Chapter XIII (1)
The ostler of the Red Lion at Compton Regis and one of the stablemen, who happened at the time to be conversing outside that hostelry, were the only persons in the village privileged to behold a certain blue and yellow postchaise draw up in front of the inn at dusk on an evening in October. Scenting a guest of importance, and preparing to summon the landlord, the ostler was, however, stayed by a curt inquiry from the postilion—
“Be this the way to Little Compton?”
“Straight on, first road to the left,” responded the ostler, advancing into one of the paths of radiance cut by the lamps in the damp autumn air. “You’re no Oxford man or you’d not ask.”
“Well, why should I be an Oxford man?” retorted the postilion. “I’m from Salisbury, if you want to know, and damme, if that ain’t as good as Oxford——”
But here a head was thrust out of the far window of the chaise, and a voice with a trace of foreign accent—the voice of a young man—demanded what the devil they had stopped for, and, grumbling, the postilion shouted to the steaming horses. As the chaise rolled off the ostler caught sight of a much older face, lit by the travelling lamp within the carriage. He stared after the receding vehicle.
“’Ere, Bill,” he called, “I’ve seen a Dook. Strike me, but it’s ’im wot’s going to stay with Mr. ‘Ungerford down to Little Compton. ’Ear the posty say ’e come from Salisbury? That the Dook, sure enough, the old party. T’other’ll be his son, the young spark wot was ’ere before.”
“Dook! Wot’s a furrin Dook?” queried the exclusive Bill, and spat on the ground.
(2)
These worthies were quite right in their surmises, and Mr. Hungerford down to Little Compton was at that moment awaiting, with what equanimity he might, the visit of his all but successful rival and of his father, to whom he had been forced to offer a hospitality which would probably ensure that rival’s complete triumph. Nor was Tristram unaware of the ironical humour of the situation.
A week had scarcely passed since Armand’s departure for Dorset—a week in which the transfigured Horatia had seemed to tread on air—when there came to her a letter from her lover saying that his father absolutely refused his consent to the match. Tristram did not like to think of the days that had followed, when Horatia went about the house dimmed and red-eyed—though she was generally invisible when he was at the Rectory—and when the Rector (so curiously are human beings compounded) raged alternately against Armand for his audacity and against the Duc de la Roche-Guyon for his prohibition. Nothing in fact could have done so much to forward the match, in so far as the Rector was concerned, as this obstacle: and at last, late one evening, Mr. Grenville came over to see Tristram quite broken, reiterating pitifully, “I am being driven to it. I can’t have the child going into a decline,” and ending up: “As for this Duke, it’s preposterous! Who is he, I should like to know, to behave as if my Horatia were not good enough for his younger son? As you know, Tristram, I detest boasting of my connections, but if it comes to that——”
And since Mr. Grenville could indeed claim cousinship of varying degrees with the Most Noble Richard Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord Nugent, with the Marquis of Chandos, and little Earl Temple, and old Lord Grenville, the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, it was hardly surprising that he was annoyed.
Tristram could only suggest that the Duc might come round. “It seems so strange,” complained Mr. Grenville, “that he should be so opposed to his son’s wishes, when his son is not a minor—how old is he?—twenty-five or twenty-six, I suppose.... You don’t think,” he said suddenly, “that it’s just a ruse on the young man’s part to get out of marrying her—that he is repenting of it—that it was only a passing fancy on his part? For if that should be so, Tristram, if he is capable of anything so vile, it will kill my girl.” His voice shook with agitation. Gone for ever were the days when he would have hoped that such was the suitor’s intention.
Tristram tried to reassure him, for he did not believe this to be the case. After the Rector, somewhat comforted, had gone, there was nothing left for him to do but to pray convulsively for Horatia’s happiness.
And when, two days later, he got a letter from Armand, saying that as the King was moving to Holyrood in mid-October he had prevailed on his father to break the journey northward and come with him to Compton Regis, and that he, Armand, had hopes... it was with real relief as well as with repugnance that Tristram did what Armand obviously hoped he would do, and invited his father and him to honour his roof during their sojourn. And if anything could have nerved him this evening to endure the position in which he had placed himself, it was the brief sight which he had of Horatia that day when he went over to tell the Rector that everything was arranged—of Horatia as she turned on him a sort of rainbow look of gratitude.
That was this morning. Now he was out in the dark and the damp to welcome his guests, exchanging suitable greetings with the elder and submitting to Armand’s embrace.
“Ah, mon cher, how amiable of you to receive us thus! We have had a dog of a journey. Mon père, enter then, while I pay the postilion; you should not expose yourself thus to the damp.”
“No, indeed,” said Tristram. “If you will come in, M. le Duc...”
In the hall, the face of M. le Duc de la Roche-Guyon appeared above the high collar of his full cloak, old, pale, rather bleached-looking. He was beginning a stately little speech when his son appeared, full of solicitude and hurried him upstairs. And Armand in person reappeared alone before dinner in order to get a few words with his host. Tristram had been preparing himself for this. The young man professed profound gratitude, was sure that if his father once saw the lady of his choice, all would be well. He himself was more hopeful than he had been for weeks past.
“In fact,” he went on, his eyes sparkling, “I believe the day is already won. My grandmother supports me—and that will turn the scale. My father has great respect for her wishes. Her letter arrived, praise the saints, just before we left Lulworth.”
Tristram now remembered to have heard something of an autocratic old Dowager Duchess, the Duke’s mother.
“She says—mais n’importe,” went on the Comte. “Now, with your permission, and if my father does not appear too tired, I will leave you after dinner to yourselves.”
“You are trusting me with a good deal, La Roche-Guyon,” Tristram was moved to remark.
“Parbleu, are you not my friend!” retorted the Frenchman. “Besides, you are one of those people whom it is natural to trust.”
Although the Duc, when he appeared, was very plainly, if immaculately attired, he somehow radiated from his person an air of courts and of diplomacy very foreign to Tristram’s dining-room and its solid British furniture. He was grand seigneur to his finger-tips, polished, melancholy, affable, and perfectly simple in his address; but it required no effort to imagine the absent cordon bleu and stars on his breast. Armand behaved towards him with a mingled air of deference and affection which, while it amused Tristram—so far as he was capable of being amused by anything—did not displease him, for it appeared genuine and habitual. Apparently the young man considered the paternal health equal to a discussion, for after one glass of port he very unembarrassedly excused himself, and left the others still seated with their wineglasses at the polished mahogany.
The Duc looked after him with a little smile of amusement and affection flitting across his delicate bloodless lips.
“That is the signal for us to begin our ‘conversations,’ Monsieur. You have plenipotentiary powers, I think?”
“I—not in the least!” said Tristram, somewhat alarmed. “I have no—no official position at all in the matter. It will be between yourself, M. le Duc, and the lady’s father. Anything that I can arrange, in the way of a meeting between you, I shall be happy to do, and any information I have is at your service. Beyond that I cannot go.”
The older man bowed. “You are a kinsman, I think, Monsieur?”
“Distant,” said Tristram. “I rather count myself an old friend.”
“Of M. Grenville or of Mademoiselle?”
“Of both.”
“And—pardon me if I ask an impertinent question, but we must know where we stand—as a kinsman and as an old friend, you have yourself no objection to this alliance?”
“I am solely desirous of Miss Grenville’s happiness,” responded Tristram, his eyes on the foot of his wineglass.
“And you think that the match with my son will ensure it?”
“How can I possibly say? But I hope that it may take place.”
“Merci, Monsieur, for your courtesy,” said the Duc, very courteously himself. “Now I in my turn must make my position clear to you. I had other views for my son—in fact I thought he... had other views for himself. I am, however, convinced that he is passionately in love with this lady, whom I doubt not I shall find to be all and more than all that he represents. But you know, Monsieur, that we French people do not look with favour upon marriages of love. We prefer that love should come after marriage. We find it better so. Then there is the difference of race. To these young people that seems nothing now, but it tells, Monsieur, it tells more and more through life. This objection naturally applies on your side also; not so the former, for you are more sentimental than we are.” He was arranging two little groups of almonds with fingers as blanched as they.
“I seem to remember,” commented Tristram, “that the Comte de Flahault, coming over to England, fell in love with an English lady and married her, and that they are living happily in Paris at this very moment.”
“Quite true,” said the Duc, with the air of one acknowledging a point, and he added another almond to the smaller pile. “But I cannot wholly allow the parallel. M. de Flahault was an Imperialist—an aide-de-camp of Napoleon in fact; he is now an Orleanist, and the lady, she was titrée, noble in her own right, I believe, the Baroness Keats, or Keat, il me semble.”
“Keith,” said Tristram. “But surely I do not need to remind M. le Duc, who has, I understand, lived much in England, that many of the members of our best families bear no titles, that with us the grandson of an earl, not being the heir, is plain Mr. So-and-so, and that some of the oldest families have never had titles at all—have, indeed, refused them.”
“That I know,” conceded M. de la Roche-Guyon. “But it is not generally understood in France.”
Tristram pushed away his wineglass. “You must not suspect me of flattery, Sir, if I say that I should have thought your own ancient and illustrious name capable of covering any disparity in station between the parties, did such exist. But I should wish to remind you that Mr. Grenville is by no means the ordinary country parson that you have perhaps imagined. He is himself the younger son of a noble family; he has connections among the highest of our English nobility, and he is no pauper. I can sketch you his family tree if you wish.... As for the lady herself, she would grace the most exalted rank, and, as a kinsman and an old friend, I think I have the right to say that the man who wins her is to be congratulated indeed.”
The Duc lifted his eyes from the almonds and shot him a keen, rather disconcerting glance. “Ah, yes. You, Monsieur, the accredited ambassador, have espoused the match with warmth. How is it that M. Grenville then refused, in no uncertain terms, to entertain the thought of it; indeed, so far as I could gather, forbade my son the house?”
For a second Tristram was taken aback by this pertinent inquiry, for he had really forgotten the Rector’s one time vehement opposition.
“I think,” he said, “that you will find Mr. Grenville... in short, that that difficulty does not now exist.”
The Duc leant back in his chair. “Will you permit me, Monsieur, to say (since I am a man so much older than you) that there is something in you, I know not what, which pleases me very much. I will be franker with you than I had meant to be. My mother, the Dowager Duchess, to whose judgment I pay great deference, is in favour of this match. I have learnt the fact but this morning. I own that I am surprised, but Armand is her favourite grandson. There are reasons, with which I need not trouble you, why her wishes should have great weight with me. I am, therefore, little likely when I see this lady, by all accounts so charming, to find her unsuitable. But what of M. son père? It will not consort very well with my dignity (to which you must permit me to hold) if I approve my son’s choice only to find that M. Grenville does not approve his daughter’s.”
And in the gaze which he directed upon Tristram, in the tones of his thin, well-bred voice, there peeped out something of the arrogance of an ancient race.
The younger man smiled. He felt suddenly very weary.
“You need not apprehend anything on that score, I can assure you, Sir. I saw Mr. Grenville this morning. When your son first asked for his daughter’s hand he was startled, greatly startled, and surprised. He probably spoke words which he would have recalled afterwards. You will find him, I think, more than reconciled to the idea.”
The Duke seemed to have fallen into a short reverie.
“It is well to be young,” he said at last, and there was faint regret in his tone. “The fire of youth—who shall give us that again? When I married my first wife, Emmanuel’s mother, I was only twenty—but that was a mariage de convenance. Armand’s mother was very beautiful; I loved her as Armand loves this lady, but he has the advantage of me... he has the advantage of me... for then I was no longer young.” He sighed, and passed his handkerchief over his lips, and his face, deeply marked, seemed to wither and grow older than its sixty-five years. “But why am I talking thus to you, Monsieur, who still have that inestimable gift of youth? Mais tout passe, tout lasse... I will do myself the honour of calling upon Mr. Grenville to-morrow morning at eleven, if you think that hour will be convenient to him.”
And he flicked with one long, polished nail at the two heaps of almonds, scattering them.
(3)
Not being present next morning at the momentous interview between the Duc and Mr. Grenville, Tristram could only guess at what happened. Armand, on fire with restlessness, spent the time walking round and round the not very extensive garden like a caged animal, and when Tristram went out to say that his father had returned and would like to see him in the study, he found the young man slashing with a stick at his rose trees.
“Oh, pardon if I have hurt them!” he exclaimed. “Mon Dieu, que je suis énervé! Yes, I will go at once. I had better have borrowed one of your horses and gone for a gallop.—He is in the study, you say, this good father of mine?”
The irony of Tristram’s own position oppressed him the more in proportion as his anxiety about Armand’s intentions was relieved. Neither the Duc nor his son said much when they emerged from their conference, only the elder man informed his host that he was to dine alone at the Rectory that evening, and that he hoped then to make the acquaintance of Miss Grenville. As good luck so ordered, a colleague of Tristram’s on the bench turned up at dinner time and had to be asked to stay. Never had Tristram so blessed his boring but steady flow of conversation, nor so welcomed his presence, which effectually prevented Armand from pouring out his own hopes and fears.
There was no one, however, to save Tristram from the Duke’s really enthusiastic praises of Miss Grenville when he returned from the Rectory, and expatiated on the gifts of heart and mind and person which he discerned in her.
“I shall keep that young rascal on tenterhooks a little longer,” he declared. “Another sleepless night will not do him any harm, if he has had as many as he asserts. Besides, it is not absolutely arranged. With your permission, Mr. Grenville will come over here to-morrow morning to discuss matters with me. I will send Armand out; no doubt, even in this misty weather, his flame will keep him warm.”
He kept his word, and next morning the Comte, refusing a horse, went soberly off on foot in the direction of the Downs. Mr. Grenville arrived; Tristram was unable, and did not indeed particularly desire, to make an opportunity of seeing him alone before he left him and the Duc to their discussion. The whole thing was getting dreamlike to him now, losing the outlines of its reality as the Downs had lost theirs with the death of summer. He would be glad when this whirl of conferences was over, the result—already certain—announced, and Armand de la Roche-Guyon no longer under his roof—not that he minded even his presence very much. How he should get on afterwards, from day to day, he did not know, but at present he seemed to himself a being without passions, energy, or desires—a mere leaf whirled on the engulfing stream of destiny, and the future was hardly worth speculating about.
He walked in his little orchard, for it was a morning gilded with the mellow brilliance of October, and noted the fallen apples. After a while, turning, he saw the Duc de la Roche-Guyon, his son and the Rector all coming over the grass towards him, conversing with an amiability which could have only one meaning. And dream-enveloped though he felt himself, leaf on the tide of fate though he might be, for a second Tristram saw nothing at all, neither figures, nor grass, nor sky, nor the bricks of his house; he was conscious only of a surging wave of rebellion that blotted them all out. Then they reappeared, and Armand, coming forward with both hands outstretched, said, in a voice of radiant happiness:
“Congratulate me, mon ami! And ah, how much I owe it to you!”
Next evening it was observed in Oriel Common Room that Dormer was unusually quiet. He withdrew earlier even than his wont, and while Newman and Hurrell Froude, going up their staircase, were commenting on the absence of light from his windows on the other side of the quadrangle, he was sitting by the fire, Tristram’s read and re-read letter on his knee, and the half-bitter postscript of it running in his head, “Henceforward your fanatical ideas will easily carry the day with me. I shall never marry now.” What he had dreamed of had come to pass—and his heart within him was desolate with pity.