she saw before her, fairest in the moments of absence; for in those moments came the life of fairy-land, when we shut our eyes on the world, and see through the haze of golden revery.

Dangerous, indeed, to Leonard would have been the soft society of Beatrice di Negra, had not his heart been wholly devoted to one object, and had not his ideal of woman been from that object one sole and indivisible reflection. But Beatrice guessed not this barrier between herself and him. Amidst the shadows that he conjured up from his past life, she beheld no rival form. She saw him lonely in the world, as she was herself. And in his lowly birth, his youth, in the freedom from presumption which characterized him in all things (save that confidence in his intellectual destinies which is the essential attribute of genius), she but grew the bolder by the belief that, even if he loved her, he would not dare to hazard the avowal.

And thus, one day, yielding, as she had ever been wont to yield, to the impulse of her quick Italian heart--how she never remembered, in what words she could never recall--she spoke, she owned her love, she pleaded, with tears and blushes, for love in return. All that pa.s.sed was to her as a dream,--a dream from which she woke with a fierce sense of agony, of humiliation,--woke as the woman "scorned." No matter how gratefully, how tenderly Leonard had replied, the reply was refusal.

For the first time she learned she had a rival; that all he could give of love was long since, from his boyhood, given to another. For the first time in her life, that ardent nature knew jealousy, its torturing stings, its thirst for vengeance, its tempest of loving hate. But, to outward appearance, silent and cold she stood as marble. Words that sought to soothe fell on her ear unheeded: they were drowned by the storm within. Pride was the first feeling which dominated the warring elements that raged in her soul. She tore her hand from that which clasped hers with so loyal a respect. She could have spurned the form that knelt at her feet, not for love, but for pardon. She pointed to the door with the gesture of an insulted queen. She knew no more till she was alone. Then came that rapid flash of conjecture peculiar to the storms of jealousy; that which seems to single from all nature the one object to dread and to destroy; the conjecture so often false, yet received at once by our convictions as the revelation of instinctive truth. He to whom she had humbled herself loved another; whom but Violante,--whom else, young and beautiful, had he named in the record of his life?--None! And he had sought to interest her, Beatrice di Negra, in the object of his love; hinted at dangers which Beatrice knew too well; implied trust in Beatrice's will to protect. Blind fool that she had been! This, then, was the reason why he had come, day after day, to Beatrice's house; this was the charm that had drawn him thither; this--she pressed her hands to her burning temples, as if to stop the torture of thought. Suddenly a voice was heard below, the door opened, and Randal Leslie entered.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Punctually at eight o'clock that evening, Baron Levy welcomed the new ally he had secured. The pair dined en tete a tete, discussing general matters till the servants left them to their wine. Then said the baron, rising and stirring the fire--then said the baron, briefly and significantly,

"Well!"

"As regards the property you spoke of," answered Randal, "I am willing to purchase it on the terms you name. The only point that perplexes me is how to account to Audley Egerton, to my parents, to the world, for the power of purchasing it."

"True," said the baron, without even a smile at the ingenious and truly Greek manner in which Randal had contrived to denote his meaning, and conceal the ugliness of it--"true, we must think of that. If we could manage to conceal the real name of the purchaser for a year or so, it might be easy,--you may be supposed to have speculated in the Funds; or Egerton may die, and people may believe that he had secured to you something handsome from the ruins of his fortune."

"Little chance of Egerton's dying."

"Humph!" said the baron. "However, this is a mere detail, reserved for consideration. You can now tell us where the young lady is?"

"Certainly. I could not this morning,--I can now. I will go with you to the count. Meanwhile, I have seen Madame di Negra; she will accept Frank Hazeldean if he will but offer himself at once."

"Will he not?"

"No! I have been to him. He is overjoyed at my representations, but considers it his duty to ask the consent of his parents. Of course they will not give it; and if there be delay, she will retract. She is under the influence of pa.s.sions on the duration of which there is no reliance."

"What pa.s.sions? Love?"

"Love; but not for Hazeldean. The pa.s.sions that bring her to accept his hand are pique and jealousy. She believes, in a word, that one who seems to have gained the mastery over her affections with a strange suddenness, is but blind to her charms because dazzled by Violante's.

She is prepared to aid in all that can give her rival to Peschiera; and yet, such is the inconsistency of woman" (added the young philosopher, with a shrug of the shoulders), "that she is also prepared to lose all chance of securing him she loves, by bestowing herself on another!"

"Woman, indeed, all over!" said the baron, tapping his snuff-box (Louis Quinze), and regaling his nostrils with a scornful pinch. "But who is the man whom the fair Beatrice has thus honoured? Superb creature! I had some idea of her myself when I bought up her debts; but it might have embarra.s.sed me, in more general plans, as regards the count. All for the best. Who's the man? Not Lord L'Estrange?"

"I do not think it is he; but I have not yet ascertained. I have told you all I know. I found her in a state so excited, so unlike herself, that I had no little difficulty in soothing her into confidence so far.