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.