Duchess - Faith and Unfaith - A Novel

"What a blessing they didn't!" says Branscombe. "Fancy, twenty of them! You'd have found it awkward in the long run, wouldn't you? And I don't think they'd have liked it, you know, in this illiberal country. So glad you thought better of it."

"I wish I could once see you as honestly" – with a slight, almost unconscious, stress on the word – "in love as I have been scores of times."

"What a melancholy time you must have put in! When a fellow is in love he goes to skin and bone, doesn't he? slights his dinner, and refuses to find solace in the best cigar. It must be trying, – very; especially to one's friends. I doubt you were a susceptible youth, Arthur. I'm not."

"Then you ought to be," says Sartoris, with some anger. "All young men should feel their hearts beat, and their pulses quicken, at the sight of a pretty woman."

"My dear fellow," says Branscombe, severely, removing his glass from his right to his left eye, as though to scan more carefully his uncle's countenance, "there is something the matter with you this morning, isn't there? You're not well, you know. You have taken something very badly, and it has gone to your morals; they are all wrong, – very unsound indeed. Have you carefully considered the nature of the advice you are giving me? Why, if I were to let my heart beat every time I meet all the pretty women I know, I should be in a lunatic asylum in a month."

"Seriously, though, I wish you would give the matter some thought," says Lord Sartoris, earnestly: "you are twenty-eight, – old enough to make a sensible choice."

Branscombe sighs.

"And I see nothing to prevent your doing so. You want a wife to look after you, – a woman you could respect as well as love, – a thoughtful beautiful woman, to make your home dearer to you than all the amusements town life can afford. She would make you happy, and induce you to look more carefully to your own interests, and – and – "

"You mean you would like me to marry Clarissa Peyton," says Dorian, good-humoredly. "Well, it is a charming scheme, you know; but I don't think it will come off. In the first place, Clarissa would not have me, and in the next, I don't want to marry at all. A wife would bore me to death; couldn't fancy a greater nuisance. I like women very much, in fact, I may say, I am decidedly fond of a good many of them, but to have one always looking after me (as you style it) and showing up my pet delinquencies would drive me out of my mind. Don't look so disgusted! I feel I'm a miserable sinner; but I really can't help it. I expect there is something radically wrong with me."

"Do you mean to tell me" – with some natural indignation – "that up to this you have never, during all your wanderings, both at home and abroad, seen any woman you could sincerely admire?"

"Numbers, my dear Arthur, – any amount, – but not one I should care to marry. You see, that makes such a difference. I remember once before – last season – you spoke to me in this strain, and, simply to oblige you, I thought I would make up my mind to try matrimony. So I went in heavily, heart and soul, for Lady Fanny Hazlett. You have seen Lady Fanny?"

"Yes, a good deal of her."

"Then you know how really pretty she is. Well, I spent three weeks at it; regular hard work the entire time, you know, no breathing-space allowed, as she never refuses an invitation, thinks nothing of three balls in one night, and insisted on my dancing attendance on her everywhere. I never suffered so much in my life; and when at last I gave in from sheer exhaustion, I found my clothes no longer fitted me. I was worn to a skeleton from loss of sleep, the heavy strain on my mental powers, and the meek endurance of her ladyship's ill tempers."

"Lady Fanny is one woman, Clarissa Peyton is quite another. How could you fail to be happy with Clarissa? Her sweetness, her grace of mind and body, her beauty, would keep you captive even against your will."

Dorian pauses for a moment or two, and then says, very gently, as though sorry to spoil the old man's cherished plan, —

"It is altogether impossible. Clarissa has no heart to give me."

Sartoris is silent. A vague suspicion of what now appears a certainty has for some time oppressed and haunted him. At this moment he is sadly realizing the emptiness of all his dreaming. Presently he says, slowly, —

"Are you quite sure of this?"

"As certain as I can be without exactly hearing it from her own lips."

"Is it Horace?"

"Yes; it is Horace," says Branscombe, quietly.

A little room, scantily but neatly furnished. A low bed. A dying man. A kneeling girl, – half child, half woman, – with a lovely, miserable face, and pretty yellow hair.

It was almost dusk, and the sound of the moaning sea without, rising higher and hoarser as the tide rushes in, comes like a wail of passionate agony into the silent room.

The rain patters dismally against the window-panes. The wind – that all day long has been sullen and subdued – is breaking forth into a fury long suppressed, and, dashing through the little town, on its way to the angry sea, makes the casements rattle noisily and the tall trees sway and bend beneath its touch. Above, in the darkening heavens, gray clouds are scurrying madly to and fro.

"Georgie," whispers a faint voice from out the gathering gloom, "are you still there?"

"Yes, dear, I am here, quite near to you. What is it?"

"Sit where I can see you, child, – where I can watch your face. I have something to say to you. I cannot die with this weight upon my heart."

"What weight, papa?"

"The uncertainty about your future," says the dying man, with some excitement. "How can I leave you, my little one, to fight this cruel world alone?"

"Do not think of me," says the girl, in a voice so unnaturally calm as to betray the fact that she is making a supreme effort to steel herself against the betrayal of emotion of any kind. By and by, will there not be long years in which to make her moan, and weep, and lament, and give herself wholly up to that grim giant, Despair? "Put me out of your thoughts altogether. I shall do very, very well. I shall manage to live as others have lived before me."

"Your Aunt Elizabeth will take you in for a little while, and then – then – "

"I shall go out as a governess. I shall get into some kind, pleasant family, and every one will be very good to me," says the girl, still in a resolutely cheerful tone. "It will just suit me. I shall like it. Do you understand me, papa? I shall like it better than anything, because children are always fond of me."

The father's face grows sadder, even grayer, as she speaks. He sighs in a troubled fashion, and strokes feebly the little fragile hand that clings so desperately to his, while the damps of death lie thick upon his brow.

"A governess," he murmurs, with some difficulty. "While you are only a child yourself? What a hard, hard fate! Is there no friend to help and comfort you?"

"I have a friend," replies she, steadily. "You have often heard me mention her. You remember the name, now, – Clarissa Peyton? She was my best friend at school, and I know she will do what she can for me. She will be able to find me some nice children, and – "

"Friendship," – interrupts he, bitterly, – "it is a breath, – a name. It will fail you when you most need it."

"Clarissa will not fail me," replies she, slowly, though with a feeling of deadly sickness at her heart. "And, besides, you must not think of me as a governess always, papa. I shall, perhaps, marry somebody, some day."

The dying man's eyes grow a shade brighter; it is a mere flicker, but it lasts for a moment, long enough to convince her she has indeed given some poor hope to cheer his last hours.