Chapter VI: Sir Carnaby Collingwood

Still intent upon his Continental scheme, and somewhat impatiently waiting the arrival of Jerry Vane, Trevor Chute was idling over a late breakfast, so full of thoughts--sweet, regretful, and angry thoughts--of Clare Collingwood that he seemed like one in a dream.

It was nearly noon. The sun of May was bathing in light the leafy foliage of the Green Park, and throwing its shadows darkly and strongly on the green below; while the far extent of the lofty street seemed all aglow and quivering in the sunshine.

How fair and fresh the world looked, and yet, since his last interview with Clare, everything seemed indistinct and unusual to his senses.

'Bah!' thought he; 'to-night Jerry and I shall be in France, and then----'

What _then_, he scarcely knew.

The current of his ideas changed, for times there were, and this became one of them, when he longed morbidly to go through all the luxury of grief and sentiment in taking that which he had never before taken, save by letter--a last farewell of her; to beg of her to let no hour of sorrow for him mar her peace, no regret for his loss of fortune, a loss that was no fault of his own; to think of him with no pain, but with a soft memory of their past love, or to forget him, though he never could, or should, forget _her_, but would ever treasure in his heart how dear she had been to him, etc., etc.; and in this mood he was indulging, when his valet laid before him a note, the envelope of which caused him to feel a kind of electric shock.

It bore the Collingwood crest.

With hands tremulous as those of an agitated girl, he tore it open, and found that it was from Sir Carnaby Collingwood--a brief invitation to dine with him at his club at eight to-morrow evening (if disengaged), 'that they might have a little talk over old times.'

'Old times,' he repeated; 'what does that phrase mean?'

He had read over the note for the fourth or fifth time when Jerry Vane arrived.

He, too, had a similar invitation, but in that there was nothing remarkable, as he had never ceased to be on terms of intimacy with Sir Carnaby.

'What _can_ old Collingwood mean by this invitation to smoke the calumet of peace?' exclaimed Trevor Chute.

'Time will show.'

'After the cutting tenor of the letter he sent me--that cold and formal letter of dismissal--I--I----'

'Forget it, like the good fellow you are; and remember only that he is the father of Clare Collingwood.'

'True.'

'You'll go, of course?' said Jerry, after a pause; but Chute was silent.

His pride suggested that under all the circumstances, especially if what 'the clubs said' were true, he should decline the invitation.

But why?

He had already been at the Collingwoods', but on a special mission, certainly.

Then Sir Carnaby was proud, and it was impossible to forget that the first formal advance had come from him. More than all, as Jerry Vane had said, he was the father of Clare, of her who had never ceased to be the idol of all his thoughts.

'By Jove, I'll go--and you, Jerry,' he exclaimed. 'Of course.'

Each dashed off an acceptance, and they were despatched to Pall Mall in the care of Trevor's valet.

After a time, as if repenting of his sudden facility, Trevor Chute muttered:

'He used barely to bow to me in the Row or in the streets after he gave me my _congé_. What the deuce can his object be? Is he--is he relenting?'

The pulsation of Chute's heart quickened at the idea, and the colour deepened in his bronzed cheek.

'How anomalous and singular is the position in which we both stand with this selfish old fellow and his daughters,' said he to Jerry as they ascended the stately marble staircase of the baronet's club next evening, and gave their cards to a giant in livery, with the small head and enormous calves and feet peculiar to the fraternity of the shoulder-knot.

As they were ushered into a lofty and magnificent room, the great windows of which opened to Pall Mall, Sir Carnaby took their cards mechanically from the silver salver, but seemed chiefly intent on bowing out a tall and fashionable-looking man, whose leading characteristics were languor of gait and bearing, with insipid blue eyes, and a bushy, sandy-coloured moustache.

'And you won't dine with us, Desmond?' he was saying.

'Impossible, thanks very much,' drawled the other. 'Then I have your full permission, Sir Carnaby?'

'With all my warmest wishes, my dear fellow,' responded the baronet cordially; and, hat in hand, the visitor bowed himself out, with a brief kind of stare at Trevor Chute, whose face, he thought, he somehow remembered, and a dry shake of the hand with Jerry Vane, whom he knew.

He was gone, 'with full permission,' to do what?

Chute's heart foreboded at that moment all the two words meant, and the next he found himself cordially greeted by the man whose son-in-law he had once so nearly been.

'Ha, Captain Chute, welcome back from India,' he exclaimed. 'By Jove, how brown you look--brown as a berry, Violet said--after potting tigers, and all that sort of thing; too much for Beverley, though. Poor Jack--good fellow, Beverley, but rash, I fear. Very glad to thank you in person for all your kindness to him and to poor Ida. Most kind of you both, I am sure, to come on so hurried an invitation.'

Of Beverley and Ida, with reference to the death of the first, and the grief of the second, he spoke in the same jaunty and smiling way that he did of the beauty of the weather, the brilliance of the London season, the topics before the House last night, or anything else, and laughingly he led the way to dinner, the courses of which were perfect, and included all manner of far-fetched luxuries, even to pigeons stewed in champagne, and other culinary absurdities.

Sir Carnaby did not seem one day older than when Trevor Chute had seen him last, and yet he had attained to those years when most men age rapidly.

He had been a singularly handsome man in that time which he was exceedingly loath to convince himself had departed--his youth.

His firm, though thin--very thin--figure was still erect, well-stayed, and padded, perhaps; his eyes were keen and bright, their smile as insincere, artificial, and hollow as it had been forty years Before. His cheek was not pale, for there was a suspicious dash of red about it, while his well-shaved hair and ragged moustache were dyed beyond a doubt, like his curled whiskers.

His mouth was perhaps weak and rather sensual; he had thin white diaphanous hands, with carefully trimmed nails and sparkling diamond rings. In general accuracy of costume he might have passed for a tailor's model, while to Chute's eye his feet were as small, his boots as glazed, as ever; yet he had undergone the tortures of the gout, drunk colchicum with toast and water till he shuddered at the thoughts thereof, and talked surreptitiously of high and dry localities as being most suitable for his health.

He had, as we have said, keen--others averred rather wicked--grey eyes, a long and thin aristocratic nose, on which, when ladies were _not_ present, he sometimes perched a gold eyeglass. He was certainly wrinkled about the face; but his smooth white forehead showed no line of thought or care, as he had never known either, yet death had more than once darkened his threshold, and hung above it a scutcheon powdered with tears. He had still the appearance of what he was--a well-shaved, well-dressed, and well 'got-up' old beau and man about town, and still flattered himself that he was not without interest in a pretty girl's eye.

He had the reputation of being a courtly and well-bred man; and yet, in his present hilarity, or from some inexplicable cause, he had the bad taste to refer in his jaunty way to his past relations with Trevor Chute, and to mingle them with some praises of his recent visitor.

'Good style of fellow, Desmond!--devilish good style, you know; has a nice place in Hants, and no end of coal-pits near the Ribble,' he continued, after the decanters had been replenished more than once. 'Wishes to stand well with Clare--_your_ old flame, Chute; got over all that sort of thing long ago, of course, for, as a lady writer says, "nothing on earth is so pleasant as being a little in love, and nothing on earth so destructive as being too much so." Desmond has my best wishes--but, Chute, the decanters stand with you.'

Chute exchanged one brief and lightning-like glance with Jerry Vane; he felt irrepressible disgust, and for this stinging tone to him would have hated the heartless old man but that he was the father of (as he now deemed her) his lost Clare Collingwood. But Jerry was made to wince too.

'Your visit the other day, Chute, seems quite to have upset poor Ida,' said he, after an awkward pause.

'So sorry to hear you say so, Sir Carnaby,' replied Chute, drily.

'I don't like girls to betray emotion on every frivolous occasion; it is bad form, you know.'

Frivolous occasion! thought Chute, receiving the last relics and mementoes of her husband from the comrade in whose arms he died, and who commanded the funeral party that fired over him.

'She has begun to mope more horribly than ever during the last few days; but if I take her down to the country, she becomes more dull than ever, or goes in for parochial work--bad style of things, I think--blankets and coals--Dorcas meetings--and helps the rector's wife in matters of soup and psalm-singing.'

Indeed, if the truth were known, Sir Carnaby Collingwood was not ill pleased by Beverley's death, all things considered. Ida's jointure was most ample--even splendid--and she had no little heir to attend to. To be the father of these grown-up girls was bad enough, he thought; but to have been a 'grandfather' would prove the culmination of horror to the would-be youthful beau of sixty.

His own lover and romance, if he ever had any--which may be doubted--were put by and forgotten years ago, and he never dreamed that others might indulge in such dreams apart from the prose of life. From his school-days he had been petted, pampered, and caressed by wealth and fortune, so much so that he was actually ignorant of human wants, ailments, or sufferings. Hence his utter callousness and indifference in such a matter as Trevor Chute's love for Clare, or her love for Chute. Though his dead wife, a fair and gentle creature, who was the antitype of Ida, and had been quite as lovely, loved him well, he had married her without an atom of affection, to suit the views of his family and her own.

Hence it was that, as we have shown, he could talk in the manner he did to his two guests--men whose past relations with his own household were of a nature so delicate, and to be approached with difficulty; yet, had anyone accused Sir Carnaby of want of tact or taste, or more than all of ill-breeding, he would have been filled with astonishment. But the ill-breeding shown by Sir Carnaby simply resulted from a total want of feeling, good taste, and perception.

Thus it was that he could coolly expatiate to Chute on the good qualities of Desmond, adding, 'You'll be glad to hear of my girl's welfare and expectations; he'll be a peer, you know, some of these days; and to poor Jerry Vane upon Ida's grief for the loss of her husband, _his_ rival.

Then, while smoothing his dyed moustache with a dainty girl-like handkerchief, all perfume and point, with a Collingwood crest in the corner thereof, he would continue in this fashion:

'Poverty is a nuisance. I have admired dowerless girls in my day--do so still--but never go farther than mere admiration; so no girl of mine shall ever marry any man who cannot keep her in the style to which she has been accustomed. It was, perhaps, a foolish match Ida made with Beverley, though he had that snug place in the Midlands--or rather, the reversion of it when his father died; but now she is a widow--ha! ha! bless my soul, that I should be the father of a widow!--and with her natural attractions, enhanced by a handsome dowry, may yet be a peeress--who knows?'

Jerry Vane, with silent rage swelling in his heart, glanced at Chute, as much as to say:

'How intolerable--how detestable--all this is!'

'She is a widow,' continued Sir Carnaby, eyeing fondly the ruby wine in his glass, as he held it between him and the lustre, with one eye closed for a moment, 'but with all her attractions, may perhaps remain so if she continues this horrible folly of unfathomable grief, and all that sort of thing.'

'It does honour to her heart!' sighed poor Jerry.

'She is becoming an enthusiast and a visionary. The girl's grief bores me, and times there are when I wish that you, friend Vane, may come to the rescue, after all.'

A little smile flitted across the face of Vane as he merely bowed to this remark, which he cared not to follow, as he was doubtful whether it was the baronet or his wine that was talking now; but he glanced at Trevor Chute, and both rose to depart, thinking they had now quite enough of Sir Carnaby's 'hospitality.'

But the latter, seized by a sudden access of friendship or familiarity, on finding that he could no longer prevail on them to remain, proposed, as the night was fine, and their ways lay together, to walk so far and enjoy a cigar.

It was impossible to decline this: the 'weeds' were lit; Sir Carnaby took an arm of each--perhaps his steps were a little unsteady--and as they turned away towards Piccadilly, he began anew to sing the praises of Desmond, with the pertinacity with which wine will sometimes make a man recur again and again to the same subject.

'Good style of fellow, and all that sort of thing, don't you know, Chute? Has a fortune--comfortable thing that--very!--but it has prevented--it has prevented----'

'What, Sir Carnaby?' asked Trevor, wearily.

'The development of his genius.'

Trevor Chute laughed aloud at this, and said:

'Ah! there is nothing like a hand-to-hand free fight with the world for _that_.'

'You are a soldier, Chute, but the world is no longer a bivalve, which one may, like ancient Pistol, open by the sword. Desmond graduated at Oxford.'

'As stroke oar, Sir Carnaby, I presume.'

'He would have taken the highest honours, Chute, and all that sort of thing, don't you know, only--only----'

'He could not?'

'Not at all,' replied Sir Carnaby, somewhat tartly. 'He preferred that they should be taken, Chute, by those who set their hearts on such things; yet for Clare's sake, I wish----'

Whatever it was he wished, Trevor Chute never learned, for now he lost all patience, and affecting suddenly to remember another engagement, bade farewell, curtly and hurriedly, to Sir Carnaby, who said:

'Must have you down at Carnaby Court when the event--perhaps the double event--comes off; good style of old place--the baronial, the mediæval, the picturesque, and all that sort of thing--bored by artists and tourists, don't you know, but, of course, you remember it--ta-ta!'

And arresting skilfully an undeniable hiccup, the senile baronet trotted, or rather 'toddled,' away in the moonlight. Remember it!

Well and sadly did Trevor Chute remember it; for there, on a soft autumn night, when the music and the hum of the dancers' voices came through the ball-room oriels, when the moonlight steeped masses of the ancient pile in silver sheen or sunk them in shadow--

'When buttresses and buttresses alternately
Seem framed of ebon or ivory,'

as he and Clare stole forth for one delicious moment from the conservatory, had he first told her how deeply and tenderly he loved her; and now again memories of the waltz they had just concluded, of the delicate perfume of her floating dress, of the scarlet flower in her dark hair, of the drooping, downcast eyes, and her lovely lips, near which his own were hovering, come vividly back to haunt him, as they had done many a time and oft when he had seen the same moon that lit up prosaic Piccadilly shining in its Orient splendour on the marble domes and towers of Delhi, on the waters of the Jumna or the Indus, and on the snow-clad peaks that look down, from afar, on the vast plains of Assam!

Now that their old tormentor was gone, both Chute and Jerry Vane laughed, but with much of scornful bitterness in their merriment.

'Hope you enjoyed your dinner, Jerry!'

'Hereditary rank is very noble, according to Burke and Debrett,' replied Vane, cynically. 'He is a baronet, true; but I would rather win a title than succeed to one; and to meet a few more men like Sir Carnaby would make a down-right Republican of me.'

'How such an empty fool ever had a daughter like Clare Collingwood is a riddle to me. He is so cool, so listless, so heartless----'

'Yet so thoroughbred, as it is deemed!'

'And so worldly--she, all heart!'

'Perhaps; but what does all this about Desmond mean, eh, friend Trevor?'

'A little time will show now,' said the other, bitterly.