The Gods, some Mortals and Lord Wickenham

Front matter

PKINTEh ):\ HA/ELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, ID,, IN \ '. I' AYl r.ST.I'RY. the Gods SOME MORTALS AND LORQ WICKENHAM0 BY JOHIV OLIVER HOBBES HtnRY8cG> Lonooa 183^. •THE-GOQS •SOME-MORTALS- •AND- •lORD^VICKENHAM- •BY •JOHN- OLIVER- •"HOBBES* HENRY&Co MDCCCXCV CONTENTS CHAP FACE I. AN ARISTOCRATIC HOUSEHOLD ... I II WHICH CONTAINS A BRIEF WELCOME, A LITTLE HISTORY, AND A LONG FARE- WELL 9 III. LORD WICKENHAM 24 [V IN WHICH WARRE DISPLAYS A FORGOTTEN TALENT 29 AN EXCURSION INTO THE SORDID AND A FLIGHT INTO RHETORIC .... 43 V VI. A LITTLE LOVE, A LITTLE SCIENCE . . 67 VII. A SOLILOQUY DURING THE SMALL HOURS . 85 VIII CONTRITION IN THE ROBUST 92 IX. MORTAL HAPPINESS 102 X. A WEDDING 1 17 XI. TWO MEN AND TWO WIVES . . . -123 r Contents VIII I'AGK CHAP. XII. DISILLUSION !32 XIII. REALITY lfil XIV. MORE REALITIES > 68 XV.

PLAIN FACTS '88 XVI. A PRELUDE 209 XVII. THE UNLOVELY 2I3 XVIII. WICKENHAM 221 XIX. THE UNSPOKEN 234 XX IN WHICH WARRE REASONS WHILE ANNE READS 252 XXI. IN WHICH THF. AUTHOR SPEAKS . . . 2.S9 XXII. ALLEGRA 262 XXIII. ACCIDENTS AND THE INEVITABLE. . . 270 XXIV. AN EPISODE 276 XXV. LORD WICKENHAM'S COMMUNICATION TO THE AUTHOR 278 XXVI. THE LAST i I The Gods, some Mortals and Lord Wickenham

Chapter I

An Aristocratic Household A GUEST was expected at the Palazzo Vendramini. A large red man in a pale livery many sizes too small was lighting the one gas-lamp which hung over the entrance, and which only served to call vain shadows out of the barren gloom. " Who goes there ? " he cried suddenly. " It is I, Antonio." The young girl who came forward seemed to have been whipped up into a fragile existence from the very cream of tenderness, weakness, love, and folly. Her oval face, small, full lips, and mysterious black hair had the romance of other centuries than this — poetic inhumanity of a sonneteer's mistress. Although her figure was not too slight, it was lost in her loose-fitting black dress, made after the schoolroom pattern with a straight, full skirt, and a bodice pleated in empty folds.

A chatelaine hung from her belt, and its silver chains chattered as she walked. " The Signor is late, Contessina," said Antonio. Allegra blushed, and pretended to be groping in her pocket. " I have lost my thimble," she said. " I did not think that the Signor was late. I am looking for my thimble." The man picked up a broom which stood in the corner of his lodge, and with magnificent indolence began to sweep the floor. "If it is here this will find it," he said. Allegra leant against the balustrade, and held her hands over her face — partly to protect it from the dust and partly to conceal her expression, which hovered between laughter and some secret anxiety. " When there is a pilgrimage the trains are always late," said Antonio. " I wonder the Signor did not come a day sooner." The girl drew a long breath.

" Ah ! " she ex claimed, " I had forgotten the pilgrimage. He may not be here for another hour. Why did I forget the pilgrimage?" " They happen so often," grumbled the man ; "it is a cheap way of getting to Rome. No wonder there is so much piety!" He dropped the broom, stretched out his arms, and yawned. "The thimble is not here." But Allegra had already disappeared, and was flying up the stairs like a bird through a cloud of smoke. Antonio could just hear the occasional flick of her skirts against the wall, and the jingle of her chatelaine. Presently a door closed, and all was silent. Antonio returned to his lodge and resumed that long siesta, his existence, which the duties of hall-portership so rudely and intem perately disturbed. It was not all cakes and ale in the service of Tito, Count Vendramini, and Allegra, his daughter ; breakfast was served late at the Palazzo, and dinner rarely.

The Count was a gentleman of military renown, who, in his youth, had married a poor lady for love, but who now bought and sold objects of art on commission. The fortune he had amassed by this means, however, added more lustre to his integrity than clothes to his back ; if not shabby, his raiment spoke of adventure, and, although he always appeared as a man of fashion, one felt that his tailor was not so indulgent as his valet was ingenious. Vendramini was to be met at the best houses ; he had a charming, stupid manner, great fluency in light conversation, and none of that wit which creates enmity and renders friendship an inglorious combat. His eyes only directed their gaze on the finest feature of each face, his ears only caught the happiest remarks, his heart only thrilled at the noble motive in every action ; in fact, he was by nature what most of us fail to become even by laborious art — an extremely agreeable person.

The superb desolation of his Palazzo was the stately background of a career which one touch of cunning would have made contemptible, and which, if the actor had been less sincere, could so easily have seemed absurd. The great stone building had within its walls an empty picture-gallery, fountains which never played, a garden without plants, and a ball-room in which no beauty had danced for fifty years. Yet, in this tomb of a once princely dignity, the Count had but three desires : to prolong his own life to the utmost limit of human existence, to make one day a really good bargain, and to find his daughter a husband. He had been left a widower just at the age when a man stands in most need of a patient, admiring companion, and when the idea of a second marriage is charming to him in the same degree that his friends would think such an act on his part supremely foolish Ridicule has a longer roll of martyrs than either love or religion, and poor Vendramini, being a man of ardent whims rather than strong passions, contented himself by wedding in imagination only all the eligible ladies of his acquaintance as they happened to pass under his notice.

He admired them all, and saw himself in circumstances of extreme felicity with any one of them ; each was his dear, and he was the dearest of each ; they were ever faithful and he was ever courtly— few husbands own such fine regard, such esteem, such consideration, for the wives of their bosom as the Count entertained for these partners of his daily dreaming. But a visionary wife, with all her merits, graces, and variety, cannot give advice, and Vendramini wanted advice. Allegra was now seventeen ; he only knew her as the one woman whom it had never occurred to him to marry. His paternal instinct taught him nothing further. He had been desperately fond of her mother, for she was pretty, and passionate, and provoking — a lady who had the gaiety of a light o' love and the modesty of a virgin saint — it was not in the nature of the man to tire of anything so artificial, so preposterous.

He had first met her at Baden-Baden, where, as the natural daughter of Lord Denborough by the naughty Duchess of A., she won the undisguised pity of every lady born in lawful wedlock, and the sly admiration of the men. She possessed great beauty, distinguished manners, and no money. It was very reasonably assumed that she would spend the best years of her life as a Peer's mistress, and in her repentant autumn marry a Colonel of Dragoons. When the Count Ven dramini demanded her hand in marriage he took a candid pride in his own unworldliness, which, at one stroke, gave glory to God, annoyance to his friends, and an honourable name to the only woman on earth he felt unworthy of. But Allegra was unlike her English mother ; her glance was cold, and she did not understand the subtleties of domestic virtue.

The Count liked to sit in his library with his friend Cardinal Villard, and think how happy his daughter ought to be alone by herself in the next room. It was insupportable when they sat opposite each other, and, in the hope of conjuring up a home-like atmosphere, talked about the repairs which they were too poor to effect, the Pope's health, and salad dressing. Allegra was no companion for a man who had such a repugnance for plain facts that he could only eat fruit when it was crystallised. The care of finding her a husband, however, was not one to make nights sleepless, or mornings over-long. The girl was pretty, and it was known that she had a rich godmother in England. Suitors smiled from all sides : some of them were well born, many very handsome, a few were not much poorer than the Count himself; he might easily have been bewildered by the difficulty of choosing an appropriate son-in-law out of the decorative and decorated mob which composed his Saturday receptions.

Allegra, unhappily, had no eyes for these gentlemen ; she disliked the Italian character, which was unsympathetic to her prim, even prudish mind. She had been taught the proprieties by an elderly woman who had been her mother's nurse, and whose life had been one undeviating observance of the genteel ; who was Protestant in faith, and Scotch by birth, and who exhibited at once the most austere traits of her creed and her nation. This good, if formidable, creature had assured Allegra that there was but one man whom she could with any good manners marry, and this was her father's friend — Dr. Simon Warre, of Grosvenor Street, in London. Warre had spent a week at the Palazzo on several occasions, and was one of the Count's most constant customers. He was forming a private museum — an expensive hobby for a bachelor ; it was a pity he had no better use for his guineas. Thus spake spinsterial wisdom. He was the visitor for whom Antonio was watching when he lit the lamp and Allegra came in search of her thimble

Chapter II

Which contains a Brief Welcome, a Little History, and a Long Farewell An hour passed. Vendramini grew impatient for Warre's arrival. There was a concert at the Quiiir.ale that evening, and the social instinct no less than duty urged the Count's attendance at the Palace. He delayed his departure till the walls could no longer contain him, when, leaving Allegra to assure his guest that Court etiquette often made one impolite even to one's most cherished friends, he stepped into his rickety chariot and drove away. When Warre was at last announced, Allegra was waiting alone in the Salon, a large, grim room, bare in spite of its green silk hangings, and dingy, with all its wealth of tarnished gilt. The girl sat on the pompous sofa, her strange little figure perched solitary and self-possessed in its environment of unrelieved and ghostly melancholy — a melancholy made more funereal by the scattered wax-candles which burned as they do in a chamber of death, giving light without life, and flame without cheer.

The man and the girl looked at each other with frank curiosity. They had not met for two years. Warre was tall, broad-shouldered, and, although not strictly handsome, his face had the heroic intention. His eyes were grey, and but for the richness of their colour would have been over-brilliant — coldly bright ; as it was, they formed a perplexing contrast to the rather sombre, even sullen ex pression of his other features. He heard Allegra's words of greeting, and her explanation of Ven dramini's absence, but as things remote, unnecessary, and meaningless. " How you have changed ! " he said abruptly. The quick blush which tinted her whole face was comparable only to the effect of a little red wine poured into clear spring water. She made no reply, but led the way down a long corridor into the dining-room.

Its ponderous oak door stood open ; he could see the window beyond curtained with faded silk rep, the long table, the carved sideboard of English design, and the mirror on which two mahogany Cupids sat, for ever drawing aside a mahogany veil. Allegra sat facing him, and stitched at a piece of em broidery while he ate his supper, which was served by two men, one of whom was evidently new to the establishment, although his livery had an air of long and faithful service. There was very little attempt at conversation. Allegra was shy, and Warre was either so absorbed in his own thoughts, or so bewildered by the fatigue of his journey, that the silence seemed natural and pleasant. When he had finished his meal, she rose and wished him good-night. " What ! " said he ; " must you go ? I am only beginning to know you."

" I always go to bed at ten." " Then you ought to have been there two hours ago. How good of you to sit up so late on my account." " Papa wished it. I was very pleased to obey him. Good-night." She spoke English with delicious precision, giving each syllable a musical value ; otherwise her accent did not betray her Italian birth. After she had gone, Warre remained in a long reverie, which was more lively than sleep, and yet less clear than waking. Hitherto he had always thought of Allegra as a pretty excuse for buying sweetmeats. How she had changed ! Why had he come to Rome ? Why had he brought— in spite of his man's remonstrances to the contrary— his dullest clothes and least youthful ties ? Why had he forgotten that the spring air was warm ? He had been working hard, and talking a great deal about matters which did not amuse him — or any one else— in the least ; he felt stale, jaded, depressed, with only a vague notion that he would like to doze for a week or so and say nothing.

The Vendramini found miracles of wit even in his yawns, and the Count was a dear fellow, a sweet old bore, who, after all, knew a great deal about the Etruscan remains. Small wonder that Rome should figure in Simon's mind as the city of repose and pleasant relaxation. How the little girl had changed ! A night's rest dimmed the unearthly romance of his first encounter with Allegra ; he almost dreaded meeting her again, lest she should find that his interest had waned, and he discover that her enchant ment fled before the sunrise. Man is ever miserly with his illusions ; if to gain two he must risk one, he shrinks from the venture. Simon wanted to remember Allegra always as she had looked when he arrived. He took breakfast with Vendramini, and lent an intelligent ear to an account of the concert, a learned analysis of the sonatas which were played, and a minute description of the gown worn — the flirtation executed — by each lad)' present.

The morning passed in restful stupidity, but that day, and during the days which followed, he saw Allegra seldom. Men should be careful how they wish. Warre could not think that she intended to avoid him, for her manner was always winning, her smile invariably sweet, her eyes, when they met his, full of kindness and sympathy. These unobtrusive graces, though baffling and, to a certain extent, unsatisfactory, were not without their fascination to a man who, in the small leisure left him by his work, was looking out for a wife who coupled an aristocratic lineage with an humble spirit, and beauty with demureness. He himself came of a distinguished family on his mother's side, but she had married a man many degrees beneath her in the social scale, and the son of this inauspicious match had found it a bitter task to assert his right to that society which, whether rightly or wrongly known as the best, alone consorted with his tastes and instincts.

Since his profession was the one of all others which demands a wife as the signpost of decorum, it was remarkable that Warre had so long remained a bachelor, and had yet won a reputation for prudence, and led a life of apparent contentment which his married rivals could not better — which most of them had only too much cause to envy. The unhappy home of his childhood and youth, where the sordid tragedy of a disastrous marriage had played itself out in genteel poverty, small humiliations, and peevish discontent, must have tired the poetic aspirations of a man even more resolute to find the delight rather than the misery of existence than Simon Warre. His mother gave the text of her long years of little suffering when she admitted over her husband's coffin that it had always sounded disrespectful when he called her by her Christian name.

Warre heard the remark, and was at first only sensitive to the grim humour of the situation. The fine lady at least lived to tell the tale ; the boor was dead. Then he remembered his father's good-nature, his deep but never-satisfied craving for the kitchen and back-stairs, his sublime endurance of an eternal education in matters of etiquette, refinement, and the gentlemanly arts, his meekness under taunts, his patience under neglect, his silence under the fretful humours of a selfish woman who knew too well that once in her life, at any rate, she had made an enormous sacrifice. Simon loved his mother, pitied her, encouraged her arrogance. She possessed the one gift which, in his eyes, atoned for every shortcoming — great personal beauty ; yet as he stood by his father's grave, and heard the muttered prayers of an impatient curate, the discordant hymn wailed by mourners, who were not so despairing but they could shout them selves into resignation ; when he saw the extravagant fears lest the widow should catch cold, and the frantic desire of the funeral guests to escape from the vulgar dust, whose glorious resurrection had been pronounced as sure and certain in a con siderate undertone, he felt a fierce and choking shame for his mother's want of heart, which he had never known for the dead man's lack of breeding.

For a week after the burial Lady Henrietta Warre found much to congratulate herself in the fact that she received letters of condolence and even calls from most of the relatives with whom she had quarrelled at the time of her marriage. But when these had displayed their Christian feeling and gratified their curiosity at the fact of learning that she lived in lodgings at West Kensington, and would probably need assistance if she were once encouraged to dine out, they had the delicacy not to intrude further upon her sorrow, which, as they each and all insisted, would of course be life-long, irremediable, and only to be endured in an un broken solitude. Like most women, Lady Henri etta learnt nothing from the mistakes, the disap pointments, the revelations which each year brings. She had no philosophy, and her opinion of religion was so high that she would have considered it pro fane to apply its consolations to the ordinary troubles of a common day.

She preferred instead to rail against the injustice, the selfishness, and the spite of every creature she had ever met or heard of, and to weep incessantly over her unmerited misfortunes. Yet a worse affliction was in store for her. Simon entered himself as a student at the Imperial College Hospital. His paternal uncle — who had married a draper's shop but whose love was science ■ — supplied the fees with plebeian generosity, and, in order to stimulate the youth's ambition, never failed to address him in the intimacy of the domestic circle as Sir Simon Warre, Bart., G.C.B., M.D., F.R.S. Lady Henrietta may not have been altogether insensible to this solace, although she often wailed her recollection of the time when a gentleman would no more dream of sitting down to dinner with his doctor than with his attorney or his bootmaker.

She refused to acknowledge that her son was under any necessity to earn a penny : he would marry a rich wife, and then all his titled relatives would take interest in him. He could go into Parliament. In the meantime she promised to do all in her power to thwart the medical idea. The boy would often journey to and fro the hospital and West Kensington three or four times a day in obedience to her crazy notes on the subject of frozen waterpipes, insolent servants, acute headaches, heart seizures, alarming fits of depression, sudden fears for his own health, and the like. What a struggle it was ! What an effort to keep pace with the other students ! What a sickening fight against time, fatigue, and failure ! When he attempted to work in the evening, his mother would either flounce out of the room, threatening suicide as the one amusement left her, or sit opposite to him alternately sulking, whimpering, and scolding.

" Why don't you talk ? " she would say. " You take no interest in me. I wish I were dead. You think of nothing but those disgusting books. I never knew any one so selfish. You never offer to read aloud to me, and you know how I delight in Pusey's Sermons ! I have devoted my life to you, made every sacrifice for you, and — I am not very strong ! " Here she would moan in self-pity, pro testing that no one loved her, that there was no place in the world for an affectionate, loyal, and devoted woman, that Simon was his father's son — coarse-minded, brutal, incapable of understanding a lady's disposition. The lad endured this martyr dom for three years, at the end of which time his health broke down ; nor did he give any hope of recovery till one fine day a rumour reached him that, should he live, it was Lady Henrietta's intention to signify her gratitude to the Almighty by marry ing the vicar of their parish.

A month later he was able to support her ladyship through the wedding ceremony, and if there was any creature in London happier than the bridegroom it was Simon when he kissed the bride good-bye. She was his mother, and he loved her, but he felt he could never again pass under the terrible scourge of her authority. He must be his own master. He shared lodgings with a fellow-student near the hospital, rose at five in the morning, worked till eleven o'clock at night, talked to the patients for recreation, and earned the money for his rent by writing humorous articles on art, politics, and literature for a Society journal. Four times a week, too, he attended classical lectures at the Imperial College, where a distinguished scholar hurled in struction at a scribbling crowd of youths and eager women, who appeared to write with their noses and hear with their heels, and who regarded the Pagan philosophers, poets, and wits as terriers do rats.

Nor were lighter distractions wanting. Since Simon was a fine-looking fellow, with courtly manners, the doctors' wives received him gladly, invited him to their less formal tea-parties, treated him — to all outward showing — as their social equal. One of them even formed the project of marrying him to her plainest daughter ; but whether he did not suspect her condescension, or whether, knowing it, he was too modest to accept so portentous an honour, the plan miscarried. Before he obtained his degree he won a Travelling Scholarship, went abroad, and returned two years later, mysterious, silent, curiously unwilling to offer any opinion even on his own right to exist. They feared he would come to nothing ; he was, there fore, chosen as the fittest man for an assistant lectureship then vacant.

The post was cheerfully offered, meekly accepted. The Senior Pathologist suffered himself to doze, sure that he would not be missed, sure that no inconvenient genius had arisen to make him reconsider the highly excellent old lectures which he had chanted for twelve years, and without the humiliating fatigue of a second thought. But he sauntered into the class-room one afternoon to find it overcrowded, and Warre demonstrating heresy with an eloquence as convincing as it was unprofessional. The two exchanged glances, and at once comprehended each other to that pitch of cock-sureness which is known as a misunderstanding. A few days later Simon sent in his resignation ; the Dean expressed his regret and looked his relief ; murmured well-known maxims about things in general, and, with official tenderness, advised him to be careful.

In the following year Warre, then five-and-twenty, got his degree, and, under the inspiration of an occasional square meal, wrote an Essay which gained him a prize and an appointment at the Knightsbridge Hospital. From that day his success was steady, his ability acknowledged ; he had many critics but few enemies, a large and amiable acquaintance, some two or three staunch friends, and a baker's dozen of aristocratic relatives who, having ignored him as a student, now found it amusing to talk of " that clever, eccentric cousin of ours who went in for science, and who is the coming man on Paralysis." At seven-and-twenty, with good health, good intentions, a good reputa tion, and an increasing income, one is not disposed to be misanthropic. Warre enjoyed his life ; he thought it an altogether splendid thing to be alive ; talked with confidence about the survival of the fittest, and declared his own willingness to surrender when a mightier than he should enter the field.

Happiness, he assured his aged patients, was far more common than was generally supposed. No creature was undeservedly wretched if one tested his grievance by the light of reason and the laws of nature. It was inspiring to hear him. True, his rosy-toed philosophy had not been forced to trip over the red-hot ploughshares of pain and its attendant devils ; but he knew what it meant to be hungry, to be cold, to be sick at heart and wild in brain. All that, however, was of his own choosing ; he need not have worked, he might have stayed quietly at home with his mother at West Kensing ton, drinking tea, fondling the cat, and escorting lady-callers to the omnibus. " Each man has two fates," he would say ; " one is a free gift, the other is a prize, but the prize must be striven for." An intelligent youth this ; wisely dispassionate, on the best of terms with the Almighty, roaring lions, and the rest, fearing no man.

The world, quick to appreciate audacity, spoke with confidence of his future. He would arrive ; but where ? Warre remained in Rome ten days, and he woke the last morning to remember that he must return to that well-furnished emptiness in Grosvenor Street he called his home. He would miss Allegra. Ador able child ! Fairy, angel, poem, picture, melody — everything seductive, alluring, and inspiring except — a woman. He could, it is true, imagine her as a kind of immaterial wife — a sweet, feminine spirit as subtle as a sunbeam, but. alas ! as intangible. Yet when he had not seen her for some hours, and the remembrance of her forbidding innocence was not too vivid, he would be startled to find how ardently he desired her companionship — her presence — how oppressive the air seemed when she was not near ; how the mere sound of her footstep made his heart cease beating ; how he lost himself when he sought to read her eyes.

All this distressed him ; he had rested, and was in the mood for exalted sentiments, for love-making, for marriage, but Allegra was a little girl ... a little girl. He had passed through a few romantic adventures : had loved, resisted, and regretted ; had loved, not resisted, and regretted also ; he had no overmastering belief in the perma nency, the seriousness of any passionate attach ment between men and women. He could not, therefore, bring himself to do more than own that if Allegra had been older, and had betrayed any strong regard for him, he would have asked her to become his wife, would have loved her better than discretion might permit him to express. But the glance, the word, the movement which would have fired this affection was not given. On the day of his departure, Allegra was even more silent, more anxious to escape from sight, than on the evening when he arrived.

She had at least blushed over her welcome, but when he said good-bye her face was pale and inexpressive; she murmured a hope that he would have a pleasant journey, and brushed a stray thread from her sleeve. The Count, who drove with Warre to the station, talked on the way of the solitariness of life, the sorrow of partings. He grew sentimental on the subject of his own forlorn state, and the difficulty he experienced in understanding Allegra " She is so reserved, so timid," he said ; " it is impossible to tell what is passing in her mind. Yet what sum is too large to settle on a wife who can adore without asking questions ? Most women are so inquisitive. They mistake curiosity for devotion to our interests. Poor Allegra ! Although she is silent I think she suffers great tragedies ! " Warre marvelled that any man could be so mistaken in his own flesh and blood. O Science ! art thou not also sometimes in error ?