Bernard Capes

“ True genius has no self-consciousness. It was his soul that played, his fingers obeying; and what conceit can there be in immortality? Seated, he touched the strings, and his soul spoke—spoke all the pity and soft sympathy which were its burden. It was tender music, sighing, sweetly subdued to the occasion. And as he proceeded he lost himself in it, lost all but the sense of that divine compassion which was moving and inspiring him. Still, the sure instinct of the artist came presently to decree a period; and ending, short of surfeit, on a dying note, he came to earth. ”

“ Mrs. Davis sat for some minutes after he was gone, her face a lively play of emotions.
“Why, deuce take it!” she thought, her lids wide, “if he doesn’t believe as I’ve used Kit for go-between with Madam and the Duke creature. Mussey-me!”
Her eyes half closed, her little nose wrinkled, stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, she went into a scream of laughter. But her mood soon changed. Panting, she rose to her feet and struck one little fist into the palm of the other.
“So I’m to go, am I!” she said. “Not before I’ve paid you for that insult, my lad. ”

“ The address, her intonation, betrayed her plainly enough for what she was—some little town skit, sempstress or servant-maid, broken loose, and now frightened over her own temerity.
“Why,” said he. “If you are in distress, I am a rare comforter. Come, let me remove this before it dissolves.”
She could offer no resistance to so beautiful a gentleman, and he slipped the vizard from her face. It was a blowzed and plain one so revealed, its only recommendation youth.
“Let honesty spare to deny itself,” said Hamilton. “There was no need to cover this away, child. What are you doing here?” ”

“ I have never known to be displayed a more perfect accord between composer, performer, and instrument. Yet, if they were to be considered in order of merit, I should put, without hesitation, the executant in the first place and the guitar in the least.”
“Yet it’th a good guitar, Thir,” ventured the glowing youth. He lifted and eyed with beatific patronage that faithful recorder of his genius.
“Good,” answered the Duke; “yet good is not good enough to be the servant of the best. But where, indeed, could one look for an instrument worthy of an Orpheus?” ”

“ Now, at that, Chesterfield, uttering an oath, made a run for the saucy creature, as if he were minded to strike her.
“No, damn it, Phil!” cried Hamilton, moving to interpose—“hold your hand. What cause have you either, for that matter!”
“Cause!” cried the nobleman, glaring round. “What the devil do you do defending her? Are you in her confidence? Cause, by God! I’ll have her by the heels for a common rogue and impostor—I’ll——” and he was making for the girl again. ”

“ Her little ladyship seemed to catch her breath over the mere audacity of this self-vindication; and then she answered in volume, though always careful to subdue her voice to the occasion—
“Innocent—you—without heart or conscience! monster of guile and ingratitude! viper on the hearth that has warmed you! Spy and informer that you are, to dare that brazen confession, and in the same breath to pretend to an artless innocence of the fire your vile calumny was intended to blow into a blaze! You innocent! You anything but the shameless wanton your every act proclaims you!” ”

“ Mr. Hamilton reflected: “What is this, my Mollinda?—for Mollinda’s work you are. Kit, and an assignation—with whom? Is it man or woman, you little devil? And so is the enigma to be resolved at last? I don’t believe a word of it. It is some pretty trick of yours to requite me for my late unkindness to you. Well, I’ll defeat it. Find me, with a green scarf to my hat, at the rendezvous, and kiss me for Kit whoever you may be. Who would have thought of that, now, George, but your own ingenious self?” ”

“ She paused, panting. “Go on,” said Moll, unruffled. “Get it all out and over.”
“It does not move you,” said Kate. “Why should it?—deaf to every appeal of honour and decency. Shame on your woman’s nature, that can so wrong and vilify one of your own sex, whose only fault has been too great a tolerance of the insult and humiliation imposed upon her by your presence.” ”

“ Hamilton pulled himself together. “This faith,” he thought, with an acid thrill, “is worth converting.”
“Why indeed?” said he. “Well, I don’t know if he’s jealous of me or not; but if that’s your recipe for curing him, we two might make a plausible conspiracy of it. Shall we rehearse the business now, Kate?”
He put a persuasive hand on her arm. She bethought herself, and squeaked out.
“You hurt me, cousin”—and she backed a little. “A play like ours is only make-believe.”
“But sure,” said he, “the best actors are those who, even in rehearsal, try to realize their parts to the life.” ”

“ And yet they had been wedded Earl and Countess not so many months but that their differences might have less divorced them. That those amounted to what they did was entirely the fault of the husband, who had chosen deliberately to provoke an estrangement in perverse spite of a certain felt premonition that his villainy was about to recoil on his own head. He really was a villain, this Lord Chesterfield; if only in one essential a greater than most of the young fire-eating profligates of his time. ”

“ And Kate was also moved; she could not well help but be. Her heart was in too emotional a state to be safe proof against such soft besieging. When the Duke leaned towards her, she did not stir, but sat with eyes downcast, her bosom plainly turbulent.
“Was I not right,” he said, “and could any gain in resonance have improved on this faultless unison of parts? Perfection must know bounds, even like a framed picture, or the soul cannot compass it. ”

“ Now, Moll was a mischief-making naughtiness, and knew it; but no woman, however self-consciously guilty, can take abuse without recrimination.
“You suppose so? Do you, indeed?” she said. “And I say if you apply those names to me and Kit you’re a liar and a beast. A nice character you, upon my word, to call shame upon your lady for doing in all innocence what you are doing out of the wickedness of your soul every day of your life. She mustn’t entertain a great gentleman, mustn’t she; but you may practise your dissembling arts on her own friend, and think none the worse of yourself for it. ”

“ Give me this bower, lady, for your rounded madrigal, wherein sweetest music lends itself with love and beauty to weave a finished pattern of delight. My lord, grant me the instrument a moment.”
He took the guitar, somewhat peremptorily, from the Earl’s hesitating hands; but he was in no mood, at this pass, to temporize or finesse. And, having received it, he went plucking softly among the strings, gathering up sweet chords and sobbing accidentals, as it were flowers, to present in a nosegay to the heart of his moved hearer. ”

“ When my love comes will he warm it for me?
It took her hearers by surprise, Hamilton not least. He was so moved, indeed, for the moment, that he failed to observe its effect on Chesterfield. They all dwelt silent for a little, while the girl, conscious of the impression she had made, looked down, still softly touching the strings. And then in a twinkle her mood changed. She shook her curls, laughed, touched out a lively air, and began to dance. ”

“ The young wit of her, the natural delicacy warring with passion, the emotions engendered of such a combat; and all housed in a form as pretty as that of a Dresden shepherdess, as pink and white, as endearing in its childish bloom—what could these all be but so many provocations to a man of Hamilton’s antecedents to play, by diverting to his own advantage the sensibilities so fondly entrusted to his sympathy, the part of Machiavellian seducer? ”

“ You might go down on your knees to her, and she would forgive and despise you; you might kiss and be friends, and she would smile, and turn away to wipe her lips. No self-abasement could atone for such an insult; but it would rather wake in her disgust for one so poor in spirit that he dared not back his own slander. Yet what she would never yield, despite pretence, to recantation and apology, she might to jealousy. ”

“ Still she struggled faintly.
“This is a poor room for resonance, my lord Duke. The audience-chamber would have been better chosen.”
“Nay,” he said; “are we not private here?”
“Private, Sir?”
“Is not privacy the very essence of all sweet sounds and thoughts? To risk interruption is to risk the jarring of their lovely sequence. No, we are happiest where we are, apart and secluded. The loneliest bower is that where the bird sings his song to an end.” ”

“ Davis, from the very moment he becomes one, hath parted with sincerity.”
“No, sure?”
“Yes, indeed; and for it exchanged the eternal adulation of the hypocrite, paid not to his merits but his title. The base thenceforth surround him; the worthy keep their distance, lest old friendships, once frankly mutual, be suspected of self-interest. He knows no truth but such as he may read in its withholding; he knows no love but such as loves his rank before himself. Was he not a goose to be a lord—to part with truth and love—to give himself to be devoured by parasites in a hundred forms?” ”

“ Hamilton gaped, a surprised grin on his face. Already somewhat confounded by his cousin’s appeal to him, this suggestion of a further entanglement seemed fairly to take his breath away. Was the coincidence accidental or deliberate? And, if the latter, what the mischief was at the bottom of it all? He might have thought “who,” rather, but that was superfluous. There could be only one. Anyhow, being in for it, he would make the best he could of circumstance. For the rest, he was rather tickled with the hussy’s impudent daring, and curious to see how her plot worked out. Where was she herself? ”

“ Evil disposition makes no more sinners than the lack of it does saints. It is mostly a question of coincidence between the alighting seed-down and the soil suitable to its germination.
Well, there are soils and soils, and as one seed which sickens on a rich loam will wax bursting fat in an arid crevice, so sand will not produce roses. Yet, I should say, if one sought a common denominator in this matter of proneness to moral infections, one could not instance a state more typically susceptive to all than that of idleness and boredom.
And to that perilous condition had poor Kate succeeded. ”

“ In the days precedent to that lucky contretemps in Duke Street, Sad Jack had once possessed a donkey. Acquiring the beast, by a stroke of good fortune, through a raffle conducted in an inn yard over the effects of a deceased tinker, he had used her to bear the burden of the instrument which, in his ploddings abroad, made so heavy physical an addition to the weight of melancholy which oppressed him. ”

“ But in a moment she looked up, and, clasping her hands, took a passionate step forward.
“My lord Duke,” she said, urgently and pitifully, “tell him—you owe it to me—that I knew nothing of your presence here, that I guessed you as little as he did himself. My behaviour proves it.”
“Surely, madam,” said his Highness, rather grimly. “It should be self-evident to any reasonable man. But to put the matter beyond dispute, I confess myself a victim to the same mischievous agency which, it seems, has been working this havoc amongst us. ”

“ What Duke, I say?”
“York, then.”
“What! Is he the villain?”
“I’ve watched them exchange glances.”
“Why, so have I, and so have hundreds.”
“You own it?”
“With perfect equanimity. Such frank barter of the eyes is your surest proof of innocence. Give me your stolen look for mischief.”
“You think he means none, then?”
Hamilton laughed, and clapped his friend on the shoulder.
“O, Phil!” said he, “thou art surely possessed. The Duke hath other fish to fry; his net is full. Believe me, on my sincerity” (and he meant it) , “your jealousy corrupts your judgment. ”

“ I hate the beast—and if it’s a question of scandal, ’tis her ladyship ought to go. There, she ought; and you know why.”
“I don’t, on my honour.”
“Then, you’d like to.”
“Ah! that, maybe, is quite another matter.”
He looked at her, she looked at him.
“Come, Mrs. Davis,” he said, after a minute of silence: “I’m sure we are on the way to understand one another.”
“O! are we?” said Moll, with a sniff.
“Scandals,” he said, “have nothing to do with facts. An apparition might cause one. You may be as innocent as a babe, but appearances are against you. ”

“ Skies might be moonless, and birds silent or out of season; wherefore there was generally to be found engaged to the service of romantic hearts and ears some performer, skilled on lute or harp, whose melodious utterances, thrilling through grove and clearing, were calculated to awaken such emotions as were compatible with the sweet understanding of sylvan solitudes.
Now, that is a true picture, though very certainly a one-sided. For where innocence goes sin is sure to follow; and the atmosphere of Mulberry Garden was by no means all of harmless frolic compact. ”

“ Here was some constitutional atrophy, already, fifteen years ago, disputing with its unborn victim the world to come, and proving, on release, stronger than the life it clung to. The boy had been an invalid from his birth—a lamp guttering before it was well lighted—a nativity most fondly lending itself, one would have thought, to the triumphant vindication of its parent doctrines. But that vindication never came; the father could not cure his child, and there was the anguish. The life he loved most on earth was the life that most baffled his efforts to mend and prolong it. ”

“ George——” He put a twitching hand on Hamilton’s sleeve. He seemed quite transformed in these few minutes; smitten out of the blue, and, under that rankling wound, lusting for what he had despised. There are those who, tyrannous to love’s submission, fall slaves to love’s disdain. ”

“ To be born, like this, to death, not life, to the visible processes of dissolution from the very threshold of existence; to be fated never to know but by report the meaning of health, as the blind must shape in their imaginations the world they can never see—truly that is to suffer the worst loss of possession, which is never to have possessed, while reading in the happiness of others the measure of one’s own eternal deprivation. ”