At dinner he was seated next to Lady Annabel, and it was impossible for any person to be more deferential, soft, and insinuating. He spoke of old days with emotion which he did not attempt to suppress; he alluded to the present with infinite delicacy. But it was very difficult to make way. Lady Annabel was courteous, but she was reserved. His lively reminiscences elicited from her no corresponding sentiment; and no art would induce her to dwell upon the present. If she only would have condescended to compliment him, it would have given him an opportunity of expressing his distaste of the life which he now led, and a description of the only life which he wished to lead; but Lady Annabel studiously avoided affording him any opening of the kind. She treated him like a stranger. She impressed upon him without effort that she would only consider him an acquaintance. How Cadurcis, satiated with the incense of the whole world, sighed for one single congratulation from Lady Annabel! Nothing could move her.
‘I was so surprised to meet you last night,’ at length he again observed. ‘I have made so many inquiries after you. Our dear friend the Bishop was, I fear, almost wearied with my inquiries after Cherbury. I know not how it was, I felt quite a pang when I heard that you had left it, and that all these years, when I have been conjuring up so many visions of what was passing under that dear roof, you were at Weymouth.’
‘Yes. We were at Weymouth some time.’
‘But do not you long to see Cherbury again? I cannot tell you how I pant for it. For my part, I have seen the world, and I have seen enough of it. After all, the end of all our exertions is to be happy at home; that is the end of everything; don’t you think so?’
‘A happy home is certainly a great blessing,’ replied Lady Annabel; ‘and a rare one.’
‘But why should it be rare?’ inquired Lord Cadurcis.
‘It is our own fault,’ said Lady Annabel; ‘our vanity drives us from our hearths.’
‘But we soon return again, and calm and cooled. For my part, I have no object in life but to settle down at the old abbey, and never to quit again our woods. But I shall lead a dull life without my neighbours,’ he added, with a smile, and in a tone half-coaxing.
‘I suppose you never see Lord —— now?’ said Lady Annabel, mentioning his late guardian. There was, as Cadurcis fancied, some sarcasm in the question, though not in the tone in which it was asked.
‘No, I never see him,’ his lordship answered firmly; ‘we differ in our opinions, and I differ from him with regret; but I differ from a sense of duty, and therefore I have no alternative.’
‘The claims of duty are of course paramount,’ observed Lady Annabel.
‘You know my cousin?’ said Cadurcis, to turn the conversation.
‘Yes, and I like him much; he appears to be a sensible, amiable person, of excellent principles.’
‘I am not bound to admire George’s principles,’ said Lord Cadurcis, gaily; ‘but I respect them, because I know that they are conscientious. I love George; he is my only relation, and he is my friend.’
‘I trust he will always be your friend, for I think you will then, at least, know one person on whom you can depend.’
‘I believe it. The friendships of the world are wind.’
‘I am surprised to hear you say so,’ said Lady Annabel.
‘Why, Lady Annabel?’
‘You have so many friends.’
Lord Cadurcis smiled. ‘I wish,’ he said, after a little hesitation, ‘if only for “Auld lang syne,” I might include Lady Annabel Herbert among them.’
‘I do not think there is any basis for friendship between us, my lord,’ she said, very dryly.
‘The past must ever be with me,’ said Lord Cadurcis, ‘and I should have thought a sure and solid one.’
‘Our opinions on all subjects are so adverse, that I must believe that there could be no great sympathy in our feelings.’
‘My feelings are beyond my control,’ he replied; ‘they are, and must ever be, totally independent of my opinions.’
Lady Annabel did not reply. His lordship felt baffled, but he was resolved to make one more effort.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I can scarcely believe myself in London today? To be sitting next to you, to see Miss Herbert, to hear Dr. Masham’s voice. Oh! does it not recall Cherbury, or Marringhurst, or that day at Cadurcis, when you were so good as to smile over my rough repast? Ah! Lady Annabel, those days were happy! those were feelings that can never die! All the glitter and hubbub of the world can never make me forget them, can never make you, I hope, Lady Annabel, quite recall them with an effort. We were friends then: let us be friends now.’
‘I am too old to cultivate new friendships,’ said Lady Annabel; ‘and if we are to be friends, Lord Cadurcis, I am sorry to say that, after the interval that has occurred since we last parted, we should have to begin again.’
‘It is a long time,’ said Cadurcis, mournfully, ‘a very long time, and one, in spite of what the world may think, to which I cannot look back with any self-congratulation. I wished three years ago never to leave Cadurcis again. Indeed I did; and indeed it was not my fault that I quitted it.’
‘It was no one’s fault, I hope. Whatever the cause may have been, I have ever remained quite ignorant of it. I wished, and wish, to remain ignorant of it. I, for one, have ever considered it the wise dispensation of a merciful Providence.’
Cadurcis ground his teeth; a dark look came over him which, when once it rose on his brow, was with difficulty dispelled; and for the remainder of the dinner he continued silent and gloomy.
He was, however, not unobserved by Venetia. She had watched his evident attempts to conciliate her mother with lively interest; she had witnessed their failure with sincere sorrow. In spite of that stormy interview, the results of which, in his hasty departure, and the severance of their acquaintance, she had often regretted, she had always retained for him the greatest affection. During these three years he had still, in her inmost heart, remained her own Plantagenet, her adopted brother, whom she loved, and in whose welfare her feelings were deeply involved. The mysterious circumstances of her birth, and the discoveries to which they had led, had filled her mind with a fanciful picture of human nature, over which she had long brooded. A great poet had become her ideal of a man. Sometimes she had sighed, when musing over her father and Plantagenet on the solitary seashore at Weymouth, that Cadurcis, instead of being the merely amiable, and somewhat narrow-minded being that she supposed, had not been invested with those brilliant and commanding qualities which she felt could alone master her esteem. Often had she, in those abstracted hours, played with her imagination in combining the genius of her father with the soft heart of that friend to whom she was so deeply attached. She had wished, in her reveries, that Cadurcis might have been a great man; that he might have existed in an atmosphere of glory amid the plaudits and admiration of his race; and that then he might have turned from all that fame, so dear to them both, to the heart which could alone sympathise with the native simplicity of his childhood.
The ladies withdrew. The Bishop and another of the guests joined them after a short interval. The rest remained below, and drank their wine with the freedom not unusual in those days, Lord Cadurcis among them, although it was not his habit. But he was not convivial, though he never passed the bottle untouched. He was in one of those dark humours of which there was a latent spring in his nature, but which in old days had been kept in check by his simple life, his inexperienced mind, and the general kindness that greeted him, and which nothing but the caprice and perversity of his mother could occasionally develope. But since the great revolution in his position, since circumstances had made him alike acquainted with his nature, and had brought all society to acknowledge its superiority; since he had gained and felt his irresistible power, and had found all the world, and all the glory of it, at his feet, these moods had become more frequent. The slightest reaction in the self-complacency that was almost unceasingly stimulated by the applause of applauded men and the love of the loveliest women, instantly took the shape and found refuge in the immediate form of the darkest spleen, generally, indeed, brooding in silence, and, if speaking, expressing itself only in sarcasm. Cadurcis was indeed, as we have already described him, the spoiled child of society; a froward and petted darling, not always to be conciliated by kindness, but furious when neglected or controlled. He was habituated to triumph; it had been his lot to come, to see, and to conquer; even the procrastination of certain success was intolerable to him; his energetic volition could not endure a check. To Lady Annabel Herbert, indeed, he was not exactly what he was to others; there was a spell in old associations from which he unconsciously could not emancipate himself, and from which it was his opinion he honoured her in not desiring to be free. He had his reasons for wishing to regain his old, his natural influence, over her heart; he did not doubt for an instant that, if Cadurcis sued, success must follow the condescending effort. He had sued, and he had been met with coldness, almost with disdain. He had addressed her in those terms of tenderness which experience had led him to believe were irresistible, yet to which he seldom had recourse, for hitherto he had not been under the degrading necessity of courting. He had dwelt with fondness on the insignificant past, because it was connected with her; he had regretted, or affected even to despise, the glorious present, because it seemed, for some indefinite cause, to have estranged him from her hearth. Yes! he had humbled himself before her; he had thrown with disdain at her feet all that dazzling fame and expanding glory which seemed his peculiar and increasing privilege. He had delicately conveyed to her that even these would be sacrificed, not only without a sigh, but with cheerful delight, to find himself once more living, as of old, in the limited world of her social affections. Three years ago he had been rejected by the daughter, because he was an undistinguished youth. Now the mother recoiled from his fame. And who was this woman? The same cold, stern heart that had alienated the gifted Herbert; the same narrow, rigid mind that had repudiated ties that every other woman in the world would have gloried to cherish and acknowledge. And with her he had passed his prejudiced youth, and fancied, like an idiot, that he had found sympathy! Yes, so long as he was a slave, a mechanical, submissive slave, bowing his mind to all the traditionary bigotry which she adored, never daring to form an opinion for himself, worshipping her idol, custom, and labouring by habitual hypocrisy to perpetuate the delusions of all around her!
In the meantime, while Lord Cadurcis was chewing the cud of these bitter feelings, we will take the opportunity of explaining the immediate cause of Lady Annabel’s frigid reception of his friendly advances. All that she had heard of Cadurcis, all the information she had within these few days so rapidly acquired of his character and conduct, were indeed not calculated to dispose her to witness the renewal of their intimacy with feelings of remarkable satisfaction. But this morning she had read his poem, the poem that all London was talking of, and she had read it with horror. She looked upon Cadurcis as a lost man. With her, indeed, since her marriage, an imaginative mind had become an object of terror; but there were some peculiarities in the tone of Cadurcis’ genius, which magnified to excess her general apprehension on this head. She traced, in every line, the evidences of a raging vanity, which she was convinced must prompt its owner to sacrifice, on all occasions, every feeling of duty to its gratification. Amid all the fervour of rebellious passions, and the violence of a wayward mind, a sentiment of profound egotism appeared to her impressed on every page she perused. Great as might have been the original errors of Herbert, awful as in her estimation were the crimes to which they had led him, they might in the first instance be traced rather to a perverted view of society than of himself. But self was the idol of Cadurcis; self distorted into a phantom that seemed to Lady Annabel pregnant not only with terrible crimes, but with the basest and most humiliating vices. The certain degradation which in the instance of her husband had been the consequence of a bad system, would, in her opinion, in the case of Cadurcis, be the result of a bad nature; and when she called to mind that there had once been a probability that this individual might have become the husband of her Venetia, her child whom it had been the sole purpose of her life to save from the misery of which she herself had been the victim; that she had even dwelt on the idea with complacency, encouraged its progress, regretted its abrupt termination, but consoled herself by the flattering hope that time, with even more favourable auspices, would mature it into fulfilment; she trembled, and turned pale.
It was to the Bishop that, after dinner, Lady Annabel expressed some of the feelings which the reappearance of Cadurcis had occasioned her.
‘I see nothing but misery for his future,’ she exclaimed; ‘I tremble for him when he addresses me. In spite of the glittering surface on which he now floats, I foresee only a career of violence, degradation, and remorse.’
‘He is a problem difficult to solve,’ replied Masham; ‘but there are elements not only in his character, but his career, so different from those of the person of whom we were speaking, that I am not inclined at once to admit, that the result must necessarily be the same.’
‘I see none,’ replied Lady Annabel; ‘at least none of sufficient influence to work any material change.’
‘What think you of his success?’ replied Masham. ‘Cadurcis is evidently proud of it. With all his affected scorn of the world, he is the slave of society. He may pique the feelings of mankind, but I doubt whether he will outrage them.’
‘He is on such a dizzy eminence,’ replied Lady Annabel, ‘that I do not believe he is capable of calculating so finely. He does not believe, I am sure, in the possibility of resistance. His vanity will tempt him onwards.’
‘Not to persecution,’ said Masham. ‘Now, my opinion of Cadurcis is, that his egotism, or selfism, or whatever you may style it, will ultimately preserve him from any very fatal, from any irrecoverable excesses. He is of the world, worldly. All his works, all his conduct, tend only to astonish mankind. He is not prompted by any visionary ideas of ameliorating his species. The instinct of self-preservation will serve him as ballast.’
‘We shall see,’ said Lady Annabel; ‘for myself, whatever may be his end, I feel assured that great and disgraceful vicissitudes are in store for him.’
‘It is strange after what, in comparison with such extraordinary changes, must be esteemed so brief an interval,’ observed Masham, with a smile, ‘to witness such a revolution in his position. I often think to myself, can this indeed be our little Plantagenet?’
‘It is awful!’ said Lady Annabel; ‘much more than strange. For myself, when I recall certain indications of his feelings when he was last at Cadurcis, and think for a moment of the results to which they might have led, I shiver; I assure you, my dear lord, I tremble from head to foot. And I encouraged him! I smiled with fondness on his feelings! I thought I was securing the peaceful happiness of my child! What can we trust to in this world! It is too dreadful to dwell upon! It must have been an interposition of Providence that Venetia escaped.’
‘Dear little Venetia,’ exclaimed the good Bishop; ‘for I believe I shall call her little Venetia to the day of my death. How well she looks to-night! Her aunt is, I think, very fond of her! See!’
‘Yes, it pleases me,’ said Lady Annabel; but I do wish my sister was not such an admirer of Lord Cadurcis’ poems. You cannot conceive how uneasy it makes me. I am quite annoyed that he was asked here today. Why ask him?’
‘Oh! there is no harm,’ said Masham; ‘you must forget the past. By all accounts, Cadurcis is not a marrying man. Indeed, as I understood, marriage with him is at present quite out of the question. And as for Venetia, she rejected him before, and she will, if necessary, reject him again. He has been a brother to her, and after that he can be no more. Girls never fall in love with those with whom they are bred up.’
‘I hope, I believe there is no occasion for apprehension,’ replied Lady Annabel; ‘indeed, it has scarcely entered my head. The very charms he once admired in Venetia can have no sway over him, as I should think, now. I should believe him as little capable of appreciating Venetia now, as he was when last at Cherbury, of anticipating the change in his own character.’
‘You mean opinions, my dear lady, for characters never change. Believe me, Cadurcis is radically the same as in old days. Circumstances have only developed his latent predisposition.’
‘Not changed, my dear lord! what, that innocent, sweet-tempered, docile child —’
‘Hush! here he comes.’
The Earl and his guests entered the room; a circle was formed round Lady Annabel; some evening visitors arrived; there was singing. It had not been the intention of Lord Cadurcis to return to the drawing-room after his rebuff by Lady Annabel; he had meditated making his peace at Monteagle House; but when the moment of his projected departure had arrived, he could not resist the temptation of again seeing Venetia. He entered the room last, and some moments after his companions. Lady Annabel, who watched the general entrance, concluded he had gone, and her attention was now fully engaged. Lord Cadurcis remained at the end of the room alone, apparently abstracted, and looking far from amiable; but his eye, in reality, was watching Venetia. Suddenly her aunt approached her, and invited the lady who was conversing with Miss Herbert to sing; Lord Cadurcis immediately advanced, and took her seat. Venetia was surprised that for the first time in her life with Plantagenet she felt embarrassed. She had met his look when he approached her, and had welcomed, or, at least, intended to welcome him with a smile, but she was at a loss for words; she was haunted with the recollection of her mother’s behaviour to him at dinner, and she looked down on the ground, far from being at ease.
‘Venetia!’ said Lord Cadurcis.
She started.
‘We are alone,’ he said; ‘let me call you Venetia when we are alone.’
She did not, she could not reply; she felt confused; the blood rose to her cheek.
‘How changed is everything!’ continued Cadurcis. ‘To think the day should ever arrive when I should have to beg your permission to call you Venetia!’
She looked up; she met his glance. It was mournful; nay, his eyes were suffused with tears. She saw at her side the gentle and melancholy Plantagenet of her childhood.
‘I cannot speak; I am agitated at meeting you,’ she said with her native frankness. ‘It is so long since we have been alone; and, as you say, all is so changed.’
‘But are you changed, Venetia?’ he said in a voice of emotion; ‘for all other change is nothing.’
‘I meet you with pleasure,’ she replied; ‘I hear of your fame with pride. You cannot suppose that it is possible I should cease to be interested in your welfare.’
‘Your mother does not meet me with pleasure; she hears of nothing that has occurred to me with pride; your mother has ceased to take an interest in my welfare; and why should you be unchanged?’
‘You mistake my mother.’
‘No, no,’ replied Cadurcis, shaking his head, ‘I have read her inmost soul today. Your mother hates me; me, whom she once styled her son. She was a mother once to me, and you were my sister. If I have lost her heart, why have I not lost yours?’
‘My heart, if you care for it, is unchanged,’ said Venetia.
‘O Venetia, whatever you may think, I never wanted the solace of a sister’s love more than I do at this moment.’
‘I pledged my affection to you when we were children,’ replied Venetia; ‘you have done nothing to forfeit it, and it is yours still.’
‘When we were children,’ said Cadurcis, musingly; ‘when we were innocent; when we were happy. You, at least, are innocent still; are you happy, Venetia?’
‘Life has brought sorrows even to me, Plantagenet.’
The blood deserted his heart when she called him Plantagenet; he breathed with difficulty.
‘When I last returned to Cherbury,’ he said, ‘you told me you were changed, Venetia; you revealed to me on another occasion the secret cause of your affliction. I was a boy then, a foolish ignorant boy. Instead of sympathising with your heartfelt anxiety, my silly vanity was offended by feelings I should have shared, and soothed, and honoured. Ah, Venetia! well had it been for one of us that I had conducted myself more kindly, more wisely.’
‘Nay, Plantagenet, believe me, I remember that interview only to regret it. The recollection of it has always occasioned me great grief. We were both to blame; but we were both children then. We must pardon each other’s faults.’
‘You will hear, that is, if you care to listen, Venetia, much of my conduct and opinions,’ continued Lord Cadurcis, ‘that may induce you to believe me headstrong and capricious. Perhaps I am less of both in all things than the world imagines. But of this be certain, that my feelings towards you have never changed, whatever you may permit them to be; and if some of my boyish judgments have, as was but natural, undergone some transformation, be you, my sweet friend, in some degree consoled for the inconsistency, since I have at length learned duly to appreciate one of whom we then alike knew little, but whom a natural inspiration taught you, at least, justly to appreciate: I need not say I mean the illustrious father of your being.’
Venetia could not restrain her tears; she endeavoured to conceal her agitated countenance behind the fan with which she was fortunately provided.
‘To me a forbidden subject,’ said Venetia, ‘at least with them I could alone converse upon it, but one that my mind never deserts.’
‘O Venetia!’ exclaimed Lord Cadurcis with a sigh, ‘would we were both with him!’
‘A wild thought,’ she murmured, ‘and one I must not dwell upon.’
‘We shall meet, I hope,’ said Lord Cadurcis; ‘we must meet, meet often. I called upon your mother today, fruitlessly. You must attempt to conciliate her. Why should we be parted? We, at least, are friends, and more than friends. I cannot exist unless we meet, and meet with the frankness of old days.’
‘I think you mistake mamma; I think you may, indeed. Remember how lately she has met you, and after how long an interval! A little time, and she will resume her former feelings, and believe that you have never forfeited yours. Besides, we have friends, mutual friends. My aunt admires you, and here I naturally must be a great deal. And the Bishop, he still loves you; that I am sure he does: and your cousin, mamma likes your cousin. I am sure if you can manage only to be patient, if you will only attempt to conciliate a little, all will be as before. Remember, too, how changed your position is,’ Venetia added with a smile; ‘you allow me to forget you are a great man, but mamma is naturally restrained by all this wonderful revolution. When she finds that you really are the Lord Cadurcis whom she knew such a very little boy, the Lord Cadurcis who, without her aid, would never have been able even to write his fine poems, oh! she must love you again. How can she help it?’
Cadurcis smiled. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘In the meantime do not you desert me, Venetia.’
‘That is impossible,’ she replied; ‘the happiest of my days have been passed with you. You remember the inscription on the jewel? I shall keep to my vows.’
‘That was a very good inscription so far as it went,’ said Cadurcis; and then, as if a little alarmed at his temerity, he changed the subject.
‘Do you know,’ said Venetia, after a pause, ‘I am treating you all this time as a poet, merely in deference to public opinion. Not a line have I been permitted to read; but I am resolved to rebel, and you must arrange it all.’
‘Ah!’ said the enraptured Cadurcis; ‘this is fame!’
At this moment the Countess approached them, and told Venetia that her mother wished to speak to her. Lady Annabel had discovered the tête-à-tête, and resolved instantly to terminate it. Lord Cadurcis, however, who was quick as lightning, read all that was necessary in Venetia’s look. Instead of instantly retiring, he remained some little time longer, talked to the Countess, who was perfectly enchanted with him, even sauntered up to the singers, and complimented them, and did not make his bow until he had convinced at least the mistress of the mansion, if not her sister-in-law, that it was not Venetia Herbert who was his principal attraction in this agreeable society.
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