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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Tale of Chloe
+by George Meredith
+#100 in our series by George Meredith
+
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+Title: The Tale of Chloe
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4494]
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+[This file was first posted on March 5, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Tale of Chloe by George Meredith
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+
+
+THE TALE OF CHLOE
+AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF BEAU BEAMISH
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+              'Fair Chloe, we toasted of old,
+                  As the Queen of our festival meeting;
+               Now Chloe is lifeless and cold;
+                  You must go to the grave for her greeting.
+               Her beauty and talents were framed
+                  To enkindle the proudest to win her;
+               Then let not the mem'ry be blamed
+                  Of the purest that e'er was a sinner!'
+
+                                        Captain Chanter's Collection.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A proper tenderness for the Peerage will continue to pass current the
+illustrious gentleman who was inflamed by Cupid's darts to espouse the
+milkmaid, or dairymaid, under his ballad title of Duke of Dewlap: nor was
+it the smallest of the services rendered him by Beau Beamish, that he
+clapped the name upon her rustic Grace, the young duchess, the very first
+day of her arrival at the Wells.  This happy inspiration of a wit never
+failing at a pinch has rescued one of our princeliest houses from the
+assaults of the vulgar, who are ever too rejoiced to bespatter and
+disfigure a brilliant coat-of-arms; insomuch that the ballad, to which we
+are indebted for the narrative of the meeting and marriage of the ducal
+pair, speaks of Dewlap in good faith
+
+               O the ninth Duke of Dewlap I am, Susie dear!
+
+without a hint of a domino title.  So likewise the pictorial historian is
+merry over 'Dewlap alliances' in his description of the society of that
+period.  He has read the ballad, but disregarded the memoirs of the beau.
+Writers of pretension would seem to have an animus against individuals of
+the character of Mr. Beamish.  They will treat of the habits and manners
+of highwaymen, and quote obscure broadsheets and songs of the people to
+colour their story, yet decline to bestow more than a passing remark upon
+our domestic kings: because they are not hereditary, we may suppose.
+The ballad of 'The Duke and the Dairymaid,' ascribed with questionable
+authority to the pen of Mr. Beamish himself in a freak of his gaiety, was
+once popular enough to provoke the moralist to animadversions upon an
+order of composition that 'tempted every bouncing country lass to sidle
+an eye in a blowsy cheek' in expectation of a coronet for her pains--and
+a wet ditch as the result!  We may doubt it to have been such an occasion
+of mischief.  But that mischief may have been done by it to a nobility-
+loving people, even to the love of our nobility among the people, must be
+granted; and for the particular reason, that the hero of the ballad
+behaved so handsomely.  We perceive a susceptibility to adulteration in
+their worship at the sight of one of their number, a young maid, suddenly
+snatched up to the gaping heights of Luxury and Fashion through sheer
+good looks.  Remembering that they are accustomed to a totally reverse
+effect from that possession, it is very perceptible how a breach in their
+reverence may come of the change.
+
+Otherwise the ballad is innocent; certainly it is innocent in design.
+A fresher national song of a beautiful incident of our country life has
+never been written.  The sentiments are natural, the imagery is apt and
+redolent of the soil, the music of the verse appeals to the dullest ear.
+It has no smell of the lamp, nothing foreign and far-fetched about it,
+but is just what it pretends to be, the carol of the native bird.  A
+sample will show, for the ballad is much too long to be given entire:
+
+          Sweet Susie she tripped on a shiny May morn,
+          As blithe as the lark from the green-springing corn,
+          When, hard by a stile, 'twas her luck to behold
+          A wonderful gentleman covered with gold!
+
+          There was gold on his breeches and gold on his coat,
+          His shirt-frill was grand as a fifty-pound note;
+          The diamonds glittered all up him so bright,
+          She thought him the Milky Way clothing a Sprite!
+
+          'Fear not, pretty maiden,' he said with a smile;
+          'And, pray, let me help you in crossing the stile.
+          She bobbed him a curtsey so lovely and smart,
+          It shot like an arrow and fixed in his heart.
+
+          As light as a robin she hopped to the stone,
+          But fast was her hand in the gentleman's own;
+          And guess how she stared, nor her senses could trust,
+          When this creamy gentleman knelt in the dust!
+
+With a rhapsody upon her beauty, he informs her of his rank, for
+a flourish to the proposal of honourable and immediate marriage.
+He cannot wait.  This is the fatal condition of his love: apparently
+a characteristic of amorous dukes.  We read them in the signs extended
+to us.  The minds of these august and solitary men have not yet been
+sounded; they are too distant.  Standing upon their lofty pinnacles,
+they are as legible to the rabble below as a line of cuneiform writing
+in a page of old copybook roundhand.  By their deeds we know them, as
+heathendom knows of its gods; and it is repeatedly on record that the
+moment they have taken fire they must wed, though the lady's finger be
+circled with nothing closer fitting than a ring of the bed-curtain.
+Vainly, as becomes a candid country lass, blue-eyed Susan tells him that
+she is but a poor dairymaid.  He has been a student of women at Courts,
+in which furnace the sex becomes a transparency, so he recounts to her
+the catalogue of material advantages he has to offer.  Finally, after his
+assurances that she is to be married by the parson, really by the parson,
+and a real parson--
+
+          Sweet Susie is off for her parents' consent,
+          And long must the old folk debate what it meant.
+          She left them the eve of that happy May morn,
+          To shine like the blossom that hangs from the thorn!
+
+Apart from its historical value, the ballad is an example to poets of our
+day, who fly to mythological Greece, or a fanciful and morbid
+mediaevalism, or--save the mark!--abstract ideas, for themes of song, of
+what may be done to make our English life poetically interesting, if they
+would but pluck the treasures presented them by the wayside; and Nature
+being now as then the passport to popularity, they have themselves to
+thank for their little hold on the heart of the people.  A living native
+duke is worth fifty Phoebus Apollos to Englishmen, and a buxom young lass
+of the fields mounting from a pair of pails to the estate of duchess,
+a more romantic object than troops of your visionary Yseults and
+Guineveres.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A certain time after the marriage, his Grace alighted at the Wells,
+and did himself the honour to call on Mr. Beamish.  Addressing that
+gentleman, to whom he was no stranger, he communicated the purport of his
+visit.
+
+'Sir, and my very good friend,' he said, 'first let me beg you to abate
+the severity of your countenance, for if I am here in breach of your
+prohibition, I shall presently depart in compliance with it.  I could
+indeed deplore the loss of the passion for play of which you effectually
+cured me.  I was then armed against a crueller, that allows of no
+interval for a man to make his vow to recover!'
+
+'The disease which is all crisis, I apprehend,' Mr. Beamish remarked.
+
+'Which, sir, when it takes hold of dry wood, burns to the last splinter.
+It is now'--the duke fetched a tender groan--'three years ago that I had
+a caprice to marry a grandchild!'
+
+'Of Adam's,' Mr. Beamish said cheerfully.  'There was no legitimate bar
+to the union.'
+
+'Unhappily none.  Yet you are not to suppose I regret it.  A most
+admirable creature, Mr. Beamish, a real divinity!  And the better known,
+the more adored.  There is the misfortune.  At my season of life, when
+the greater and the minor organs are in a conspiracy to tell me I am
+mortal, the passion of love must be welcomed as a calamity, though one
+would not be free of it for the renewal of youth.  You are to understand,
+that with a little awakening taste for dissipation, she is the most
+innocent of angels.  Hitherto we have lived .  .  .  To her it has been a
+new world.  But she is beginning to find it a narrow one.  No, no, she is
+not tired of my society.  Very far from that.  But in her present station
+an inclination for such gatherings as you have here, for example, is like
+a desire to take the air: and the healthy habits of my duchess have not
+accustomed her to be immured.  And in fine, devote ourselves as we will,
+a term approaches when the enthusiasm for serving as your wife's
+playfellow all day, running round tables and flying along corridors
+before a knotted handkerchief, is mightily relaxed.  Yet the dread of
+a separation from her has kept me at these pastimes for a considerable
+period beyond my relish of them.  Not that I acknowledge fatigue.  I
+have, it seems, a taste for reflection; I am now much disposed to read
+and meditate, which cannot be done without repose.  I settle myself, and
+I receive a worsted ball in my face, and I am expected to return it.  I
+comply; and then you would say a nursery in arms.  It would else be the
+deplorable spectacle of a beautiful young woman yawning.'
+
+'Earthquake and saltpetre threaten us less terribly,' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+'In fine, she has extracted a promise that 'this summer she shall visit
+the Wells for a month, and I fear I cannot break my pledge of my word; I
+fear I cannot.'
+
+'Very certainly I would not,' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+The duke heaved a sigh.  'There are reasons, family reasons, why my
+company and protection must be denied to her here.  I have no wish . . .
+indeed my name, for the present, until such time as she shall have found
+her feet .  .  .  and there is ever a penalty to pay for that.  Ah, Mr.
+Beamish, pictures are ours, when we have bought them and hung them up;
+but who insures us possession of a beautiful work of Nature?  I have
+latterly betaken me to reflect much and seriously.  I am tempted to side
+with the Divines in the sermons I have read; the flesh is the habitation
+of a rebellious devil.'
+
+'To whom we object in proportion as we ourselves become quit of him,' Mr.
+Beamish acquiesced.
+
+'But this mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure, is one of
+the wonders.  It does not pall on them; they are insatiate.'
+
+'There is the cataract, and there is the cliff.  Potentate to potentate,
+duke--so long as you are on my territory, be it understood.  Upon my way
+to a place of worship once, I passed a Puritan, who was complaining of a
+butterfly that fluttered prettily abroad in desecration of the Day of
+Rest.  "Friend," said I to him, "conclusively you prove to me that you
+are not a butterfly."  Surly did no more than favour me with the anathema
+of his countenance.'
+
+'Cousin Beamish, my complaint of these young people is, that they miss
+their pleasure in pursuing it.  I have lectured my duchess--'
+
+'Ha!'
+
+'Foolish, I own,' said the duke.  'But suppose, now, you had caught your
+butterfly, and you could neither let it go nor consent to follow its
+vagaries.  That poses you.'
+
+'Young people,' said Mr. Beamish, 'come under my observation in this poor
+realm of mine--young and old.  I find them prodigiously alike in their
+love of pleasure, differing mainly in their capacity to satisfy it.
+That is no uncommon observation.  The young, have an edge which they are
+desirous of blunting; the old contrariwise.  The cry of the young for
+pleasure is actually--I have studied their language--a cry for burdens.
+Curious!  And the old ones cry for having too many on their shoulders:
+which is not astonishing.  Between them they make an agreeable concert
+both to charm the ears and guide the steps of the philosopher, whose
+wisdom it is to avoid their tracks.'
+
+'Good.  But I have asked you for practical advice, and you give me an
+essay.'
+
+'For the reason, duke, that you propose a case that suggests hanging.
+You mention two things impossible to be done.  The alternative is, a
+garter and the bedpost.  When we have come upon crossways, and we can
+decide neither to take the right hand nor the left, neither forward nor
+back, the index of the board which would direct us points to itself, and
+emphatically says, Gallows.'
+
+'Beamish, I am distracted.  If I refuse her the visit, I foresee
+dissensions, tears, games at ball, romps, not one day of rest remaining
+to me.  I could be of a mind with your Puritan, positively.  If I allow
+it, so innocent a creature in the atmosphere of a place like this must
+suffer some corruption.  You should know that the station I took her from
+was .  .  .  it was modest.  She was absolutely a buttercup of the
+fields.  She has had various masters.  She dances .  .  .  she dances
+prettily, I could say bewitchingly.  And so she is now for airing her
+accomplishments: such are women!'
+
+'Have you heard of Chloe?' said Mr. Beamish.  'There you have an example
+of a young lady uncorrupted by this place--of which I would only remark
+that it is best unvisited, but better tasted than longed for.'
+
+'Chloe?  A lady who squandered her fortune to redeem some ill-requiting
+rascal: I remember to have heard of her.  She is here still?  And ruined,
+of course?'
+
+'In purse.'
+
+'That cannot be without the loss of reputation.'
+
+'Chloe's champion will grant that she is exposed to the evils of
+improvidence.  The more brightly shine her native purity, her goodness
+of heart, her trustfulness.  She is a lady whose exaltation glows in her
+abasement.'
+
+'She has, I see, preserved her comeliness,' observed the duke, with a
+smile.
+
+'Despite the flying of the roses, which had not her heart's patience.
+'Tis now the lily that reigns.  So, then, Chloe shall be attached to the
+duchess during her stay, and unless the devil himself should interfere,
+I guarantee her Grace against any worse harm than experience; and that,'
+Mr. Beamish added, as the duke raised his arms at the fearful word, 'that
+shall be mild.  Play she will; she is sure to play.  Put it down at a
+thousand.  We map her out a course of permissible follies, and she plays
+to lose the thousand by degrees, with as telling an effect upon a
+connubial conscience as we can produce.'
+
+'A thousand,' said the duke, 'will be cheap indeed.  I think now I have
+had a description of this fair Chloe, and from an enthusiast; a brune?
+elegantly mannered and of a good landed family; though she has thought
+proper to conceal her name.  And that will be our difficulty, cousin
+Beamish.'
+
+'She was, under my dominion, Miss Martinsward,' Mr. Beamish pursued.
+'She came here very young, and at once her suitors were legion.  In the
+way of women, she chose the worst among them; and for the fellow Caseldy
+she sacrificed the fortune she had inherited of a maternal uncle.  To
+release him from prison, she paid all his debts; a mountain of bills,
+with the lawyers piled above--Pelion upon Ossa, to quote our poets.  In
+fact, obeying the dictates of a soul steeped in generosity, she committed
+the indiscretion to strip herself, scandalizing propriety.  This was
+immediately on her coming of age; and it was the death-blow to her
+relations with her family.  Since then, honoured even by rakes, she has
+lived impoverished at the Wells.  I dubbed her Chloe, and man or woman
+disrespectful to Chloe packs.  From being the victim of her generous
+disposition, I could not save her; I can protect her from the shafts of
+malice.'
+
+'She has no passion for play?' inquired the duke.
+
+'She nourishes a passion for the man for whom she bled, to the exclusion
+of the other passions.  She lives, and I believe I may say that it is the
+motive of her rising and dressing daily, in expectation of his advent.'
+
+'He may be dead.'
+
+'The dog is alive.  And he has not ceased to be Handsome Caseldy, they
+say.  Between ourselves, duke, there is matter to break her heart.  He
+has been the Count Caseldy of Continental gaming tables, and he is
+recently Sir Martin Caseldy, settled on the estate she made him free to
+take up intact on his father's decease.'
+
+'Pah! a villain!'
+
+'With a blacker brand upon him every morning that he looks forth across
+his property, and leaves her to languish!  She still--I say it to the
+redemption of our sex--has offers.  Her incomparable attractions of mind
+and person exercise the natural empire of beauty.  But she will none of
+them.  I call her the Fair Suicide.  She has died for love; and she is a
+ghost, a good ghost, and a pleasing ghost, but an apparition, a taper.
+
+The duke fidgeted, and expressed a hope to hear that she was not of
+melancholy conversation; and again, that the subject of her discourse
+was not confined to love and lovers, happy or unhappy.  He wished his
+duchess, he said, to be entertained upon gayer topics: love being a theme
+he desired to reserve to himself.  'This month!' he said, prognostically
+shaking and moaning.  'I would this month were over, and that we were
+well purged of it.'
+
+Mr. Beamish reassured him.  The wit and sprightliness of Chloe were so
+famous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged for
+her company; she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played harp and
+harpsichord divinely, and touched the guitar, and danced, danced like the
+silvery moon on the waters of the mill pool.  He concluded by saying that
+she was both humane and wise, humble-minded and amusing, virtuous yet not
+a Tartar; the best of companions for her Grace the young duchess.
+Moreover, he boldly engaged to carry the duchess through the term of her
+visit under a name that should be as good as a masquerade for concealing
+his Grace's, while giving her all the honours due to her rank.
+
+'You strictly interpret my wishes,' said the duke; 'all honours, the
+foremost place, and my wrath upon man or woman gainsaying them!'
+
+'Mine! if you please, duke,' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+'A thousand pardons!  I leave it to you, cousin.  I could not be in safer
+hands.  I am heartily bounders to you.  Chloe, then.  By the way, she has
+a decent respect for age?'
+
+'She is reverentially inclined.'
+
+'Not that.  She is, I would ask, no wanton prattler of the charms and
+advantages of youth?'
+
+'She has a young adorer that I have dubbed Alonzo, whom she scarce
+notices.'
+
+'Nothing could be better.  Alonzo: h'm!  A faithful swain?'
+
+'Life is his tree, upon which unceasingly he carves his mistress's
+initials.'
+
+'She should not be too cruel.  I recollect myself formerly: I was .  .  .
+Young men will, when long slighted, transfer their affections, and be
+warmer to the second flame than to the first.  I put you on your guard.
+He follows her much?  These lovers' paintings and puffings in the
+neighbourhood of the most innocent of women are contagious.'
+
+'Her Grace will be running home all the sooner.'
+
+'Or off!--may she forgive me!  I am like a King John's Jew, forced to
+lend his treasure without security.  What a world is ours!  Nothing,
+Beamish, nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted!  Catch a
+prize, and you will find you are at war with your species.  You have to
+be on the defensive from that moment.  There is no such thing as
+peaceable procession on earth.  Let it be a beautiful young woman!--Ah!'
+
+Mr. Beamish replied bracingly, 'The champion wrestler challenges all
+comers while he wears the belt.'
+
+The duke dejectedly assented.  'True; or he is challenged, say.  Is there
+any tale we could tell her of this Alonzo?  You could deport him for the
+month, my dear Beamish.'
+
+'I commit no injustice unless with sufficient reason.  It is an estimable
+youth, as shown by his devotion to a peerless woman.  To endow her with
+his name and fortune is his only thought.'
+
+'I perceive; an excellent young fellow!  I have an incipient liking for
+this young Alonzo.  You must not permit my duchess to laugh at him.
+Encourage her rather to advance his suit.  The silliness of a young man
+will be no bad spectacle.  Chloe, then.  You have set my mind at rest,
+Beamish, and it is but another obligation added to the heap; so, if I do
+not speak of payment, the reason is that I know you would not have me
+bankrupt.'
+
+The remainder of the colloquy of the duke and Mr. Beamish referred
+to the date of her Grace's coming to the Wells, the lodgement she was to
+receive, and other minor arrangements bearing upon her state and comfort;
+the duke perpetually observing, 'But I leave it all to you, Beamish,'
+when he had laid down precise instructions in these respects, even to the
+specification of the shopkeepers, the confectioner and the apothecary,
+who were to balance or cancel one another in the opposite nature of their
+supplies, and the haberdasher and the jeweller, with whom she was to make
+her purchases.  For the duke had a recollection of giddy shops, and of
+giddy shopmen too; and it was by serving as one for a day that a certain
+great nobleman came to victory with a jealously guarded dame beautiful as
+Venus.  'I would have challenged the goddess!' he cried, and subsided
+from his enthusiasm plaintively, like a weak wind instrument.  'So there
+you see the prudence of a choice of shops.  But I leave it to you,
+Beamish.'  Similarly the great military commander, having done whatsoever
+a careful prevision may suggest to insure him victory, casts himself upon
+Providence, with the hope of propitiating the unanticipated and darkly
+possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The splendid equipage of a coach and six, with footmen in scarlet and
+green, carried Beau Beamish five miles along the road on a sunny day to
+meet the young duchess at the boundary of his territory, and conduct her
+in state to the Wells.  Chloe sat beside him, receiving counsel with
+regard to her prospective duties.  He was this day the consummate beau,
+suave, but monarchical, and his manner of speech partook of his external
+grandeur.  'Spy me the horizon, and apprise me if somewhere you
+distinguish a chariot,' he said, as they drew up on the rise of a hill
+of long descent, where the dusty roadway sank between its brown hedges,
+and crawled mounting from dry rush-spotted hollows to corn fields on a
+companion height directly facing them, at a remove of about three-
+quarters of a mile.  Chloe looked forth, while the beau passingly raised
+his hat for coolness, and murmured, with a glance down the sultry track:
+'It sweats the eye to see!'
+
+Presently Chloe said, 'Now a dust blows.  Something approaches.  Now I
+discern horses, now a vehicle; and it is a chariot!'
+
+Orders were issued to the outriders for horns to be sounded.
+
+Both Chloe and Beau Beamish wrinkled their foreheads at the disorderly
+notes of triple horns, whose pealing made an acid in the air instead of
+sweetness.
+
+'You would say, kennel dogs that bay the moon!' said the wincing beau.
+'Yet, as you know, these fellows have been exercised.  I have had them
+out in a meadow for hours, baked and drenched, to get them rid of their
+native cacophony.  But they love it, as they love bacon and beans.  The
+musical taste of our people is in the stage of the primitive appetite for
+noise, and for that they are gluttons.'
+
+'It will be pleasant to hear in the distance,' Chloe replied.
+
+'Ay, the extremer the distance, the pleasanter to hear.  Are they
+advancing?'
+
+'They stop.  There is a cavalier at the window.  Now he doffs his hat.'
+
+'Sweepingly?'
+
+Chloe described a semicircle in the grand manner.
+
+The beau's eyebrows rose.  'Powers divine !' he muttered.  'She is let
+loose from hand to hand, and midway comes a cavalier.  We did not count
+on the hawks.  So I have to deal with a cavalier!  It signifies, my dear
+Chloe, that I must incontinently affect the passion if I am to be his
+match: nothing less.'
+
+'He has flown,' said Chloe.
+
+'Whom she encounters after meeting me, I care not,' quoth the beau,
+snapping a finger.  'But there has been an interval for damage with a
+lady innocent as Eve.  Is she advancing?'
+
+'The chariot is trotting down the hill.  He has ridden back.  She has no
+attendant horseman.'
+
+'They were dismissed at my injunction ten miles off particularly to the
+benefit of the cavaliering horde, it would appear.  In the case of a
+woman, Chloe, one blink of the eyelids is an omission of watchfulness.'
+
+'That is an axiom fit for the harem of the Grand Signior.'
+
+'The Grand Signior might give us profitable lessons for dealing with the
+sex.'
+
+'Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war!'
+
+'Trust you, and the stopper is out of the smelling-bottle.'
+
+'Mr. Beamish, we are women, but we have souls.'
+
+'The pip in the apple whose ruddy cheek allures little Tommy to rob the
+orchard is as good a preservative.'
+
+'You admit that men are our enemies?'
+
+'I maintain that they carry the banner of virtue.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Beamish, I shall expire.'
+
+'I forbid it in my lifetime, Chloe, for I wish to die believing in one
+woman.'
+
+'No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters!'
+
+'Then fly to a hermitage; for all flattery is at somebody's expense,
+child.  'Tis an essence-extract of humanity!  To live on it, in the
+fashion of some people, is bad--it is downright cannibal.  But we may
+sprinkle our handkerchiefs with it, and we should, if we would caress our
+noses with an air.  Society, my Chloe, is a recommencement upon an upper
+level of the savage system; we must have our sacrifices.  As, for
+instance, what say you of myself beside our booted bumpkin squires?'
+
+'Hundreds of them, Mr. Beamish !'
+
+'That is a holocaust of squires reduced to make an incense for me, though
+you have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic osier
+ribs.  Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues.  Grant us ours
+too.  I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and I
+expect my task to be severe.  I carry the banner aforesaid; verily and
+penitentially I do.  It is an error of the vulgar to suppose that all is
+dragon in the dragon's jaws.'
+
+'Men are his fangs and claws.'
+
+'Ay, but the passion for his fiery breath is in woman.  She will take her
+leap and have her jump, will and will!  And at the point where she will
+and she won't, the dragon gulps and down she goes!  However, the business
+is to keep our buttercup duchess from that same point.  Is she near?'
+
+'I can see her,' said Chloe.
+
+Beau Beamish requested a sketch of her, and Chloe began: 'She is
+ravishing.'
+
+Upon which he commented, 'Every woman is ravishing at forty paces, and
+still more so in imagination.'
+
+'Beautiful auburn hair, and a dazzling red and white complexion, set in a
+blue coif.'
+
+'Her eyes?'
+
+'Melting blue.'
+
+''Tis an English witch!' exclaimed the beau, and he compassionately
+invoked her absent lord.
+
+Chloe's optics were no longer tasked to discern the fair lady's
+lineaments, for the chariot windows came flush with those of the beau on
+the broad plateau of the hill.  His coach door was opened.  He sat
+upright, levelling his privileged stare at Duchess Susan until she
+blushed.
+
+'Ay, madam,' quoth he, 'I am not the first.'
+
+'La, sir!' said she; 'who are you?'
+
+The beau deliberately raised his hat and bowed.  'He, madam, of whose
+approach the gentleman who took his leave of you on yonder elevation
+informed you.'
+
+She looked artlessly over her shoulder, and at the beau alighting from
+his carriage.  'A gentleman?'
+
+'On horseback.'
+
+The duchess popped her head through the window on an impulse to measure
+the distance between the two hills.
+
+'Never!' she cried.
+
+'Why, madam, did he deliver no message to announce me?' said the beau,
+ruffling.
+
+'Goodness gracious!  You must be Mr. Beamish,' she replied.
+
+He laid his hat on his bosom, and invited her to quit her carriage for a
+seat beside him.  She stipulated, 'If you are really Mr. Beamish?' He
+frowned, and raised his head to convince her; but she would not be
+impressed, and he applied to Chloe to establish his identity.  Hearing
+Chloe's name, the duchess called out, 'Oh! there, now, that's enough, for
+Chloe's my maid here, and I know she's a lady born, and we're going to be
+friends.  Hand me to Chloe.  And you are Chloe?' she said, after a frank
+stride from step to step of the carriages.  'And don't mind being my
+maid?  You do look a nice, kind creature.  And I see you're a lady born;
+I know in a minute.  You're dark, I'm fair; we shall suit.  And tell me--
+hush!--what dreadful long eyes he has!  I shall ask you presently what
+you think of me.  I was never at the Wells before.  Dear me! the coach
+has turned.  How far off shall we hear the bells to say I'm coming?  I
+know I'm to have bells.  Mr. Beamish, Mr. Beamish!  I must have a chatter
+with a woman, and I'm in awe of you, sir, that I am, but men and men I
+see to talk to for a lift of my finger, by the dozen, in my duke's
+palace--though they're old ones, that's true--but a woman who's a lady,
+and kind enough to be my maid, I haven't met yet since I had the right to
+wear a coronet.  There, I'll hold Chloe's hand, and that'll do.  You
+would tell me at once, Chloe, if I was not dressed to your taste; now,
+wouldn't you?  As for talkative, that's a sign with me of my liking
+people.  I really don't know what to say to my duke sometimes.  I sit and
+think it so funny to be having a duke instead of a husband.  You're off!'
+
+The duchess laughed at Chloe's laughter.  Chloe excused herself, but was
+informed by her mistress that it was what she liked.
+
+'For the first two years,' she resumed, 'I could hardly speak a syllable.
+I stammered, I reddened, I longed to be up in my room brushing and
+curling my hair, and was ready to curtsey to everybody.  Now I'm quite at
+home, for I've plenty of courage--except about death, and I'm worse about
+death than I was when I was a simple body with a gawk's "lawks!" in her
+round eyes and mouth for an egg.  I wonder why that is?  But isn't death
+horrible?  And skeletons!' The duchess shuddered.
+
+'It depends upon the skeleton,' said Beau Beamish, who had joined the
+conversation.  'Yours, madam, I would rather not meet, because she would
+precipitate me into transports of regret for the loss of the flesh.  I
+have, however, met mine own and had reason for satisfaction with the
+interview.'
+
+'Your own skeleton, sir!' said the duchess wonderingly and appalled.
+
+'Unmistakably mine.  I will call you to witness by an account of him.'
+
+Duchess Susan gaped, and, 'Oh, don't!' she cried out; but added, 'It 's
+broad day, and I've got some one to sleep anigh me after dark'; with
+which she smiled on Chloe, who promised her there was no matter for
+alarm.
+
+'I encountered my gentleman as I was proceeding to my room at night,'
+said the beau, 'along a narrow corridor, where it was imperative that one
+of us should yield the 'pas;' and, I must confess it, we are all so
+amazingly alike in our bones, that I stood prepared to demand place of
+him.  For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the first
+glance repulsive.  I took him for anybody's skeleton, Death's ensign,
+with his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and the extraordinary
+splay feet--in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky hobbledehoy which man
+is built on, and by whose image in his weaker moments he is haunted.  I
+had, to be frank, been dancing on a supper with certain of our choicest
+Wits and Beauties.  It is a recipe for conjuring apparitions.  Now, then,
+thinks I, my fine fellow, I will bounce you; and without a salutation I
+pressed forward.  Madam, I give you my word, he behaved to the full pitch
+as I myself should have done under similar circumstances.  Retiring upon
+an inclination of his structure, he draws up and fetches me a bow of the
+exact middle nick between dignity and service.  I advance, he withdraws,
+and again the bow, devoid of obsequiousness, majestically condescending.
+These, thinks I, be royal manners.  I could have taken him for the Sable
+King in person, stripped of his mantle.  On my soul, he put me to the
+blush.'
+
+'And is that all?' asked the duchess, relieving herself with a sigh.
+
+'Why, madam,' quoth the beau, 'do you not see that he could have been
+none other than mine own, who could comport himself with that grand air
+and gracefulness when wounded by his closest relative?  Upon his opening
+my door for me, and accepting the 'pas,' which I now right heartily
+accorded him, I recognized at once both him and the reproof he had
+designedly dealt me--or the wine supper I had danced on, perhaps I should
+say' and I protest that by such a display of supreme good breeding he
+managed to convey the highest compliment ever received by man, namely the
+assurance, that after the withering away of this mortal garb, I shall
+still be noted for urbanity and elegancy.  Nay, and more, immortally,
+without the slip I was guilty of when I carried the bag of wine.'
+
+Duchess Susan fanned herself to assist her digestion of the anecdote.
+
+'Well, it's not so frightful a story, and I know you are the great Mr.
+Beamish;' she said.
+
+He questioned her whether the gentleman had signalled him to her on the
+hill.
+
+'What can he mean about a gentleman?' she turned to Chloe.  'My duke told
+me you would meet me, sir.  And you are to protect me.  And if anything
+happens, it is to be your fault.'
+
+'Entirely,' said the beau.  'I shall therefore maintain a vigilant
+guard.'
+
+'Except leaving me free.  Oof!  I've been boxed up so long.  I declare,
+Chloe, I feel like a best dress out for a holiday, and a bit afraid of
+spoiling.  I'm a real child, more than I was when my duke married me.
+I seemed to go in and grow up again, after I was raised to fortune.  And
+nobody to tell of it!  Fancy that!  For you can't talk to old gentlemen
+about what's going on in your heart.'
+
+'How of young gentlemen?' she was asked by the beau.
+
+And she replied, 'They find it out.'
+
+'Not if you do not assist them,' said he.
+
+Duchess Susan let her eyelids and her underlie half drop, as she looked
+at him with the simple shyness of one of nature's thoughts in her head at
+peep on the pastures of the world.  The melting blue eyes and the cherry
+lip made an exceedingly quickening picture.  'Now, I wonder if that is
+true?' she transferred her slyness to speech.
+
+'Beware the middle-aged!' he exclaimed.
+
+She appealed to Chloe.  'And I'm sure they're the nicest.'
+
+Chloe agreed that they were.
+
+The duchess measured Chloe and the beau together, with a mind swift in
+apprehending all that it hungered for.
+
+She would have pursued the pleasing theme had she not been directed to
+gaze below upon the towers and roofs of the Wells, shining sleepily in a
+siesta of afternoon Summer sunlight.
+
+With a spread of her silken robe, she touched the edifice of her hair,
+murmuring to Chloe, 'I can't abide that powder.  You shall see me walk in
+a hoop.  I can.  I've done it to slow music till my duke clapped hands.
+I'm nothing sitting to what I am on my feet.  That's because I haven't
+got fine language yet.  I shall.  It seems to come last.  So, there 's
+the place.  And whereabouts do all the great people meet and prommy--?'
+
+'They promenade where you see the trees, madam,' said Chloe.
+
+'And where is it where the ladies sit and eat jam tarts with whipped
+cream on 'em, while the gentlemen stand and pay compliments?'
+
+Chloe said it was at a shop near the pump room.
+
+Duchess Susan looked out over the house-tops, beyond the dusty hedges.
+
+'Oh, and that powder!' she cried.  'I hate to be out of the fashion and a
+spectacle.  But I do love my own hair, and I have such a lot, and I like
+the colour, and so does my duke.  Only, don't let me be fingered at.  If
+once I begin to blush before people, my courage is gone; my singing
+inside me is choked; and I've a real lark going on in me all day long,
+rain or sunshine--hush, all about love and amusement.'
+
+Chloe smiled, and Duchess Susan said, 'Just like a bird, for I don't know
+what it is.'
+
+She looked for Chloe to say that she did.
+
+At the moment a pair of mounted squires rode up, and the coach stopped,
+while Beau Beamish gave orders for the church bells to be set ringing,
+and the band to meet and precede his equipage at the head of the bath
+avenue: 'in honour of the arrival of her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap.'
+
+He delivered these words loudly to his men, and turned an effulgent gaze
+upon the duchess, so that for a minute she was fascinated and did not
+consult her hearing; but presently she fell into an uneasiness; the signs
+increased, she bit her lip, and after breathing short once or twice, 'Was
+it meaning me, Mr. Beamish?' she said.
+
+'You, madam, are the person whom we 'delight to honour,' he replied.
+
+'Duchess of what?' she screwed uneasy features to hear.
+
+'Duchess of Dewlap,' said he.
+
+'It's not my title, sir.'
+
+'It is your title on my territory, madam.'
+
+She made her pretty nose and upper lip ugly with a sneer of 'Dew--!  And
+enter that town before all those people as Duchess of .  .  .  Oh, no, I
+won't; I just won't!  Call back those men now, please; now, if you
+please.  Pray, Mr. Beamish!  You'll offend me, sir.  I'm not going to be
+a mock.  You'll offend my duke, sir.  He'd die rather than have my
+feelings hurt.  Here's all my pleasure spoilt.  I won't and I sha'n't
+enter the town as duchess of that stupid name, so call 'em back, call 'em
+back this instant.  I know who I am and what I am, and I know what's due
+to me, I do.'
+
+Beau Beamish rejoined, 'I too.  Chloe will tell you I am lord here.'
+
+'Then I'll go home, I will.  I won't be laughed at for a great lady
+ninny.  I'm a real lady of high rank, and such I'll appear.  What 's a
+Duchess of Dewlap?  One might as well be Duchess of Cowstail, Duchess of
+Mopsend.  And those people!  But I won't be that.  I won't be played
+with.  I see them staring!  No, I can make up my mind, and I beg you to
+call back your men, or I'll go back home.'  She muttered, 'Be made fun of
+--made a fool of!'
+
+'Your Grace's chariot is behind,' said the beau.
+
+His despotic coolness provoked her to an outcry and weeping: she
+repeated, 'Dewlap!  Dewlap!' in sobs; she shook her shoulders and hid her
+face.
+
+'You are proud of your title, are you, madam?' said he.
+
+'I am.' She came out of her hands to answer him proudly.  'That I am!'
+she meant for a stronger affirmation.
+
+'Then mark me,' he said impressively; 'I am your duke's friend, and you
+are under my charge here.  I am your guardian and you are my ward, and
+you can enter the town only on the condition of obedience to me.  Now,
+mark me, madam; no one can rob you of your real name and title saving
+yourself.  But you are entering a place where you will encounter a
+thousand temptations to tarnish, and haply forfeit it.  Be warned do
+nothing that will.'
+
+'Then I'm to have my own title?' said she, clearing up.
+
+'For the month of your visit you are Duchess of Dewlap.'
+
+'I say I sha'n't!'
+
+'You shall.'
+
+'Never, sir!'
+
+'I command it.'
+
+She flung herself forward, with a wail, upon Chloe's bosom.  'Can't you
+do something for me?' she whimpered.
+
+'It is impossible to move Mr. Beamish,' Chloe said.
+
+Out of a pause, composed of sobs and sighs, the duchess let loose in a
+broken voice: 'Then I 'm sure I think--I think I'd rather have met--have
+met his skeleton!'
+
+Her sincerity was equal to wit.
+
+Beau Beamish shouted.  He cordially applauded her, and in the genuine
+kindness of an admiration that surprised him, he permitted himself the
+liberty of taking and saluting her fingers.  She fancied there was
+another chance for her, but he frowned at the mention of it.
+
+Upon these proceedings the exhilarating sound of the band was heard;
+simultaneously a festival peal of bells burst forth; and an admonishment
+of the necessity for concealing her chagrin and exhibiting both station
+and a countenance to the people, combined with the excitement of the
+new scenes and the marching music to banish the acuter sense of
+disappointment from Duchess Susan's mind; so she very soon held herself
+erect, and wore a face open to every wonder, impressionable as the blue
+lake-surface, crisped here and there by fitful breezes against a level
+sun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It was an axiom with Mr. Beamish, our first, if not our only
+philosophical beau and a gentleman of some thoughtfulness, that the
+social English require tyrannical government as much as the political are
+able to dispense with it: and this he explained by an exposition of the
+character of a race possessed of the eminent virtue of individual self-
+assertion, which causes them to insist on good elbowroom wherever they
+gather together.  Society, however, not being tolerable where the
+smoothness of intercourse is disturbed by a perpetual punching of sides,
+the merits of the free citizen in them become their demerits when a
+fraternal circle is established, and they who have shown an example of
+civilization too notable in one sphere to call for eulogy, are often to
+be seen elbowing on the ragged edge of barbarism in the other.  They must
+therefore be reduced to accept laws not of their own making, and of an
+extreme rigidity.
+
+Here too is a further peril; for the gallant spirits distinguishing them
+in the state of independence may (he foresaw the melancholy experience of
+a later age) abandon them utterly in subjection, and the glorious
+boisterousness befitting the village green forsake them even in their
+haunts of liberal association, should they once be thoroughly tamed by
+authority.  Our 'merrie England' will then be long-faced England, an
+England of fallen chaps, like a boar's head, bearing for speech a lemon
+in the mouth: good to feast on, mayhap; not with!
+
+Mr. Beamish would actually seem to have foreseen the danger of a
+transition that he could watch over only in his time; and, as he said,
+'I go, as I came, on a flash'; he had neither ancestry nor descendants:
+he was a genius, he knew himself a solitary, therefore, in spite of his
+efforts to create his like.  Within his district he did effect something,
+enough to give him fame as one of the princely fathers of our domestic
+civilization, though we now appear to have lost by it more than formerly
+we gained.  The chasing of the natural is ever fraught with dubious
+hazards.  If it gallops back, according to the proverb, it will do so at
+the charge: commonly it gallops off, quite off; and then for any kind of
+animation our precarious dependence is upon brains: we have to live on
+our wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land, and cannot be
+remitted in entail.
+
+Rightly or wrongly (there are differences of opinion about it) Mr.
+Beamish repressed the chthonic natural with a rod of iron beneath his
+rule.  The hoyden and the bumpkin had no peace until they had given
+public imitations of the lady and the gentleman; nor were the lady and
+the gentleman privileged to be what he called 'free flags.'  He could be
+charitable to the passion, but he bellowed the very word itself (hauled
+up smoking from the brimstone lake) against them that pretended to be
+shamelessly guilty of the peccadilloes of gallantry.  His famous accost
+of a lady threatening to sink, and already performing like a vessel in
+that situation: 'So, madam, I hear you are preparing to enrol yourself in
+the very ancient order?' .  .  .  (he named it) was a piece of insolence
+that involved him in some discord with the lady's husband and 'the rascal
+steward,' as he chose to term the third party in these affairs: yet it is
+reputed to have saved the lady.
+
+Furthermore, he attacked the vulgarity of persons of quality, and he has
+told a fashionable dame who was indulging herself in a marked sneer of
+disdain, not improving to her features, 'that he would be pleased to have
+her assurance it was her face she presented to mankind': a thing--thanks
+perhaps to him chiefly--no longer possible of utterance.  One of the sex
+asking him why he addressed his persecutions particularly to women:
+'Because I fight your battles,' says he, 'and I find you in the ranks of
+the enemy.' He treated them as traitors.
+
+He was nevertheless well supported by a sex that compensates for dislike
+of its friend before a certain age by a cordial recognition of him when
+it has touched the period.  A phalanx of great dames gave him the terrors
+of Olympus for all except the natively audacious, the truculent and the
+insufferably obtuse; and from the midst of them he launched decree and
+bolt to good effect: not, of course, without receiving return missiles,
+and not without subsequent question whether the work of that man was
+beneficial to the country, who indeed tamed the bumpkin squire and his
+brood, but at the cost of their animal spirits and their gift of speech;
+viz.  by making petrifactions of them.  In the surgical operation of
+tracheotomy, a successful treatment of the patient hangs, we believe, on
+the promptness and skill of the introduction of the artificial windpipe;
+and it may be that our unhappy countrymen when cut off from the source of
+their breath were not neatly handled; or else that there is a physical
+opposition in them to anything artificial, and it must be nature or
+nothing.  The dispute shall be left where it stands.
+
+Now, to venture upon parading a beautiful young Duchess of Dewlap, with
+an odour of the shepherdess about her notwithstanding her acquired art of
+stepping conformably in a hoop, and to demand full homage of respect for
+a lady bearing such a title, who had the intoxicating attractions of the
+ruddy orchard apple on the tree next the roadside wall, when the owner is
+absent, was bold in Mr. Beamish, passing temerity; nor would even he have
+attempted it had he not been assured of the support of his phalanx of
+great ladies.  They indeed, after being taken into the secret, had
+stipulated that first they must have an inspection of the transformed
+dairymaid; and the review was not unfavourable.  Duchess Susan came out
+of it more scatheless than her duke.  She was tongue-tied, and her
+tutored walking and really admirable stature helped her to appease, the
+critics of her sex; by whom her too readily blushful innocence was
+praised, with a reserve, expressed in the remark, that she was a
+monstrous fine toy for a duke's second childhood, and should never have
+been let fly from his nursery.  Her milliner was approved.  The duke was
+a notorious connoisseur of female charms, and would see, of course, to
+the decorous adornment of her person by the best of modistes.  Her
+smiling was pretty, her eyes were soft; she might turn out good, if well
+guarded for a time; but these merits of the woman are not those of the
+great lady, and her title was too strong a beam on her character to give
+it a fair chance with her critics.  They one and all recommended powder
+for her hair and cheeks.  That odour of the shepherdess could be
+exorcised by no other means, they declared.  Her blushing was indecent.
+
+Truly the critics of the foeman sex behaved in a way to cause the blushes
+to swarm rosy as the troops of young Loves round Cytherea in her sea-
+birth, when, some soaring, and sinking some, they flutter like her
+loosened zone, and breast the air thick as flower petals on the summer's
+breath, weaving her net for the world.  Duchess Susan might protest her
+inability to keep her blushes down; that the wrong was done by the
+insolent eyes, and not by her artless cheeks.  Ay, but nature, if we are
+to tame these men, must be swathed and concealed, partly stifled,
+absolutely stifled upon occasion.  The natural woman does not move a foot
+without striking earth to conjure up the horrid apparition of the natural
+man, who is not as she, but a cannibal savage.  To be the light which
+leads, it is her business to don the misty vesture of an idea, that she
+may dwell as an idea in men's minds, very dim, very powerful, but
+abstruse, unseizable.  Much wisdom was imparted to her on the subject,
+and she understood a little, and echoed hollow to the remainder, willing
+to show entire docility as far as her intelligence consented to be awake.
+She was in that stage of the dainty, faintly tinged innocence of the
+amorousness of themselves when beautiful young women who have not been
+caught for schooling in infancy deem it a defilement to be made to
+appear other than the blessed nature has made them, which has made them
+beautiful, and surely therefore deserves to be worshipped.  The lectures
+of the great ladies and Chloe's counsels failed to persuade her to use
+the powder puff-ball.  Perhaps too, as timidity quitted her, she enjoyed
+her distinctiveness in their midst.
+
+But the distinctiveness of a Duchess of Dewlap with the hair and cheeks
+of our native fields, was fraught with troubles outrunning Mr. Beamish's
+calculations.  He had perceived that she would be attractive; he had not
+reckoned on the homogeneousness of her particular English charms.  A
+beauty in red, white, and blue is our goddess Venus with the apple of
+Paris in her hand; and after two visits to the Pump Room, and one
+promenade in the walks about the Assembly House, she had as completely
+divided the ordinary guests of the Wells into male and female in opinion
+as her mother Nature had done in it sex.  And the men would not be
+silenced; they had gazed on their divinest, and it was for the women
+to succumb to that unwholesome state, so full of thunder.  Knights and
+squires, military and rural, threw up their allegiance right and left
+to devote themselves to this robust new vision, and in their peculiar
+manner, with a general View-halloo, and Yoicks, Tally-ho, and away we go,
+pelt ahead!  Unexampled as it is in England for Beauty to kindle the
+ardours of the scent of the fox, Duchess Susan did more--she turned all
+her followers into hounds; they were madmen: within a very few days of
+her entrance bets raged about her, and there were brawls, jolly flings at
+her character in the form of lusty encomium, givings of the lie, and upon
+one occasion a knock-down blow in public, as though the place had never
+known the polishing touch of Mr. Beamish.
+
+He was thrown into great perplexity by that blow.  Discountenancing the
+duel as much as he could, an affair of the sword was nevertheless more
+tolerable than the brutal fist: and of all men to be guilty of it, who
+would have anticipated the young Alonzo, Chloe's quiet, modest lover!
+He it was.  The case came before Mr. Beamish for his decision; he had
+to pronounce an impartial judgement, and for some time, during the
+examination of evidence, he suffered, as he assures us in his Memoirs, a
+royal agony.  To have to strike with the glaive of Justice them whom they
+most esteem, is the greatest affliction known to kings.  He would have
+done it: he deserved to reign.  Happily the evidence against the
+gentleman who was tumbled, Mr. Ralph Shepster, excused Mr. Augustus
+Camwell, otherwise Alonzo, for dealing with him promptly to shut his
+mouth.
+
+This Shepster, a raw young squire, 'reeking,' Beau Beamish writes of him,
+'one half of the soil, and t' other half of the town,' had involved Chloe
+in his familiar remarks upon the Duchess of Dewlap; and the personal
+respect entertained by Mr. Beamish for Chloe so strongly approved
+Alonzo's championship of her, that in giving judgement he laid stress on
+young Alonzo's passion for Chloe, to prove at once the disinterestedness
+of the assailant, and the judicial nature of the sentence: which was,
+that Mr. Ralph Shepster should undergo banishment, and had the right to
+demand reparation.  The latter part of this decree assisted in effecting
+the execution of the former.  Shepster declined cold steel, calling it
+murder, and was effusive of nature's logic on the subject
+
+'Because a man comes and knocks me down, I'm to go up to him and ask him
+to run me through!'
+
+His shake of the head signified that he was not such a noodle.  Voluble
+and prolific of illustration, as is no one so much as a son of nature
+inspired to speak her words of wisdom, he defied the mandate, and refused
+himself satisfaction, until in the strangest manner possible flights of
+white feathers beset him, and he became a mark for persecution too trying
+for the friendship of his friends.  He fled, repeating his tale, that he
+had seen 'Beamish's Duchess,' and Chloe attending her, at an assignation
+in the South Grove, where a gentleman, unknown to the Wells, presented
+himself to the adventurous ladies, and they walked together--a tale
+ending with nods.
+
+Shepster's banishment was one of those victories of justice upon which
+mankind might be congratulated if they left no commotion behind.  But,
+as when a boy has been horsed before his comrades, dread may visit them,
+yet is there likewise devilry in the school; and everywhere over earth
+a summary punishment that does not sweep the place clear is likely to
+infect whom it leaves remaining.  The great law-givers, Lycurgus, Draco,
+Solon, Beamish, sorrowfully acknowledge that they have had recourse to
+infernal agents, after they have thus purified their circle of an
+offender.  Doctors confess to the same of their physic.  The expelling
+agency has next to be expelled, and it is a subtle poison, affecting our
+spirits.  Duchess Susan had now the incense of a victim to heighten her
+charms; like the treasure-laden Spanish galleon for whom, on her voyage
+home from South American waters, our enterprising light-craft privateers
+lay in wait, she had the double attraction of being desirable and an
+enemy.  To watch above her conscientiously was a harassing business.
+
+Mr. Beamish sent for Chloe, and she came to him at once.  Her look was
+curious; he studied it while they conversed.  So looks one who is
+watching the sure flight of an arrow, or the happy combinations of an
+intrigue.  Saying, 'I am no inquisitor, child,' he ventured upon two or
+three modest inquisitions with regard to her mistress.  The title he had
+disguised Duchess Susan in, he confessed to rueing as the principal cause
+of the agitation of his principality.  'She is courted,' he said, 'less
+like a citadel waving a flag than a hostelry where the demand is for
+sitting room and a tankard!  These be our manners.  Yet, I must own, a
+Duchess of Dewlap is a provocation, and my exclusive desire to protect
+the name of my lord stands corrected by the perils environing his lady.
+She is other than I supposed her; she is, we will hope, an excellent good
+creature, but too attractive for most and drawbridge and the customary
+defences to be neglected.
+
+Chloe met his interrogatory with a ready report of the young duchess's
+innocence and good nature that pacified Mr. Beamish.
+
+'And you?' said he.
+
+She smiled for answer.
+
+That smile was not the common smile; it was one of an eager exultingness,
+producing as he gazed the twitch of an inquisitive reflection of it on
+his lips.  Such a smile bids us guess and quickens us to guess, warns us
+we burn and speeds our burning, and so, like an angel wafting us to some
+heaven-feasting promontory, lifts us out of ourselves to see in the
+universe of colour what the mouth has but pallid speech to tell.  That is
+the very heart's language; the years are in a look, as mount and vale of
+the dark land spring up in lightning.
+
+He checked himself: he scarce dared to say it.
+
+She nodded.
+
+'You have seen the man, Chloe?'
+
+Her smiling broke up in the hard lines of an ecstasy neighbouring pain.
+'He has come; he is here; he is faithful; he has not forgotten me.  I was
+right.  I knew!  I knew!'
+
+'Caseldy has come?'
+
+'He has come.  Do not ask.  To have him!  to see him!  Mr. Beamish, he is
+here.'
+
+'At last!'
+
+'Cruel!'
+
+'Well, Caseldy has come, then!  But now, friend Chloe, you should be made
+aware that the man--'
+
+She stopped her ears.  As she did so, Mr. Beamish observed a thick silken
+skein dangling from one hand.  Part of it was plaited, and at the upper
+end there was a knot.  It resembled the commencement of her manufactory
+of a whip: she swayed it to and fro, allowing him to catch and lift the
+threads on his fingers for the purpose of examining her work.  There was
+no special compliment to pay, so he dropped it without remark.
+
+Their faces had expressed her wish to hear nothing from him of Caseldy
+and his submission to say nothing.  Her happiness was too big; she
+appeared to beg to lie down with it on her bosom, in the manner of an
+outworn, young mother who has now first received her infant in her arms
+from the nurse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Humouring Chloe with his usual considerateness, Mr. Beamish forbore to
+cast a shadow on her new-born joy, and even within himself to doubt the
+security of its foundation.  Caseldy's return to the Wells was at least
+some assurance of his constancy, seeing that here they appointed to meet
+when he and Chloe last parted.  All might be well, though it was
+unexplained why he had not presented himself earlier.  To the lightest
+inquiry Chloe's reply was a shiver of happiness.
+
+Moreover, Mr. Beamish calculated that Caseldy would be a serviceable ally
+in commanding a proper respect for her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap.  So
+he betook himself cheerfully to Caseldy's lodgings to deliver a message
+of welcome, meeting, on his way thither, Mr. Augustus Camwell, with whom
+he had a short conversation, greatly to his admiration of the enamoured
+young gentleman's goodness and self-compression in speaking of Caseldy
+and Chloe's better fortune.  Mr. Camwell seemed hurried.
+
+Caseldy was not at home, and Mr. Beamish proceeded to the lodgings of the
+duchess.  Chloe had found her absent.  The two consulted.  Mr. Beamish
+put on a serious air, until Chloe mentioned the pastrycook's shop, for
+Duchess Susan had a sweet tooth; she loved a visit to the pastrycook's,
+whose jam tarts were dearer to her than his more famous hot mutton pies.
+The pastry cook informed Mr. Beamish that her Grace had been in his shop,
+earlier than usual, as it happened, and accompanied by a foreign-looking
+gentleman wearing moustachois.  Her Grace, the pastrycook said, had
+partaken of several tarts, in common with the gentleman, who complimented
+him upon his excelling the Continental confectioner.  Mr. Beamish glanced
+at Chloe.  He pursued his researches down at the Pump Room, while she
+looked round the ladies' coffee house.  Encountering again, they walked
+back to the duchess's lodgings, where a band stood playing in the road,
+by order of her Grace; but the duchess was away, and had not been seen
+since her morning's departure.
+
+'What sort of character would you give mistress Susan of Dewlap, from
+your personal acquaintance with it?' said Mr. Beamish to Chloe, as they
+stepped from the door.
+
+Chloe mused and said, 'I would add "good" to the unkindest comparison you
+could find for her.'
+
+'But accepting the comparison!' Mr. Beamish nodded, and revolved upon the
+circumstance of their being very much in nature's hands with Duchess
+Susan, of whom it might be said that her character was good, yet all the
+more alive to the temptations besetting the Spring season.  He allied
+Chloe's adjective to a number of epithets equally applicable to nature
+and to women, according to current ideas, concluding: 'Count, they call
+your Caseldy at his lodgings.  "The Count he is out for an airing."  He
+is counted out.  Ah! you will make him drop that "Count" when he takes
+you from here.'
+
+'Do not speak of the time beyond the month,' said Chloe, so urgently on a
+rapid breath as to cause Mr. Beamish to cast an inquiring look at her.
+
+She answered it, 'Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask
+for?'
+
+The beau clapped his elbows complacently to his sides in philosophical
+concord with her sentiment.
+
+In the afternoon, on the parade, they were joined by Mr. Camwell, among
+groups of fashionable ladies and their escorts, pacing serenely, by
+medical prescription, for an appetite.  As he did not comment on the
+absence of the duchess, Mr. Beamish alluded to it; whereupon he was
+informed that she was about the meadows, and had been there for some
+hours.
+
+'Not unguarded,' he replied to Mr. Beamish.
+
+'Aha!' quoth the latter; 'we have an Argus!' and as the duchess was not
+on the heights, and the sun's rays were mild in cloud, he agreed to his
+young friend's proposal that they should advance to meet her.  Chloe
+walked with them, but her face was disdainful; at the stiles she gave her
+hand to Mr. Beamish; she did not address a word to Mr. Camwell, and he
+knew the reason.  Nevertheless he maintained his air of soldierly
+resignation to the performance of duty, and held his head like a
+gentleman unable to conceive the ignominy of having played spy.
+Chloe shrank from him.
+
+Duchess Susan was distinguished coming across a broad uncut meadow,
+tirra-lirraing beneath a lark, Caseldy in attendance on her.  She stopped
+short and spoke to him; then came forward, crying ingenuously.  'Oh, Mr.
+Beamish, isn't this just what you wanted me to do?'
+
+'No, madam,' said he, 'you had my injunctions to the contrary.'
+
+'La!' she exclaimed, 'I thought I was to run about in the fields now and
+then to preserve my simplicity.  I know I was told so, and who told me!'
+
+Mr. Beamish bowed effusively to the introduction of Caseldy, whose
+fingers he touched in sign of the renewal of acquaintance, and with a
+laugh addressed the duchess:
+
+'Madam, you remind me of a tale of my infancy.  I had a juvenile comrade
+of the tenderest age, by name Tommy Plumston, and he enjoyed the
+privilege of intimacy with a component urchin yclept Jimmy Clungeon, with
+which adventurous roamer, in defiance of his mother's interdict against
+his leaving the house for a minute during her absence from home, he
+departed on a tour of the district, resulting, perhaps as a consequence
+of its completeness, in this, that at a distance computed at four miles
+from the maternal mansion, he perceived his beloved mama with sufficient
+clearness to feel sure that she likewise had seen him.  Tommy consulted
+with Jimmy, and then he sprang forward on a run to his frowning mama, and
+delivered himself in these artless words, which I repeat as they were
+uttered, to give you the flavour of the innocent babe: he said, "I frink
+I frought I hear you call me, ma! and Jimmy Clungeon, he frought he frink
+so too!"  So, you see, the pair of them were under the impression that
+they were doing right.  There is a delicate distinction in the tenses of
+each frinking where the other frought, enough in itself to stamp
+sincerity upon the statement.'
+
+Caseldy said, 'The veracity of a boy possessing a friend named Clungeon
+is beyond contest.'
+
+Duchess Susan opened her eyes.  'Four miles from home!  And what did his
+mother do to him?'
+
+'Tommy's mama,' said Mr. Beamish, and with the resplendent licence of the
+period which continued still upon tolerable terms with nature under the
+compromise of decorous 'Oh-fie!' flatly declared the thing she did.
+
+'I fancy, sir, that I caught sight of your figure on the hill yonder
+about an hour or so earlier,' said Caseldy to Mr. Camwell.
+
+'If it was at the time when you were issuing from that wood, sir, your
+surmise is correct,' said the young gentleman.
+
+'You are long-sighted, sir!'
+
+'I am, sir.'
+
+'And so am I.'
+
+'And I,' said Chloe.
+
+'Our Chloe will distinguish you accurately at a mile, and has done it,'
+observed Mr. Beamish.
+
+'One guesses tiptoe on a suspicion, and if one is wrong it passes, and if
+one is right it is a miracle,' she said, and raised her voice on a song
+to quit the subject.
+
+'Ay, ay, Chloe; so then you had a suspicion, you rogue, the day we had
+the pleasure of meeting the duchess, had you?' Mr. Beamish persisted.
+
+Duchess Susan interposed.  'Such a pretty song! and you to stop her,
+sir!'
+
+Caseldy took up the air.
+
+'Oh, you two together!' she cried.  'I do love hearing music in the
+fields; it is heavenly.  Bands in the town and voices in the green
+fields, I say!  Couldn't you join Chloe, Mr ....  Count, sir, before we
+come among the people, here where it 's all so nice and still.  Music!
+and my heart does begin so to pit-a-pat.  Do you sing, Mr. Alonzo?'
+
+'Poorly,' the young gentleman replied.
+
+'But the Count can sing, and Chloe's a real angel when she sings; and
+won't you, dear?' she implored Chloe, to whom Caseldy addressed a prelude
+with a bow and a flourish of the hand.
+
+Chloe's voice flew forth.  Caseldy's rich masculine matched it.  The song
+was gay; he snapped his finger at intervals in foreign style, singing
+big-chested, with full notes and a fine abandonment, and the quickest
+susceptibility to his fair companion's cunning modulations, and an eye
+for Duchess Susan's rapture.
+
+Mr. Beamish and Mr. Camwell applauded them.
+
+'I never can tell what to say when I'm brimming'; the duchess let fall a
+sigh.  'And he can play the flute, Mr. Beamish.  He promised me he would
+go into the orchestra and play a bit at one of your nice evening
+delicious concerts, and that will be nice--Oh!'
+
+'He promised you, madam, did he so?' said the beau.  'Was it on your way
+to the Wells that he promised you?'
+
+'On my way to the Wells!' she exclaimed softly.  'Why, how could anybody
+promise me a thing before ever he saw me?  I call that a strange thing to
+ask a person.  No, to-day, while we were promenading; and I should hear
+him sing, he said.  He does admire his Chloe so.  Why, no wonder, is it,
+now?  She can do everything; knit, sew, sing, dance--and talk!  She's
+never uneasy for a word.  She makes whole scenes of things go round you,
+like a picture peep-show, I tell her.  And always cheerful.  She hasn't a
+minute of grumps; and I'm sometimes a dish of stale milk fit only for
+pigs.
+
+With your late hours here, I'm sure I want tickling in the morning, and
+Chloe carols me one of her songs, and I say, "There's my bird!"'
+
+Mr. Beamish added, 'And you will remember she has a heart.'
+
+'I should think so!' said the duchess.
+
+'A heart, madam!'
+
+'Why, what else?'
+
+Nothing other, the beau, by his aspect, was constrained to admit.
+
+He appeared puzzled by this daughter of nature in a coronet; and more on
+her remarking, 'You know about her heart, Mr. Beamish.'
+
+He acquiesced, for of course he knew of her life-long devotion to
+Caseldy; but there was archness in her tone.  However, he did not expect
+a woman of her education to have the tone perfectly concordant with the
+circumstances.  Speaking tentatively of Caseldy's handsome face and
+figure, he was pleased to hear the duchess say, 'So I tell Chloe.'
+
+'Well,' said he, 'we must consider them united; they are one.'
+
+Duchess Susan replied, 'That's what I tell him; she will do anything you
+wish.'
+
+He repeated these words with an interjection, and decided in his mind
+that they were merely silly.  She was a real shepherdess by birth and
+nature, requiring a strong guard over her attractions on account of her
+simplicity; such was his reading of the problem; he had conceived it at
+the first sight of her, and always recurred to it under the influence of
+her artless eyes, though his theories upon men and women were astute, and
+that cavalier perceived by long-sighted Chloe at Duchess Susan's coach
+window perturbed him at whiles.  Habitually to be anticipating the
+simpleton in a particular person is the sure way of being sometimes the
+dupe, as he would not have been the last to warn a neophyte; but abstract
+wisdom is in need of an unappeased suspicion of much keenness of edge, if
+we would have it alive to cope with artless eyes and our prepossessed
+fancy of their artlessness.
+
+'You talk of Chloe to him?' he said.
+
+She answered.  'Yes, that I do.  And he does love her!  I like to hear
+him.  He is one of the gentlemen who don't make me feel timid with them.'
+
+She received a short lecture on the virtues of timidity in preserving the
+sex from danger; after which, considering that the lady who does not feel
+timid with a particular cavalier has had no sentiment awakened, he
+relinquished his place to Mr. Camwell, and proceeded to administer the
+probe to Caseldy.
+
+That gentleman was communicatively candid.  Chloe had left him, and he
+related how, summoned home to England and compelled to settle a dispute
+threatening a lawsuit, he had regretfully to abstain from visiting the
+Wells for a season, not because of any fear of the attractions of play--
+he had subdued the frailty of the desire to play--but because he deemed
+it due to his Chloe to bring her an untroubled face, and he wished first
+to be the better of the serious annoyances besetting him.  For some
+similar reason he had not written; he wished to feast on her surprise.
+'And I had my reward,' he said, as if he had been the person principally
+to suffer through that abstinence.  'I found--I may say it to you, Mr.
+Beamish love in her eyes.  Divine by nature, she is one of the immortals,
+both in appearance and in steadfastness.'
+
+They referred to Duchess Susan.  Caseldy reluctantly owned that it would
+be an unkindness to remove Chloe from attendance on her during the short
+remaining term of her stay at the Wells; and so he had not proposed it,
+he said, for the duchess was a child, an innocent, not stupid by any
+means; but, of course, her transplanting from an inferior to an exalted
+position put her under disadvantages.
+
+Mr. Beamish spoke of the difficulties of his post as guardian, and also
+of the strange cavalier seen at her carriage window by Chloe.
+
+Caseldy smiled and said, 'If there was one--and Chloe is rather long--
+sighted--we can hardly expect her to confess it.'
+
+'Why not, sir, if she be this piece of innocence?' Mr. Beamish was led to
+inquire.
+
+'She fears you, sir,' Caseldy answered.  'You have inspired her with an
+extraordinary fear of you.'
+
+'I have?' said the beau: it had been his endeavour to inspire it, and he
+swelled somewhat, rather with relief at the thought of his possessing a
+power to control his delicate charge, than with our vanity; yet would it
+be audacious to say that there was not a dose of the latter.  He was a
+very human man; and he had, as we have seen, his ideas of the effect of
+the impression of fear upon the hearts of women.  Something, in any case,
+caused him to forget the cavalier.
+
+They were drawn to the three preceding them, by a lively dissension
+between Chloe and Mr. Camwell.
+
+Duchess Susan explained it in her blunt style: 'She wants him to go away
+home, and he says he will, if she'll give him that double skein of silk
+she swings about, and she says she won't, let him ask as long as he
+pleases; so he says he sha'n't go, and I'm sure I don't see why he
+should; and she says he may stay, but he sha'n't have her necklace, she
+calls it.  So Mr. Camwell snatches, and Chloe fires up.  Gracious, can't
+she frown!--at him.  She never frowns at anybody but him.'
+
+Caseldy attempted persuasion on Mr. Camwell's behalf.  With his mouth at
+Chloe's ear, he said, 'Give it; let the poor fellow have his memento;
+despatch him with it.'
+
+'I can hear! and that is really kind,' exclaimed Duchess Susan.
+
+'Rather a missy-missy schoolgirl sort of necklace,' Mr. Beamish observed;
+'but he might have it, without the dismissal, for I cannot consent to
+lose Alonzo.  No, madam,' he nodded at the duchess.
+
+Caseldy continued his whisper: 'You can't think of wearing a thing like
+that about your neck?'
+
+'Indeed,' said Chloe, 'I think of it.'
+
+'Why, what fashion have you over here?'
+
+'It is not yet a fashion,' she said.
+
+'A silken circlet will not well become any precious pendant that I know
+of.'
+
+'A bag of dust is not a very precious pendant,' she said.
+
+'Oh, a memento mori!' cried he.
+
+And she answered, 'Yes.'
+
+He rallied her for her superstition, pursuing, 'Surely, my love, 'tis a
+cheap riddance of a pestilent, intrusive jaloux.  Whip it into his hands
+for a mittimus.'
+
+'Does his presence distress you?' she asked.
+
+'I will own that to be always having the fellow dogging us, with his
+dejected leer, is not agreeable.  He watches us now, because my lips are
+close by your cheek.  He should be absent; he is one too many.  Speed him
+on his voyage with the souvenir he asks for.'
+
+'I keep it for a journey of my own, which I may have to take,' said
+Chloe.
+
+'With me?'
+
+'You will follow; you cannot help following me, Caseldy.'
+
+He speculated on her front.  She was tenderly smiling.  'You are happy,
+Chloe?'
+
+'I have never known such happiness,' she said.  The brilliancy of her
+eyes confirmed it.
+
+He glanced over at Duchess Susan, who was like a sunflower in the sun.
+His glance lingered a moment.  Her abundant and glowing young charms were
+the richest fascination an eye like his could dwell on.  'That is right,'
+said he.  'We will be perfectly happy till the month ends.  And after it?
+But get us rid of Monsieur le Jeune; toss him that trifle; I spare him
+that.  'Twill be bliss to him, at the cost of a bit of silk thread to us.
+Besides, if we keep him to cure him of his passion here, might it not be
+--these boys veer suddenly, like the winds of Albion, from one fair
+object to t' other--at the cost of the precious and simple lady you are
+guarding?  I merely hint.  These two affect one another, as though it
+could be.  She speaks of him.  It shall be as you please, but a trifle
+like that, my Chloe, to be rid of a green eye!'
+
+'You much wish him gone?' she said.
+
+He shrugged.  'The fellow is in our way.'
+
+'You think him a little perilous for my innocent lady?'
+
+'Candidly, I do.'
+
+She stretched the half-plaited silken rope in her two hands to try the
+strength of it, made a second knot, and consigned it to her pocket.
+
+At once she wore her liveliest playfellow air, in which character no one
+was so enchanting as Chloe could be, for she became the comrade of men
+without forfeit of her station among sage sweet ladies, and was like a
+well-mannered sparkling boy, to whom his admiring seniors have given the
+lead in sallies, whims, and fights; but pleasanter than a boy, the soft
+hues of her sex toned her frolic spirit; she seemed her sex's deputy, to
+tell the coarser where they could meet, as on a bridge above the torrent
+separating them, gaily for interchange of the best of either, unfired and
+untempted by fire, yet with all the elements which make fire burn to
+animate their hearts.
+
+'Lucky the man who wins for himself that life-long cordial!' Mr. Beamish
+said to Duchess Susan.
+
+She had small comprehension of metaphorical phrases, but she was quick at
+reading faces; and comparing the enthusiasm on the face of the beau with
+Caseldy's look of troubled wonderment and regret, she pitied the lover
+conscious of not having the larger share of his mistress's affections.
+When presently he looked at her, the tender-hearted woman could have
+cried for very compassion, so sensible did he show himself of Chloe's
+preference of the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+That evening Duchess Susan played at the Pharaoh table and lost eight
+hundred pounds, through desperation at the loss of twenty.  After
+encouraging her to proceed to this extremity, Caseldy checked her.  He
+was conducting her out of the Play room when a couple of young squires of
+the Shepster order, and primed with wine, intercepted her to present
+their condolences, which they performed with exaggerated gestures,
+intended for broad mimicry of the courtliness imported from the
+Continent, and a very dulcet harping on the popular variations of her
+Christian name, not forgetting her singular title, 'my lovely, lovely
+Dewlap!'
+
+She was excited and stunned by her immediate experience in the transfer
+of money, and she said, 'I 'm sure I don't know what you want.'
+
+'Yes!' cried they, striking their bosoms as guitars, and attempting the
+posture of the thrummer on the instrument; 'she knows.  She does know.
+Handsome Susie knows what we want.' And one ejaculated, mellifluously,
+'Oh!' and the other 'Ah!' in flagrant derision of the foreign ways they
+produced in boorish burlesque--a self-consolatory and a common trick of
+the boor.
+
+Caseldy was behind.  He pushed forward and bowed to them.  'Sirs, will
+you mention to me what you want?'
+
+He said it with a look that meant steel.  It cooled them sufficiently to
+let him place the duchess under the protectorship of Mr. Beamish, then
+entering from another room with Chloe; whereupon the pair of rustic bucks
+retired to reinvigorate their valiant blood.
+
+Mr. Beamish had seen that there was cause for gratitude to Caseldy, to
+whom he said, 'She has lost?' and he seemed satisfied on hearing the
+amount of the loss, and commissioned Caseldy to escort the ladies to
+their lodgings at once, observing, 'Adieu, Count!'
+
+'You will find my foreign title of use to you here, after a bout or two,'
+was the reply.
+
+'No bouts, if possibly to be avoided; though I perceive how the flavour
+of your countship may spread a wholesome alarm among our rurals, who will
+readily have at you with fists, but relish not the tricky cold weapon.'
+
+Mr. Beamish haughtily bowed the duchess away.
+
+Caseldy seized the opportunity while handing her into her sedan to say,
+'We will try the fortune-teller for a lucky day to have our revenge.'
+
+She answered: 'Oh, don't talk to me about playing again ever; I'm nigh on
+a clean pocket, and never knew such a sinful place as this.  I feel I've
+tumbled into a ditch.  And there's Mr. Beamish, all top when he bows to
+me.  You're keeping Chloe waiting, sir.'
+
+'Where was she while we were at the table?'
+
+'Sure she was with Mr. Beamish.'
+
+'Ah!' he groaned.
+
+'The poor soul is in despair over her losses to-night,' he turned from
+the boxed-up duchess to remark to Chloe.  'Give her a comfortable cry and
+a few moral maxims.'
+
+'I will,' she said.  'You love me, Caseldy?'
+
+'Love you?  I?  Your own?  What assurance would you have?'
+
+'None, dear friend.'
+
+Here was a woman easily deceived.
+
+In the hearts of certain men, owing to an intellectual contempt of easy
+dupes, compunction in deceiving is diminished by the lightness of their
+task; and that soft confidence which will often, if but passingly, bid
+betrayers reconsider the charms of the fair soul they are abandoning,
+commends these armoured knights to pursue with redoubled earnest the
+fruitful ways of treachery.  Their feelings are warm for their prey,
+moreover; and choosing to judge their victim by the present warmth of
+their feelings, they can at will be hurt, even to being scandalized, by a
+coldness that does not waken one suspicion of them.  Jealousy would have
+a chance of arresting, for it is not impossible to tease them back to
+avowed allegiance; but sheer indifference also has a stronger hold on
+them than a, dull, blind trustfulness.  They hate the burden it imposes;
+the blind aspect is only touching enough to remind them of the burden,
+and they hate if for that, and for the enormous presumption of the belief
+that they are everlastingly bound to such an imbecile.  She walks about
+with her eyes shut, expecting not to stumble, and when she does, am I to
+blame?  The injured man asks it in the course of his reasoning.
+
+He recurs to his victim's merits, but only compassionately, and the
+compassion is chilled by the thought that she may in the end start across
+his path to thwart him.  Thereat he is drawn to think of the prize she
+may rob him of; and when one woman is an obstacle, the other shines
+desirable as life beyond death; he must have her; he sees her in the hue
+of his desire for her, and the obstacle in that of his repulsion.
+Cruelty is no more than the man's effort to win the wished object.
+
+She should not leave it to his imagination to conceive that in the end
+the blind may awaken to thwart him.  Better for her to cast him hence,
+or let him know that she will do battle to keep him.  But the pride of a
+love that has hardened in the faithfulness of love cannot always be wise
+on trial.
+
+Caseldy walked considerably in the rear of the couple of chairs.  He saw
+on his way what was coming.  His two young squires were posted at Duchess
+Susan's door when she arrived, and he received a blow from one of them in
+clearing a way for her.  She plucked at his hand.  'Have they hurt you?'
+she asked.
+
+'Think of me to-night thanking them and heaven for this, my darling,' he
+replied, with a pressure that lit the flying moment to kindle the after
+hours.
+
+Chloe had taken help of one of her bearers to jump out.  She stretched a
+finger at the unruly intruders, crying sternly, 'There is blood on you--
+come not nigh me!'  The loftiest harangue would not have been so cunning
+to touch their wits.  They stared at one another in the clear moonlight.
+Which of them had blood on him?  As they had not been for blood, but for
+rough fun, and something to boast of next day, they gesticulated
+according to the first instructions of the dancing master, by way of
+gallantry, and were out of Caseldy's path when he placed himself at his
+liege lady's service.  'Take no notice of them, dear,' she said.
+
+'No, no,' said he; and 'What is it?' and his hoarse accent and shaking
+clasp of her arm sickened her to the sensation of approaching death.
+
+Upstairs Duchess Susan made a show of embracing her.  Both were
+trembling.  The duchess ascribed her condition to those dreadful men.
+'What makes them be at me so?' she said.
+
+And Chloe said, 'Because you are beautiful.'
+
+'Am I?'
+
+'You are.'
+
+'I am?'
+
+'Very beautiful; young and beautiful; beautiful in the bud.  You will
+learn to excuse them, madam.'
+
+'But, Chloe--' The duchess shut her mouth.  Out of a languid reverie, she
+sighed: 'I suppose I must be!  My duke--oh, don't talk of him.  Dear man!
+he's in bed and fast asleep long before this.  I wonder how he came to
+let me come here.
+
+I did bother him, I know.  Am I very, very beautiful, Chloe, so that men
+can't help themselves?'
+
+'Very, madam.'
+
+'There, good-night.  I want to be in bed, and I can't kiss you because
+you keep calling me madam, and freeze me to icicles; but I do love you,
+Chloe.'
+
+'I am sure you do.'
+
+'I'm quite certain I do. I know I never mean harm. But how are we women
+expected to behave, then?  Oh, I'm unhappy, I am.'
+
+'You must abstain from playing.'
+
+'It's that!  I've lost my money--I forgot.  And I shall have to confess
+it to my duke, though he warned me.  Old men hold their fingers up--so!
+One finger: and you never forget the sight of it, never.  It's a round
+finger, like the handle of a jug, and won't point at you when they're
+lecturing, and the skin's like an old coat on gaffer's shoulders--or,
+Chloe! just like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up to
+the face of a corpse.  I declare, it's just like!  I feel as if I didn't
+a bit mind talking of corpses tonight.  And my money's gone, and I don't
+much mind.  I'm a wild girl again, handsomer than when that----he is a
+dear, kind, good old nobleman, with his funny old finger: "Susan!
+Susan!"  I'm no worse than others.  Everybody plays here; everybody
+superior.  Why, you have played, Chloe.'
+
+'Never!'
+
+'I've heard you say you played once, and a bigger stake it was, you said,
+than anybody ever did play.'
+
+'Not money.'
+
+'What then?'
+
+'My life.'
+
+'Goodness--yes!  I understand.  I understand everything to-night-men too.
+So you did!--They're not so shamefully wicked, Chloe.  Because I can't
+see the wrong of human nature--if we're discreet, I mean.  Now and then a
+country dance and a game, and home to bed and dreams.  There's no harm in
+that, I vow.  And that's why you stayed at this place.  You like it,
+Chloe?'
+
+'I am used to it.'
+
+'But when you're married to Count Caseldy you'll go?'
+
+'Yes, then.'
+
+She uttered it so joylessly that Duchess Susan added, with intense
+affectionateness, 'You're not obliged to marry him, dear Chloe.'
+
+'Nor he me, madam.'
+
+The duchess caught at her impulsively to kiss her, and said she would
+undress herself, as she wished to be alone.
+
+From that night she was a creature inflamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The total disappearance of the pair of heroes who had been the latest in
+the conspiracy to vex his delicate charge, gave Mr. Beamish a high
+opinion of Caseldy as an assistant in such an office as he held.  They
+had gone, and nothing more was heard of them.  Caseldy confined his
+observations on the subject to the remark that he had employed the best
+means to be rid of that kind of worthies; and whether their souls had
+fled, or only their bodies, was unknown.  But the duchess had quiet
+promenades with Caseldy to guard her, while Mr. Beamish counted the
+remaining days of her visit with the impatience of a man having cause to
+cast eye on a clock.  For Duchess Susan was not very manageable now; she
+had fits of insurgency, and plainly said that her time was short, and she
+meant to do as she liked, go where she liked, play when she liked, and be
+an independent woman--if she was so soon to be taken away and boxed in a
+castle that was only a bigger sedan.
+
+Caseldy protested he was as helpless as the beau.  He described the
+annoyance of his incessant running about at her heels in all directions
+amusingly, and suggested that she must be beating the district to recover
+her 'strange cavalier,' of whom, or of one that had ridden beside her
+carriage half a day on her journey to the Wells, he said she had dropped
+a sort of hint.  He complained of the impossibility of his getting an
+hour in privacy with his Chloe.
+
+'And I, accustomed to consult with her, see too little of her,' said Mr.
+Beamish.  'I shall presently be seeing nothing, and already I am sensible
+of my loss.'
+
+He represented his case to Duchess Susan:--that she was for ever driving
+out long distances and taking Chloe from him, when his occupation
+precluded his accompanying them; and as Chloe soon was to be lost
+to him for good, he deeply felt her absence.
+
+The duchess flung him enigmatical rejoinders: 'You can change all that,
+Mr. Beamish, if you like, and you know you can.  Oh, yes, you can.  But
+you like being a butterfly, and when you've made ladies pale you're
+happy: and there they're to stick and wither for you.  Never!--I've that
+pride.  I may be worried, but I'll never sink to green and melancholy for
+a man.'
+
+She bridled at herself in a mirror, wherein not a sign of paleness was
+reflected.
+
+Mr. Beamish meditated, and he thought it prudent to speak to Caseldy
+manfully of her childish suspicions, lest she should perchance in like
+manner perturb the lover's mind.
+
+'Oh, make your mind easy, my dear sir, as far as I am concerned,' said
+Caseldy.  'But, to tell you the truth, I think I can interpret her creamy
+ladyship's innuendos a little differently and quite as clearly.  For my
+part, I prefer the pale to the blowsy, and I stake my right hand on
+Chloe's fidelity.  Whatever harm I may have the senseless cruelty--
+misfortune, I may rather call it--to do that heavenly-minded woman in our
+days to come, none shall say of me that I was ever for an instant guilty
+of the baseness of doubting her purity and constancy.  And, sir, I will
+add that I could perfectly rely also on your honour.'
+
+Mr. Beamish bowed.  'You do but do me justice.  But, say, what
+interpretation?'
+
+'She began by fearing you,' said Caseldy, creating a stare that was
+followed by a frown.  'She fancies you neglect her.  Perhaps she has a
+woman's suspicion that you do it to try her.'
+
+Mr. Beamish frenetically cited his many occupations.  'How can I be ever
+dancing attendance on her?'  Then he said, 'Pooh,' and tenderly fingered
+the ruffles of his wrist.  'Tush, tush,' said he, 'no, no: though if it
+came to a struggle between us, I might in the interests of my old friend,
+her lord, whom I have reasons for esteeming, interpose an influence that
+would make the exercise of my authority agreeable.  Hitherto I have seen
+no actual need of it, and I watch keenly.  Her eye has been on Colonel
+Poltermore once or twice his on her.  The woman is a rose in June, sir,
+and I forgive the whole world for looking--and for longing too.  But I
+have observed nothing serious.'
+
+'He is of our party to the beacon-head to-morrow,' said Caseldy.  'She
+insisted that she would have him; and at least it will grant me furlough
+for an hour.'
+
+'Do me the service to report to me,' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+In this fashion he engaged Caseldy to supply him with inventions, and
+prepared himself to swallow them.  It was Poltermore and Poltermore, the
+Colonel here, the Colonel there until the chase grew so hot that Mr.
+Beamish could no longer listen to young Mr. Camwell's fatiguing drone
+upon his one theme of the double-dealing of Chloe's betrothed.  He became
+of her way of thinking, and treated the young gentleman almost as coldly
+as she.  In time he was ready to guess of his own acuteness that the
+'strange cavalier' could have been no other than Colonel Poltermore.
+When Caseldy hinted it, Mr. Beamish said, 'I have marked him.' He added,
+in highly self-satisfied style, 'With all your foreign training, my
+friend, you will learn that we English are not so far behind you in the
+art of unravelling an intrigue in the dark.' To which Caseldy replied,
+that the Continental world had little to teach Mr. Beamish.
+
+Poor Colonel Poltermore, as he came to be called, was clearly a victim of
+the sudden affability of Duchess Susan.  The transformation of a stiff
+military officer into a nimble Puck, a runner of errands and a sprightly
+attendant, could not pass without notice.  The first effect of her
+discriminating condescension on this unfortunate gentleman was to make
+him the champion of her claims to breeding.  She had it by nature, she
+was Nature's great lady, he would protest to the noble dames of the
+circle he moved in; and they admitted that she was different in every way
+from a bourgeoise elevated by marriage to lofty rank: she was not vulgar.
+But they remained doubtful of the perfect simplicity of a young woman who
+worked such changes in men as to render one of the famous conquerors of
+the day her agitated humble servant.  By rapid degrees the Colonel had
+fallen to that.  When not by her side, he was ever marching with sharp
+strides, hurrying through rooms and down alleys and groves until he had
+discovered and attached himself to her skirts.  And, curiously, the
+object of his jealousy was the devoted Alonzo!  Mr. Beamish laughed when
+he heard of it.  The lady's excitement and giddy mien, however, accused
+Poltermore of a stage of success requiring to be combated immediately.
+There was mention of Duchess Susan's mighty wish to pay a visit to the
+popular fortune-teller of the hut on the heath, and Mr. Beamish put his
+veto on the expedition.  She had obeyed him by abstaining from play of
+late, so he fully expected, that his interdict would be obeyed; and
+besides the fortune-teller was a rogue of a sham astrologer known to have
+foretold to certain tender ladies things they were only too desirous to
+imagine predestined by an extraordinary indication of the course of
+planets through the zodiac, thus causing them to sin by the example of
+celestial conjunctions--a piece of wanton impiety.  The beau took high
+ground in his objections to the adventure.  Nevertheless, Duchess Susan
+did go.  She drove to the heath at an early hour of the morning, attended
+by Chloe, Colonel Poltermore, and Caseldy.  They subsequently breakfasted
+at an inn where gipsy repasts were occasionally served to the fashion,
+and they were back at the wells as soon as the world was abroad.  Their
+surprise then was prodigious when Mr. Beamish, accosting them full in
+assembly, inquired whether they were satisfied with the report of their
+fortunes, and yet more when he positively proved himself acquainted with
+the fortunes which had been recounted to each of them in privacy.
+
+'You, Colonel Poltermore, are to be in luck's way up to the tenth
+milestone,--where your chariot will overset and you will be lamed for
+life.'
+
+'Not quite so bad,' said the Colonel cheerfully, he having been informed
+of much better.
+
+'And you, Count Caseldy, are to have it all your own way with good luck,
+after committing a deed of slaughter, with the solitary penalty of
+undergoing a visit every night from the corpse.'
+
+'Ghost,' Caseldy smilingly corrected him.
+
+'And Chloe would not have her fortune told, because she knew it!'
+Mr. Beamish cast a paternal glance at her.  'And you, madam,' he bent
+his brows on the duchess, 'received the communication that "All for Love"
+will sink you as it raised you, put you down as it took you up, furnish
+the feast to the raven gentleman which belongs of right to the golden
+eagle?'
+
+'Nothing of the sort!  And I don't believe in any of their stories,'
+cried the duchess, with a burning face.
+
+'You deny it, madam?'
+
+'I do.  There was never a word of a raven or an eagle, that I'll swear,
+now.'
+
+'You deny that there was ever a word of "All for Love"?  Speak, madam.'
+
+'Their conjuror's rigmarole!' she murmured, huffing.  'As if I listened
+to their nonsense!'
+
+'Does the Duchess of Dewlap dare to give me the lie?' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+'That's not my title, and you know it,' she retorted.
+
+'What's this?' the angry beau sang out.  'What stuff is this you wear?'
+He towered and laid hand on a border of lace of her morning dress, tore
+it furiously and swung a length of it round him: and while the duchess
+panted and trembled at an outrage that won for her the sympathy of every
+lady present as well as the championship of the gentlemen, he tossed the
+lace to the floor and trampled on it, making his big voice intelligible
+over the uproar: 'Hear what she does! 'Tis a felony!  She wears the stuff
+with Betty Worcester's yellow starch on it for mock antique!  And let who
+else wears it strip it off before the town shall say we are disgraced--
+when I tell you that Betty Worcester was hanged at Tyburn yesterday
+morning for murder!'
+
+There were shrieks.
+
+Hardly had he finished speaking before the assembly began to melt; he
+stood in the centre like a pole unwinding streamers, amid a confusion of
+hurrying dresses, the sound and whirl and drift whereof was as that of
+the autumnal strewn leaves on a wind rising in November.  The troops of
+ladies were off to bereave themselves of their fashionable imitation old
+lace adornment, which denounced them in some sort abettors and associates
+of the sanguinary loathed wretch, Mrs. Elizabeth Worcester, their
+benefactress of the previous day, now hanged and dangling on the
+gallows-tree.
+
+Those ladies who wore not imitation lace or any lace in the morning, were
+scarcely displeased with the beau for his exposure of them that did.  The
+gentlemen were confounded by his exhibition of audacious power.  The two
+gentlemen nighest upon violently resenting his brutality to Duchess
+Susan, led her from the room in company with Chloe.
+
+'The woman shall fear me to good purpose,' Mr. Beamish said to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Mr. Camwell was in the ante-room as Chloe passed out behind the two
+incensed supporters of Duchess Susan.
+
+'I shall be by the fir-trees on the Mount at eight this evening,' she
+said.
+
+'I will be there,' he replied.
+
+'Drive Mr. Beamish into the country, that these gentlemen may have time
+to cool.'
+
+He promised her it should be done.
+
+Close on the hour of her appointment, he stood under the fir-trees,
+admiring the sunset along the western line of hills, and when Chloe
+joined him he spoke of the beauty of the scene.
+
+'Though nothing seems more eloquently to say farewell,' he added, with a
+sinking voice.
+
+'We could say it now, and be friends,' she answered.
+
+'Later than now, you think it unlikely that you could forgive me, Chloe.'
+
+'In truth, sir, you are making it hard for me.'
+
+'I have stayed here to keep watch; for no pleasure of my own,' said he.
+
+'Mr. Beamish is an excellent protector of the duchess.'
+
+'Excellent; and he is cleverly taught to suppose she fears him greatly;
+and when she offends him, he makes a display of his Jupiter's awfulness,
+with the effect on woman of natural spirit which you have seen, and
+others had foreseen, that she is exasperated and grows reckless.  Tie
+another knot in your string, Chloe.'
+
+She looked away, saying, 'Were you not the cause?  You were in collusion
+with that charlatan of the heath, who told them their fortunes this
+morning.  I see far, both in the dark and in the light.'
+
+'But not through a curtain.  I was present.'
+
+'Hateful, hateful business of the spy!  You have worked a great mischief
+Mr. Camwell.  And how can you reconcile it to, your conscience that you
+should play so base a part?'
+
+'I have but performed my duty, dear madam.'
+
+'You pretend that it is your devotion to me!  I might be flattered if I
+saw not so abject a figure in my service.  Now have I but four days of my
+month of happiness remaining, and my request to you is, leave me to enjoy
+them.  I beseech you to go.  Very humbly, most earnestly, I beg your
+departure.  Grant it to me, and do not stay to poison my last days here.
+Leave us to-morrow.  I will admit your good intentions.  I give you my
+hand in gratitude.  Adieu, Mr. Camwell.'
+
+He took her hand.  'Adieu.  I foresee an early separation, and this dear
+hand is mine while I have it in mine.  Adieu.  It is a word to be
+repeated at a parting like ours.  We do not blow out our light with one
+breath: we let it fade gradually, like yonder sunset.'
+
+'Speak so,' said she.
+
+'Ah, Chloe, to give one's life!  And it is your happiness I have sought
+more than your favor.'
+
+'I believe it; but I have not liked the means.  You leave us to-morrow?'
+
+'It seems to me that to-morrow is the term.'
+
+Her face clouded.  'That tells me a very uncertain promise.'
+
+'You looked forth to a month of happiness--meaning a month of delusion.
+The delusion expires to-night.  You will awaken to see your end of it in
+the morning.  You have never looked beyond the month since the day of his
+arrival.'
+
+'Let him not be named, I supplicate you.'
+
+'Then you consent that another shall be sacrificed for you to enjoy your
+state of deception an hour longer?'
+
+'I am not deceived, sir.  I wish for peace, and crave it, and that is all
+I would have.'
+
+'And you make her your peace-offering, whom you have engaged to serve!
+Too surely your eyes have been open as well as mine.  Knot by knot--
+I have watched you--where is it?--you have marked the points in that
+silken string where the confirmation of a just suspicion was too strong
+for you.'
+
+'I did it, and still I continued merry?'  She subsided from her
+scornfulness on an involuntary 'Ah!' that was a shudder.
+
+'You acted Light Heart, madam, and too well to hoodwink me.  Meanwhile
+you allowed that mischief to proceed, rather than have your crazy lullaby
+disturbed.'
+
+'Indeed, Mr. Camwell, you presume.'
+
+'The time, and my knowledge of what it is fraught with, demand it and
+excuse it.  You and I, my dear and one only love on earth, stand outside
+of ordinary rules.  We are between life and death.'
+
+'We are so always.'
+
+'Listen further to the preacher: We have them close on us, with the
+question, Which it shall be to-morrow.  You are for sleeping on, but I
+say no; nor shall that iniquity of double treachery be committed because
+of your desire to be rocked in a cradle.  Hear me out.  The drug you have
+swallowed to cheat yourself will not bear the shock awaiting you tomorrow
+with the first light.  Hear these birds!  When next they sing, you will
+be broad awake, and of me, and the worship and service I would have
+dedicated to you, I do not .  .  .  it is a spectral sunset of a day that
+was never to be!--awake, and looking on what?  Back from a monstrous
+villainy to the forlorn wretch who winked at it with knots in a string.
+Count them then, and where will be your answer to heaven?  I begged it of
+you, to save you from those blows of remorse; yes, terrible!'
+
+'Oh, no!'
+
+'Terrible, I say!'
+
+'You are mistaken, Mr. Camwell.  It is my soother.  I tell my beads on
+it.'
+
+'See how a persistent residence in this place has made a Pagan of the
+purest soul among us!  Had you .  .  .  but that day was not to lighten
+me!  More adorable in your errors that you are than others by their
+virtues, you have sinned through excess of the qualities men prize.  Oh,
+you have a boundless generosity, unhappily enwound with a pride as great.
+There is your fault, that is the cause of your misery.  Too generous!
+too proud!  You have trusted, and you will not cease to trust; you have
+vowed yourself to love, never to remonstrate, never to seem to doubt;
+it is too much your religion, rare verily.  But bethink you of that
+inexperienced and most silly good creature who is on the rapids to her
+destruction.  Is she not--you will cry it aloud to-morrow--your victim?
+You hear it within you now.'
+
+'Friend, my dear, true friend,' Chloe said in her deeper voice of melody,
+'set your mind at ease about to-morrow and her.  Her safety is assured.
+I stake my life on it.  She shall not be a victim.  At the worst she will
+but have learnt a lesson.  So, then, adieu!  The West hangs like a
+garland of unwatered flowers, neglected by the mistress they adorned.
+Remember the scene, and that here we parted, and that Chloe wished you
+the happiness it was out of her power to bestow, because she was of
+another world, with her history written out to the last red streak before
+ever you knew her.  Adieu; this time adieu for good!
+
+Mr. Camwell stood in her path.  'Blind eyes, if you like,' he said, 'but
+you shall not hear blind language.  I forfeit the poor consideration for
+me that I have treasured; hate me; better hated by you than shun my duty!
+Your duchess is away at the first dawn this next morning; it has come to
+that.  I speak with full knowledge.  Question her.'
+
+Chloe threw a faltering scorn of him into her voice, as much as her
+heart's sharp throbs would allow.  'I question you, sir, how you came to
+this full knowledge you boast of?'
+
+'I have it; let that suffice.  Nay, I will be particular; his coach is
+ordered for the time I name to you; her maid is already at a station on
+the road of the flight.'
+
+'You have their servants in your pay?'
+
+'For the mine--the countermine.  We must grub dirt to match deceivers.
+You, madam, have chosen to be delicate to excess, and have thrown it upon
+me to be gross, and if you please, abominable, in my means of defending
+you.  It is not too late for you to save the lady, nor too late to bring
+him to the sense of honour.'
+
+'I cannot think Colonel Poltermore so dishonourable.'
+
+'Poor Colonel Poltermore!  The office he is made to fill is an old one.
+Are you not ashamed, Chloe?'
+
+'I have listened too long,' she replied.
+
+'Then, if it is your pleasure, depart.'
+
+He made way for her.  She passed him.  Taking two hurried steps in the
+gloom of the twilight, she stopped, held at her heart, and painfully
+turning to him, threw her arms out, and let herself be seized and kissed.
+
+On his asking pardon of her, which his long habit of respect forced him
+to do in the thick of rapture and repetitions, she said, 'You rob no
+one.'
+
+'Oh,' he cried, 'there is a reward, then, for faithful love.  But am I
+the man I was a minute back?  I have you; I embrace you; and I doubt that
+I am I.  Or is it Chloe's ghost?'
+
+'She has died and visits you.'
+
+'And will again?'
+
+Chloe could not speak for languor.
+
+The intensity of the happiness she gave by resting mutely where she was,
+charmed her senses.  But so long had the frost been on them that their
+awakening to warmth was haunted by speculations on the sweet taste of
+this reward of faithfulness to him, and the strange taste of her own
+unfaithfulness to her.  And reflecting on the cold act of speculation
+while strong arm and glowing mouth were pressing her, she thought her
+senses might really be dead, and she a ghost visiting the good youth for
+his comfort.  So feel ghosts, she thought, and what we call happiness in
+love is a match between ecstasy and compliance.  Another thought flew
+through her like a mortal shot: 'Not so with those two! with them it will
+be ecstasy meeting ecstasy; they will take and give happiness in equal
+portions.'  A pang of jealousy traversed her frame.  She made the
+shrewdness of it help to nerve her fervour in a last strain of him to her
+bosom, and gently releasing herself, she said, 'No one is robbed.  And
+now, dear friend, promise me that you will not disturb Mr. Beamish.'
+
+'Chloe,' said he, 'have you bribed me?'
+
+'I do not wish him to be troubled.'
+
+'The duchess, I have told you--'
+
+'I know.  But you have Chloe's word that she will watch over the
+duchess and die to save her.  It is an oath.  You have heard of some
+arrangements.  I say they shall lead to nothing: it shall not take place.
+Indeed, my friend, I am awake; I see as much as you see.  And those. . .
+after being where I have been, can you suppose I have a regret?  But she
+is my dear and peculiar charge, and if she runs a risk, trust to me that
+there shall be no catastrophe; I swear it; so, now, adieu.  We sup in
+company to-night.  They will be expecting some of Chloe's verses, and she
+must sing to herself for a few minutes to stir the bed her songs take
+wing from; therefore, we will part, and for her sake avoid her; do not be
+present at our table, or in the room, or anywhere there.  Yes, you rob no
+one,' she said, in a voice that curled through him deliciously by
+wavering; but I think I may blush at recollections, and I would rather
+have you absent.  Adieu!  I will not ask for obedience from you beyond
+to-night.  Your word?'
+
+He gave it in a stupor of felicity, and she fled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Chloe drew the silken string from her bosom, as she descended the dim
+pathway through the furies, and set her fingers travelling along it for
+the number of the knots.  'I have no right to be living,' she said.
+Seven was the number; seven years she had awaited her lover's return; she
+counted her age and completed it in sevens.  Fatalism had sustained her
+during her lover's absence; it had fast hold of her now.  Thereby had she
+been enabled to say, 'He will come'; and saying, 'He has come,' her touch
+rested on the first knot in the string.  She had no power to displace her
+fingers, and the cause of the tying of the knot stood across her brain
+marked in dull red characters, legible neither to her eye nor to her
+understanding, but a reviving of the hour that brought it on her spirit
+with human distinctness, except of the light of day: she had a sense of
+having forfeited light, and seeing perhaps more clearly.  Everything
+assured her that she saw more clearly than others; she saw too when it
+was good to cease to live.
+
+Hers was the unhappy lot of one gifted with poet-imagination to throb
+with the woman supplanting her and share the fascination of the man who
+deceived.  At their first meeting, in her presence, she had seen that
+they were not strangers; she pitied them for speaking falsely, and when
+she vowed to thwart this course of evil it to save a younger creature of
+her sex, not in rivalry.  She treated them both with a proud generosity
+surpassing gentleness.  All that there was of selfishness in her bosom
+resolved to the enjoyment of her one month of strongly willed delusion.
+
+The kiss she had sunk to robbed no one, not even her body's purity, for
+when this knot was tied she consigned herself to her end, and had become
+a bag of dust.  The other knots in the string pointed to verifications;
+this first one was a suspicion, and it was the more precious, she felt it
+to be more a certainty; it had come from the dark world beyond us, where
+all is known.  Her belief that it had come thence was nourished by
+testimony, the space of blackness wherein she had lived since, exhausting
+her last vitality in a simulation of infantile happiness, which was
+nothing other than the carrying on of her emotion of the moment of sharp
+sour sweet--such as it may be, the doomed below attain for their
+knowledge of joy--when, at the first meeting with her lover, the
+perception of his treachery to the soul confiding in him, told her she
+had lived, and opened out the cherishable kingdom of insensibility to her
+for her heritage.
+
+She made her tragic humility speak thankfully to the wound that slew her.
+'Had it not been so, I should not have seen him,' she said:--Her lover
+would not have come to her but for his pursuit of another woman.
+
+She pardoned him for being attracted by that beautiful transplant of the
+fields: pardoned her likewise.  'He when I saw him first was as beautiful
+to me.  For him I might have done as much.'
+
+Far away in a lighted hall of the West, her family raised hands of
+reproach.  They were minute objects, keenly discerned as diminished
+figures cut in steel.  Feeling could not be very warm for them, they were
+so small, and a sea that had drowned her ran between; and looking that
+way she had scarce any warmth of feeling save for a white rhaiadr leaping
+out of broken cloud through branched rocks, where she had climbed and
+dreamed when a child.  The dream was then of the coloured days to come;
+now she was more infant in her mind, and she watched the scattered water
+broaden, and tasted the spray, sat there drinking the scene, untroubled
+by hopes as a lamb, different only from an infant in knowing that she had
+thrown off life to travel back to her home and be refreshed.  She heard
+her people talk; they were unending babblers in the waterfall.  Truth was
+with them, and wisdom.  How, then, could she pretend to any right to
+live?  Already she had no name; she was less living than a tombstone.
+For who was Chloe?  Her family might pass the grave of Chloe without
+weeping, without moralizing.  They had foreseen her ruin, they had
+foretold it, they noised it in the waters, and on they sped to the
+plains, telling the world of their prophecy, and making what was untold
+as yet a lighter thing to do.
+
+The lamps in an irregularly dotted line underneath the hill beckoned her
+to her task of appearing as the gayest of them that draw their breath for
+the day and have pulses for the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+At midnight the great supper party to celebrate the reconciliation of
+Mr. Beamish and Duchess Susan broke up, and beneath a soft fair sky the
+ladies, with their silvery chatter of gratitude for amusement, caught
+Chloe in their arms to kiss her, rendering it natural for their cavaliers
+to exclaim that Chloe was blest above mortals.  The duchess preferred to
+walk.  Her spirits were excited, and her language smelt of her origin,
+but the superb fleshly beauty of the woman was aglow, and crying, 'I
+declare I should burst in one of those boxes--just as if you'd stalled
+me!' she fanned a wind on her face, and sumptuously spread her spherical
+skirts, attended by the vanquished and captive Colonel Poltermore, a
+gentleman manifestly bent on insinuating sly slips of speech to serve for
+here a pinch of powder, there a match.  'Am I?' she was heard to say.
+She blew prodigious deep-chested sighs of a coquette that has taken to
+roaring.
+
+Presently her voice tossed out: 'As if I would!'  These vivid
+illuminations of the Colonel's proceedings were a pasture to the rearward
+groups, composed of two very grand ladies, Caseldy, Mr. Beamish, a lord,
+and Chloe.
+
+'You man!  Oh!' sprang from the duchess.  'What do I hear?  I won't
+listen; I can't, I mustn't, I oughtn't.'
+
+So she said, but her head careened, she gave him her coy reluctant ear,
+with total abandonment to the seductions of his whispers, and the lord
+let fly a peal of laughter.  It had been a supper of copious wine, and
+the songs which rise from wine.  Nature was excused by our midnight
+naturalists.
+
+The two great dames, admonished by the violence of the nobleman's
+laughter, laid claim on Mr. Beamish to accompany them at their parting
+with Chloe and Duchess Susan.
+
+In the momentary shuffling of couples incident to adieux among a company,
+the duchess murmured to Caseldy:
+
+'Have I done it well.'
+
+He praised her for perfection in her acting.  'I am at your door at
+three, remember.'
+
+'My heart's in my mouth,' said she.
+
+Colonel Poltermore still had the privilege of conducting her the few
+farther steps to her lodgings.
+
+Caseldy walked beside Chloe, and silently, until he said, 'If I have not
+yet mentioned the subject--'
+
+'If it is an allusion to money let me not hear it to-night,' she replied.
+
+'I can only say that my lawyers have instructions.  But my lawyers cannot
+pay you in gratitude.  Do not think me in your hardest review of my
+misconduct ungrateful.  I have ever esteemed you above all women; I do,
+and I shall; you are too much above me.  I am afraid I am a composition
+of bad stuff; I did not win a very particularly good name on the
+Continent; I begin to know myself, and in comparison with you, dear
+Catherine----'
+
+'You speak to Chloe,' she said.  'Catherine is a buried person.  She died
+without pain.  She is by this time dust.'
+
+The man heaved his breast.  'Women have not an idea of our temptations.'
+
+'You are excused by me for all your errors, Caseldy.  Always remember
+that.'
+
+He sighed profoundly.  'Ay, you have a Christian's heart.'
+
+She answered, 'I have come to the conclusion that it is a Pagan's.'
+
+'As for me,' he rejoined, 'I am a fatalist.  Through life I have seen my
+destiny.  What is to be, will be; we can do nothing.'
+
+'I have heard of one who expired of a surfeit that he anticipated, nay
+proclaimed, when indulging in the last desired morsel,' said Chloe.
+
+'He was driven to it.'
+
+'From within.'
+
+Caseldy acquiesced; his wits were clouded, and an illustration even
+coarser and more grotesque would have won a serious nod and a sigh from
+him.  'Yes, we are moved by other hands!'
+
+'It is pleasant to think so: and think it of me tomorrow.  Will you!'
+said Chloe.
+
+He promised it heartily, to induce her to think the same of him.
+
+Their separation was in no way remarkable.  The pretty formalities were
+executed at the door, and the pair of gentlemen departed.
+
+'It's quite dark still,' Duchess Susan said, looking up at the sky, and
+she ran upstairs, and sank, complaining of the weakness of her legs, in a
+chair of the ante-chamber of her bedroom, where Chloe slept.  Then she
+asked the time of the night.  She could not suppress her hushed 'Oh!'
+of heavy throbbing from minute to minute.  Suddenly she started off at
+a quick stride to her own room, saying that it must be sleepiness which
+affected her so.
+
+Her bedroom had a door to the sitting-room, and thence, as also from
+Chloe's room, the landing on the stairs was reached, for the room ran
+parallel with both bed-chambers.  She walked in it and threw the window
+open, but closed it immediately; opened and shut the door, and returned
+and called for Chloe.  She wanted to be read to.  Chloe named certain
+composing books.  The duchess chose a book of sermons.  'But we're all
+such dreadful sinners, it's better not to bother ourselves late at
+night.'  She dismissed that suggestion.  Chloe proposed books of poetry.
+'Only I don't understand them except about larks, and buttercups, and
+hayfields, and that's no comfort to a woman burning,' was the answer.
+
+'Are you feverish, madam?' said Chloe.  And the duchess was sharp on her:
+'Yes, madam, I am.'
+
+She reproved herself in a change of tone: 'No, Chloe, not feverish, only
+this air of yours here is such an exciting air, as the doctor says; and
+they made me drink wine, and I played before supper--Oh! my money; I used
+to say I could get more, but now!' she sighed--'but there's better in the
+world than money.  You know that, don't you, you dear?  Tell me.  And
+I want you to be happy; that you'll find.  I do wish we could all be!'
+She wept, and spoke of requiring a little music to compose her.
+
+Chloe stretched a hand for her guitar.  Duchess Susan listened to some
+notes, and cried that it went to her heart and hurt her.  'Everything we
+like a lot has a fence and a board against trespassers, because of such a
+lot of people in the world,' she moaned.  'Don't play, put down that
+thing, please, dear.  You're the cleverest creature anybody has ever met;
+they all say so.  I wish I----Lovely women catch men, and clever women
+keep them: I've heard that said in this wretched place, and it 's a nice
+prospect for me, next door to a fool!  I know I am.'
+
+'The duke adores you, madam.'
+
+'Poor duke!  Do let him be--sleeping so woebegone with his mouth so, and
+that chin of a baby, like as if he dreamed of a penny whistle.  He
+shouldn't have let me come here.  Talk of Mr. Beamish.  How he will miss
+you, Chloe!'
+
+'He will,' Chloe said sadly.
+
+'If you go, dear.'
+
+'I am going.'
+
+'Why should you leave him, Chloe?'
+
+'I must.'
+
+'And there, the thought of it makes you miserable!'
+
+'It does.'
+
+'You needn't, I'm sure.'
+
+Chloe looked at her.
+
+The duchess turned her head.  'Why can't you be gay, as you were at the
+supper-table, Chloe?  You're out to him like a flower when the sun jumps
+over the hill; you're up like a lark in the dews; as I used to be when I
+thought of nothing.  Oh, the early morning; and I'm sleepy.  What a beast
+I feel, with my grandeur, and the time in an hour or two for the birds to
+sing, and me ready to drop.  I must go and undress.'
+
+She rushed on Chloe, kissed her hastily, declaring that she was quite
+dead of fatigue, and dismissed her.  'I don't want help, I can undress
+myself.  As if Susan Barley couldn't do that for herself! and you may
+shut your door, I sha'n't have any frights to-night, I'm so tired out.'
+
+'Another kiss,' Chloe said tenderly.
+
+'Yes, take it'--the duchess leaned her cheek--'but I'm so tired I don't
+know what I'm doing.'
+
+'It will not be on your conscience,' Chloe answered, kissing her warmly.
+
+Will those words she withdrew, and the duchess closed the door.  She ran
+a bolt in it immediately.
+
+'I'm too tired to know anything I'm doing,' she said to herself, and
+stood with shut eyes to hug certain thoughts which set her bosom heaving.
+
+There was the bed, there was the clock.  She had the option of lying down
+and floating quietly into the day, all peril past.  It seemed sweet for a
+minute.  But it soon seemed an old, a worn, an end-of-autumn life, chill,
+without aim, like a something that was hungry and toothless.  The bed
+proposing innocent sleep repelled her and drove her to the clock.  The
+clock was awful: the hand at the hour, the finger following the minute,
+commanded her to stir actively, and drove her to gentle meditations on
+the bed.  She lay down dressed, after setting her light beside the clock,
+that she might see it at will, and considering it necessary for the bed
+to appear to have been lain on.  Considering also that she ought to be
+heard moving about in the process of undressing, she rose from the bed
+to make sure of her reading of the guilty clock.  An hour and twenty
+minutes! she had no more time than that: and it was not enough for her
+various preparations, though it was true that her maid had packed and
+taken a box of the things chiefly needful; but the duchess had to change
+her shoes and her dress, and run at bo-peep with the changes of her mind,
+a sedative preface to any fatal step among women of her complexion, for
+so they invite indecision to exhaust their scruples, and they let the
+blood have its way.  Having so short a space of time, she thought the
+matter decided, and with some relief she flung despairing on the bed, and
+lay down for good with her duke.  In a little while her head was at work
+reviewing him sternly, estimating him not less accurately than the male
+moralist charitable to her sex would do.  She quitted the bed, with a
+spring to escape her imagined lord; and as if she had felt him to be
+there, she lay down no more.  A quiet life like that was flatter to her
+idea than a handsomely bound big book without any print on the pages, and
+without a picture.  Her contemplation of it, contrasted with the life
+waved to her view by the timepiece, set her whole system rageing; she
+burned to fly.  Providently, nevertheless, she thumped a pillow, and
+threw the bedclothes into proper disorder, to inform the world that her
+limbs had warmed them, and that all had been impulse with her.  She then
+proceeded to disrobe, murmuring to herself that she could stop now, and
+could stop now, at each stage of the advance to a fresh dressing of her
+person, and moralizing on her singular fate, in the mouth of an observer.
+'She was shot up suddenly over everybody's head, and suddenly down she
+went.'  Susan whispered to herself: 'But it was for love!'  Possessed by
+the rosiness of love, she finished her business, with an attention to
+everything needed that was equal to perfect serenity of mind.  After
+which there was nothing to do, save to sit humped in a chair, cover her
+face and count the clock-tickings, that said, Yes--no; do--don't; fly--
+stay; fly--fly!  It seemed to her she heard a moving.  Well she might
+with that dreadful heart of hers!
+
+Chloe was asleep, at peace by this time, she thought; and how she envied
+Chloe!  She might be as happy, if she pleased.  Why not?  But what kind
+of happiness was it?  She likened it to that of the corpse underground,
+and shrank distastefully.
+
+Susan stood at her glass to have a look at the creature about whom there
+was all this disturbance, and she threw up her arms high for a languid,
+not unlovely yawn, that closed in blissful shuddering with the sensation
+of her lover's arms having wormed round her waist and taken her while she
+was defenceless.  For surely they would.  She took a jewelled ring, his
+gift, from her purse, and kissed it, and drew it on and off her finger,
+leaving it on.  Now she might wear it without fear of inquiries and
+virtuous eyebrows.  O heavenly now--if only it were an hour hence; and
+going behind galloping horses!
+
+The clock was at the terrible moment.  She hesitated internally and
+hastened; once her feet stuck fast, and firmly she said, 'No'; but the
+clock was her lord.  The clock was her lover and her lord; and obeying
+it, she managed to get into the sitting-room, on the pretext that she
+merely wished to see through the front window whether daylight was
+coming.
+
+How well she knew that half-light of the ebb of the wave of darkness.
+
+Strange enough it was to see it showing houses regaining their solidity
+of the foregone day, instead of still fields, black hedges, familiar
+shapes of trees.  The houses had no wakefulness, they were but seen to
+stand, and the light was a revelation of emptiness.  Susan's heart was
+cunning to reproach her duke for the difference of the scene she beheld
+from that of the innocent open-breasted land.  Yes, it was dawn in a
+wicked place that she never should have been allowed to visit.  But where
+was he whom she looked for?  There!  The cloaked figure of a man was at
+the corner of the street.  It was he.  Her heart froze; but her limbs
+were strung to throw off the house, and reach air, breathe, and (as her
+thoughts ran) swoon, well-protected.  To her senses the house was a house
+on fire, and crying to her to escape.
+
+Yet she stepped deliberately, to be sure-footed in a dusky room; she
+touched along the wall and came to the door, where a foot-stool nearly
+tripped her.  Here her touch was at fault, for though she knew she must
+be close by the door, she was met by an obstruction unlike wood, and the
+door seemed neither shut nor open.  She could not find the handle;
+something hung over it.  Thinking coolly, she fancied the thing must be a
+gown or dressing-gown; it hung heavily.  Her fingers were sensible of the
+touch of silk; she distinguished a depending bulk, and she felt at it
+very carefully and mechanically, saying within herself, in her anxiety
+to pass it without noise, 'If I should awake poor Chloe, of all people!'
+Her alarm was that the door might creak.  Before any other alarm had
+struck her brain, the hand she felt with was in a palsy, her mouth gaped,
+her throat thickened, the dust-ball rose in her throat, and the effort to
+swallow it down and get breath kept her from acute speculation while she
+felt again, pinched, plucked at the thing, ready to laugh, ready to
+shriek.  Above her head, all on one side, the thing had a round white
+top.  Could it be a hand that her touch had slid across?  An arm too!
+this was an arm!  She clutched it, imagining that it clung to her.  She
+pulled it to release herself from it, desperately she pulled, and a lump
+descended, and a flash of all the torn nerves of her body told her that a
+dead human body was upon her.
+
+At a quarter to four o'clock of a midsummer morning, as Mr. Beamish
+relates of his last share in the Tale of Chloe, a woman's voice, in
+piercing notes of anguish, rang out three shrieks consecutively, which
+were heard by him at the instant of his quitting his front doorstep,
+in obedience to the summons of young Mr. Camwell, delivered ten minutes
+previously, with great urgency, by that gentleman's lacquey.  On his
+reaching the street of the house inhabited by Duchess Susan, he perceived
+many night-capped heads at windows, and one window of the house in
+question lifted but vacant.  His first impression accused the pair of
+gentlemen, whom he saw bearing drawn swords in no friendly attitude of an
+ugly brawl that had probably affrighted her Grace, or her personal
+attendant, a woman capable of screaming, for he was well assured that it
+could not have been Chloe, the least likely of her sex to abandon herself
+to the use of their weapons either in terror or in jeopardy.  The
+antagonists were Mr. Camwell and Count Caseldy.  On his approaching them,
+Mr. Camwell sheathed his sword, saying that his work was done.  Caseldy
+was convulsed with wrath, to such a degree as to make the part of an
+intermediary perilous.  There had been passes between them, and Caseldy
+cried aloud that he would have his enemy's blood.  The night-watch was
+nowhere.  Soon, however, certain shopmen and their apprentices assisted
+Mr. Beamish to preserve the peace, despite the fury of Caseldy and the
+provocations--'not easy to withstand,' says the chronicler--offered by
+him to young Camwell.  The latter said to Mr. Beamish: 'I knew I should
+be no match, so I sent for you,' causing his friend astonishment,
+inasmuch as he was assured of the youth's natural valour.
+
+Mr. Beamish was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them in
+equal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for the
+alarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would have
+inclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swung
+wide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding clasped
+hands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: 'Oh,
+she's dead; she's dead, dead!'
+
+Caseldy rushed past her.
+
+'How, dead! good woman?' Mr. Beamish questioned her most incredulously,
+half-smiling.
+
+She answered among her moans: 'Dead by the neck; off the door--Oh!'
+
+Young Camwell pressed his forehead, with a call on his Maker's name.  As
+they reached the landing upstairs, Caseldy came out of the sitting-room.
+
+'Which?' said Camwell to the speaking of his face.
+
+'She !' said the other.
+
+'The duchess?' Mr. Beamish exclaimed.
+
+But Camwell walked into the room.  He had nothing to ask after that
+reply.
+
+The figure stretched along the floor was covered with a sheet.  The young
+man fell at his length beside it, and his face was downward.
+
+
+Mr. Beamish relates: 'To this day, when I write at an interval of fifteen
+years, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I behold the
+shrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was broken by a
+faithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to arrest one weaker than
+herself on the descent to perdition.  Therein it was beneficently granted
+her to be of the service she prayed to be through her death.  She died to
+save.  In a last letter, found upon her pincushion, addressed to me under
+seal of secrecy toward the parties principally concerned, she anticipates
+the whole confession of the unhappy duchess.  Nay, she prophesies: "The
+duchess will tell you truly she has had enough of love!"  Those actual
+words were reiterated to me by the poor lady daily until her lord arrived
+to head the funeral procession, and assist in nursing back the shattered
+health of his wife to a state that should fit her for travelling.  To me,
+at least, she was constant in repeating, "No more of love!"  By her
+behaviour to her duke, I can judge her to have been sincere.  She spoke
+of feeling Chloe's eyes go through her with every word of hers that she
+recollected.  Nor was the end of Chloe less effective upon the traitor.
+He was in the procession to her grave.  He spoke to none.  There is a
+line of the verse bearing the superscription, "My Reasons for Dying,"
+that shows her to have been apprehensive to secure the safety of Mr.
+Camwell:
+
+                    I die because my heart is dead
+                    To warn a soul from sin I die:
+                    I die that blood may not be shed, etc.
+
+She feared he would be somewhere on the road to mar the fugitives, and
+she knew him, as indeed he knew himself, no match for one trained in the
+foreign tricks of steel, ready though he was to dispute the traitor's
+way.  She remembers Mr. Camwell's petition for the knotted silken string
+in her request that it shall be cut from her throat and given to him.'
+
+Mr. Beamish indulges in verses above the grave of Chloe.  They are of a
+character to cool emotion.  But when we find a man, who is commonly of
+the quickest susceptibility to ridicule as well as to what is befitting,
+careless of exposure, we may reflect on the truthfulness of feeling by
+which he is drawn to pass his own guard and come forth in his nakedness;
+something of the poet's tongue may breathe to us through his mortal
+stammering, even if we have to acknowledge that a quotation would scatter
+pathos.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+All flattery is at somebody's expense
+Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues
+But I leave it to you
+Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war
+Happiness in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance
+If I do not speak of payment
+Intellectual contempt of easy dupes
+Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples
+Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?
+No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters
+Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted
+Primitive appetite for noise
+She might turn out good, if well guarded for a time
+The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost
+They miss their pleasure in pursuing it
+This mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure
+Wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land
+
+
+[The End]
+
+
+
+
+********************************************************************
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+End of the Project Gutenberg etext of The Tale of Chloe
+by George Meredith
+
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