“Take your reversion, brother,” said he. “As for me, I am for the madhouse, I suppose.”
At a grinding word, two of the men helped him to mount, and moved away with him. I never saw him again. The other two entered the cottage, to fetch and escort Mr. Portlock to his doom. I was left alone with his lordship.
My heart was broken. I left it scattered on the turf, with all the fragments of the past.
“Now, papa devil,” I said, with a shriek of laughter, “what about your dutiful daughter?”
XXI.
I AM METAMORPHOSED
I had loved, and lost, and buried my dream of yesterday. It lay fathoms deep in the green forest. From the moment of my resurrection I knew myself for a changeling—a fairy creature quite other than the soft, emotional child who had cried herself to sleep on last night’s hearth. George was in his house of discipline; Portlock, with others, transported; my past was broken for me beyond repair. Facing me instead were the battlements and pinnacles of a new dominion, with what infinite potentialities behind its walls! Conscience makes no conquests. With my rebirth had come the lust to supply the deficiencies of the old. I laid my love in its grave with tears and kisses, and turned intrepid to the assault.
Memory, my friend, makes men good critics, but bad romancers. I was too indulgent of my kind to be the first: beauty invited me: I would forget. Remorse is, indeed, of all self-indulgences the most useless. It reconciles an offended Heaven to us no more than do tearful sighs win a wife her husband’s condonation of an ill-cooked dinner. An inch-narrow of reformation is better than an ell-broad of apology. Let our sweetness of to-day, rather, be our experience of yesterday. The gods find no entertainment in regrets. They shower their benefits on the unminding; and in the gifts of the present we are justified of our past actions. It is only when we are rich that we can afford to put up tablets to our memories; whence follows that we cannot more honour the dead than by taking our profit of the living. Well, once I had lived for others; now I would live on them—a word of distinction and a world of difference.
His lordship took me straight to London, and gave me a little suite of rooms in his fine house in Berkeley Square, where I was to remain during the next three years, until, in fact, I was come legally of age. He had decided, on reflection, that I was to be his niece. He was a very great man, and this gift was only one of many in his disposal. It was no business of mine how he accounted to the world for my title. My interest was only to justify it, with a view to my position in life when I was become marriageable. Wherefore I would consent to give him none of my duty until he had drawn up a settlement in my favour, to date from my majority. I had had enough of unprofitable bargains.
Perhaps he would never have consented to this—for, like all covetous pluralists, he was parsimonious—had not the death of the young viscount about this time moved him to seek comfort in an artificial relationship for the real one he had lost. In the hearts of the worst of us, I suppose, such vacancies yearn to be filled; and so the poor childless wretch took his opportunity, and adopted me. I hope I acquitted myself properly for the favour; but, in truth, I could never quite forgive him his treachery to his brother.
In the meantime, I developed rapidly, and had my little court, quite exclusive of les convenances. The ladies, of course, looked askance at me; but what did I care? I had only to curtsey to my glass to procure the reason. And they made their modistes their deputies in paying me the sincerest flattery. Instead, I experienced the high distinction of a whole entourage of carpet-knights—captains and parsons and diplomatists unending—who came to ogle their own images in my blue eyes, and, losing their heads like Narcissus from giddiness, tumbled in by the score, until I was stocked as full under each brow as an abbot’s pond. It was a rare sport to throw crumbs of comfort to these gaping creatures, and see them rise and jostle one another for the best pickings. I assure you, my friend, I was a queen in my sphere, and had as much need to practise diplomacy. It was that first attached me to politics—the knowledge of into what good coin for bribery and the traffic of State secrets those pretty orbs might be converted. So soon, sure, as amongst my parliamentary followers I distinguished my favourites, I began to sift my political opinions, and to work for the handsomest. I have traced my measures in both Houses, believe me, my little monsieur: I have pulled some strings, sitting in my boudoir, with results as far-reaching as St. Stephen’s. Ah, well! they were days! But I will be true to myself in not bewailing them. Memory, in my philosophy, is a very lean old pauper, crumbling dried herbs into his broth. I never could abide mint sauce unless plucked from the green.