Damon, that bitter day comes, you will know pretty accurately how Guy felt & what Guy said. Let us, then, pass over an hour, & reenter our hero’s domain with Jack Egerton, who, at about 11 o’clock, gave his sharp, short rap at the door of that sanctum. “Who the devil is it?” said Guy, savagely, starting at the sound. “Your Mentor.” “Jack?—Confound you!—Well, come in if you like.” “I do like, most decidedly,” said Egerton briskly, sending a puff of balmy Havana smoke before him as he entered. “What’s the matter now? I’ve been at Swift’s after you, & didn’t half expect to find you moping here.” “I don’t care where I am,” said Guy with a groan. “Sit down. What is the use of living?” “Shall I answer you from a scientific, theological or moral point of view?” “Neither. Don’t be a fool.” “Oh,” with a slight shrug, “I thought you might like me to keep you company.” Guy growled. “I don’t know whether you want to be kicked or not,” he said, glaring at poor Jack, “but I feel deucedly like trying it.” “Do, my dear fellow! If it will shake you out of this agreeable fit of the dumps I shall feel that it is not paying too dearly.” Guy was silent for a moment; then he picked up Georgie’s letter & held it at arm’s length, before his friend. “Look there,” he said. Jack nodded. “My death warrant.” He stooped down & pushed it deep into the smouldering coals—it burst into a clear flame, & then died out & turned to ashes. “Woman’s love,” observed Jack sententiously. Jack was a boasted misogynist, & if he had not pitied Guy from the depths of his honest heart, might have felt some lawful triumph in the stern way in which his favourite maxim, “Woman is false” was brought home to his long unbelieving friend; such a triumph as that classic bore, Mentor, doubtless experienced when Telemachus broke loose from the rosy toils of Calypso. “There,” he continued. “If you have the pluck to take your fancy—your passion—whatever you choose to call it, & burn it as you burned that paper, I have some hopes for you.” Guy sat staring absently at the red depths of the falling fire. “Did a woman ever serve you so, Jack?” he asked, suddenly, facing about & looking at Egerton sharply; but Jack did not flinch. “No,” he said in a voice of the profoundest scorn; “I never gave one of them a chance to do it. You might as well say, did I ever pick up a rattle-snake, let it twist round my arm & say: ‘Bite!’ No, decidedly not!” “Then you believe that all women are the same?” “What else have I always preached to you?” cried Jack, warming with his favourite subject. “What does Pope say? ‘Every woman is at heart a rake’! And Pope knew ‘em. And I know ‘em. Look here; your cousin is not the only woman you’ve had to do with. How did the others treat you? Ah—I remember the innkeeper’s daughter that vacation in Wales, my boy!” “Don’t,” said Guy reddening angrily. “It was my own fault. I was only a boy, & I was a fool to think I cared for the girl—that’s nothing. She is the only woman I ever loved!” “So much the better. The more limited one’s experience, the less harm it will do. Only guard yourself from repeating such a favourite folly.” “There’s no danger of that!” “I hope not,” said Egerton. “But I have got a plan to propose to you. After such a little complaint as you have been suffering from, change of scene & climate is considered the best cure. Come to Italy with me, old fellow!” “To Italy!” Guy repeated. “When? How soon?” “The day after tomorrow.” “But—I—I meant—I hoped … to see her again.” Jack rapped the floor impatiently with his stick. “What? Expose yourself to the contempt & insult, or still worse, the pity, of a woman who has jilted you? For Heaven’s sake, lad, keep hold of your senses!” “You think I oughtn’t to go, then?” said Guy, anxiously. “Go!—out of the fryingpan into the fire I should call it,” stormed Jack, pacing up & down the littered room. “No. He must be a poor-spirited fellow who swims back for salvation to the ship that his pitched him overboard! No. Come abroad with me, as soon as you can get your traps together, & let the whole thing go to the deuce as fast as it can.” Jack paused to let his words take effect; & Guy sat, with his head leaning on his hand, still studying the ruins of the fire. At last he sprang up & caught his shrewd-headed friend by the hand. “By Jove, Jack, you’re right. What have we got to live for but our art? Come along. Let’s go to Italy—tomorrow, if you can, Jack!” And go they did, the next day. As his friends used to say of him, “Jack’s the fellow for an emergency.” His real, anxious affection for Guy, & his disinterested kind-heartedness conquered every obstacle to so hasty & unexpected a departure; & four days after he parted with Georgie in the drawing-room of Holly Lodge, Guy Hastings was on his way to Calais, looking forward, through the distorting spectacles of a disappointed love, to a long, dreary waste of life which was only one degree better than its alternative, the utter chaos of death.
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V.
Lady Breton of Lowood.
“A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”
Tennyson: Locksley Hall.
It is sometimes wonderful to me how little it takes to make people happy. How short a time is needed to bury a grief, how little is needed to cover it! What Salvandy once said in a political sense, “Nous dansons sur un volcan,” is equally true of life. We trip lightly over new graves & gulfs of sorrow & separation; we piece & patch & draw together the torn woof of our happiness; yet sometimes our silent sorrows break through the slight barrier we have built to ward them off, & look us sternly in the face—
A month after Guy Hastings & Egerton started on their wanderings southward, Miss Rivers’ engagement to Lord Breton of Lowood was made known to the fashionable world, & a month after that (during which the fashionable world had time to wag its tongue over the nine-day’s wonder of the old peer’s being caught by that “fast little chit”) Georgie became Lady Breton. As a county paper observed: “The brilliant espousals were celebrated with all the magnificence of wealth directed by taste.” Georgie, under her floating mist of lace went up the aisle with a slow step, & not a few noticed how intensely pale she was; but when she came out on her husband’s arm her colour had revived & she walked quickly & bouyantly. Of course Mrs. Rivers was in tears; & Kate & Julia, in their new rôle of bridemaids fluttered about everywhere; & Miss Blackstone put on a gown of Bismarck-coloured poplin (her favourite shade) & a bonnet of surprising form & rainbow tints, in honour of the occasion. But perhaps the real moment of Georgie’s triumph was when the carriage rolled through the grand gateways of Lowood, & after long windings through stately trees & slopes of shaven lawn, passed before the door of her new home. Her heart beat high as Lord Breton, helping her to descend, led her on his arm through the wide hall lined by servants; she felt now that no stakes would have been too high to win this exquisite moment of possessorship. A fortnight after this brought on the bright, busy Christmas season; & as Lord Breton was desirous of keeping it festively, invitations were sent out right & left. Georgie, although perhaps she had not as much liberty as she had dreamed, found her husband sufficiently indulgent, unless his express wishes were crossed; when, as the game-keeper once remarked, “His lordship were quite piq nacious.” She enjoyed, too, the character of Lady Bountiful, & the tribute of obsequious flattery which everybody is ready to pay to the mistress of a hospitable house; but it was not long before she felt that these passing triumphs, which her girlish fancy had exaggerated, palled on her in proportion as they became an understood part of her life; praise loses half its sweetness when it is expected. At first she would not confess to herself the great want that seemed to be growing undefinably into her life; but as the gulf widened, she could not overlook it. There is but one Lethe for those who are haunted by a life’s mistake; & Georgie plunged into it. I have hinted that she had had a reputation for fastness in her unmarried days; this reputation, which grew as much out of a natural vivacity & daring as out of anything marked in her conduct, grew to be a truth after she became Lady Breton. She dashed into the crowd to escape the ghosts that peopled her solitude with vague reproaches; & as the incompleteness of her mischosen life grew upon her day by day it gave new impetus to the sort of moral opium-eating which half-stifled memory. Lord Breton did not care to stay her; he took a certain pride in
