CHAPTER III.
COELEBS, quid agam?*--HORACE.
* "What shall I do, a bachelor?"
IN a room at Fenton's Hotel sat Lord Vargrave and Caroline Lady
Doltimore,--two months after the marriage of the latter.
"Doltimore has positively fixed, then, to go abroad on your return from
Cornwall?"
"Positively,--to Paris. You can join us at Christmas, I trust?"
"I have no doubt of it; and before then I hope that I shall have arranged
certain public matters, which at present harass and absorb me even more
than my private affairs."
"You have managed to obtain terms with Mr. Douce, and to delay the
repayment of your debt to him?"
"Yes, I hope so, till I touch Miss Cameron's income; which will be mine,
I trust, by the time she is eighteen."
"You mean the forfeit money of thirty thousand pounds?"
"Not I; I mean what I said!"
"Can you really imagine she will still accept your hand?"
"With your aid, I do imagine it! Hear me. You must take Evelyn with you
to Paris. I have no doubt but that she will be delighted to accompany
you; nay, I have paved the way so far. For, of course, as a friend of
the family, and guardian to Evelyn, I have maintained a correspondence
with Lady Vargrave. She informs me that Evelyn has been unwell and
low-spirited; that she fears Brook-Green is dull for her, etc. I wrote,
in reply, to say that the more my ward saw of the world, prior to her
accession, when of age, to the position she would occupy in it, the more
she would fulfil my late uncle's wishes with respect to her education and
so forth. I added that as you were going to Paris, and as you loved her
so much, there could not be a better opportunity for her entrance into
life under the most favourable auspices. Lady Vargrave's answer to this
letter arrived this morning: she will consent to such an arrangement
should you propose it."
"But what good will result to yourself in this project? At Paris you
will be sure of rivals, and--"
"Caroline," interrupted Lord Vargrave, "I know very well what you would
say: I also know all the danger I must incur. But it is a choice of
evils, and I choose the least. You see that while she is at Brook-Green,
and under the eye of that sly old curate, I can effect nothing with her.
There, she is entirely removed from my influence: not so abroad; not so
under your roof. Listen to me still further. In this country, and
especially in the seclusion and shelter of Brook-Green, I have no scope
for any of those means which I shall be compelled to resort to, in
failure of all else."
"What can you intend?" said Caroline, with a slight shudder.
"I don't know what I intend yet. But this, at least, I can tell
you,--that Miss Cameron's fortune I must and will have. I am a desperate
man; and I can play a desperate game, if need be."
"And do you think that _I_ will aid, will abet?"
"Hush, not so loud! Yes, Caroline, you will, and you must aid and abet
me in any project I may form."
"Must! Lord Vargrave?"
"Ay," said Lumley, with a smile, and sinking his voice into a
whisper,--"ay! _you are in my power_!"
"Traitor!--you cannot dare! you cannot mean--"
"I mean nothing more than to remind you of the ties that exist between
us,--ties which ought to render us the firmest and most confidential of
friends. Come, Caroline, recollect all the benefit must not lie on one
side. I have obtained for you rank and wealth; I have procured you a
husband,--you must help me to a wife!"
Caroline sank back, and covered her face with her hands.
"I allow," continued Vargrave, coldly,--"I allow that your beauty and
talent were sufficient of themselves to charm a wiser man than Doltimore;
but had I not suppressed jealousy, sacrificed love, had I dropped a hint
to your liege lord,--nay, had I not fed his lap-dog vanity by all the
cream and sugar of flattering falsehoods,--you would be Caroline Merton
still!"
"Oh, would that I were! Oh that I were anything but your tool, your
victim! Fool that I was! wretch that I am! I am rightly punished!"
"Forgive me, forgive me, dearest," said Vargrave, soothingly; "I was to
blame, forgive me: but you irritated, you maddened me, by your seeming
indifference to my prosperity, my fate. I tell you again and again,
pride of my soul, I tell you, that you are the only being I love! and if
you will allow me, if you will rise superior, as I once fondly hoped, to
all the cant and prejudice of convention and education, the only woman I
could ever respect, as well as love. Oh, hereafter, when you see me at
that height to which I feel that I am born to climb, let me think that to
your generosity, your affection, your zeal, I owed the ascent. At
present I am on the precipice; without your hand I fall forever. My own
fortune is gone; the miserable forfeit due to me, if Evelyn continues to
reject my suit, when she has arrived at the age of eighteen, is deeply
mortgaged. I am engaged in vast and daring schemes, in which I may
either rise to the highest station or lose that which I now hold. In
either case, how necessary to me is wealth: in the one instance, to
maintain my advancement; in the other, to redeem my fall."
"But did you not tell me," said Caroline, "that Evelyn proposed and
promised to place her fortune at your disposal, even while rejecting your
hand?"
"Absurd mockery!" exclaimed Vargrave; "the foolish boast of a girl,--an
impulse liable to every caprice. Can you suppose that when she launches
into the extravagance natural to her age and necessary to her position,
she will not find a thousand demands upon her rent-roll not dreamed of
now; a thousand vanities and baubles that will soon erase my poor and
hollow claim from her recollection? Can you suppose that, if she marry
another, her husband will ever consent to a child's romance? And even
were all this possible, were it possible that girls were not extravagant,
and that husbands had no common-sense, is it for me, Lord Vargrave, to be
a mendicant upon reluctant bounty,--a poor cousin, a pensioned
led-captain? Heaven knows I have as little false pride as any man, but
still this is a degradation I cannot stoop to. Besides, Caroline, I am
no miser, no Harpagon: I do not want wealth for wealth's sake, but for
the advantages it bestows,--respect, honour, position; and these I get as
the husband of the great heiress. Should I get them as her dependant?
No: for more than six years I have built my schemes and shaped my conduct
according to one assured and definite object; and that object I shall not
now, at the eleventh hour, let slip from my hands. Enough of this: you
will pass Brook-Green in returning from Cornwall; you will take Evelyn
with you to Paris,--leave the rest to me. Fear no folly, no violence,
from my plans, whatever they may be: I work in the dark. Nor do I
despair that Evelyn will love, that Evelyn will voluntarily accept me
yet: my disposition is sanguine; I look to the bright side of things; do
the same!"
Here their conference was interrupted by Lord Doltimore, who lounged
carelessly into the room, with his hat on one side. "Ah, Vargrave, how
are you? You will not forget the letters of introduction? Where are you
going, Caroline?"
"Only to my own room, to put on my bonnet; the carriage will be here in a
few minutes." And Caroline escaped.
"So you go to Cornwall to-morrow, Doltimore?"
"Yes; cursed bore! but Lady Elizabeth insists on seeing us, and I don't
object to a week's good shooting. The old lady, too, has something to
leave, and Caroline had no dowry,--not that I care for it; but still
marriage is expensive."
"By the by, you will want the five thousand pounds you lent me?"
"Why, whenever it is convenient."
Say no more,--it shall be seen to. Doltimore, I am very anxious that
Lady Doltimore's _debut_ at Paris should be brilliant: everything depends
on falling into the right set. For myself, I don't care about fashion,
and never did; but if I were married, and an idle man like you, it might
be different."
"Oh, you will be very useful to us when we return to London. Meanwhile,
you know, you have my proxy in the Lords. I dare say there will be some
sharp work the first week or two after the recess."
"Very likely; and depend on one thing, my dear Doltimore, that when I am
in the Cabinet, a certain friend of mine shall be an earl. Adieu."
"Good-by, my dear Vargrave, good-by; and, I say,--I say, don't distress
yourself about that trifle; a few months hence it will suit me just as
well."
"Thanks. I will just look into my accounts, and use you without
ceremony. Well, I dare say we shall meet at Paris. Oh, I forgot,--I
observe that you have renewed your intimacy with Legard. Now, he is a
very good fellow, and I gave him that place to oblige you; still, as you
are no longer a _garcon_--but perhaps I shall offend you?"
"Not at all. What is there against Legard?"
"Nothing in the world,--but he is a bit of a boaster. I dare say his
ancestor was a Gascon, poor fellow!--and he affects to say that you can't
choose a coat, or buy a horse, without his approval and advice,--that he
can turn you round his finger. Now this hurts your consequence in the
world,--you don't get credit for your own excellent sense and taste.
Take my advice, avoid these young hangers-on of fashion, these club-room
lions. Having no importance of their own, they steal the importance of
their friends. _Verbum sap_."
"You are very right,--Legard _is_ a coxcomb; and now I see why he talked
of joining us at Paris."
"Don't let him do any such thing! He will be telling the Frenchmen that
her ladyship is in love with him, ha, ha!"
"Ha, ha!--a very good joke--poor Caroline!--very good joke!"
"Well, good-by, once more." And Vargrave closed the door.
"Legard go to Paris--not if Evelyn goes there!" muttered Lumley.
"Besides, I want no partner in the little that one can screw out of this
blockhead."
