“Well, ‘fall’ and ‘violently’ are two words that I should never have associated with his actions at any time of life. But I should have said that he was a man not likely to form a very passionate attachment to any woman who did not satisfy his refinement of taste, which is exquisitely truthful when applied to poems and statues, but a little too classically perfect for just appreciation of flesh and blood, at least in that sex which is so charming that every defect in it is a shock on the beau ideal.”
“Nevertheless,” said Lady Gertrude, after acknowledging, with a gracious smile, the somewhat old-fashioned gallantry conveyed in my observations—“nevertheless, Percival has loved deeply and fervently, and, what may seem to you strange, has been crossed in his affections.”
“Strange! Alas! in love nothing is strange. No one is loved for his merits any more than for his fortune or rank; but men, and women too, are married for their merits, and still more for their rank and their fortune. I can imagine, therefore, though with difficulty, a girl wooed by Percival Tracey not returning his love, but I cannot conceive her refusing his hand. How was it?”
“You see how I am confiding in you. But you are almost the only friend of his youth whom Percival has invited as his guest; and your evident appreciation of his worth at once opens my heart to you. In the course of that lengthened absence from England—on the eve of which you took leave of him nearly thirty years ago—Percival formed a close friendship with a fellow-traveller in the East: Percival considers that to the courage, presence of mind, and devotion of this gentleman, a few years younger than himself, he owed his life in some encounter with robbers. Mr Gerrard (that is this friend’s name) was poor and without a profession. When Percival was about to return to Europe, he tried in vain to persuade Mr Gerrard to accompany him—meaning, though he did not say so, to exert such interest with Ministers as he possessed, to obtain for Gerrard some honourable opening in the public service. The young man refused, and declared his intention of settling permanently at Cairo. Percival, in the course of his remonstrances, discovered that the cause of this self-exile was a hopeless attachment, which had destroyed all other objects of ambition in Gerrard’s life, and soured him with the world itself. He did not, however, mention the name of the lady, nor the reasons which had deprived his affection of hope. Well, Percival left him at Cairo, and travelled back into Europe. At a German spa he became acquainted with an Irish peer who had run out his fortune, been compelled to sell his estates, and was living upon a small annuity allowed to him either by his creditors or his relations; a man very clever, very accomplished, not of very high principle, and sanguine of bettering his own position, and regaining the luxuries to which he had been accustomed, through some brilliant marriage, which the beauty of his only daughter might enable her to make. Beauty to a very rare degree she possessed—nor beauty alone; her mind was unusually cultivated, and her manners singularly fascinating. You guess already?”
“Yes. Percival saw here one with whom he did not fall in love, but for whom he rose into love. He found his ideal.”
“Exactly so. I need not say that the father gave him all encouragement. Percival was on the point of proposing, when he received a letter from Mr Gerrard (to whom he had written, some weeks before, communicating the acquaintance he had made, and the admiration he had conceived); and the letter, written under great excitement, revealed the object of Gerrard’s hopeless attachment. Of Irish family himself, he had known this young lady from her childhood—and from her childhood loved her. He had been permitted to hope by Lord ——, who was at that time in a desperate struggle to conceal or stave off his ruin, and who did not scruple to borrow from his daughter’s suitor all that he could extract from him. Thus, when the final crash came, Lord ——’s ruin involved nearly the whole of Gerrard’s patrimony; and, of course, Lord —— declared that a marriage was impossible between two young persons who had nothing to live upon. It was thus that Edmund Gerrard had become an exile.
“This intelligence at once reversed the position of the rivals. From that moment Percival devoted himself to bless the life of the man who had saved his own. How he effected this object I scarcely know; but Lord —— gave his consent to Gerrard’s suit, and lived six years longer with much pomp and luxury in Paris. Gerrard settled with his wife in Percival’s Irish castle, and administers Percival’s Irish estates, at a salary which ranks him with the neighbouring gentry. But Percival never visits that property—I do not think he would trust himself to see the only woman he ever loved as the wife of another, though she is no longer young, and is the mother of children, whose future fortunes he has, doubtless, assured.”
“What you tell me,” said I, with emotion, “is so consistent with Tracey’s character that it gives me no surprise. That which does surprise me is, not the consent of the ruined father, but the consent of the accomplished daughter. Did Percival convince himself that she preferred his rival?”
“That is a question I can scarcely answer. My own belief is, that her first fancy had been caught by Gerrard, and that she had given him cause to believe that that first fancy was enduring love; but that, if her intimate acquaintance with Percival had continued longer, and had arrived at a stage at which his heart had been confessed to her, and her own heart frankly wooed, the first fancy would not have proved enduring love. But the acquaintance did not reach to that stage; and I have always understood that her marriage has been a very happy one.”
“In that happiness Tracey is consoled?”