The Young Duke by Benjamin Disraeli (read book .TXT) 📖

now. Is there a more contemptible, a more ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous ass than myself? Fear not for its delivery, most religiously shall it be consigned to the hand of its owner. The fellow has paid a compliment to my honour or my simplicity: I fear the last, and really I feel rather proud. But away with these feelings! Have I not seen her in his arms? Pah! Thank God! I spoke. At least, I die in a blaze. Even Annesley does not think me quite a fool. O, May Dacre, May Dacre! if you were but mine, I should be the happiest fellow that ever breathed!'

He breakfasted, and then took his way to the Dragon with Two Tails. The morning was bright, and fresh, and beautiful, even in London. Joy came upon his heart, in spite of all his loneliness, and he was glad and sanguine. He arrived just in time. The coach was about to start. The faithful ostler was there with his great-coat, and the Duke found that he had three fellow-passengers. They were lawyers, and talked for the first two hours of nothing but the case respecting which they were going down into the country. At Woburn, a despatch arrived with the newspapers. All purchased one, and the Duke among the rest. He was well reported, and could now sympathise with, instead of smile at, the anxiety of Lord Darrell.

'The young Duke of St. James seems to have distinguished himself very much,' said the first lawyer.

'So I observe,' said the second one. 'The leading article calls our attention to his speech as the most brilliant delivered.'

'I am surprised,' said the third. 'I thought he was quite a different sort of person.'

'By no means,' said the first: 'I have always had a high opinion of him. I am not one of those who think the worse of a young man because he is a little wild.'

'Nor I,' said the second. 'Young blood, you know, is young blood.'

'A very intimate friend of mine, who knows the Duke of St. James well, once told me,' rejoined the first, 'that I was quite mistaken about him; that he was a person of no common talents; well read, quite a man of the world, and a good deal of wit, too; and let me tell you that in these days wit is no common thing.'

'Certainly not,' said the third. 'We have no wit now.'

'And a kind-hearted, generous fellow,' continued the first, 'and _very_ unaffected.'

'I can't bear an affected man,' said the second, without looking off his paper. 'He seems to have made a very fine speech indeed.'

'I should not wonder at his turning out something great,' said the third.

'I have no doubt of it,' said the second.

'Many of these wild fellows do.'

'He is not so wild as we think,' said the first.

'But he is done up,' said the second.

'Is he indeed?' said the third. 'Perhaps by making a speech he wants a place?'

'People don't make speeches for nothing,' said the third.

'I shouldn't wonder if he is after a place in the Household,' said the second.

'Depend upon it, he looks to something more active,' said the first.

'Perhaps he would like to be head of the Admiralty?' said the second.

'Or the Treasury?' said the third.

'That is impossible!' said the first. 'He is too young.'

'He is as old as Pitt,' said the third.

'I hope he will resemble him in nothing but his age, then,' said the first.

'I look upon Pitt as the first man that ever lived,' said the third.

'What!' said the first. 'The man who worked up the national debt to nearly eight hundred millions!'

'What of that?' said the third. 'I look upon the national debt as the source of all our prosperity.'

'The source of all our taxes, you mean.'

'What is the harm of taxes?'

'The harm is, that you will soon have no trade; and when you have no trade, you will have no duties; and when you have no duties, you will have no dividends; and when you have no dividends, you will have no law; and then, where is your source of prosperity?' said the first.

But here the coach stopped, and the Duke got out for an hour.

By midnight they had reached a town not more than thirty miles from Dacre. The Duke was quite exhausted, and determined to stop. In half an hour he enjoyed that deep, dreamless slumber, with which no luxury can compete. One must have passed restless nights for years, to be able to appreciate the value of sound sleep.


CHAPTER IX.


A Last Appeal


HE ROSE early, and managed to reach Dacre at the breakfast hour of the family. He discharged his chaise at the Park gate, and entered the house unseen. He took his way along a corridor lined with plants, which led to the small and favourite room in which the morning meetings of May and himself always took place when they were alone. As he lightly stepped along, he heard a voice that he could not mistake, as it were in animated converse. Agitated by sounds which ever created in him emotion, for a moment he paused. He starts, his eye sparkles with strange delight, a flush comes over his panting features, half of modesty, half of triumph. He listens to his own speech from the lips of the woman he loves. She is reading to her father with melodious energy the passage in which he describes the high qualities of his Catholic neighbours. The intonations of the voice indicate the deep sympathy of the reader. She ceases. He hears the admiring exclamation of his host. He rallies his strength, he advances, he stands before them. She utters almost a shriek of delightful surprise as she welcomes him.

How much there was to say! how much to ask! how much to answer! Even Mr. Dacre poured forth questions like a boy. But May: she could not speak, but leant forward in her chair with an eager ear, and a look of congratulation, that rewarded him for all his exertion. Everything was to be told. How he went; whether he slept in the mail; where he went; what he did; whom he saw; what they said; what they thought; all must be answered. Then fresh exclamations of wonder, delight, and triumph. The Duke forgot everything but his love, and for three hours felt the happiest of men.

At length Mr. Dacre rose and looked at his watch with a shaking head. 'I have a most important appointment,' said he, 'and I must gallop to keep it. God bless you, my dear St. James! I could stay talking with you for ever; but you must be utterly wearied. Now, my dear boy, go to bed.'

'To bed!' exclaimed the Duke. 'Why, Tom Rawlins would laugh at you!'

'And who is Tom Rawlins?'

'Ah! I cannot tell you everything; but assuredly I am not going to bed.'

'Well, May, I leave him to your care; but do not let him talk any more.'

'Oh! sir,' said the Duke, 'I really had forgotten. I am the bearer to you, sir, of a letter from Mr. Arundel Dacre.' He gave it him.

As Mr. Dacre read the communication, his countenance changed, and the smile which before was on his face, vanished. But whether he were displeased, or only serious, it was impossible to ascertain, although the Duke watched him narrowly. At length he said, 'May! here is a letter from Arundel, in which you are much interested.'

'Give it me, then, papa!'

'No, my love; we must speak of this together. But I am pressed for time. When I come home. Remember.' He quitted the room.

They were alone: the Duke began again talking, and Miss Dacre put her finger to her mouth, with a smile.

'I assure you,' said he, 'I am not wearied. I slept at----y, and the only thing I now want is a good walk. Let me be your companion this morning!'

'I was thinking of paying nurse a visit. What say you?'

'Oh! I am ready; anywhere.'

She ran for her bonnet, and he kissed her handkerchief, which she left behind, and, I believe, everything else in the room which bore the slightest relation to her. And then the recollection of Arundel's letter came over him, and his joy fled. When she returned, he was standing before the fire, gloomy and dull.

'I fear you are tired,' she said.

'Not in the least.'

'I shall never forgive myself if all this exertion make you ill.'

'Why not?'

'Because, although I will not tell papa, I am sure my nonsense is the cause of your having gone to London.'

'It is probable; for you are the cause of all that does not disgrace me.' He advanced, and was about to seize her hand; but the accursed miniature occurred to him, and he repressed his feelings, almost with a groan. She, too, had turned away her head, and was busily engaged in tending a flower.

'Because she has explicitly declared her feelings to me, and, sincere in that declaration, honours me by a friendship of which alone I am unworthy, am I to persecute her with my dishonoured overtures--the twice rejected? No, no!'

They took their way through the park, and he soon succeeded in re-assuming the tone that befitted their situation. Traits of the debate, and the debaters, which newspapers cannot convey, and which he had not yet recounted; anecdotes of Annesley and their friends, and other gossip, were offered for her amusement. But if she were amused, she was not lively, but singularly, unusually silent. There was only one point on which she seemed interested, and that was his speech. When he was cheered, and who particularly cheered; who gathered round him, and what they said after the debate: on all these points she was most inquisitive.

They rambled on: nurse was quite forgotten; and at length they found themselves in the beautiful valley, rendered more lovely by the ruins of the abbey. It was a place that the Duke could never forget, and which he ever avoided. He had never renewed his visit since he first gave vent, among its reverend ruins, to his overcharged and most tumultuous heart.

They stood in silence before the holy pile with its vaulting arches and crumbling walls, mellowed by the mild lustre of the declining sun. Not two years had fled since here he first staggered after the breaking glimpses of self-knowledge, and struggled to call order from out the chaos of his mind. Not two years, and yet what a change had come over his existence! How diametrically opposite now were all his thoughts, and views, and feelings, to those which then controlled his fatal soul! How capable, as he firmly believed, was he now of discharging his duty to his Creator and his fellow-men! and yet the boon that ought to have been the reward for all this self-contest, the sweet seal that ought to have ratified this new contract of existence, was wanting.

'Ah!' he exclaimed aloud, and in a voice of anguish, 'ah! if I ne'er had left the walls of Dacre, how different might have been my lot!'

A gentle but involuntary pressure reminded him of the companion whom, for once in his life, he had for a moment forgotten.

'I feel it is madness; I feel it is worse than madness; but