m ™ }.fi; LI E> RA RY OF THL U N I VERS ITY or ILLINOIS v.l Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/rumour01shep RUMOUR BY THE AUTHOK OF " CHAELES AUCHESTER," " COUNTEEPARTS, &c. &c. *' Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad Rumour lies ; But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, ^ And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; As He pronounces lastly, on each deed, Of so much fame in Heaven, expect thy meed." Lycidas. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON : HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, I, GREAT MARLHOUOUGH STREET. 1B58. ' Thti right of Translation is resented. LONDON : GODFREY AND DELANY, 3, SAVOY .STREET, STRAND, INSCRIBED BY PERMISSION TO > THE MARCHIONESS OE HASTINGS BARONESS GREY DE RUTHYN. RUMOUR CHAPTEE I. It was a mid- August evening, warm and cloud- less, and very dusty on a certain high road in England, along whose foot-path were pressing two travellers, a woman and a youth. The way was monotonously bounded on one side by a long wall, enclosing shrubberies pertain- ing to a retired manufacturer, who had found it very easy to plant trees, but impossible to force from them prematurely the solemn splendours of profound ancestral shades. Lamps at regular dis- tances showed the road onwards straight and unwinding within the sight, and the view across VHL. T. » Z RUMOUR. the road, by daylight a breadth of pasture, deep green or clover-flush, now seemed a purple flat, over which the soft wind wandered, each breath heaving with stolen fragrances, or laden still more heavily with the distant thunder of the train, and the diminished, wailful shriek of its guardian monster. The wayfarers must have been weary, for before they reached the angle of the wall, they both stopped, and the woman sat down to rest on the bank, which, spotted with scanty grass, half choked with dust, sloped to the dustier road. She said some words to her companion, and he nodded for reply, and then stood on beside her, with his large hat, of a somewhat outlandish form, slouched over his brows, and his right foot beating constantly on the ground. Presently a watercart — strange spectacle after sunset upon so lone a road — creaked slowly by, scattering its broad stream over the hissing dust. It was scarcely out of sight when a carriage fol- lowed it, seen by the light of its own lamps, and whose driver, steeds, and occupants alike received the benefit of the cooled and moistened track. It was going at full speed, and in another instant would have passed the travellers, when its course RUMOUR. 6 was arrested by the youth himself, who stepped into the road, and walked full pace towards the horses; thereby causing the conscientious coach- man to pull them up, much more on account of their fresh and timid blood, than for fear of running over a human being in a slouched hat, who had the further audacity to advance to the window as the carriage stopped, and to tap upon the glass, which was up then, but dashed down in another moment. ** Who are you, and what do you want ?" en- quired a lady, whose spirited tones betrayed not the least alarm, though her only companion was another lady. The youth bowed, or rather nodded, then raised his head which had been sunk upon his breast, and cast a peering glance on both those fair faces. The hat was dragged off after that scrutiny, and a very lowly though awkward recognition followed in a bow. He fumbled with one hand a little, and at length produced a letter. *' I wish to know where these people live," said he in broken English. " To whom then is it addressed ? " asked the elder lady, and she took the letter in her hand, and read the superscription by the light of a lamp hanging from the carriage top. For these 4 RUMOUR. ladies whenever so travelling together, did not waste their time ; when not speaking they studied or read together, and were in all respects like devotedly attached sisters, except that they were mother and daughter. "What a sinofular — extraordinary coincidence — why Elisabeth, this letter is for us ; and the writing too is the old scrawl, Schenk's hiero- glyphic — who is to make it out ? " ** Let me look, mamma." And the two heads touched one another, bend- ing over the letter. They spelled, smiled, laughed together as though no one else were by. "The letter is for you then, lady, as you open it," said the youth, who w^as still standing close to the window, and looking in full upon them ; thus placed, however, not seeming rude, if his behaviour were so. Now he spoke German. The lady who had addressed him first looked up, and answered in that language. " It was very impertinent to open it without telling you first it was for us ; but my old friend's writing made me forget for a moment everything else. But it would have saved you some trouble if you had inquired at the station where we lived; they know. RUMOUR. O " Ah, but I could not pronounce the name, and I would not show the letter, because it would perhaps have been stolen, and it is all I have in the world, except something which is not of value yet. Now," changing his moody tone for one of sharp vivacity, '* which way am I to go to find your house ? at least not your house, of course I know my place, though you will let me see you there, and will do more than that, for Schenk promised me so. But my mother is with me, and is sick with the journey ; she is sitting out there on the bank, and I must take her to an inn. " Strange to bring her ! Schenk does not say so," whispered the mother to the daughter, noiselessly close at her ear ; but the whisper was heard. " She goes with me everywhere," he said, in a sharp and scornful voice. "Your daughter does not leave you^ The ladies glanced at each other, and in their mute eye-language, expressive to each other, they inquired, " What shall we do with both ?" at least, the mother's eye inquired so ; but the daughter answered alone in English. " AVe must take them back, mamma, it is three miles b RUMOUR. to Northeden now, and I am sure no one who has come from the station can walk so far, par- ticularly if tired." The mother looked amazed, and somewhat anxious. " Go hack ? but if so we shall not get to Walden until eleven, nay twelve o'clock, and Charles will be so terribly alarmed about you, and will think you are taken suddenly ill." "Oh no, he always has true presentiments, never false ones. A little anxiety will season him, he will have plenty of it in time to come. We cannot leave that pale creature sitting in the dust. Turn the horses' heads, draw up at the side of the road, and then when we have taken up those two persons, return to Northeden, and stop at the Homestead Inn." This last part of the sentence, delivered as an order, was directly obeyed ; evidently the servants were accustomed to witness acts of eccentric kindness on the part of their employers. The door was opened, the youth handed his mother into the carriage, and followed himself, quite as a matter of course. She was so exhausted that she was soon asleep, and he would have shut himself up, as it were, with closed lids and lips, as though asleep, had not the elder lady asked him " How RUMOUR. did you know me ? How did you trust the letter to me ? Might I not also have stolen it ?" ., " I know a thief when I see one," was the reply. " First I thought that ladies, or anybody in so fine a carriage, could tell me the way to take. And when I saw you I knew you from the picture you gave Schenk." " Has he kept that scratch all these years ? " the lady asked. There was a nod, but no further reply or remark, the hat was dragged down again over the brows, and the face sunk again upon the breast. " It has not taken long you see, mamma," said Elisabeth, as they stopped at the door of a picturesque country inn, with lights gleaming through crimson blinds below, and behind white curtains above, at the windows ; and to the master of which, when he came out, his round countenance elongated like a face in a spoon, by surprise, the elder lady explained something which only drew it down the longer, though at the same time it was warped across by a smile, made grim with reverence. The woman woke up ; the youth handed her out as composedly as he had handed her in, and while she stared round her, curtseyed, and poured forth an inar- 8 RUMOUR. ticulate babble of gratitude, he looked on with an air almost impatient, and although he said " I thank you, lady," it was rather in the tone of a superior who acknowledges his due, than of an inferior (or even an equal), benefited by an act of unusual, and most opportune coiu-tesy. *' Now fresh horses, mamma," said Elisabeth, " and we shall in no time be there." RUMOUR % CHAPTER II. The mother and daughter entered the ball- room at the auspicious moment when supper was served; auspicious for them, because its formality all broken up, the crowd pressing outwards, armed with one desire — a very natural one after the fatigue of a festival at the sultry autumn fall, that of refreshing itself — ^left them an almost deserted room behind it. The gentlemen of the crowd were many of them gay in military costume, whose possible garishness was corrected and softened by the universal ladies' costume — white; for the heat and splendour of the weather demanded the lightest and the coolest covering. As all passed 10 RUMOUR. to the pavilion on the lawn which would con- tain all the guests, there were many wafted 'I wonders/ and floating questions respecting India, whether the weather was as warm there, or could possibly be warmer — whether such and such exotics in the tent or on the tables, were children of the Indian sun ; w^hich Indian fruits were most refreshing; which station was the healthiest, the gayest, and the least infested by rattle-snakes. And these murmurs, insignificant in themselves, were accompanied by glances which rendered them significant, and smiles more sad than gay, and many a sigh half stifled ; over all spreading the melancholy of which not the manliest is ashamed, the melancholy promise of the Unknown, to the daring and the devoted. For a common cause or condition binds the many hearts together in a stricter fraternity than that of blood ; and the few great hearts and heroic minds raise the many of less intelligence and feeling to their own high standard, at least for the time they are to act and endure together. This regiment was very soon to leave for India, and for active service, and though a large pro- portion of its members were full of hasty blood, foolish with the frailty of youth ; though there RUMOUR. 11 were vain men, frivolous men, idle men, and selfish men, among them, still they all seemed alike endowed with a mysterious individual ititerest that each perceived in each — bound to one place, on the same business, liable to the same dangers, possibly the same destiny or death: So men feel in the time of a common plague or sickness, or when great judgments walk abroad, and fall on men together ; — famine, or panic ; as terrible as war and death, if less sublime than they. There was one among those present having already seen active service, who had won glory already as his just guerdon during his first cam- paign in India, a man marvellously matured for his years, and of principles as pure as his stainless soldier's honour. It was he who advanced to meet Elisabeth, and who took her from her mother's side with the air of one who had more part in her possession already, than had her mother. Till her coming, his glance had been sad with suspense, but only with such gentle torment ; neither shade of jealousy nor scowl of suspicion had darkened his fair and dauntless aspect. Yet she had kept him waiting three hours after the appointed time for their meeting that night ; 12 RUMOUR. and there remained but three weeks more in all, that he might hope to pass, before their separa- tion, in the sunshine of her darling presence. Instead of following the crowd, these two returned awhile to the dancing-room, where they had all the red seats to themselves, and where, it may be supposed, Elisabeth explained to him the cause of her delay. Her mother did not return to them, though she had greeted her daughter's companion with more than the interest of a friend ; — she went on with the rest, and was unquestionably, although so late risen, the star of the evening. She was one of those rare natures whose fruitage is more precious than their flower ; and the spells of her mature mind were more powerful than had been her charms in youth. Her imperial form, her bright com- plexion and brighter glance, her lips cast in the very mould of a smile, scarcely formed her fascination, or more than veiled with their impres- sion the stronger one of her dazzling talents ; and it is unquestionable, that but for her noble nature, generous heart, and delicate reserve, this Lady Delucy would have been a very dan- gerous person — and perhaps herself in danger. But heaven had formed her in a holy, as nature RUMOUR. 13 in a happy hour, and she beneficently diffused her influence, as a summer day its light. Even beauty has a beneficent influence when it dwells with a woman framed as she. For such a woman, losing her husband early, and retaining her whole grace if not her freshness, and gaining the full experience both social and intellectual, from a studious and refined existence, than which, to the inexperienced, there is no greater attrac- tion: — such a woman has it in her power to aff*ect the youthful of the opposite sex, more determinately than do the majority of their age, in her own. Such a one, through thought- lessness, or vanity, or ungoverned impulse, — called by the cowardly charitable, excitability, — may injure the first impressions of women formed by men still ignorant, and rash with the virgin susceptibility of youth, — and even if her own reputation be not injured, its mortal raiment may be smirched, till the inward brightness fails, through its destined medium, to flash on mortal eyes. But one so virtuous, possessed entirely of herself, and gay with conscious goodness, is an ideal of maternity ; all the young are as her children, and if they call her not by the name of mother, her heart responds as such to theirs. 14 RUMOUR. Lady Delucy could not help feeling interested in every young man present who was a brother officer of Colonel Lyonhart, to whom her daughter was affianced. And they were one and all bewitched by her ; a swarm of them behind her chair, and one on each hand, and several across the table : to all these she listened with delight, though it is possible their conversational powers were very limited, and inferior to her own. But in their rulinof sub- ject of discourse her heart and hopes were bound up. They all sincerely admired, the most sincerely liked, Charles Lyonhart, and for some who had served with him or under him already, he was an actual hero. Tales of his successful daring, and natural power over those singular Eastern aborigines of which Europe talks so much and knows so little ; — of his simple virtue and austere self-reverence ; — assurances of his iron strength andiron will, alike physically and morally defying for him the stimulant climate ; even the probable minutiae of the voyage and journey were grateful to her ear. Such pre- occupation accounted for the fact, that she neither spoke to, nor specially noticed, any other of the guests at the other tables or her own. RUMOUR. 15 When all were ready to dance again, and she was returning to the ball-room, rather anxious for fear Elisabeth and her friend should be rudely disturbed, she happened to brush the elbow of a gentleman just inside the door. With her usual amiability she paused and would have apologised; but instead, she started back, — murmured, **Diamid," in a tone of mingled interest and surprise ; then recovering her full self-possession, she held out her hand and said with great cordiality, " I did not know you had returned ; — why did you not send me word?" '' Here is the reason," he answered in a proud voice, and with an air of mingled defiance and delight ; and he drew forward a young, very young girl, who had fallen behind him while Lady Delucy spoke, ^' Lady Geraldine Albany ; my wife." Again the elder lady lost her self- command, she started and flushed, and gazed with earnest wonder ; there soon stood tears in her eyes. On account of the girl herself, such tears would not have been signs of too exaggerated interest, drawn from a maternal heart. For she could be scarcely more than a child in years, yet her vivid and pictorial loveliness, of a lofty stamp and suggestion, gave promise of great power 16 RUMOUR. and greater pride : power to suffer, pride to endure ; and through all, passion, which was existence, and a loving nature which would set no limits to its necessity and demand for love. A being so far above the gentle average of her sex, that to invest her too early with the estate which is either the crown of blessings or of burdens, had been an error, if not a deed to merit a graver name, on the parts of her parents and her husband, a man of mature age, and into whose youth had been crowded experience and adventure such as seldom spread over an entire human life prolonged to farthest age. Few persons besides Lady Delucy would so have reasoned. Others would have found in the child's extraordinary beauty a charming excuse for her premature social exposition. And though her unconscious pride and innocence touche result, held up her mother to her as contempti- ble, because ignorant of what persons round her knew. He taught Elisabeth to return thanks in her prayers that she had been born in England, with a father who was neither Jew, Turk, infidel nor heretic, whatever her mother might be. To be grateful for the existent social code which raises a child to its father's position, whatever its mother's may have been. He gave her governesses and masters, with certificates from college and employer. They taught her all they knew ; her mind was very quick to receive, but she could not retain all, only the best part, that is, the exercise of the memory aroused tlu^ thinking faculties. But her greatest pleasure, a sort of delightful dream that she dreamed every day at a certain hour, was to go and see her mother ; her father set apart one regular time for this filial and maternal interchange of intercourse, because it was proper, and religious, that a child should honour both her parents. So she paid her visits to the large room, filled with overpowering, melt- ing heat from two large ornamented stoves, fille^i with dim light from low -hanging lamps, even at, noonday, because to exclude the draugbtfe.; XhiyJ^ VOL. I. D 34 ''■ RUMOUR. crimson curtains fell always over the shuttered windows. No chairs nor table furnished the room, only piles of cushions, in the midst of a heap of which her mother reclined by day and on which she slept at night. Always sumptuously attired in glittering stuffs and gorgeous shawls, her dark skin lighted up by blinding jewels ; and featured delicately, with her moony eyes and soft slow motions, she captivated her child's fancy, naturally a brilliant one, and it was only in her child's presence that she was ever known to talk. When they were alone together, and Elisabeth coaxed her and caressed, she would now and then tell her about the land whence she had been brought ; the mosques, the palaces, the palms ; the bazaar and the harem ; the fountains, flowers, and skies. Perhaps, had her father heard these confidences, made in broken English, helped out with racy idiom and translated proverb, he w ould have forbidden his wife to talk upon the subject to his daughter, but he was scarcely ever present, and when so her voice was silent, she hardly even whispered to him greeting and farewell. Elisabeth kept them to herself, merely because she did not think they would interest her father, and yet thev were always in hor thoughts, and the gladdest X' RUMOUR. *^* 35 day of all her youngest life was that on which she found a copy of the Arabian Nights iii the library. Her father, who seldom had either time or inclination to take her out with him, was so delighted with a long letter, half in French, and half in Italian, with a Latin postscript, written to him by her the Christmas she was fourteen, that he took her to see a pantomime. From that hour she had an aim in life ; she was always dreaming, yet performing in her dreams; the creative faculty was roused, and by its instantaneous reciprocation the artistic mind was revealed to itself. Her father, discovering her enthusiastic delight when on different occasions he took her to the theatre with him afterwards, immediately curtailed her enjoyments in that line, began to have grave doubts whether it was proper a taste so decided should be encouraged, at last drew a line, as he expressed it, and only allowed her to hear a play of Shakspeare's twice a year, and those always historical ones. But even few and far between, those were angel visits to her. Her progressive mind affected not her inno- cence of heart. She even clung more and more 36 RUMOUR. to her helpless mother, and once entreated her father to try a change of climate to her own country, for her mother's health. But her father answered, *' She does not wish it, she has never asked me, and it would make her suffer more to be disturbed." Nor had she ever con- fessed it to her child ; her pride was the pride of the eastern, the most stubborn in the world. When Elisabeth was twenty-one, there occurred a crisis in commerce, one of those climaxes which are sudden prosperity to a few, to the many the crush of ruin, and which seem periodical, like war and epidemy — perhaps necessary for the expurgation of mens minds from the lust of luxury and over-confidence. Her father, who though not speculative, kept all his capital afloat, lost all in the losses of others richer than himself. There only remained a small sum, about five hundred pounds, which he had reserved as a present for his daughter on her coming of age — and this she had just received; she placed more than half in her father's hands, he knew not what she meant to do with the rest, but she only besought him not to move from his house, for a few months, because her mother was accus- tomed to it. RUMOUR. 37 She had made up her mind in a moment; and was sanguine of success, as the pui^e in purpose, full of conscious power, have a right to be. A chief theatrical manager of that day, was as remarkable for discernment and benevo- lence, as for talent and popularity, and it was to him she went, confided her scheme, and was received by him as his own pupil, a rare honour, but well deserved. She studied with ardour, persistency, and industry, which those who sneer at the dramatic calling as an amuse- ment (like novel-writing), might have found it impossible to exert in their own worldly busi- ness. She worked so hard that her master, unflinching as he was in ordinary cases, gave her the credentials for public initiation at the end of three months, together with a parting boon of en- couraging words, such as had never been the ver- dict of his lips before. In fact she owed much to her previous mental cultivation, and so he told her ; but she owed the most to a singularly serene disposition, which quelled insurgent excitability, and lent her self-control in action, which it is the work of years artificially to attain. When everything was settled between the manager and master, now her employer and 38 RUMOUR. friend, she told her father of her scheme, se- creted until perfect, for their subsistence as a family, through her newly developed art. Only an English father would have outraged a child's tenderness and devotion as he did, in return for her confidence. Instead of giving her strength by his approving smile, strength very- needful to one whose excessive modesty was the only possible enemy to her success, he raved, and stormed with rage, only impotent because it could find no real basis, and when the heat of the mood had subsided to a calm more cruel, he tried to argue without actual premises, and darkened his counsel by words without know- ledge, till his fury turned against himself, and doubly aggravated his insane anger towards his child. He commanded her to relinquish her design on the pain of excommunication from his thoughts and love; and this final utterance in its cool measured tones, dried up the tears which his harsher heat had drawn from the stricken rock, for firm as a rock re- mained her rooted intention, though she suffered to the full as bitterly as he had meant she should. But it was a false sense of duty, the name, against the true sense of duty, the RUMOUR. 39 necessity^ and that sufficed ; conscience against prejudice prevailed.. She knew that else 4;hey must starve, that her mother must perish if forced into less luxurious routine, that her father's head was white with his early winter, creeping on his barren autumn. She knew that none other of her talents, nor all his business habits could gain employment which should even supply them with bread, much less sustain her mother in her needful ease. So she went to work without his blessing, which she was innocent enough to covet, and in the face of the disapprobation and contempt of all her relations and acquaintances besides. These last, with the usual inconsistency of such persons, all went to witness her first public performance, applauded her in the theatre, and went home and slandered her to their heart's content. But her father never went to see her and hear her, never mentioned her objectionable calling, nor confessed himself indebted to her in the least degree. Yet he ate of her bread, and drank of her cup, and was to her as a father still, though he treated her no longer as a child. So without a father's sanction, the most sacred 40 RUMOUR. save that of conscience, or a mother's presence and protection, she was exposed to the roughest of all the tides of opinion, and breasted its breakers by her own strength alone. For three years it prevailed, her reputation remained as pure as her fame was fresh, and but for her reticence of demeanour, her triumphs might have drawn envy from her inferiors. At the end of that time too she would have been rich, but for her double burden of filial love and duty. A young man of what is called high birth, but ill-bred, worse-principled, and vicious most of all, happened to turn towards her his roving eyes, and unhappily she fixed them. Her stately sweetness, and excelling character, excited him to attempt an adventure, which none hut he would have dared to dream of, much less to undertake. And he failed at the very outset, nor could he succeed in obtaining a single interview ; and all his letters were returned unopened, except the first one, which had been opened without suspicion of its contents. Through a false heart he could afford to act falsely without compunction, and the false un- falterinof tongue assisted his revenofe. First in one ear alone he breathed the lie, reversing RUMOUR. 41 every circumstance ; hers the dawning interest, the devoted attention, the insinuating corres- pondence ; the crowning fact, — the crowning falsehood, — her ardent and uncontrollable at- tachment, declared and gratified, but gratified only with the calm facility and freedom of a man of fashion. This tale, told to one person under a half-promise of secresy, made and received by two persons alike dishonourable; very soon spread, first in whispered hints of ab- horrent deeds, soon a bruit of degraded purity, at last a belief in it that could not, because it would not, be shaken. Unfortunately it was while she was absent from her usual home, spending a few weeks to rest and recruit in country air during a need- ful suspension of her engagements, that her father heard the report, and believed it, so true is it if men will, they are allowed to harden their own hearts. He impotently resolved never to see her again, and wrote to tell her so, darkening still more blackly the fair page so sullied, by curses as impotent as the resolution. But she was weak enough to be made ill by that letter ; rather innocent enough, filial enough, and new enough 42 RUMOUR. to life^ with its tests the most austere and awful always for the purest. She was so ill, she could not answer it, could not rebut the charge ; by which worldly women would only have been made strong with indignation ; but which pros- trated her physically, stunned her mentally, effects which served to convince people more and more, that the charge was a true one. A week after this letter had been sent, her father, who had not left her house yet, despite his intention never to see her again, was sitting in his room with a countenance grim and pale, but past repentance as he was, ser\dng only to suggest remorse. A gentleman was an- nounced, and entered; a w-hite-haired man, plain-faced, dignified ; who pulled out a card, threw it on the table, and, still standing though requested to take a seat, said calmly, " I have come formally to obtain a formal consent to my intended proposals for your daughter's hand. As a matter of form I say, merely, for it is otherwise of no value. I am of age to be her father, as well as in a position to protect her as a husband from her own parent — and, more unhappy parent than you have dared to assume yourself! from my own son." RUMOUR. 43 I [The father to whom he spoke, turned so deadly pale with the reaction of nature shame- fully repressed, that the visitor was obliged to ring the bell for water, though he showed no compassion when a more deathlike swoon ensued. He might have felt compassion, for he was easily moved towards it, had he not detected the glance of unholy triumph, and lustful pride, when his own name was read by the other on the card he had thrown down. For truly virtuous, though exclusive and proud enough in his own fashion, the Earl Delucy valued his own character above his rank, and as for his family history he would only have been thankful to have the last page erased and to throw the book into the fire; so terrible to his heart and his faith was its necessary re- cord, the useless, vicious, and abominable character and career of his only son. It had been some time before the report of Elisabeth's degradation had reached him, still longer before he learned that his own son had first given utterance to it, and pretended she was his own victim. Lord Delucy had only seen her once or twice, he was no play-goer, but the pro- foundest Shakspearian student could not have 44 RUMOUR. possessed more discrimination of character : and when he heard she was ill he went to see her himself, and in the presence of two physi- cians whom he forced to accompany him, and a nurse who had been hastily provided, he assured her of his unshaken faith in her good- ness and her innocence. That assurance was to her revival, and saved her from the grave where very likely her reputation would have been lost for ever for those still living, who, perhaps to spite etiquette which prescribes that of those departed only good must be spoken, are remarkably fond of thinking evil of the same. Elisabeth really married Lord Delucy out of gratitude ; no other sentiment could find room within, and as for passion, she shrank from the very name with a terror only pardonable in one who had suffered so desperately from its simulation. Her gratitude, sincere, boundless, and devoted, dwelt alone in her heart, filled up the measure of her thankfulness to heaven whom first she thanked. But no colder shrine than her spirit ever guarded from the wanton wind the vestal flame. She felt that happiness in its primitive purity, could never affect her RUMOUR. 45 now, and that love was a severer friend than she had deemed him. In her duty she never Mled any more than in her gratitude, and in her duty she must have been perfect, for her husband never missed anything in her, neither passion, nor love, nor even happiness. Her light step, her sunny smile, her faithful breast, at least brought him the fulness of that delight of which he had clasped, in his first alliance, the fleshless skeleton. She, too, was rewarded, for her father restored to her his blessing, which, how little soever its intrinsic value, was very dear to her. Her mother returned to her own land, and lived many years there, rejoicing in the sun. Her husband's child, sick, dreary, lost in terrors and the blackest unbelief, came to die near her, helped by her gentleness through the darkest hour ; and if not at peace with himself, perhaps so with God, because penitent, went to rest. As she watched by her husband's dying pillow, made easy by her sweet tenderness, her soft solicitude, and sacred influence, she made the inward resolution, which she renewed on a more religious vow upon his closed grave, that whatever might her temptations be, she would 46 RUMOUR. never marry again ; to his memory she devoted herself, and to his child, their only daughter ; his conservative tastes she cherished as her own ; his castle wore its raiment of decay proudly, his fallen trees found their last beds in the soil from which they sprang — she was, in short, the guardian of his child and heiress. But she had not controlled that child in her affection, and blessed God that it was not part of her duty to do so ; but that it was a part of her duty in her own to control herself she believed, and acted in that faith. Time had brought a victim to the sacrificial altar of her heart, she had slain it, her own love in her own happiness. One great delight, besides her daughter, was still her own. Generous — to a fault, if she had not been most just ; large-hearted, open-handed, and full of sympathy with art, she dedicated to artists if needy, perse verant, and genuine, the large fortune settled on her by her husband, which it did not trouble her to receive, as it scarcely diminished sensibly the vast one re- verting to her child, and was entirely separate from it — the fruits of her husband's services as an eminent ruler, in his youth, in India. RUMOUR. 47 CHAPTER IV, It was early day. Northeden lay in a valley, its castle and its hamlet, and the valley was bright with culture as a teeming garden, with a core of the richest timber growth in its centre, from whose shade, in the distance a deep green cloud, sprung the pale turrets to which the new-risen sun, piercing the mild mist of the lowland, now lent a roseate burnish. The castle was old enough to have been a ruin, and restored ; not with the restitution which has fallen like a curse on many a shrine antique ; the plaster-glare of freshened arches, the ghost-colours of modern windows. Here old materials fallen from use or into misuse were 48 RUMOUR. replaced and re-combined. Tapestries of hues as dim as dying flowers, still rendered faithfully from the walls their pale pictorial legends ; flowers carved in wood, — an art in its perfec- tion lost like the art of glass distaining, — were eaten with the canker of decav, vet held their graceful sway on cornice, frame, and moulding, mixed with leaf garlands, worm-perforated until they seemed brownly glimmering like skeletons of forest leaves in autumn. Old furniture, old carpets, old damasks, filled the state-rooms with- out one garish inconsistency. To velvet curtains, whitened in long lines where the sun had burned upon their folds, to leathern hangings, whose gold figures Time's finger had rasped to pallid yellow, to blackened stone, chipped marble, phantom portrait, stole a lesser than day's own light even at fullest noon, from small unfrequent windows, gloomed deeper by the intense tints, with which old art had gemmed the upper panes. The breeze, whether creeping in through crack, or dancing through open door, seemed to lend itself to mysterious echoes the moment it entered the halls, and the tempest-tone of the wind sounded like a roll of thunder heard in a vault or cavern. On winter nights of RUMOUR. 49 storm, too, the trees in the park roared like a sea against that thunder, and there scarcely passed a day, during the latter equinox, but some huge hoar elm, or oak of fabulous descent crashed to the trembling ground. These corpse trunks, never removed when fallen, lay here and there under the leaf-domes and arch avenues, across your path you met them, or crushing flat the long fern of the glades ; — some half-bleached, dry as ivory, with hollows that the wild bees made their cells in ; others enamelled with mosses of emerald and gold, or crusted with lichen delicately fair as the sea-flowers which wreath a sunken wreck. A high wall wrapped so thick with ivies that not a brick-tint started through the glossy gloom, compassed the park all round, a soli- tude undesecrated by the step of progress, and than which none serener or sweeter could be found in the summer noons when the insect hum, the myriad chirp, and the breeze that chafed the leafy-deeps, melted altogether into a dream of sound most like that dream of shade. There was a garden next to the park, but that too rather grand than gay, with walks as wide as roads, and deserts of grass spangled with VOL. I. E 50 RUMOUR. flower oases, for lawns ; with pillars whose crowning vases were too vast to fill with any flowers save hollyhocks, and dahlias ; with black evergreen masses cut into monstrous shapes ; with fountains of quaint device, some trickling, others dry ; and mossed dials, and summer houses large enough to live in. The garden wall continued that of the path, as richly ivied, and passed down to the gates, bordering on each side the entrance avenue of elms planted six deep, a quarter of a mile long. There was another approach to the castle, quite close to the tower called the summer tower, because only in summer inhabited. In the wall on that side of the garden the ivy from a certain spot had been cut away, and the bricks taken out, leaving an aperture large enough for a single person to pass through, filled with the gate of the lightest iron fretwork. To stand on the castle-side and look through that gate, was like turning from the mellow darkening twilight to the dazzle of fullest noon. In a smaller garden, flowers were blossoming in that perfec- tion which it is the necessary homage of the flower -worshipper's most jealous passion to create. Kound the soft lawn, unspeckled by RUMOUR. 51 one peasant daisy, the wall was hidden by a light gothic framework, delicately gilt, filled with foreign plants whose blooms bathed in the sun- light, calm as jewels displayed behind a shrine of crystal. As brilliant were the flower-beds on the lawn, but there the jewel calm was agitated by each quiver of the breeze, to that stir of infinitely blended fragrance which is its paradise to the sense of smell, and that silent harmony with which the flutter of colour feasts the eye. Urns overflowed with sparkling creepers, baskets of wrought alabaster held rose clusters as snowy- pure, tier above tier aspired pyramids that seemed blossoming flame. In sea-water basins gleamed the flowers of the ocean, and in one bright water lay lilies of the wave, white, golden, azure, fanned by mysterious maiden hair and bordered with blue forget- me-not. There was a house in this sfarden too, its low white walls crossed with trellis from verandah to chimney, the trellis so thicklv interlaced with delicate plants, in fullest flower, that it looked rather a bower than a domestic dwelling. All the rooms, all on the ground floor, showed through the crystal sashes of their windows a soft gleam of colours like shadows IIRRARY - 52 RUMOUR. of the flowers without. All the walls were hung with flower-coloured silks; one, a spring cham- ber, with hues of hyacinths, pink, lilac, purple, tender blue ; a summer drawing-room with rose hues, pale and white and damask ; an autumn one with tints of geranium, and green relieved with gold. The dining-room was filled with gems of pictures, and fruit beautifully painted seemed dropping from the ceiling. One bed-room was lined with white, soft and pure as the cradle of a child seemed the bed with its satin quilt, and lace curtain falling from a single pillar of carved ivory, tufted with one snowy plume : while marble cherubs in recesses here and there held lamps that when lighted, cast on their dimpled countenances a flush like the roses of the dawn. But now, at morning, the artificial flush has sickened before the living lights that mock all art and artifice. The sun looks in at one window without any greeting from hues that mimic his own rainbows, the window of the only simple room in that delicate and sumptuous dwelling. Strict need of the severe student had ordered its furni- ture only, a table with its oil- cloth cover somewhat rubbed, old turkey carpet faded, one large chair: one desk, one wicker basket filled with torn letters ; RUMOUR. 53 the walls lined with books, none gaily bound, the monotony of the many uniforms suggesting stan- dard authors, works of reference, official registers. In that room, writing at the table, sat Diamid Albany. Pale the night before, he was ghastly now, and shadows blue as those cast in hollows of the snowdrift, rimmed his great dark eyes. The droop of those eyes,^in society so vividly expanded? the frown between them, melancholy rather than stern, the relaxed under lip, the nervous clutch of the pen between the fingers as though their own strength were not sufficient to retain it un- seconded by the power of the will, the stoop and rounded shoulder, all told a tale of weariness irresistible by the body ; but mentally, never gaining the upper hand. Weariness of what ? Certainly not of that apparition, which entering at the door, melts every line of the face into mo- mentary softness, brims the eye with kindness warmer than affection, and swells the breast with a sigh of ineffable relief. It was Geraldine in her unfashionable morning dress, a loose white robe of lawn, her lovely hair flowing to her waist in child-like curls. Child as she was in years, and old for his years as he was, there seemed no incongruence between them, even 54 RUMOUR. in point of age. Only genius, with its daring innocence, its untaught power to solve all myste- ries of feeling, could have rendered her a com- panion as well as a consoling charmer, for one of his sagacity and experience. She understood his character without caring that she did so, she drew upon his enormous mental resources with confi- dence but without apology, never did she descant upon that which he valued far too secretly to bear its mention — ^his idol of renown. Too little yet, to say of one too liberally gifted with s}Tiipathy, with intelligence, with passion ; too early gifted with consummate joy. "I am going to Lady Delucy's," said she, clinging to his embracing arm, and covering his hand with kisses fit to fall on an infant's cheek, so soft and noiseless were they, '' and it is a very good thing I am, for do you know if I were a/o/ze without you, even for a morning /zozi;, my heart would beat so with suspense that I should die." ** No, no, you would wait for me." " To wait would be death," she answered; " is not night the emblem of death, does it not wait for the morning ? but you wdll only be six hours, four at the committee, and one hour to ride there, and the other back." RUMOUR. 55 " I shall not ride, it takes too long, I take the train." But Geraldine threw her arms round him ; she wept, she implored, and the roses burned feverish on her cheeks. " Not the train, Diamid, not the train without me. I know something would happen, I should die of fear. I know you are safe on horseback, all creatures love you." " Saving only men." "But promise, promise !" So he promised, well knowing the result of hard riding to the strained nervous, system which had been the solitary demon battling with his ambition, all his life, always conquered, though its thrusts were felt so keenly. Geraldine stood beside the horse while he mounted, stroked its black silk mane, ran for a rose to put beside its ear, took one of its delicately shod feet in her hand, and flapped a little dust ofl* it with her handkerchief, talked of riding behind her husband in man's disguise, " a jockey-groom, Mr. Albany's last," made him change watches with her, in short, detained him by every possible expedient, till he had barely half-an hour for a ride of eleven miles. Just 56 RUMOUR. before he left her, he gave her the key of the iron gate between their garden and park. '* Shall I give your love to her?" asked Geral- dine. " I have given it all to you, there is none left for any other." And so he rode away, and she returned into the garden, sat down amidst the flowers and wept bitterly, blind ingly, as some weep over the grave of love. Oh haughty pas- sion, untrained in thy blossom hours, flinging wild tendrils round a heart too fully satisfied ; what shall be thy fruition ? or shall those tendrils, grown more strong and clinging still, strangle the delicate spirit Contentment, more easily than sorrow could wither it away ? Certain it was, however, that she could not bear herself alone for long ; she rose hastily, filled her garden-hat with fresh-blown flowers as she passed them, and went through the gate into the park. RUMOUR. CHAPTER V. Lady Delucy saw Geraldine cross the lawn from the ground floor windows of a room she had always been used to share with her daughter, till she had found a companion dearer still than her mother ; Geraldine stepped in at the window, which was open. ** I have come, you see," she said. Lady Delucy took both her hands, would have liked to kiss her, but did not dare, so proud was the brilliant face in every line, with the pride of a child who will not be coaxed to smile when it is sad, or when it does not choose. Neither did she, any more than a child would have done, try to conceal her surprise at the style of the room. 58 RUMOUR, SO sombre and dull to her, with its dim wains- cotting, high chairs, and heavy tables, heaps of books wherever there was room to deposit them, odd volumes from the library, Italian and French novelties in their flimsy wrappers, new plays, new poems, German and Spanish dic- tionaries, all the newspapers, all the periodicals, all serials illustrated by art. There were certainly a piano and a harp, but the first was closed, and the second covered. There were but two easy seats in the room, reading chairs, in one of which the lady sat, and Geraldine chose a cushion at its foot. " Diamid would not send his love to vou," she began, " though I asked him whether I should bring it." '* Because he had given it all to you — was not that the reason ?" " How could you know he said so? for he did." " I knew Diamid when he was as young as you are now, he was in my father s house at that time, to be initiated into the mysteries of eastern trade, for though his father was a bookworm, his earlier ancestors were all con- nected with the east, you know." RUMOUR. 59 " Yes, but papa won't hear of that ; it makes him very angry^ I suppose Diamid used to talk to you, and that you petted him ; he says so. " I learned his ways, and understood his fancies, he was as wonderful a boy as he is now a wonderful man." " And when you were married he says you were very generous to his father, who was so poor because no one would risk the publication of his books." " Generous, never ; my husband, who always sought the society of the wise, became acquainted with Diamid's father, and wished him to live near him, because he valued his society so highly." ** And so he went to the house where we live now ; but Diamid said it was your house, that your husband gave it to you, and that he had no peace till he had earned enough money by his books to buv the house : he could not bear to be indebted, even to you." " Diamid was always too proud, it is perhaps his only fault." *^ But it was not so pretty then as he has made it now." 60 RUMOUR. " No indeed, when I came from London this time, and found all the workmen about it, I suspected something was going to happen. " Did not Diamid write and tell you about me ? he said he tells you every thing. " " No, he did not tell me that^ but I fancy he was too agreeably engaged to find time to write." *^ Were you not surprised to see little me, last night? You could not be more surprised than I was when he asked me to be his wife. He too — I should as soon have dreamed that one of the sons of God would see that I was fair, and come from Heaven to seek me, because it was hell without my love." Lady Delucy sighed, but she did not check her, she knew too well the neces- sary conditions of a nature prematured, all that it will do and have ; its erring yet touching exigencies. " I should like to hear all about you, Geraldine — you must let me call you so — how you first saw Diamid, and how he ventured to think you would suit him. All about you, because concerning him, will please me." " I'll try, but there seems so much, though there is really so little, so few events in my life I mean. My mother was a Geraldi, and I had RUMOUR. 61 her name, to make my father's name endurable, and now it serves to beautify my beautiful .new name, which no one can take from me. I was born in Italy, and came to England for a little while with papa and mamma. But when I was six, and mamma had still no son, my grandmamma Geraldi, who had married her cousin of the same name — he was dead then though — sent for me, she wished to bring me up and leave me her fortune, which is very large. She hated me first for being a girl. Papa could not refuse, for he wanted me to have all the money. I did not care for it then, but now I do, for it will be Diamid's to make use of, and papa's too shall all be his when it is mine. So they sent me back to Italy, and an English governess with me, that I might be brought up like an English girl. I can truly say however, that I have forgotten all she taught me, except the language itself. She was a Protestant, and read me English prayers on a Sunday, and made me hold books of sermons in my hands all day. Then I had a master for French, and one for Latin, and for mathematics and astronomy. I loved none of those things, but hated astronomy most of all. There was an observatory at the top of the 62 RUMOUR. palazzo and there I was stuck to look through a tube, till I could dream of nothing but the shapes of the constellations as they are traced on the globe, crawling all over the sky ; and then I had an illness in which I raved about them, so they left off teaching me astronomy, and I had more time to myself. Soon I began to read the books in the library for pleasure — for after all, I understood Italian best, and I found out all the poetry, and soon wrote myself, it is so easy to write poetry in Italian, and in Italy. I improvisated to the statues in the garden, I was Beatrice, I was Laura, I was Leonora D'Este. Always a woman, and the poets my heroes, yet I burned to be a genius greater than the greatest of all those. But I took care to keep to myself only, my worship of the divinities of song. " There was only one person in our house who interested me, because of my own age, for I was allowed to be intimate with no young ladies of Catholic families, and there were none round about who were not so. A dear cousin of mine lived with grandmamma; his name was Geraldi Feriani. He was an officer s son, one of the vounofer branch of his own family — and mamma's first cousin. RUMOUR. 63 not so rich as she in expectations, married him to avoid being put into a convent. Geraldi is just a year older than I — eighteen. He loves me a great deal better than I deserve ; even as a child, he spoiled me. Everybody was rather strict besides, grandmamma pretty strict with me, but terribly strict with him. She treated him as she treats her servants, she never addressed him in conversation, and she would not let him have masters, though I wished him to learn with me. She forbade me also to play with him, and I disobeyed her, though I never promised in words that I would obey. The only times we could be alone together was when grandmamma was in the oratory, or with the priest in the chapel. How handsome Geraldi would have been if he had not been so savagely, doggedly sad ! he never smiled to show his splendid teeth, and his eyes were half shut up with melancholy. He stamped on the ground when he walked, as if he were crushing down something terrible and strong into it, and often went into pale passions, when he did not speak, but set his teeth tight and ground them, and shuddered from head to foot ; till I was afraid he was going mad. That was when he was growing tall, and grandmamma used 64 RUMOUR. to hint that it would not do to keep him idle any longer, yet she never said what he was to be when he grew up, nor he either, he would never speak of himself to her. " One day he had been walking about with that crunching, grinding step, and being in the garden and knowing grandmamma was at her prayers, I called him to come and sit beside me, and when he would not come I pulled him, and then he came quietly enough. We sat down, I recollect, on the base of a statue of a nymph with a thorn in her foot, she was holding her foot in her hand and stood in a thicket of roses from which the thorn came I suppose. But the other foot was chipped and a great piece too was broken off the plinth, as we were sitting, on Geraldi's side. Then I said, " I wish I knew what makes you so dreadfully unhappy ; is it because grandmamma is cold ? She cannot love warmly Geraldi, she cannot love as I love. Do not mind about her, I will love you double, I will love you warmly as the sun and kiss you as softly as the moon when she lays her beam upon your forehead. I will love you more than twenty sisters, and when I am married, we will live together." Of course, Lady Delucy, I only meant that I RUMOUR. 65 should be married some day, to some one or other. But Geraldi turned round on me, black fire seemed to dart out of his eyes, he caught hold of me and pressed me so hard in his arms that I felt his heart beat, and heard it too. « Geraldine, Geraldine, do you mean that T * Of course,' said I, quite startled, as soon as I could get my breath." " * But do you not see that they will never allow it. We must go away in the dark — far —far.'" " ' Oh Geraldi, I did not mean that I would marry you^ but that you should live with me and my husband.' " "Down fell Geraldi, dropped like a stone on the ground, and cut his temple against the sharp broken edge of the plinth. I was horrified, I thought he was killed, but the blood started out of the wound, and I screamed — then remembering how far we were from the house, I tied it up with my handkerchief, meaning to run home for some one directly I had done so, for I thought he would bleed to death. But instead, the bleeding revived him, he opened his eyes, and held my frock so tightly, that I could not stir." VOL. I. F 66 RUMOUR. " ' Promise me,' he said, between his lips which were purple, and his clenched teeth, * that you will never, never, tell anyone that you refused me — I could not bear that, and if you did I should kill you and myself too, with my father's sword, the same which — ' " "^ — And there he stopped short, nor could I make him complete the meaning of the sentence." **^My dear child," said Lady Delucy, "pardon me — but should you not keep your cousin's story a secret? — was it not confided to you alone ? " '^ Oh ! no, he did not say so — I have told Diamid. I should not tell anybody^ of course, but Diamid says he feels for you almost as a mother." Any but a child in inexperience, at least of women, would have been struck by the expression of the lady's face — very sudden, hke the shadow- on it of a mental spasm, very short, passing into a light of pale yet patient melancholy. But Geraldine's proud eyes saw only signs of interest, and sympathy with herself. " My love," said the lady, very tenderly, "would you have liked, if Diamid had not loved you, that any person^that he — should have known vou loved him ? " RUMOUR. 67 ** Yes, yes," cried Geraldine in glad tones of triumph — " I should have gloried in it, and have wished to die for love of him, and that all the world should know I died so, he the most of aU." " Oh,'' thought Lady Delucy, " child most of all there, younger in that belief than thy years ! Strange fate ! desire uncreated, before fulfilment came : Spring born instead of summer, of the spring. A destiny unearthly of doomed delight. Can such last, even for this short life ? If not, who would break and scatter one link of the frail and flower- woven chain ? Not I." So she smiled, and sighed together, while Geraldine went on. *' When Geraldi was well again, I said to him, * Why did you say that they would not let us marry ? I do not say we ought, for I don't believe we should suit each other, and besides, I must marry to please papa, because he is ambitious, and I am his only child, and he has been so kind in letting me live in darling Italy ; but why would they positively prevent it, if we liked?'" " * I am poor, I am disgraced, I had better bo dead, and if I were worthy of my father I soon 68 RUMOUR. should be.' But no more would he tell me, so I was curious, and talked to the servants, with whom I had never been thrown before, but I was determined I would know. I made out that grandmamma took Geraldi out of charity ; certainly the English proverb that charity is cold, received its interpretation through her. Well, Geraldi's father was never a favourite of his mother's family, he became by conviction a republican, and tried to turn his sword against the king, who had treated some of his associates with dreadful injustice and cruelty. I don't know the particulars, but Geraldi's father was discovered in his attempt, and imprisoned. To evade his probable fate he fell upon his sword, and died in torment. For the double offence of treason and suicide, his child suffered the loss of all his property, except the sword, which some daring colleague, in prison too, managed to steal and gave Geraldi. Geraldi has buried it in the ground in its case ; I only know the spot, for he made me promise not to tell even Diamid. The Geraldis had always treated his father as a hair-brained underling, one who had infringed on the honour of the family ; so conservative, even of bad things, are they. I loved RUMOUR. 69 Geraldi better than ever after I knew all about his troubled life, yet I loved less to be near him, and I strove my utmost to conquer that aversion, because I thought it cruel and ungener- ous when he had no one else to love him. I was excessively hurt and angry with grand- mamma, yet dared not say so, for fear she should send him quite away, and at last I almost worked myself up into a belief that I ought to marry him, and that when I was old enough I would try, perhaps I might like him better then, I thought. " Papa and mamma always came to spend the au- tumn with us, and returned to England in time for the opening of parliament. Last autumn papa wrote word that he should bring a friend with him, and that I was to be introduced at table — I had never appeared yet, when there were any strangers. The day came ; the courier came to say that they were j ust at hand. Then grandmamma took me into her own hands and dressed me for the first time in her life. To my surprise and horror she put on me a lace frock — a dreadful thing from Paris, low in the throat, with short sleeves — and what was worse, she trimmed me all over with jewels, till I looked like an idol 70 RUMOUR, of the Virgin. I did not dare to complain, however, and indeed I felt it did not really signify, for I was not at all excited about the stranger they said was coming. All day that day too, Geraldi was nowhere to be seen. At last the time came, grandmamma went down, dressed grandly, but not frightfully as I was, and she led me in her hand. Of course I wanted to run and kiss papa and mamma, but she pinched my hand so tight I could not get it free. And when I got into the room — an immense room, I could not at first see what the stranger was like. I looked all round, while papa and mamma embraced me, and at last saw some person in a corner — next moment papa took me to him. But what was strange, he only said my name by way of introduction, not his. It was Diamid, however, looking so beautiful, but oh, so weary ! And when he said " I am very happy to see you Lady Geraldine," so kindly, just as if I were a child (and indeed I suppose I was, for I wanted to put my arms round him and kiss him) I thought for the first time that English was, after all, not so harsh a tongue as I had always believed. But the next moment Diamid glanced at my dress — I saw he thought it ridiculous, for there was a RUMOUR, 71 little baby-smile just at the corners of his mouth ; and I burned with shame and indignation. I never reflected in those days, but acted on impulse as naturally as I breathed, and I ran with all my speed out of the room ; I did not even hear them call after me, I suppose they were too much amazed, for no one had seen Diamid's glance ex- cept myself, I rushed into grandmamma's room and tore off the lace rubbish and diamonds, flinging them into her press, and th€n I let down all my hair in curls just as I had worn it before grandmamma rolled it up and dressed it, and as I wear it now ; and I put on one of my old dresses, made like this which I have on. Nobody sent after me, and I staid there awhile, and at last went down into the library, got something to eat from one of the servants, and then settled myself to read, but I could neither read nor settle, so I went out on the terrace, and walked up and down very fast — I was so excited I did not know what to do, so afraid and yet glad — all the world seemed new ; and yet I felt it was only because that stranger was in the house, only because I longed for him to see me again, in my own natural habit, that he might think me pretty, as I knew he would then. Presentlv they all 72 RUMOUR. came out to walk, I had expected them, because the evening was so warm ; I walked slower ; soon papa came up to me. He was very angry, I could see that, and yet I did not care, for Diamid was close behind him. Papa began to scold in a very low voice, and in Italian." " ' I am much displeased with you, — how dared you go away when I ordered you were to be pre- sent at dinner ? and how dared you change your dress, which I had ordered too — I am astonished, I am amazed — ' But Diamid interrupted him. " * Stay,' he said, ' she should be enshrined and worshipped as that rare thing, a woman who under- stands herself, and who, unstained by the vanity which clothes all beauty with corruption, has courage to repudiate artifice ; as sincere as she is fair.' Papa looked astounded, he had no idea Diamid understood Italian. And so ashamed for him to have heard what he said to me." " Why ashamed ?" asked Lady Delucy, assum- ing ignorance, for she could not believe so young a girl would know . " I did not know then, — Diamid told me after- wards, he tells me all I ask him. Papa wished Diamid to marry me, and to seem so anxious that I should appear in full dress was a British blunder, which no RUMOUR. 73 one could detect more easily, nor mock more deli- cately, than Diamid. Papa had chosen to admire Diamid because he is what papa calls a self- made man, meaning he can do all he chooses, and cares to do the utmost, because so ambitious. Papa is ambitious, but has a small mind which can only move in a circle. I had heard all my life of Diamid Albany, but never for a moment then, imagined this stranger was the same. So Diamid walked with me on the terrace ; he talked to me so beautifully, so kindly, yet so admiringly ; I was proud, I grew prouder every moment, and felt as if I grew, — I do believe I was a woman grown that night. The next day we talked again ; how easy I was with him, — yet he w^as the first person to whom I had ever looked up. He drew out every secret feeling, only by looking me in the face, as the air draws out the perfumes of the flowers, and the sun draws up the dew. I told him all about Geraldi, and actually asked him whether I should not do right to marry him. Diamid said earnestly, ' You must not think of it, my child. Small natures in making sacrifices become sublime ; great minds by the diminution of natural happiness, turn into slaves instead of the rulers they should 74 RUMOUR. be." Proud as I was when he called me woman, I was happier now that he called me * child.' " Next day papa brought me a number of books and told me that I was to read them, that it was time I should — that everybody must be able to say they had read them, and talk about them. I wondered why, but not long. I never was averse to reading, except books on science. Everything but science seemed treated of in these. There were dramas, prose romances, satires, essays, theories sketched and typified, and I felt sure that only one produced them all. There was no name on the title pages; you know Diamid never put his name till it was famous; this was the first edition of his works, papa had procured it on purpose J that I might not know. For some days I did not see Diamid, nor papa, they went out on excursions, and I was left at home. I had read all the books through by the time they returned, and was reading them again. I remember so well that day, as well as those in Heaven must remember the day they died. I was reading * The Lotus Valley.' You remember that one, of course ?" " I do remember it, but perhaps I do not know it so well as you do, it was the earliest of RUMOUR. 75 the works he published," — " Yes, his Primavera, this first bloom of the spring of genius, what a blossom too ! I was reading the passage where Eenaro locks up the child Inesilla whom he has received as ransom for her father, in the court of the Hareem. I know that passage by heart," " ' You cannot escape," said Eenaro ; * you are entirely in my power ; with a word of mine I can release you, by an act detain you here for ever.' ' I do not care,' replied the child, * nothing is of any consequence to me now. But do kill that pretty poor butterfly which I caught this morning and was playing with when you carried me away. I hid it in the hollow of my hand, but you pressed my hand so tightly that it was hurt, — poor me ! I crushed the butterfly, and when you let my hand go and I opened it, it fell upon the floor. It cannot fly, it has lost its beautiful soft dust, and its rose and purple spots are quivering with pain. Oh, crush it with your foot, which is heavier than mine ! I have no slippers, and my tread is too light to kill it, I should make it suffer more.' Eenaro strode three steps along the marble floor, and crushed the butterfly ; its ruined wings 76 RUMOUR. lay like bruised petals of a storm-scattered iris. He turned to the child ; he had put on not an angry frown. * So you have lost your Psyche/ he said, * and you are mine.' * But you cannot crush me/ she answered. " * Then Eenaro heaved a great sigh which shook the pomegranate blossoms. He went out hastily, and left Inesilla there. When he returned she was asleep by the fountain in the midst, the sound of the water as a song of eternal kisses, had lulled her sorrow till it dreamed of joy. Eenaro approached her with stillness ; his feet unshod, he held in his hand the gem- encrusted slippers, lest their sound on the marble should awaken her. Her long hair had fallen into the water, and floated wide there like golden weeds ; Kenaro lifted it from the water, wrung it from its dangerous moisture, and dried it on the folds of his robe, so gently, all so tenderly, that she smiled in her sleep, in a dream that her mother was toying with her hair, as in days when they dressed each other with flowers, and made a play of love. Renaro laid that yet damp hair back from her brow, lest its chill should cross her sweet visions with the cold dream of death ; then gathering pomegi'anate RUMOUR. 77 flowers and the jasmines which had come from her own land, he laid them in her lap, and glided from the court again, again sighing, this time not loud enough to shake the blossoms, for fear of rudely stirring a sweeter blossom still.' " " While I read, Diamid came behind me, and looked over my shoulder. I felt his breath on my neck, I would not move, lest he should go away. When I arrived at the end of the last passage, I was going to turn a page. ' Are not those two passages contradictory to each other ? Critics say so, and doomed the book to oblivion long ago ; but it is not buried, nevertheless, I suppose because there are so many fools left in the world,' he said. " 'No, no !' I said, very eagerly, ' they are not contradictory passages, they explain each other. He did exactly what she asked him, and did it to prove his allegiance, which is further proved by the interest of a man so stern and inflexibly drawn, in the affair of a child and a butterfly. It is a delicate and subtle touch, quite in keeping with the gentleness of his demeanour afterwards. I agree with all this author writes, and understand all too, which is more than I can say for any other English 78 RUMOUR. writer. But he is not an English thinker — he only subdues the language to his uses, a stubborn instrument, but so entirely his slave. Ah! I understand him, and wish I could see him, for I know him without seeing him. I am not like owls which see best in the dark, or bats which love to fly at twilight ; I can only look at the light, and soar towards the sun.' I don t know what rhapsody I was going to utter, for his presence gave me the gift of language, as the music-god of the north, Spromkari, — to all those children who see him in his blue depths, playing on the eternal harp, — gives the gift of music. But Diamid touched my forehead with one of his hands, I turned to him straight, I looked at him. He said, in tones that seemed to pierce my brain, * Thou understandest all, in understanding me\ ' And before I could breathe again, before I could even wonder, what he meant " Here the Lady and Geraldine started both, and both exclaimed, ' What sound was that ?' It did not cease, but swelled with a volume and a voice neither of the wind nor thunder. It was music certainly, imperious and insur- gent, brimming far over, and flooding its own source. RUMOUR, 79 " The organ ! " cried Lady Delucy, " the old organ in the hall ; but who can be playing,, and, above all, to make it sound ^o ? I must go and see." And she left Geraldine, and went. 80 RUMOUR. CHAPTER VI. Though Geraldine had been nurtured in one of the kingdoms of the glory of song, she had heard little music, and understood less. For a moment or two, her idolising tast« for her hus- band's deeds and words, had been wounded by her companion's putting them by so easily for a fresh and a strange interest. But s^ill the sound grew, surging stronger and richer, till the diapason woke sympathetic vibrations in the strings oi the closed piano, and made the chords of the covered harp shudder, as if brushed by a hand too rude. Then Geraldine's heart, filled with the passion of happiness ; it penetrated, and seemed to create a new desire, which was not for love to convict RUMOUR. 81 of some imperious need unfelt before. Soon she was in the hall too. The organ in the hall was very old, and not of master-build, ^ot a gleam of gilding remained on the pipes, from whose points cobwebs hung and fluttered, and the cover for the keys had been lost so many years, that deposit after deposit of dust had fallen between their cracks, half choking the sound of some, and dumbing altogether not a few. Still before the organ hung its curtain, once red, now rust-hued velvet, and the rings which held it to the rods were rusty too. In fact for years the instrument had been considered useless, and only the conservative pride of the house had suffered it to remain standing. Yet this wreck, this ruin, this body from which one would have said the soul had fled, seemed in this hour to have its mechanical power renovated as if by its long rest, and a soul more great than its own pos- sessed it newly. When Lady Delucy went into the hall, the first thing she saw was a group of her own servants, one of whom was dispensing gossip, that salt of servants' lives, to the rest. Being the senior of the party, he grimaced with fear when he VOL. I. G 82 RUMOUR. beheld his mistress. She only inquired, however, who was playing ? " A wild-looking, wandering sort of a person," was the reply, — and he knocked at the front entrance door, just a single knock, as sharp and sudden as a shot, and when I opened it, this person walks in, and asks for you^ my lady, not like a gentleman's servant, but as a impostor who wishes to pass for a gentleman. He must be a impostor of course, or would have knocked a double knock, acting as a gentleman. I says, not of course thinking it mattered whether he was kept or not, ' you can stand inside while I enquire whether my lady will have anything to say to you ;' knowing there was no plate in the hall except the fire-irons. * But,' says I, * give me your card with your name, or I cannot think of troubling my lady.' He gives me this scrap of paper, and who could read thatf — it's not writinor at all ! While I am o^one to see whether your ladyship is at home to any one of that class, he spies out (I suppose) the horgan, and I know no more than that I and the rest within hear- shot — run in to remove him ; but you see, my lady, believing him to be a lunatic rather than a impostor why naturally we couldn't agree among RUMOUR. 83 US to disturb him, knowing no one hut a lunatic could play so on the horgan — that horgan in particular." Lady Delucy took the paper and read in a grotesque German hand the name of a person who had stopped the carriage the night before. Now Lady Delucy had not forgotten him ; she told him to call on her that day, when she left him with his mother, to be cared for at the village inn — the night before. But she had appointed four o'clock, as she had fixed employ- ment for the morning — engagements, however, which Geraldine had been permitted to break through after all. But Lady Delucy was not one to be severe upon artists for infringement of social rules, or want of punctuality ; upon rent artists rather, for she gave no quarter to mimic ones. The voice of her servant worried her, as it jarred against the noble music ; she sent him and all the rest away, and then stood still to listen. As for the servants, they vanished precipitately, not without noise, which such persons usually manage to make, most of all when they are trying to be quiet. Once in their o^vn place, the season- ing of their discourse grew still more stinging. 84 JIUMOUR. " My lady's ways and whimsies is not strange, being met with as she was by my lord. I hope and pray this strange man won't harm her — but to leave her all alone with him ! Supposing he was to go into one of his lunacies while here ?" " / only hope he is no more than a lunatic," observed a younger member of the retinue, one who had shared the quite modern benefits of a course of popular education. All the others looked up to him, as coming from London, and having attended lectures on all subjects, occult and familiar. " What could be worse ?" they asked, " what did he mean ? " " I don't mean anything, for I don't know, and without knowing there's no meaning ; but I do remember hearing of the fiddler who had only one string to his fiddle, which the devil screwed on for him, which was shown in this, that if any other fiddler happened to play on it (but he was always much against their doing it), why they only made it squeak and set your teeth on edge ; and yet he, the fiddler it belonged to, could play music and keep your mouths open as well as your ears, on that very one string, soft and loud equally." RUMOUR. 85 "What was his name?" asked one of the house- maids. " I can't exactly remember, but it was some- thing like Pagan, and a Pagan he was, or worse, which I believe myself. I believe in the devil, I think it a part of religion, nor am I a dissenter — I renounced the devil at the font." " But how could he be the devil, if the devil fastened on the string?" " Is not that what I was wishing to bring you to ? Do not fiddlers fasten on their own strings ? Well, that proves him to have been the devil, and the devil, we are expressively told, walks about seeking whom he may devour, and what more likely but that being a spirit, and able to change his shape, he should have taken fust to the fiddle, and take to the horgan now ? ' " But still people have played on that horgan," observed a sceptical scullery maid, who, in the excitement of the time, had been allowed to approach her superiors as she was not wont. " Or else what was it made for, and put up in the hall?" " Certainly people has played on it, but clothes wear out, and so do horgans. Handel, who wrote those long pieces called oritorias, one of 86 RUMOUR. which I heard in London, a Christmas piece called Messiah. He played on that horgan once, more than one hundred years ago. And to show its age, the long parts of the keys which are made black in our proper church horgans, are made white in that one, and the white parts of the keys black." " Ah," said the old porter, who had spoken to his mistress, " I recollect once, when my little lady was a tiny roaming thing of six or so, she come roaming into the hall one night when I was putting logs on the hall fire. My little lady, says * Prout,' she says, as pretty as she always speaks, ' will you just make a little wind come into the organ ? I want to try and put down one of those keys. Mamma says they are too heavy, and that I cannot ; but if I could, it would surprise mamma very much, would it not, Prout?' " Of course I did it, with pleasure, and I declare I think it pretty near as hard to play the bellors as to play the horgan, at all events I did play the bellors, and my little lady could not play the horgan. Not with all the strength of her little fists piled one on the other, could she get down one note. I remember then my little lady RUMOUR. 87 says, * It's no use, Prout, but I thank you,' she always said / thank you, so grand and yet so pretty. Then I come round in front, and she is playing with the keys, if she can t upon them. She calls the long white keys ladies' coffins, and the black parts marble pavements, and says, ' no wonder they are dead, being made to listen to music, and the music being dead.' And she finishes by rubbing her pretty little fingers all along the dust and smearing it all over her face. And her nurse comes, snatches her up, and scolds me rarely." " I give you a last proof," here broke in the devil-ridden. " The devil and no mistake ! There is no one blowing the bellows, and Prout is well aware as I am, that no one besides the devil could make wind for himself." " Then my lady might be whisked out of window in a flame of sulphureous fire, like Lady Hatton in the play." " That was because Lady Hatton sold herself to him to get a sweetheart ; — my lady living all by herself is safe enough for that." *'She may live all alone by herself, hut she sees people sometimes — and just before he went abroad, Mr. Albany was in and out in her own 88 RUMOUR. room, through the door in the wall — not coming round the right way of the front entrance." To this theory the majority only gave consent by silence. And was the lady astonished that the organ, without wind to feed it, should give out a greater than its own voice ? She did not think about it at all, nor find time to wonder, she remembered no more the actual decay, thus repaired the dim pipes, filled fresh with golden tongues. So masterly was the hand that thus created, that she almost feared the masterhood of the creating presence. She would have doubted the pos- sibility of the player's being so young as the person who had given her the letter, but for the fact that the name on the scrap of paper in her hand was the name mentioned in the letter from one she had benefitted in his neediest days, who now commended to her notice another needy aspirant. All at once, while she was lost in the improvisation just as one progresses spiritually in a dream, not knowing the end, enrapt in expec- tation ; the dream broke off short : just as in a rude awakening from sleep. "Are you tired ?" asked a voice which sounded after the music, strangely harsh and rude. Then RUMOUR. 89 the lady heard a rustling, and steps, she was sure that some second person moved behind the organ, coming forward to the front ; still the curtains were undrawn ; it was not her the voice addressed. No longer fearing to dissipate the dream, she walked up to the curtains, and very gently drew them aside. Behind them, as she expected, sat the youth ; beside him now stood his mother, who on seeing Lady Delucy fell into a nervous fluster, which entirely deprived her of utterance, though it made her cough spasmodically, for many moments As for the player, he had dropped his eyes gloomily, like a moping owl in the sunshine, and his hair, which was in colour and texture not unlike the down of the owl's breast, fell forward (as if recently shaken) over the brows ; so completely covering that crown of the countenance, the forehead, that the lady could not the least guess at its structure, nor even trace its size. By the fresh and all-revealing daylight she perceived that the face she scanned was in fact, and as the world would have decided, irremediably plain ; to her it was interesting for other reasons, but most of all because of that same harmonious ugliness, for each feature being 90 RUMOUR. plain by itself, the effect was far more agreeable to an artistic vision than might be a face with one lovely feature, distorted by the ugliness of the rest to the discord unavoidable in such a case. The skin of this face was colourless, but neither white nor fair; of a dry sallow tint, which attested a condition of bodily ill-health. Years upon years of experience beyond the natural portion of so young a life, had folded too straitly the thin line of the lips ; there was still a charm for which the lady had an eye, in the ex- pression absolutely unsensual, which the severity of the line imparted ; while yet the face retained the whole burden of the passion of youth, unshared, unmitigated — virgin yet. The lady interpreted all these meanings, for she was a student of such whenever they presented themselves, but they would have been veiled from other eyes by a pre- vailing aspect of despair, increased by the expression of the figure, more sharply lined than even the face, more drooping still, the torture of restrained restlessness in its rigid attitude. The lady's eyes filled with the light, if not the tears of pity — but she took care he should not see them. She stood behind him, and soon her kindly smile reassured the mother ; it struc k RUMOUR. 91 her, that she could not speak English easily, and she addressed her in her own tongue. " Your son has a wonderful talent for music," she observed. The son did not stir, nor move his eyes. **0h," began the woman fluently enough, after the fashion of her class, when once their tongues are loosed. " Oh, I do not know what to say, how to apologise, for my great misconduct in coming in. You had ordered him to come alone, my lady, and he would not wait till the hour you had appointed ; I followed him close as I always do when he walks about, for fear he should fall into a ditch, or walk straight against a wall. But when he arrived I waited outside, as it was right for me to do. In a minute he opened the door, and pulled me in ; his arm was so strong, and his eyes shone so, that I was afraid of his having a fever of the brain, for the doctors warned me never to cross him, not when he was four years old and broke all the wine glasses large and small, by putting water into them, and playing cathedral chimes. And not liking the sounds he made so well as those chimes — the finest in all Hanover — he took the little stick and smashed them one by one." 92 RUMOUR. While she so ran on, the son looked up and the lady did not see how he glanced at his mother, because she stood on the other side, but the glance checked her tongue. Then he turned to the lady, who smiled ; but it was evident to her, that at once he had detected the pity that softened her eyes, for a livid haughtiness fell upon his face, like the shadow of a sultry cloud; it was with it as with a clear complexion when it blushes, divided between pride and shame. The eager voice, deepened from its usual harsh medium, seemed to convey that haughtiness to another sense than sight. "The lady could not blame me for handling her organ — /could not have handled it too long." " Herman, Herman !" cried the mother again in affright. " Lady, I pray you, forgive him, he is so wild upon music that he has no respect of persons ; he has made an idol of it, and it prevents his giving honour where honour is due both to God and man." The lady noticed a twang in these last few words very unusual among associations of her country, how common soever in this. She saw too, how they grated on the son's ear, but still he turned not to speak, his mother could perceive this ; RUMOUR. 93 bitterly the thin lips curled, but no bitter answer came. " Your son is quite right to say he could not play too long, I am only astonished that he can play at all upon an instrument so unworthy of him, and so completely worn out." " Do you know ?" he exclaimed speaking harshly, eagerly again, "do you know what it shows, what it proves, that I can play on it ? Do you know that it is not only bad because it is old, but that the day it was set up it ought to have been pulled down again, and broken into bits and sticks, and made into a bonfire ? And the maker should have been roasted in the midst, if indeed, any fire could have been hot enough to burn through so thick a skull — except the hottest " " Herman! Herman !" broke in the mother, and he left the dooming sentence unfinished still persisted, " Lady, do you know what it is to make music from a lump like this ?" " It is genius," said the lady, for want of a better word. '* It is creation. It is what made the world ; it is what he who made all things only gives the lords of men." M RUMOUR. "Herman! Herman!" "You have said so, mother. Why did you give me the name, lord-man ? — " " Hush — thou knowest, all know who do not shut their ears, that all are alike before God." " But not before man," he muttered. The lady came again to his relief. " Is the organ your favourite, your own instru- ment? " she asked. He looked full at her, and his small grey eyes filled as it were from behind the iris with pale, gleaming fire — the true magnetic light. A sudden power seized him to express in words, " Your question could only have been thought of, and asked with a view to a reply, by a woman. Oh lady, women are very useful to musicians in all but the highest, — in dramatic parts. They are divine,m divine dramatic parts, equally the World- divine^ — the Olympian, — parts of majestic passion, or sublimated crime ; — and the Spiritual-dwine, — parts angelic, of tender chastity, or all sacri- ficing love. Women are priceless, or rather slaves to be purchased at any cost, by musicians for the use of music. But as for women being musi- cians themselves, — why, the pianoforte was made for women — that is quite enough.*' RUMOUR. 95 " Made for women ?" interrupted Lady Delucy, amused rather than surprised. ** Yes, made for them, an invention patented by benevolent persons on their account. How many women, answer me, play other instruments, instruments for the orchestra, as well as most women play the piano- forte ?" " They are the exceptions, certainly," said the lady. " Exceptions ! and exceptions among women^ who all imitate each other ! — few enough are such exceptions. The pianoforte is a toy, and for the most part women treat their piano- fortes just as they treated their toys when they were children, petted them and knocked them about, often spoiled them altogether, now and then swaddled them in wool, and did not play with them at all." *^ That is true, certainly ! " *^ And as true, that when women are not satisfied with their own rights in art, it happens as it does when dissatisfied with their own rights in life as women ; they try to scale the heights, they bruise and break their frail frames against the rocks ; and if a woman, so trying physically to attain what she need not 96 RUMOUR. covet — ^for spiritually she is able to embrace it — if such a woman does not perish, self-hurled to destruction, she remains an exception, as you say, a monster; soon she hates herself." The lady was surprised, but she gloried in anything that resembled an encounter of two minds agreed to differ. " How then?" she asked, *^ Cecilia was her- self a Saintess." — " Madam, Cecilia was unmarried — that is sufficient to prove her beyond all women ; an angel. Cecilia was a type. We call all Art feminine, because it aspires." " Woman reaches out her arms to man, the truer to nature and to beauty, the more fully she opens her arms, still always to the One, that shall fill and satisfy, not to the many, who pass through them to elude her. So does Art — above all. Art- Musical, stretch in all her strength to God. And as God is infinite, phantoms of perfection all bright with the brightness of His presence, pass one by one through the dreams of Art, they elude her embrace only to give room to fresh and pure celestial visions ; we call that Creation, it is the progress of a Soul. Finite while human, the faithful man with his single RUMOUR 97 impression, fills the arms of the faithful woman. That woman is slave, not child of Art, I give you a proof. Possessing what you call genius, she will throw it by, cast it to the winds — nay, lay it at the feet of the man she loves, and bid him tread it into the dust of things forgotten ; if only his opinions or pursuits, agree not with the habits of Genius. I grant that a woman may have genius, — most unhappy mind, and thirsty soul ! though I would have her calmly wise, fit to worship as she is meet to love. A woman may be a poetess of the holy passion, she may discuss in books what men's natures dare never expose to themselves, much less to others. She may clothe heroism and grace with the material immortality of sculpture. She may paint — that is to say she may commune wdth the colour-art as nuns in <--on vents keep up their communication with their celestial bridegroom; by yearnings, by fastings, by self-imposition and perpetually-recurring disappointment. But music! — Song, indeed, is a wreath cf woman ; it crowns with unearthly loveliness her fairest charms, it gives her beauty if she has none else ; it gives her wings if she is pure, and she soars before death into the nearest Heaven, and drops on us influences, VOL. I. II 98 RUMOUR. holier than the star-influences, dreams of passion incorruptible. But song is not the whole of music, it is a ray only of the rainbow, or rather, the most artless form of musical expression, giving just such tender beauty to Art when it assists it, as infancy gives human nature." The lady ceased to be surprised, she was absorbed in growing interest. The shrill tones had mounted to a lofty pitch, so that their metallic clarity struck through ; the face changed as visibly as an autumn landscape when the sun pierces the fog that mantled it — the grey eyes iixed, and delicate lights played over them like the steady electric smiles of a fervent summer night. When he ceased speaking, of course the lightnings faded, the eyes grew dim, yet the face retained its brightness somewhat, and the hands quivered silently over the keys, though they formed no clustering chord. The lady grew actually impatient if he did not play, slie must boar him go on speaking. *-' Then you did not tell me which instrument you love best to play — though you told me (and taught me) a good deal besides, which, perhaps, it is good to know, that we may not think too liihgly of ourselves." RUMOUR. 99 '^ I did not tell you to take you down. I have no instrument, as the cant is, and the ignorant boast ; God be thanked for that ! Unless the musician can play with all instruments for his own purposes, he is but the instrument of music himself. Only so far as he commands them all, is he himself music — least finite image of the Eternal." " You do not then satisfy yourself in play- mg? " That time has long been past with me, or 1 should not be here. I dream now — like the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters, so stir my shadows, dim shapes of sound, across the chaos of my fathomless intention." " I knew not," murmured the lady half unconsciously,' when he paused again — **that musicians could so speak — could so discourse of what alone they understand ; it is strange and new." The mother, who had been nearly asleep during a rhapsody which was like a sermon in a foreign language to her ear, now woke up and yawned. A sort of shiver shook his frame, as- the cross influence smote him, and he saiik into the old attitude, with more than the old restraint K)0 RUMOUR. CHAPTER VII. While Lady Delucy was talking to her new and singular acquaintance, she had forgotten in her artistic enthusiasm, her other friend, scarcely of less recent introduction. Geraldine had listened to the music first with wonder and delight ; then with mingling wonder whether Diamid, who admired scarcely any playing, would admire this. But when it ceased, she grew weary, and finding Lady Delucy did not return to look for her, she persuaded herself it was quite time for her to go home, that she might he ready to greet her husband on his return. She k^ft a little note on the table in the room where she had been talking to Ladv RUMOUR. 101 Delucy, explaining this, and bidd'nif^ her fare- well. The lady was glad to see her daughter and Colonel Lyonhart come into the hall, for the pause in the player's behaviour made her nervous ; she scarcely knew what to say or do next. She left him and hastened to meet Elisabeth. " Have you heard anything while you were \n the garden ?" she asked her — " young Eodomant has been playing. No praise can exaggerate his merits, Schenk has spoken well." "We were too far from the house, mamma, we went to the village, for we thought he and his mother would want a lodging ; there are two rooms to let in the white cottage." " I do not know yet, I have not seen him alone yet. I should like him to stay here — " Elisabeth's smile checked her. For Elisabeth could recall several melancholy, though diverting instances of her mother s excessive benevolence. One that of a gentleman who spoke broken English, and announced himself as a German artist, carrying with him a portfolio of mag- nificent foreign sketches and a letter of intro- duction from one of the princes of Gcrmiin artists, but who could not sketch, because he 102 RUMOUR. had broken his arm (still in a sling) in the overturn of a diligence. He was lodged and boarded sumptuously for a fortnight, at the end of which time there appeared in the Times an advertisement of that same portfolio, the actual property of the artist, who was said to have written the letter. An exceedingly large reward was offered for the sketches if restored; and Lady Delucy hastened to the rooms she had appropriated to her visitor ; but found him already gone — he had received the information before she did, having taken his copy of the paper himself, out of the letter box, the instant it was deposited therein by the postman — and being aware that Lady Delucy seldom looked at hers till after breakfast. Not only had he gone, but though she wrote to the artist directlv, she had to send to town for his address, and her friend reached him first^ and made his story appear so plausible that he received the reward. He was at last caught, with the forged letter still upon his person — but, he had then spent the money. Another time Lady Delucy had done a great deal for a man who played upon the harp, very well too, but in the streets, and who prevailed upon her innocence, to believe RUMOUR. 103 that his father, a man of social position, had turned him out of doors, because he persisted in the study of art. She procured him a good many pupils besides her own daughter, and one morning when he was left alone in the dining room, for about five minutes, he pocketed and vanished with six golden spoons and a silver pap- boat, enriched with emeralds, out of the side- board closet. Lady Delucy knew she had often been deceived, but her benevolence had in those cases misled her judgment, being first excited. In this instance, her judgment had been formed first. She had not been prepossessed, nor did slie know the youth was absolutely poor ; she thought he only wanted patronage. Her daughter's smile however made her very anxious that Elisabeth should herself judge of the power and the skill which so enchanted her. It was evident that Elisabeth only went to please her mother ; but she did go with her to the organ — having given Colonel Lyonhart a look, which asked him to go too. ^* My daughter," said Lady Delucy, " wishes to renew her acquaintance with you — she scarcely saw vou last niofht." Elisabeth's sweet smile and expressive eyes, 104 RUMUL'R. were sweetest and most eloquent for the musi- cian, just because she did not admire him at all ; she pitied his pallid and rugged countenance, his writhing restlessness awakened newly, his despairing expression, that almost implied self- disgust. Now, to Lady Delucy's extreme annoyance, the gloom which had filmed his eyes, melted not the least, it overspread his whole countenance, and an unutterable awk- wardness possessed his frame ; he stooped, he shrugged, he shook himself like some wild animal disturbed in its lair bv man, and ended by burying his face in his hands, and placing his elbows on the key-board. So he stayed awhile ; but only Avhile his mother was again curtseying and apologising. She began to cry at last ; — and then he looked up, and said in his harshest tones, yet not without respect in his manner to Lady Delucy, " Am I to play any more ? because if not, I must go." How respectful soever he was to her, he turned his back completely on Elisabeth and her lover. " I wish my daughter to hear you play, if you are not tired." For she hoped his playing would dissipate the disagreeable effect he had personally produced. RfJMOUR. 105 " I am very willing," he answered, " but she," pointing to his mother, "has not strength to blow any longer ; and without wind I can but make these keys rattle like old bones. However, to the ears of asses, and some men, it would be as agreeable and profitable if T rattled them as if I played." And he rattled them with his knuckles. Lady Delucy was very glad that Colonel Lyon- hart, who understood almost every Oriental dialect, was profoundly ignorant of all European languages but English. She sent in all haste for one of the servants, who came ; but would not have dared to come had his ladies been alone ; for Colonel Lyonhart was looked upon by the household at large in the same sort of light as a policeman — an infallible protector against natural or diabolical dangers. Sorely did the lady repent her ignorance of a phenomenon of character she had not happened to meet with before. Eodomant put out the whole power of the organ, and laying his hands on as many keys as they would cover, com- menced a series of awful noises, hideous and ridiculous ; yet various as the screams of night- birds, the squalls of grimalkins, the howls of beasts, the groans of those in the extremity of 106 RUMOUR. sea-sickness, whole masses of flats, sharps, and naturals — those next door neighbours, and bitter enemies, held on together, till the ear was set as it were on edge, like the teeth by a virulent acid. At last the bolt of musical revenge fell, in a crash of dissonances, a chaotic strum too loud to be endured ; and every one fed the field, except Lady Delucy, who indeed could not move for laughing, and whose first anger had subsided into the sympathy of one who had been the most delicate of comic actresses, and drawn smiles to a thousand lips by the least dimpling relaxation of her serene soft face. Rodomant's mother ran away first ; then Elisabeth, who stayed as long as she could bear it, because in her simplicity she really thought he was playing his best ; and who, when she did move, glided so gently away that no one heard her in the midst of the other noise. Charles Lyonhart, following close beside her, slammed the hall door with his whole strength, in a sort of heroic rage, because Elisabeth's ears had been so tortured, and her sweet grace insulted by one — upon whom he conferred various epithets in Hindostanee, which it would be difficult even at Billingsgate to parallel in the EngHsh language. RUMOUR. 107 With the banging of the door the noise of the organ ceased. Rodomant looked up in the lady's face with a droll, satisfied smile ; not arch, for the lips were not curved enough to assume such an expression, but confiding and mild withal; — • while he touched here and there a note, or gathered and let go again a chord, softly and fitfully as a butterfly now brushes a rose, now lights upon a pansy. " I have sent him away !" he said triumphantly. "You were very cruel," said the lady " for he has never heard music such as yours, and it would have done him good. I also particularly desired that my daughter should be enchanted, as she might have been if you had done yourself the smallest possible justice.'* " I was not thinking about her being en- chanted — ^I only could not have him near me ; and as to playing, that was good enough for him. He is a person wh o considers music a craft for vagabonds, half wits, and men who faint at the sight of blood. He does not even know what art means, but what he understands by it he despises. He thinks us all dissipated, extravagant, and vain as women. We are voluptuous, spendthrifts, weeds of the devil's growing in God's great field — 108 RUMOUR. the world. You cannot contradict me, it is all true that I have said." It was so true that she could not contradict him. Charles Lyonhart, like most men first in their own worldly order and clinging to a worldly profession with a tenacity renown has riveted, was ignorant of the claims of those whose profession, if it can be so called, is eminently unworldly, how dependent soever its votaries be on the world for sustenance. As little worldly wise, less worldly- prudent, and of no use in the world at all, he esteemed all artists of every class. Lady Delucy had spent many hours in vainly contrasting this prejudice in his mind, and had given it up at last through the conviction that it must arise from a want of passion in his nature. But that was before her daughter's betrothal, which convinced her shortly that whatever might be his prejudices, he was persistent and passionate enough. Yet he did not care even for Elisabeth's playing, and he tried not to yawn, and tried hard to listen, when she sang great foreign scenas. He liked her simplest ballads best, still preferred the kind accents of her silver speech to her most golden singing. " Will you stay here and play, while I speak to RUMOUR 109 your mother — and will you let me speak after- wards to you ? " " Do not listen, lady, to anything she says about me — she tells untruths ; that are truths to her, however, for she believes them. About herself she can talk — there is little in her history ; and still less, alas ! in mine." Then Lady Delucy took the woman to the room where she had talked to Geraldine. Directly they were shut in, the woman began, as the lady expected, to cry and complain. " It was so sad, so trying," she said, " to have a child who was not like other children — who cannot work regularly to gain an honest living — cannot settle into regular habits, and marry happily in his own country. If he had been quite an idiot, he would always have been a baby to her, and she should not have suffered half so much as now she did. He was always making enemies, and quarrelling with his friends ; and now, after throwing away such fine chances in Germany, to come to England and disgrace himself the first thing, by placing him- self on an equality with a high lady — a great lady, — and she, his poor mother, obliged to seem to encourage him, because she dare not cross him, lest as the doctor said, those convulsions might 1 1 RUMOUR. come back, which he had when he was a child." " You are quite right," said the lady, directly she could get in a word — " to take care of him, and it would be very wrong to cross him. I will tell you why : your son is not my equal in music, he is my superior. And once I was not the lady of this house — I was an actress on the English stage, until my noble husband married me." She meant to mend matters, but she had made them worse : the woman shrank from her with awe and terror in her face ; she was evidently one of those — few^er abroad than at home, but too many any- where, who have been bred in superstitious horror of actors and actresses, a superstition perhaps the last remaining in full strength, of the fine antique stock, of whom witches are the maternal ancestors. But the lady's sweet smile and countenance which glowed with goodness carried a countercharm to the artificial dread. *' Well ! so kind and great a lady had been in so humble a position, that it was wonderful she had no pride — could excuse her son's behaviour." "' But your son is a good son to you, is he not ? " the lady asked. " He certainly never told lies, and he ate very RUMOUR. Ill little and drank no beer, and was not gay ; he hated all amusements. But so wild, so irregular, so rude to everybody, particularly his betters." "Was his father a musician?" asked Lady Delucy. " Oh no, a shoemaker, but a very good one^ with a fine business. Herman would never learn it, nor anything. I am now sorry we sent him to school, for then he could not have taken up the whims he did about learning. Then, another vexation happened. He was so clever that he went beyond all the scholars. His father would have sent him to college, and he might have been a Professor, but he said, ' No, I know as much as I want of those things. I will read for myself.' He spent his mornings in a great library, and we thought perhaps he was writing a book, that might be a good thing, to have his books at Leipsig fair. But one day I found his papers,, they were not book-papers, but music, pages on pages of it. And as he was out, I burned them^ because I thought it would force him to take up with some serious pursuit. For all this time he was living on our hands. When he came home.'' — *^ Oh," said the lady, " was he very much vexed indeed ?" 112 RUMOUR. " No, and that was odd, he took it so easily that I thought he would never write any more- He did not scold, he only sighed once, and tapped his forehead and said, * Thou canst not burn what is written.' However, soon he began, not only to write again, but to play. He played now on a fiddle, which he tried for a week ; all night • long he played ; at the end of the week he got a horn, then a flute ; all sorts of instruments. There might have been hope if he would have kept to one, but he never settled to any. And he was so idle, that he would only practise." The lady smiled. *' But how did he contrive to play the organ, for that is wonderful in him, and even vou must be proud of him there." " No, lady, I do not understand music, nor can I hear much in it. I used to love our solemn, holy hymns at Kosenthal." " What, then, is your religion ?" asked the lady. *' I am a Moravian, and the Countess Von Welt brought me with her, when she married, as her maid, because I worked so well. I em- broidered all her wedding dresses ; and oh ! to see my husband's shroud and winding-sheet — they were most beautiful, so fine, everybody came to see them«" RUMOUR. 113 A sudden thought struck the lady. ** What was your name before your marriage ? " she en- quired. " Eachael von David ; my father lived at Rosenthal, and was a tailor. My mother was a Moravian, she too worked well." " A Moravian^'' murmured Lady Delucy. " The old heritage, the old brand of merit, only half hidden under the parti-coloured rags of naturalisation." " What did you say, madam ?" " Nothing, nothing ; but your son, how did he get to the organ ? " " He asked his father for six lessons, only six. He learned of the organist at the Church. After one lesson he came homo with a black bruise on his head ; when his master began to play to him, he had actually pushed him off the stool; then naturally enough his master was in a passion, and hit his head with the corner of the big choral book. Herman would learn of him no more, nothing suited him but that he would learn of Herr Schenk at the Cathedral. That was so dear his father refused him iirst. But it was not dear in the end, for Herr Schenk took a fancv to him and gave him twenty-four lessons for nothing. VOL, I. I 114 RUMOUR. Then came the worst part of his ingratitude to God and man. For though I should have pre- ferred him to be anything else, yet it would have heen very respectable if he had got a place as organist — in a Church, I mean, of course. Herr Schenk promised to give him a letter, a certificate, and one besides to tell that he could teach. At first he got on so well that he had eight pupils, and he played duets sometimes with Herr Schenk, which m.ade crowds come to the Cathedral to hear. At last, oh Lady, my old mistress, the Countess von Welt, sent for him, for my son to teach her daughter, the young Countess. How glad I was ! I was proud then. Oh how I talked to him and besought him to behave well, and I made him most beautiful shirts, and brushed his clothes ; he looked like a gentleman. For a month or two he went on well, except that he always crumpled his wristbands by tucking them half way up his arms, — the shirts were never fit to put on twice, But then he did a most dreadful and grievous thing, which spoiled all his fortune, and then troubles came together as close as swal- lows in a flight. " " What was the dreadful thing though ?" asked the lady frowning, really impatient. RUMOUR, 115 " He actually had the audacity to make love, at least not exactly to make love, but to show he felt it, to the Countess Clara, my old mistress's own child, his own pupil. The Countess sent him away, and would never see me, nor him, any more. All the people, who let him teach their children, took them from under his instruction too : he lost all, — and when the Countess von Welt sent him his money, he sent it all back to her. Then, all at once, his father died, he had been poorly, and I had not told him of Herman's misbehaviour, because I thought it would make him worse. I was glad I had not told him, he was spared that unhappiness. Then, after his death there was much less money in the business than I thought; he had always looked for his son to help him. And Herman made me sell the stock; it fetched little, for the people were all running to a new shop opposite the market, where a French- woman sold shoes and boots from Paris. — Well, Herman said to me, ' this money will keep you for a year, and then you will see what I shall do. I am going away all day, every day, but I shall come back at night and sleep.' In case of robbers or fire, just to think, to leave me so ! And lie would not say where he was going : certainly he 116 RUMOUR. came home every night, but he never said a word, and I of course thought he was working hard at some trade, to surprise me with. At the end of the year he told me — that is, he took me with him to Herr Schenk's, and, lady, that whole year he had been doing nothing but studying music. ' Why,' I said, speaking as mildly as I could, " how much more time do you mean to waste so ?" " ' All my life,' said he. Then despair seemed to fill my heart, and I could say no more, I could only pray for resignation to bear my lot." " And what next ? " " Herr Schenk said, very politely I must say, — he is a fine old gentleman, — ' Your son is going to England and there he will make his fortune. ' Oh, what a long way,' I said ; * if we must go anywhere why not nearer home ? ' ' Because, said Herr Schenk, ' England is the richest country in all the world, and I shall write him a letter which he is to take to a kind and great lady, who will introduce him to her friends as she intro- duced me. She is richer now than she was then. All the great persons in England like their children to take lessons of foreigners, especially Germans, in music. And he can teach children — yes, and grown-up children now.' " RUMOUR. 117 Lady Delucy thought of the simple old German who only loved his pipe besides his organ, and who led so frugal a life that he could subsist entirely, when in London, upon the handsome remuneration she, his then only pupil, made him for his instructions, when, before her marriage, she had wished to make herself mistress of the science of music. And she wondered how the being she had in the hall would contrive to instruct children, especially the children of the nobility of Britain. She would ask no more questions about him, " You tell me you work," she observed. " Now you need be under no apprehensions about your son and yourself, for I can get you and give you a great deal of work. Fine work is almost as difficult to procure as fine music. My daughter will be married some day, and as she will go to India with her husband she will want a great many more clothes than do most young ladies when they marry. You shall make them all — at least as many of them as you like — for I know how beautiful is the needlework of the Moravians, and that my daughter and I shall like yours very much better than what is done in England." Then the lady finished in her thoughts : — *' It 118 RUMOUR. will take her mind off her son. His patience with her is actual virtue, but it would be heresy to call it so." Soon she was alone with the son. He was not so agreeable as she had expected — for, once out of the musical body, he was as queer and restless as ever, seeming scarcely in a con- dition of sanity. Indeed, had she been a fool, she might really have thought him mad ; but she was of too lucid a mind not to receive clearly the impression of every other. She fixed her serene eyes on him, and gradually he calmed beneath their influence. However he writhed and fidgeted, his eyes became fixed upon her^ and he now examined her with all the eagerness of a youth, yet all the simplicity of a child. " She has told you about the little countess, lady?" " I did not believe what she believes however, do not fear." " No, I should think not. It was the countess who made love to me. It was I who would go no more to teach her, after she had pressed my hand and asked me for a lock of my hair. But she was so angry with me for scolding her and sneering at her, that she told her mother it was /who had RUMOUR. 1 1 y been the fool. I never knew love — the love of the human lover. My bride is found, however — nay, I have married her. And she shall not be poor. She shall reign a queen, and I her king, will reign over her, yet worship her and be her servant." *' Now, I wish to ask what are your designs 1 Without knowing them I cannot help you, and 1 wish to help you rightly. You know that, for you read character." " You ought to wish ; it would be for your own advantage, too," he muttered. Truly, no respect of persons dwelt with him, saving only one person — himself. "I know, and fully recognise, the claims of genius. But there is an intellectual as well as a moral conscience. The greater the powers the more conscientiously they must be employed ; the more they promise the more they must produce." *' Who, of nineteen years, ever knew what I know ? I am aged with knowledge ; wisdom turned my heart to stone in the cradle." *^ Is this vanity or the pride of power?" the lady asked herself. " But what do you wish to do — how to begin ? " she added, aloud. " Lady " — and here his voice was no longer 120 RUMOUR. rude, it trembled — *^ I did not come here to make money, though I came because it is so rich a place ; and though it is strange enough that, practical nation as you are, with your golden tests for everything, even merit, you still are the people who give the most to fame, and the most fame to the famous. I want to make my first great fame in England, not as others have done, make it abroad and then bring it over, already hackneyed, to be hunted round and round in a circle, and then turned out altogether." " But here — in this country-place ? " " Oh, Schenk gave me the letter addressed here, because he said it was the time of year when fine ladies are in the country. As for my mother, you may think it impertinent I brought her too. But I will never leave her, and I can earn enough to support her by spending an hour a day in writing trumpery for the music-sellers. I ought to support her, for I would learn no trade. You see what she is, that she believes in art as in the devil — in fact, not believing it at all, but fright- ened at it as the superstitious fear ghosts, not believing in them either. But she brought me up, instead of strangling me or starving me ; ugly as a viper when I was born, she nourished me, RUMOUR. 121 she let me live. And for that she shall be remembered when I am a Power upon the earth." " Your wish then is fame, fame earthly and perishable, after all." " Fame ! — but many things have fame, earthly things, fame earthly ; things spiritual, a fame as pure." " May it be yours, and may you deserve it ; above all, may you not depend upon it for your soul's sustenance, for if so, you shall thirst again." '* Ah, vou once had fame, a woman's fame. And you could give it up ! What surer proof that fame is no more sufficient for a woman's whole delight than love is enough for man's." The lady smiled. When she had given up her dear pursuit it was for nothing she loved as well, nor had the love she received filled up the chasm in her being between her artist and her private life ; it did but cover the abyss with frail bright roses, though an angel hovered over it — her child. Still, nothing in her face, or manner, or most transient mood, betrayed that to her life the vital principle of life's perfection was wanting. There was but a shade of gravity at which one wondered. 122 RUMOUR. because she was so generous, and her means to relieve were so large — ^for to have the power to be generous equal to the will, is the most certain brightener, after love, of a true-hearted woman's fate. RUMOUR. 123 CHAPTER VIIL On a bright May morning the chief critic of one of the periodicals that sustain the glory of the English press, was sitting at his desk with nothing particular to do, because nothing par- ticular had been done. Innumerable letters lay on the table directed to Tims Scrannel, Esq. He had answered all he meant to answer, and left the others out to produce an effect, even though his servant only should witness the effect, and have cause to marvel at the magnitude of his correspondence. Tims Scrannel was no ordinary person.- Slug- gish and cold as crawled the current of his blood, surcharging his temperament with lymph, yet his veins held brighter, quicker drops, that seemed 124 RUMOUR. as though with that they could not blend, any more than wine with oil when poured upon it. His parents' marriage of mislike had developed itself in the sure result, an offspring endowed with a crabbed contrariety of attributes. He li^as, as it were, possessed of twin spirits, frater- nising not in their mutual prison, — as if to realise the old heathen suspicion that two demons dwell with the individual man, prompting him either to good or evil. A demon and an angel ruled this nature, and if not equally, it was not strange, for the demon was fostered upon its own food, the flesh, and the senses were its ministering slaves. But as for the angel, that slept in the trances of the soul, only waking at strange moments, a stranger almost to itself. All circumstances had conspired to make this life a convulsion, rather than a struggle, for this twin-possessed. He was unloved by a loveless mother — one of those of whom one can but believe they are here, on earth, in a state not only probational but progressive : — a feminine monster, head-woman — that is, a brain teeming with frivolous inventions ; heart-reptile, whose still, chill blood seemed the unbound snow-wreath of maiden modesty to the simple nature it deluded RUMOUR. 125 — until round his warm heart the cold coils had closed — too late, for after marriage. Thenceforth his life became a galvanised existence ; his soul swooned into a torpor which nothing but the shock of death could scatter. Tims Scrannel was their only child, begotten in disappointment, and born, as far as character involves personality, of a mother, yet without one. He was ugly, and his mother hated him, cast him from her cold breast ; he was weakly, and his father cared for him tenderly, until his budding character disclosed the blight of the maternal blood. He had been christened — by his mother's determination, which always carried the day by woman's majority of one against him who, if not her master, is sure to be her slave — and named a name which no person could wish to bear to the grave, and have in- scribed upon his coffin. But he was so insig- nificantly named that he might possibly inherit a property belonging to a relation of his mother's, whose house bore that name since Barebones sat. And he changed his sirname besides, that he might actually inherit the fortune of another. The first speculation failed entirely, and as for the second, it was, on reversion to him, so dimin- ished by extravagance that it was scarcely worth 126 RUMOUR. the trouble of a claim. At twenty-five Tims Scrannel was a disappointed man. He had never been a youth ^ in the young, ignorant, and dream- ful sense, reeling as with wine beneath the bliss of being. Like Narcissus, he gazed on himself, and unlike Narcissus fell to hating the image he beheld within. He detested his looks, his name and style, his means — just sufficient to make the very poor envy him as rich, the rich to look down on him as very poor. His ambition was petty, therefore perilous, for if he longed to be some- thing it was something he knew not of, and no winged impulse drove him to any goal. From head to foot cased in the icy mail of scepticism, there yet boiled a spring at his heart — the fire of jealousy ever fed that central heat. Yet was the brain sound, the mind without a flaw, and there were mines of intellectual resource ever in reserve, and golden veins enriched by working to the uttermost. And as for the soul, there in its own home the angel slept, and now and then woke gently — gently as Byron's slept., under the muse's magnetic sway. The waking of the angel gave a thrill of higher life — nay, the highest — to the imprisoned nature; it distilled through all the senses. To his ear, ever that of the musical RUMOUR. 127 voluptuary, it brought the music of the spheres ; to his eye it showed the green repose of death's illimitable fields, the true Elysian. In those angelical moods, his taste was turned as fever- sick from the luscious fruits of pleasure, and the taste spiritual that it typified yearned in the thirst of its extremity for such water as was promised to the woman frail and faithful at the earthly well. Then the very arms wearied of all that man can materially embrace, the sense of touch was subli- mated into that spiritual body we call magnetic, when soul embraces soul ; then the very scent fainted from perception of artificial essences, the green-room bouquet and the ball-room wreath ; but a rose freshly opened, or a wall-flower washed in spring rains, sufinsed the soul with soft, sad memories, a trouble of delight. But the twin-angel, far from making the pos- sessed one suffer less, added poignancy to the con- trasting torment ; the demon- twin raged and tore him, in revenge for the transient helplessness in which it had been bound. And its fiendish strength, in alliance with the cold common sense of the mind in mammon's power, excellently fitted him for his profession, a jackal of that lion, the press. He, without unmanly flinching, could 128 RUMOUR. pluck the literary weakling from the breast that nourished it, and mercifully strangle its earliest cries; he could cut the gangrene of vanity from the self' love he wounded, with a hand that quivered not the while it tortured. He could also have bound up the wounds which sensitive merit had received from a misappreciating majority ; he could have directed conscious yet trembling power, and have taught the new-fledged muse the flight of the Olympian heaven. He helped none of these. He could approve, but it was always the prize efibrt of mediocrity ; he could en- courage, but ever the mind mimetic, he could urge to fresh essays — but it was then as though he urged the swan to the shore, and the dove to the water-waste where her foot should find no rest. He could condemn the nightingale to silence, and tempt the hedge-sparrow to sing. But he was a treasure to his employers, those who call sweet bitter, and bitter sweet — and taste them wrong too, after long vitiation of the mental palate. It has been said that it is easier to unmake than to make, and this certainlv holds good of criticism. A book may be demolished (as to its popular and peculiar character) in half an hour's li^ht writing, yet itself may have been RUMOUR 129 laboured at for many months. Just as a picture may be despoiled of fame by being hung in a wrong light, so may a book be displaced from the niche its own pretensions might have gained for it, by a false design ascribed, not proved. But who looks for proof in such a case, in days when time is money ? But Tims had funded his mental resources so wisely that he lived well, in the social sense, by means of a style of writing no more difficult nor exhausting to a shrewd person of superior educa- tion and large literary experience, than it is difficult for a dispensing chemist to compound drugs. He lived also by himself; he was not married, though no longer young in years ; he was too great an epicure to admire easily, and too suspicious to select, even among women, who pleased him. Then he was so plain a man, and only a beautiful woman of a high physical stamp and social caste would have repaid him for the trouble of marrying. Still, often as the demon rent him with its teeth, and lashed his sullen blood to blackest fever, his angel, the Art loving, saved him from the vortex of dissipation, seeming to hold above it her still impending presence, as the moon's white finger points out the sudden chasm at the traveller s feet. VOL. I. K 130 RUMOUR. Tims rose from the writinof-table in his ornate room, so chastely furnished, with its small pyramid of minute marble busts — the celebrities of the modem Olympus, reduced by the skill of the first metropolitan modeller from master casts. Four pictures only adorned the walls, a Murillo, a Coreggio, a Titian, and a Turner. About a thousand books, all bound in green — all presents from their authors, and each with its flyleaf an autograph — filled two cases of carved mahogany, and the one large window faced a small fretted balustrade, sparkling with scarlet geraniums. Tims walked upstairs into his dressing-room, a chamber so shaded and so scented that in it Adonis might have lain in state. He snarled in the ruthlessly-reflecting mirror at his own face^ his brickdust-hued hair, and eyes placed like those of a Mongol, — at the entirely bare fact of ugliness attested by every line and wrinkle, the angel- gleam totally eclipsed now by the interposing demon. But upon his hands Tims did not scowl ; he grimly grinned ; they were his pet point, the jewels of his personality — white, delicate, well- shaped — worthy as models of his artistic worship, and the constant contemplation of them with which he was wont to relieve his mind in public^ when surrounded by handsome men, fair women. Humour. 131 and beautiful-faced artists, whom he envied most of all. Tims was dressed carefully, yet carelessly, in a sere-leaf coloured coat and a brown round- topped hat, like a wandering artist. He was going to see and be seen at the private view of the Academy in Trafalgar-square. It was full when he got in — the chief room especially crowded, and as usual the great crowd was before one picture. Tims, of course, had seen all the most im- portant pictures at the artist's own houses, for they all tried, naturally enough, to conciliate him. Strange, however, to say, the crowd was in this instance neither before Moonraker's " Morning after the Last Day," nor in front of Leveler s " Dream of the Christ Child," nor wondering, divided between delis^ht and distaste, at Romana's "Expiation, Post Mortem." It consisted cer- tainly, for the most part, of men, and they were all worshipping together at a shrine which would never lack votaries, though all fanes should fall and temples perish, — woman's beauty. It was a full-length life-sized portrait, and when Tims caught a glimpse of the lovely girl-face he looke