" Perhaps I do, Mark," said his lordship, with a chuckle. "So, I say, let the man that found the fox run the fox, and kill the fox, and take the brush home." "And so it shall be," quoth my Lord Minchampstead. CHAPTER IX. AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A SISTER?" BUT what was the mysterious bond between La Cordifi. amma and the American, which had prevented Scoutbush from following the example of his illustrious progenitor, and taking a viscountess from off the stage? Certainly, any one who had seen her with him on the morning after Scoutbush's visit to the Mellots, would have said that, if the cause was love, the love was all on one side. She was standing by the fireplace in a splendid pose, her arm resting on the chimney-piece, the book from which she had been reciting in one hand, the other playing in her black curls, as her eyes glanced back ever and anon at her own profile in the mirror. Stangrave was half sitting in a low chair by her side, half kneeling on the footstool before her, looking up beseechingly, as she looked down tyrannically. Stupid, this reciting? Of course it is! ties, not shams; life, not the stage; nature, "Throw away the book, then, and words, live!" She knew well what he meant; but she answered as if she had misunderstood him. "Thanks, I live already, and in good company enough. My ghost-husbands are as noble as they are obedient; do all which I demand of them, and vanish on my errands when I tell them. Can you guess who my last is? Since I tired of Egmont, I have taken Sir Galahad, the spotless knight. Did you ever read the Mort d'Arthur?" "A hundred times." "Of course!" and she spoke in a tone of contempt so strong that it must have been affected. "What have you not read? And what have you copied? No wonder that these English have been what they have been for centuries, while their heroes have been the Galahads, and their Homer the Mort d'Arthur." "Enjoy your Utopia!" said he, bitterly. "Do you fancy they acted up to their ideals? They dreamed of the Quest of the Sangreal; but which of them ever went upon it?" "And does it count for nothing that they felt it the finest thing in the world to have gone on it, had it been possible? Be sure, if their ideal was so self-sacrificing, so lofty, their practice was ruled by something higher than the almighty dollar." "And so are some other men's, Marie," answered he, reproachfully. "Yes, forsooth; - when the almighty dollar is there already, and a man has ten times as much to spend every day as he can possibly invest in French cookery, and wines, and fine clothes, then he begins to lay out his surplus nobly on self-education, and the patronage of art, and the theatre for merely æsthetic purposes, of course; and, when the lust of the flesh has been satisfied, thinks himself an archangel, because he goes on to satisfy the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Christ was of old the model, and Sir Galahad was the hero. Now the one is exchanged for Göthe, and the other for Wilhelm Meister." "Cruel! You know that my Göthe fever is long past. How would you have known of its existence if I had not confessed it to you as a sin of old years? Have I not said to you, again and again, show me the thing which you would have me do for your sake, and see if I will not do it?" "For my sake? A noble reason! Show yourself the thing which you will do for its own sake; because it ought to be done. Show it yourself, I say; I cannot show you. If your own eyes cannot see the Sangreal, and the angels who are bearing it before you, it is because they are dull and gross; and am I Milton's archangel, to purge them with euphrasy and rue? If you have a noble heart, you will find for yourself the noble Quest. If not, who can prove to you that it is noble?" And, tapping impatiently with her foot, she went on to herself— "A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail: " Why, there was not a knight of the round table, was there, who did not give up all to go upon that Quest, though only one was found worthy to fulfil it? But, now-a-days, the knights sit drinking hock and champagne, or drive sulkywagens, and never fancy that there is a Quest at all." Why talk in these parables?" "So the Jews asked of their prophets. They are no parables to my ghost-husband Sir Galahad. Now go, if you please; I must be busy, and write letters." He rose with a look, half of disappointment, half amused, and yet his face bore a firmness which seemed to say, "You will be mine yet." As he rose, he cast his eye upon the writing-table, and upon a letter which lay there; and, as he did so, his cheek grew pale, and his brows knitted. The letter was addressed to "Thomas Thurnall, Esq., Aberalva." "Is this, then, your Sir Galahad?" asked he, after a pause, during which he had choked down his rising jealousy, while she looked first at herself in the glass, and then at him, and then at herself again, with a determined and triumphant air. "And what if it be?" "So he, then, has achieved the Quest of the Sangreal?" Stangrave spoke bitterly, and with an emphasis upon the "he; and "What if he have? Do you know him?" answered she, while her face lighted up with eager interest, which she did not care to conceal, perhaps chose, in her woman's love of tormenting, to parade. "I knew a man of that name once," he replied, in a carefully careless tone, which did not deceive her; "an adven turera doctor, if I recollect who had been in Texas and Mexico, and I know not where besides. Agreeable enough he was; but, as for your Quest of the Sangreal, whatever it may be, he seemed to have as little notion of anything beyond his own interest as any Greek I ever met." Unjust! Your words only show how little you can see! That man, of all men I ever met, saw the Quest at once, and followed it, at the risk of his own life, as far at least as he was concerned with it;-ay, even when he pretended to see nothing. O, there is more generosity in that man's affected selfishness, than in all the noisy good nature which I have met with in the world! Thurnall? O, you know his nobleness as little as he knows it himself!" "Then he, I am to suppose, is your phantom-husband, for as long, at least, as your present dream lasts?" asked he, with white, compressed lips. "He might have been, I believe," she answered, carelessly, "if he had even taken the trouble to ask me. "Marie, this is too much! Do you not know to whom you speak? To one who deserves, if not common courtesy, at least common mercy." "Because he adores me, and so forth? So has many a man done; or told me that he had done so. Do you know that I might be a viscountess to-morrow, so Sabina informs me, if I but chose?" "A viscountess? Pray accept your effete English aristocrat, and, as far as I am concerned, accept my best wishes for your happiness." My effete English aristocrat, did I show him that pedigree of mine which I have ere now threatened to show you, would perhaps be less horrified at it than you are." mean. you Marie, I cannot bear this! Tell me only what you What care I for pedigree? I want you-worship and that is enough, Marie !" "You admire me because I am beautiful. What thanks do I owe you for finding out so patent a fact? What do you do more to me than I do to myself?" and she glanced back once more at the mirror. "Marie, you know that your words are false; I do more "You admire me," interrupted she, "because I am clever. What thanks to you for that, again? What do you do more to me than you do to yourself?" "And this, after all—" "After what? After you found me, or rather I found you - you the critic, the arbiter of the green-room, the highly-organized do-nothing, teaching others how to do nothing most gracefully; the would-be Göthe, who must, for the sake of his own self-development, try experiments on every weak woman whom he met. And I, the new phenomenon, whom you must appreciate to show your own taste, patronize to show your own liberality, develop to show your own insight into character. You found yourself mistaken! You had attempted to play with the tigress and behold she had talons; to angle for the silly fish- and behold the fish was the better angler, and caught you." "Marie, have mercy! Is your heart iron?" |