Chapter III (3)

“Audacity. You are right. _Toujours de l’audace._ I am a man of a single idea; the idea at present on my groove of thought is the gold Finche. The lion in my path is Grey Seymour. If he were poor I wouldn’t have a chance; but he has millions, and money doesn’t fall in love with money. Your heiress always spoons on a pauper, while your _aurati juvenes_ go in for penniless governesses. _Ne c’est pas, mon vieux?_ Give us a match. I’ll go and take a swim; and you go and call on Wilson Finche. His direction is—stay; I’ll write it down for you. There!” he exclaimed, handing me a card: “‘Wilson Finche, Esquire, Sea View Cottage, The Cliff.’ You’ll find him at home now, Crosse, and in that beatific condition which is the outcome of a Château Lafitte of the ’54 vintage. _Adios!_”

Obeying the mandate of this very peculiar young man, I strolled down to The Cliff.

The wide sea heaved and plashed beneath me with a dull, dulcet murmur. Away out on its unruffled bosom lay great patches of purple, denoting the passage of some fleecy cloud onwards, ever onwards. White sails dotted the deep green sea like daisies on a dappled field. The shingle caressed by the wooing wavelets was red and brown, while the wave-kissed pebbles flashed in the sunlight. Boats like specks were drawn up on the beach, and sailors were busy with sails and cordage and the impedimenta of their craft.

Finche’s marine residence stood boldly prominent, all corners and gables like an old cocked hat. It was new and pert-looking, and wore the air of a coquette in a brand-new toilette from Worth’s. A ribbon border of glowing scarlet geraniums led from the lich-gate to the Queen Anne porch, whereon sat, or lay, or reclined—it was all three—my old friend, his body in one of those chairs which invalid passengers on ocean steamers much affect, to the envy of all who do not possess the luxury, his feet on a camp-stool, beside him a small marble-topped table, whereon stood a bottle of claret, a crystal glass of wafer-like thinness, and a box of cigars. Price had spoken wisely.

After the usual exclamations of greeting had dried up I complimented Finche on the beauty of the location.

“Yes, sir; it costs money, but what’s money if you don’t get value for it? Thompson—you know Thompson, of Brand & Thompson—that man, sir, has four millions, sir, and what value does _he_ take out of it, sir? A back-room in Thirteenth Street; a breakfast at a foul-smelling restaurant, sir; a five-minute dinner at Cable’s; an unhealthy supper at another restaurant, and half a dozen of newspapers. _That’s_ what _he_ has for his four millions.”

“You are wiser in your generation, Finche.”

“I am wise in this way, sir”—Finche is very sententious, and his shirt-collar is always troubling him—“I must have value for my money. One hundred cents for my dollar is good enough for me. If, sir, I can get one hundred and fifty, so much the better; but, sir, I never take ninety, or ninety-five, sir, or ninety-and-nine, sir. Help yourself to that claret—it’s a Nat Johnson, sir; I paid twenty-five dollars a case for it in the year ’70. It’s value for the money, sir, _I_ tell _you_.”

“You are here with your _Lares_ and _Penates_,” I observed, after some further remarks upon the value of the surroundings.

“What do you mean, sir?” Finche is as ignorant as a chimpanzee.

“Your household gods.”

“Yes, sir. I am here with my daughter and my wife. My daughter gets value, sir, in the hops at the Ocean House, and the nice society she meets with—real bang-up swells, sir. My wife gets value out of the salt water, sir—health, sir, which improves her body and her temper, sir. She is a quick-tempered woman is Mrs. Finche, and when she’s ill, sir, she’s ugly.”

At this moment the pony phaeton which I had observed from the piazza of the hotel dashed up to the lich-gate.

“My daughter and her friend, Miss Neville, an English girl, sir, of a very high family, poor as cheap claret, sir, but proud as a coupon, sir. She’s on a visit to us, but we get value out of her. She sings lovely, sir; you shall hear her. It entertains our swell friends, and thus we strike a balance. The tall one is my daughter, sir.”

I saw a slim but well-proportioned figure, clad in a rich black silk dress, the cut of which, even to my masculine eyes, betrayed the hand of an artist; a face, though not beautiful by any means, earnest and interesting, surmounted by a profusion of little fair curls, arranged, as was the fashion, so as to conceal the forehead; a picturesque hat, a pair of diamond solitaire earrings, and upon the whole a person decidedly “fetching.” Her companion was _petite_, and constructed, as they say of saucy steamers, upon the most perfect lines. She was a clear brunette, and as she swept somewhat haughtily past the glowing ribbon borders I bethought me of Cleopatra, and the passage down the Cydnus of that boat which wrecked the fortunes of the luckless Antony.

Of course I gazed at the possessor of five hundred thousand dollars, as the “penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree” counted for nothing.

“Hattie, this is my old friend, Mr. Crosse, of Noo York, who has come to Newport to take some value out of the summer-time.”

Miss Finche was very gracious, presenting me with a hand encased in a glove of many buttons, and flashing a row of magnificent teeth between each smile.

“Are you a ‘cottager,’ Mr. Crosse?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Are you at the Ocean or the Acquednuk?”

“The Ocean.”

“The other is quieter.”

“There is better value at the Ocean, Hattie,” observed her father.

“One sees everybody worth seeing there. Isn’t the piazza charming, Mr. Crosse?”

“Of its kind, yes; but I would prefer a little of this,” sweeping the horizon with my hand.

“It is very beautiful,” said a sweet, low voice by my side, a voice that “chimed” into my ear—I can use no other word. It was Miss Neville who spoke.

“There is great value to be got out of that view at sunset, sir—yellows and reds, sir, that would set up a painter, if he could only fetch up to the right color and give good value to the buyer.”

Miss Neville imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders, while I winced at this commercial view of marine painting. I wondered what Mr. Hook, R.A., or my rising young friend Mr. Quartly would have said to the man of tallow.

“Hattie, another bottle of this wine, although it’s a pity to drink it on a hot day; one doesn’t get the value out of it. Get into the house, girls; I want to have a talk with my friend Crosse here. What is Bullandust going to do in Lake Shores?” addressing me.

I protested.

“Finche,” I said, “I’ve come down here for sea, and sky, and trees, and _dolce far niente_.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Well, loafing,” I laughed.

“There an’t no value to be got out of that.”

“Isn’t there, though? And I mean to drop Wall Street, and scrip, and shares, and every sort of business. I won’t even look at a newspaper till I choose to go back.”

“You an’t in earnest?” said my host, gazing at me in solemn astonishment.

“A fact, upon my honor.”

“Well, that—say, there’s some one saluting. It’s not me—I don’t know the man. It must be a friend of yours, sir.”

I adjusted my double glass and gazed towards the lich-gate.

A slight sense of shock vibrated through my system. Leaning upon the gate, and nodding at me like a Chinese mandarin, was Mr. Herbert Price, Temple, London, E. C.

“You seem to be having a good time there, my friend,” he gaily cried.

What could I say? What could I do?

“It’s awfully hot for walking.”

“Won’t you step in, sir?” said Finche.

I could not say, Don’t ask this man. Of course a gossip and a glass of wine, and a mere formal introduction to Finche, meant nothing.

“His name’s Price,” I hurriedly whispered—“stopping at Ocean House—London barrister—don’t know him.” Whether these last three words were lost upon Finche or not it is impossible to determine, inasmuch as he took no notice of them whatever.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Price. Any friend of my friend Mr. Crosse is welcome here, sir. Get a chair. Take that other one, sir, with the back to it; you’ll get more value out of it. That’s my principle—take value out of everything. A glass of wine, sir? It’s a Château Lafitte that cost me twenty-five dollars a case in ’70, sir. Touch that gong, sir!”

A servant appeared in obedience to the tocsin.

“Ask Miss Finche to send me another bottle of this wine, then take the empty bottle. Put it carefully by, Mary, as all the bottles have to go back after I have taken the value out of them, which I guess I do,” with a chuckle.

“Did you walk down, Mr. Crosse?” asked Price.

“Yes.” I was on the borderland of indignation. I felt foolish—checkmated.

“You had no difficulty in finding the place.”

“I can always find _my_ friend’s house, Mr. Price.”

“You were dull enough about it on the piazza when we were speaking about Mr. Finche. What a glorious spot you have here! It reminds me of Devonshire. Ah! you American millionaires know how to live.”

“We try to get value out of the world.”

“And you succeed. Your good health, Mr. Finche. Ah!” smacking his lips, “that _is_ wine. What a superb thing to sit beneath one’s vine or fig-tree, drink such nectar as this, and to be able to—pay for it!” with a light laugh.

“You are from London, sir, my friend Crosse tells me.”

I could have flung the contents of my glass into Finche’s face. Price would perhaps think I had been singing his praises.

“Yes, I hail from that little village on the Thames.”

“A lawyer?”

“One of the briefless. I did not choose the profession, I assure you. Like my first frock, it was chosen for me, and I was thrust into it _bon gré mal gré_. I’ll tell you who I am and what I am. I have told my friend Crosse already.” And he summed up the case, much in the same words as he had addressed to me.

Finche was impressed by the mention of the title, and deeply interested in a detailed description of the Moat.

“I am happy to meet you, sir, and should be glad to visit Sir Harvey Price at Holten Moat when I go to England next year, sir. Do you purpose taking much value out of this country, sir?”

Price actually winked at me, and that wink spoke the following words:

“I mean to take five hundred thousand dollars if I can.”

A bell sounded.

“Supper, gentlemen!” said Finche. “Let us get in. No ceremony here, Mr. Price. We have no Moats for three hundred years in our family, although we see them every day in our neighbor’s eye—ha! ha!”

It would never do to have this pickpocket, for aught I knew to the contrary, enter beneath my friend’s roof under the very peculiar circumstances of the case. Had he been an ordinary travelling acquaintance it would not have much mattered, but a penniless adventurer bent upon matrimonial designs—never!

“Mr. Price and I are going back to the Ocean House,” I said in my sternest tone, and in a manner so marked as to bear but the one interpretation.

“What do I hear, Mr. Crosse?” exclaimed Miss Finche, emerging from the interior, arrayed in a bewitching toilette of fleecy white and delicate lilac.

“My dear, this is—”

“I beg your pardon, Finche, but could I—” I burst in.

“This is Mr. Price, of London, a friend of—”

“Finche, I may as well”— But the pompous old ass would have his bray, and Price was conversing with Hattie Finche ere I could utter the words of explanation that were ready to spring from my lips.

“Gentlemen, you would like to wash your hands. Just step up to my _sanctum_. Tompkins” (to a servant), “show these gentlemen to my _sanctum_.”

When the door had closed upon us, “Mr. Price,” I said, “do you call this fair?”

“Everything is fair in love.”

“Bosh, sir! You find in me a man unwilling to wound the feelings of another. I have gained nothing by acting the part of a gentleman.”

“I deny that!” his coat off, his head deep in the marble basin. “You’ve made _me_ your friend for life.”

“And who might _you_ be?”

“I’ve told you. See, now,” his hands dripping, “here,” plunging one of them into the breast-pocket of his coat, which was lying on a bed—“here’s a ten-pound note; spend every shilling of it in cablegrams. You have my own, you have my father’s address. Wire him, wire anybody you like, you’ll have your reply to-morrow. My story will be corroborated in every particular. _That_ ought to satisfy you.”

I shook my head.

“Time with _me_ is money. This fellow, Grey Seymour, is to meet her to-morrow at a garden-party at Mrs. Dyke Howell’s. His millions will come into play, and such heavy artillery will sweep my rusty flint-locks into ash-barrels. A duel with artillery is all very well, but when the batteries are all on one side one side wins. My chances depend on what running I can make to-night. I can talk to women as few men can. It is my faculty. I know where to reach them, and how. It is _nascitur non fit_ with me. I don’t go on Doctor Johnson’s idea of making an idiot of a girl’s understanding by flattery. That is false in theory, false in practice. Now, you are not half bad. Stand by me,” placing his hand on my shoulder, “and, by George! I’ll do something for you yet.”

He was thoroughly in earnest, and hang me if I could refuse him. I suppose it was my bounden duty to have done so. Common sense and common prudence nudged me ere I took his proffered hand, but, heedless of the whisperings of still, small voices, I permitted myself to go with the tide. It was treating my friend Finche badly; it was placing myself in a false, if not a worse, position; and yet—I could not utter that absurdly small word “no.”

The morrow would tell its own tale, for I had resolved upon telegraphing without the assistance of Mr. Price’s ten-pound note, and a few hours could do no possible harm. If Miss Finche were to lose her heart in the space of an evening, she would prove a very noteworthy exception to the great sisterhood to which she belonged.

The addition to her dinner table did not seem to please Mrs. Finche, an emaciated, waspish, red-nosed lady, whose thin lips had an unpleasant twitch in them, and whose bright, beady black eyes darted angrily hither and thither like a pair of beetles in search of prey.

I sat next to her; opposite to me Miss Neville; Finche was at the foot of the table; on his right _my_ friend Price, on his left the heiress.

“What brings _you_ to this fashionable place, Mr. Crosse?” asked mine hostess, the inference being “plain to the naked eye.”

“Well, I thought I’d like to take a peep at the gay goings-on.”

“Ah!” an icy chill in the monosyllable.

Mrs. Finche being very silent, and, if not silent, snappish, I directed my conversation to Miss Neville, whom I found to be absolutely charming. I had travelled a good deal, and, from the loneliness of my life, read about as much as ordinary men, and I discovered, to my most intense pleasure, that there was at least _one_ young girl in the nineteenth century the possessor of ideas above the level of sweet things in sheathe-like costumes, or the latest methods for beautifying the human face divine.

Miss Neville was thoroughbred, and all unconsciously showed her lustrous lineage in every movement, every gesture, every word. Blood will tell, and it spoke its own emblazoned story in the winsome elegance of this “rare bit o’ womankind.”

Mr. Price laughed and talked, and narrated piquant anecdotes, and kept Miss Finche well in hand, causing the host “all the time” to indulge in a vast, expansive smile. Finche was getting the value of his mutton and his claret out of his friend’s friend. He was satisfied. After dinner the young ladies returned to the Queen Anne porch, while the waspish hostess proceeded to take forty wide-awake winks. We mankind talked generally, and, although pressed to remain at our wine, Price and I were glad to get from beyond the range of our host’s perpetual “values.”

As we were seated upon the wooden steps at the feet of the fair ones, gazing out across the wide, wide ocean, gilded with the expiring rays of the setting sun, and canopied by a sky of pale blue merging into delicate green, and again into white, the lich-gate swung back and Grey Seymour swung in.

“What a glorious evening! Are you for a walk on the cliff?” asked the new-comer, eyeing Price and myself as he spoke. “How do?” he added, addressing me.

“Mr. Seymour, Mr. Price,” said Miss Finche, while the two men nodded stiffly.

“A walk on the cliff, by all means; don’t you think so, Maude?” asked Miss Finche, addressing Miss Neville.

“_Comme vous voulez._”

“Let’s go as we are.”

We sallied forth.

“What a nuisance, this fellow’s turning up!” whispered Price angrily. “I shall have to fall back.”

Seymour and Miss Finche led the way. I did the elderly and protecting party.

“I place them in your charge,” were the parting words of mine host. “The youngsters will take value out of one another; _you_ take value out of the whole lot.”

I dropped behind, and proceeded to enjoy the glories of the night in my own way. Soon came that entrancing blue light which steals in between day and dark, and the stars began to throb in the great canopy, and that “hush” which Night sends as her envoy to earth was passing over hill and hollow, and land and sea.

I sat down in a little nook on the cliff—a corner that seemed almost clean out of the world, and as if the earth had suddenly ended there. I thought over many things, and in the _bizarre_ reflections consequent upon the adventures of the day came a dreamy sensation of admiration for the fair young girl whom destiny had thrown beneath the roof-tree of my friend Wilson Finche. I felt strangely interested in her already. Why, I did not ask myself. She was a blaze of intelligence, a mine of intellectual wealth. I do not mean for one second to say that she was a genius, but there was a tone of high culture about her that shed itself like a fragrant perfume.

Miss Finche appeared to me to be a very nice, ladylike, ordinary class of girl—one of those patent-mannered, warranted-to-go-well sort of young ladies who rove at their sweet wild will in the garden of society; but beside Miss Neville she was absolutely colorless.

I sat thinking over the strange freaks of fortune, that give thousands of dollars to some girls, leaving others without a dime, when the sound of approaching voices scattered my reverie to the night breeze that gently fanned my pepper and salt—too much salt—whiskers. I was in a hollow beneath the cliff. The speakers were Grey Seymour and Hattie Finche.

Miss Finche’s tone was cold and resolute.

“I do not love you, Mr. Seymour. I never could. I will not hold out a particle of hope.”

“Don’t say that, Hattie—anything but that. Hope is all I have to live for,” he cried in a quivering, agonized way that made me sad to hear.

“I tell you fairly I can give you no hope.”

“_Try_ and love me. I can make life a dream to you. Your every wish shall be gratified. My whole time shall be spent in anticipating your lightest fancy. O Hattie! do not drive me to despair, desperation.”

She was silent. They had stopped right opposite to where I sat concealed. I frankly confess I was too much interested to think of making my proximity known. It was a mean thing to remain where I was. I reproach myself while I write.

“I do not care for your money,” he raved on. “I have millions, ay, millions at my command, and those millions shall be spent to make your life an idyl.”

“Did I not tell you that I could not care for you last season? Did I not repeat it at Martha’s Vineyard two weeks ago? Now I repeat it again and for the last time. Let us be friends.”

“Friends!” he bitterly cried.

“Yes, friends, and good friends. Why not? In a short time you will wonder you ever were in love with me, and—”

“Never!” he burst in.

“Oh! yes, you will. And, what is more, you will fall in love with somebody else.”

“Do you wish to drive me mad?”

“On the contrary, I wish to bring you to your senses. Listen to me calmly.”

“I cannot.”

“But you must. This passion of yours is a boyish love.”

“It is my life.”

“Nothing of the kind. I don’t want your love. I could not return it.”

“But you won’t try.”

“I will not indeed. I am selfish enough to care for my own happiness, and my happiness—that is, the matrimonial part of it—does _not_ lie with you. You are very fond of me?”

“I—”

“Now, don’t rhapsodize. You would do a good deal to make me happy?”

“Anything.”

“Would you be willing to make a sacrifice for me, if I earnestly asked you?”

“Try me, Hattie!”

“Well, then, I’ll put you to the test.”

“Do,” firmly, resolutely.

“You know Maude Neville. She is young, beautiful, penniless. She hasn’t a friend in the world. Be her friend.”

“What am I to do?”

“Marry her.”

There was a sound as though he had sprung backwards.

“This is insolence, Hattie,” he exclaimed hotly.

“Don’t be silly,” coolly observed Miss Finche, and I heard no more, for they had moved onwards.

This was a strange experience—a woman refusing a man, and then asking him to make love to another. I had read much of the doings of the sex, but this situation beat anything I had ever seen on the stage. Miss Finche’s evident self-possession, not a ripple in her voice, told how truly she spoke when she told the luckless love-sick youth she did not care for him, while the coolness, not to say the audacity, of the proposition almost staggered me. And Miss Neville—was not she to be consulted in the business? I was very much mistaken in my estimate of that young lady if _she_ would haul down her colors at the bidding of any captain afloat, if she had not a mind so to do herself.

When I arrived, all alone, at the cottage, it was to find Miss Finche flirting heavily with Mr. Herbert Price, Miss Neville playing a brilliant fantasia of Chopin’s upon the piano, and, _mirabile dictu_, Mr. Grey Seymour, his face, his neck, his ears in a rosy glow, leaning over her and turning the leaves of the music. Could he have—pshaw! impossible.

“You know Mrs. Dyke Howell?” was Mr. Price’s observation, as we turned out of Sea View Cottage on our way to the Ocean House.

“Very slightly.”

“But you _do_ know her?”

“Well—yes.”

“You’ll get me a card for her garden party to-morrow?”

“Well, considering that I haven’t got one for myself, I—”

“That’s nothing to the point. A man can ask a favor for a friend he wouldn’t ask for himself, you know.”

“But you are _not_ my friend.”

“I mean to be, though. Friendship must begin somewhere, and ours flourishes like Jack’s bean-stalk.”

“’Pon my word, I—”

“There, now, you’ll write for the card to-night: ‘Mr. John V. Crosse presents his compliments to Mrs. Dyke Howell, and would feel much obliged for an invitation for an English friend’—it looks well to have an _English_ friend—‘for her garden party to-morrow,’ or words to that effect. We’ll send it off to-night, and you see, old man, it will get you an invitation as well.”

“You are the coolest hand I ever even read of.”

“Must be. My godmother’s legacy, like Bob Acre’s courage, is oozing out at my fingers’ ends, and I’ve nothing but my return ticket and my audacity to look to. Come, now, Crosse, don’t do things by halves. You’ve introduced me to a very nice family. Can’t say I admire my mother-in-law. What son-in-law does, though? The old boy is no end of a bore, but Hattie is all there.”

“I did not introduce you, Mr. Price; you introduced yourself.”

“Never could have done it but for you; _ergo_, logically, you introduced me.”

To my shame be it said, I wrote a note from the Ocean House to Mrs. Dyke Howell, a haughty lady of cadaverous aspect, and a nose resembling that of the late Duke of Wellington, who believed in that small monarchy called Knickerbockerdom, and in everything high, and mighty, and fashionable.

The cards came without note or comment, and _my friend Price_ and I started for Hawthorndale. He wore a frock-coat that, even irritated as I was, evoked admiring comment, and a tall hat so shiny that I felt I could have shaved by it.

Before starting I telegraphed to Sir Harvey Price, Bart., Holten Moat, Sevenoaks, Kent, England, in the following words:

“Is your son Herbert in America? Is he a barrister? Describe him. Of
the utmost importance. Telegraph instantly to

“J. V. CROSSE, Ocean House,
Newport, R. I., U. S. A.”

I chuckled as I handed over my greenbacks.

“He doesn’t think I’ve taken him at his word. A few hours will unriddle him,” were my thoughts as we emerged from the hotel. I had seen Grey Seymour that morning _en route_ to bathe. There were black shadows beneath his eyes, and the great brightness which I had so much admired the day before had faded out of his face. What was the issue of that most remarkable conversation?

He was the first person I encountered after passing through the icy fingers of Mrs. Dyke Howell, and much of the old look had returned.

“Have you seen the Finches?” he asked.

“No.”

“By the way, who is your friend Mr. Price?”

“He’s no particular _friend_ of mine—merely a travelling acquaintance. He’s a member of the English bar, and very clever.” This latter assertion I believed in my heart.

“Is he rich?”

“Oh! dear, no.”

“Unmarried?”

“Yes. That is, I believe so.”

“I see him here to-day. I suppose Mrs. Howell knows him.”

I was considerably relieved when young Roadwell, of the Coaching Club, cut in with a query as to a pair of roans which Seymour was about to put under the hammer, and left the pair diving “full fathom five” into the mysteries of horse-flesh.

The Finches arrived later on in full force—Mrs. Finche in yellow and green and red like a mayonnaise of lobster; Hattie in floating white; Maude Neville in black and orange. My friend Price clung to Miss Finche’s side like her breloquet, while Grey Seymour seemed to devote himself to the brunette.

“_Ma foi_,” thought I, “can the convocation of last night have so soon borne fruit? It would not be difficult to fall in love with Miss Neville, but the falling out of it first is the trouble.”

I did not see Price until eleven o’clock that night. He had gone home with the Finches—I was left out in the cold—and returned to the hotel in splendid spirits.

“Anybody there?” I asked with assumed carelessness.

“Nobody but Seymour.”

“Ah! Spooning over Miss Finche?”

“Not a bit of it; it’s over the other one. He was with her all day to-day, and by Jove! sir, to-night they were on the balcony doing moonlight like anything.”

“Where is he? Did you leave him behind you?”

“No; we left together, but he didn’t seem to want me, and—”

“And did _you_ see that?” I sneered.

“Why, of course I did. _I_ wasn’t going to do The Cliffs at this hour. I prefer my cigar on the piazza here.”

I did not see either of my gentlemen the following day, save in a casual way. Seymour appeared to be picking up his good looks, and as the table to which I was relegated was within range of his _quartier_, I could perceive, from the flotilla of plates and dishes around him at breakfast, that his rejection by Hattie Finche had in nowise impaired his appetite.

I was in love once, twenty-five years ago, and I lived on it. A sweet cake and a glass of champagne twice a day kept me in the flesh. I wouldn’t undertake to try that “little game” again. Judging from my own symptoms at that critical period of my existence, I fairly argued that Grey Seymour had either over-lived his passion for the heiress, that he was off with the old love and on to the new, or that his mistress and he had come to an understanding after they had passed beyond my coigne of vantage. I must own I was “sairly and fairly” puzzled. The reply to my cablegram was anxiously awaited. Properly speaking, it was due upon the evening of the day on which I set the wires in motion. Allowing for the difference in time between Newport and London, say six hours and a half, and having despatched it at 9 A.M., I might fairly have reckoned on a reply that night. The Moat, however, was some little distance from Sevenoaks, so I shouldn’t be utterly disappointed were forty-eight hours to elapse ere tidings would reach me. As it was, however, the appearance of every despatch boy sent a thrill of expectation through me, and a pang of corresponding disappointment when I sought the message on the rack under the letter C.

It was upon the second morning that Price came down to breakfast arrayed in nautical costume, deep, dark, desperate blue flannel, with a superb Maréchal Niel rosebud in his button-hole, and a genuine air of festivity in his whole appearance.

“What mischief are you up to to-day?” I asked.

“A sail with my friends the Finches.”

“_My_ friends, if _you_ please, Mr. Price.”

“To be sure; I quite forgot. Doosid nice people. I say, I _am_ making the running, and I mean to win, as we say in the race-course, ‘hands down.’”

“Ahem! It doesn’t follow that if you win the daughter you’ll get over the father,” I observed with a knowing air.

“Oh! I’m not going to trouble myself about _him_. _You’ll_ square him for me.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Price?” almost aghast at this cool impudence.

“I mean that old fogies understand one another. You’ll rub it into him that I am a man of considerable genius; of keen perception, calm deliberation; in the habit of hand-balancing conflicting propositions, a brilliant orator, and that I have tact, which is better than talent, and audacity, which is better than either or both.”

“If I were to speak about you at all to _my_ friend Mr. Finche, I should certainly pay a glowing tribute to this last quality,” sneeringly.

“That’s a good fellow. You’re a brick of the most adhesive quality. You go for Finche when I give you the word. I mean to pop for Hattie the first good chance.”

“Well, really, I—”

“I know what you’re going to say: ‘Man is man and master of his fate.’ Shakspere says ‘sometimes.’ I mean to play the waiting race. The man who can afford it gets three to one in his favor. I can only be beaten by a dash-horse now. Here comes the man whom I imagined was the favorite, and he is not entered for the race at all.”

Grey Seymour joined us, also arrayed in dark blue, a red rose in _his_ button-hole.

“These are our favors,” laughed Price: “Miss Finche yellow, Miss Neville red.

“‘Oh! my love is like a red, red rose that sweetly blows in June!’”

And gaily humming that song which Sims Reeves has made all his own, he lounged out of the immense _salle à manger_, casting criticising glances _en passant_.

I am fond of the sea. I never was sick in my life, and once upon a time thought of running a saucy schooner. Would I, like Paul Pry, drop into this party with an “I hope I don’t intrude”?

The hour was rapidly approaching when I must take action with reference to my friend Mr. Price. He had entered Finche’s house under my _ægis_, and I was bound in honor to protect Finche and Finche’s child. Yes, I would join the yachting excursion _bon gré mal gré_, and in a few straight words tell Wilson Finche exactly how the land lay.

I donned a blue flannel suit—no man goes to Newport without one—and taking an old-fashioned telescope under my arm, went upon the piazza to await the appearance of Grey Seymour, who was still occupied in going through the entire _menu_ for his matitudinal meal.

“A telegram for you, sir,” said the clerk, as I passed the desk.

“At last,” I muttered, as I tore it open.

It was from Lady Price, and dated Holten Moat:

“My son is in America. Barrister. Tall, thin, dark. Black mole under
left ear. Scar on right wrist. Telegraph if in trouble.”

At that particular moment Mr. Price appeared on the corridor, engaged in chewing a tooth-pick.

I went to him, and, without a single word, seized his right hand, baring his wrist. The scar was there. I then wheeled him round, and took a rapid and searching look behind his left ear.

“Ah!” he laughed, “looking for the _macula materna_? So you’ve been telegraphing home, you incredulous old codger,” scanning the open telegram.

“Read it,” I said. I should mention that the black mole was in its place.

“Why, you’ll frighten the old lady into fits. Write her at once, Crosse, and tell her I’m as safe as the milk in a cocoanut. Don’t spare your dollars, old man!”

* * * * *

When I left Newport the Finches were still at Sea View Cottage, and my friend Mr. Price on a visit in the house. About six months later I received cards to attend at the nuptials of Miss Hattie Julia Maria Anne Finche to Herbert Price. An attack of the gout prevented my putting in an appearance, but I sent both bride and groom a little present. To the daughter of my old friend I gave a pearl necklace; to his son-in-law a diamond ring, with the words inscribed in raised letters, “_De l’audace. Toujours de l’audace._”

I may mention that Grey Seymour and his charming bride honored me with a visit some time, later on, _en route_ to Europe.

THE PRINCIPLE OF BEATITUDE IN HUMAN NATURE.

St. Thomas defines beatitude, in respect to man, to be “the perfect good in which the natural tendency of the human will to universal good attains complete rest.”[119] This is beatitude objectively considered. Subjectively, it is the actual fruition consequent upon attainment, and rest in the quiet possession, of the perfect good which is the object of volition. This fruition is an immanent act within the nature of the human subject, and must therefore proceed from a principle within the human nature. Nature denotes the same thing with essence, expressing only as a distinctive term its being a principle of activity. By reason of his essence, the human being has within him a principle by virtue of which he desires, seeks, and is impelled by the movement given him by his First and Final Cause toward the attainment of beatitude. As intelligent, universal truth is his object, to which his intellect is connatural; as volitive, universal good is his object, to which his will naturally corresponds.

The idea of universal good is obviously the one which lies at the foundation of this conception of beatitude. It is well known that the notion of good as a universal is one of the transcendental predicates; that is, of those which are outside of everything which does or can mark out any generic ratio, or diversity of kind between any existing or possible beings. Good is not a genus or kind, in opposition to some diverse genera or kinds which are not good; and, _à fortiori_, it is not a species, under which individuals are to be classed as specifically different, by the note of goodness, from other individuals who by their specific difference are something else than good. It is the species which completely determines the essence of every existing thing, and the specific difference which marks its essential unlikeness to other things whose essence is other than its own. Therefore no being can be essentially unlike any other by reason of one being good and the other somehow dissimilar to good. The predicate of good belongs to all genera, and, of course, to all species and individuals, as a universal notion transcending all their respective determining notes, and identifying itself, in the analogical sense proper to each of them, with all and singular of these notes.

Good is whatever is consonant to nature, whatever is a perfection, or subserves to the conservation and increase of a perfection. It is coextensive with being, and identical with it, as are all the transcendental notions, which merely present the same object of thought under various phases. Whatever is thinkable, as an object is an entity; as having its own entity undivided in itself and divided from every entity other than itself, is a unity; as an intelligible entity is a verity; as containing in itself reason for the volition that it should be what it is, it is a good. All these notions are contained in the notion of being, and are as universal as being, which has in opposition to it only nothing, that is, no-being, no-one-thing, no-true-thing, no-good, mere negation and nullity.

We are at present concerned only with actually existing rational nature, in its relation to universal being as the object of its volition, or movement towards the universal good in which it seeks for beatitude. Whatever is consonant to rational nature, gives it perfection or subserves to its perfection, is its good. Good is being regarded in its aspect as something desirable, in which the will can rest with complacency. Every actual, concrete essence is good, as such, because it has being, and in so far as it has being; and it presents, therefore, an object to the will which is desirable and in which it can have complacency. The rational nature is in itself a good as an actual being, and it is a good to itself, or, in other words, it is a good for it that it exists. The universe in which it exists is all good in essence and nature. Universal nature is in consonance with itself, and its laws tend to the perfection, conservation, and augmentation of being, throughout its whole extent. The movement of will in rational nature toward the universal good is only a higher kind and mode of an operation which is common to all nature. Things destitute of sense are put into operation toward the general end of the universe by blind and fatal laws, which receive their impulse and direction solely from the will and motive power of their creator. Those which have sense but not reason are incited to movement by a vital impulse and the excitement of their sensitive faculties by external objects. Rational nature moves itself by intelligence and will toward the good which is its object. Intellect has for its connatural object universal being as verity, and tends toward an adequation between itself and its object. So, likewise, the will in respect to the good of being. This adequation constitutes the beatitude of rational nature, and an approximation to it is an approach toward beatitude which constitutes a greater or lesser degree of imperfect felicity. The principle of beatitude has therefore been pointed out and proved to exist in human nature. The intense longing for it is matter of self-consciousness to every human being. The natural tendency and longing for beatitude cannot have been implanted by the Creator in order to be frustrated. There is no place in the nature of things for any other intention and end of creation, except to produce the good of being in all its grades and orders, according to the determinate measure prescribed by the divine intellect and the divine will. The good of inanimate nature necessarily falls short of any final and complete term in itself, because it does not contain any faculty of apprehension and complacency. Mere sensitive apprehension and complacency in living, irrational beings do not adequately supply this deficiency, because they attain only to the lowest and most imperfect good, in a partial and deficient mode. All nature below the rational, therefore, furnishes only an element, an inchoate and incomplete material substratum for the formal and complete good of created being, which can only possess a final actuality and become an end in itself in rational nature. Material beings have only their own essence and existence, which are exclusive and isolated, determined by necessary laws to merely extrinsic states and movements, in which they are totally inert. They have no return upon themselves and no capacity of receiving any other being into their own. Therefore they can have no self-consciousness or self-activity, no cognition or sentiment. Sensitive beings have a partial return upon themselves by sensation and sensitive cognition, and a limited self-activity. A spirit returns upon itself with a complete retroaction, and can receive other beings into itself according to the mode of the recipient, that is, ideally. It has therefore complete self-consciousness and self-activity, intelligence and volition, and in the human essence, by virtue of the union of the rational part with the animal, it has also a more perfect kind of sensitive life. It apprehends and possesses its own being, and universal being outside of itself, as a verity by intelligence, as a good by volition. When it is perfect and permanent in its natural good, the possession of this good is in itself beatitude. There is no other term or effect which can possibly have the ratio of an end to the intention of the Creator in the creative act, for it is the only complete and final good of being. Created being is nothing but a participation of the uncreated and necessary being, and an imitation of it in the finite order. Finite beatitude is, therefore, a participation of the infinite beatitude of the divine nature, and an imitation of it. God alone is THE BEING, who exists by his essence, and possesses being absolutely and in plenitude. In the same sense in which He alone is, whose Name is EGO SUM QUI SUM, He alone is _good_ and He alone is _blessed_. That is, He alone is good by his essence actually and in plenitude, and is alone by his essence possessed of the plenitude of blessedness.

Boethius defines the eternity of God as “the perfect possession, all at once, of boundless life.” This may answer as a definition of the beatitude of God. His being is living being, in all respects boundless, and so absolutely in act that it is incapable of any increase or diminution. The being of God is essentially good, and an object of complacency. The life of God consists in the act of intelligence and volition in which he knows and wills his own being, as infinitely intelligible and infinitely desirable. For God, to be and to live is to be blessed. The vision of his own essence presents to him an object of infinite complacency in which his will rests with a perfect and eternal quietude. What his essence is, and what that good is which constitutes the infinite beatitude of God, we cannot know except in an analogical manner. The universe of created being is an image and imitation of the divine essence. Whatever being and good we can perceive in the works of God we know must have its archetype in the essence of God, existing in a supereminent mode and an infinite plenitude. Created beauty is something which being seen pleases, in which the will reposes with complacency when it is apprehended by the intellect. Infinite, absolute, uncreated beauty must please infinitely the infinite intelligence which beholds it by a comprehensive vision. This is the nearest approach we can make to a conception of the beatitude of God.

The being of God is the archetype and source of all created being, and his infinite beatitude the archetype and source of all finite beatitude in created, intelligent beings. Creation proceeds not from want but from fulness of good in the infinite Being; not from necessity but from free volition. It is an overflow of power, intelligence, and love, diffusive of the good of being from the boundless sea of the divine essence into the streams which it fills. Its ideal possibility is in the divine essence as imitable, presenting to the divine intelligence innumerable terms of the divine omnipotence, and to the divine will innumerable objects of volition and complacency. The act which brings it out of nonexistence into existence proceeds from the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity equally and indivisibly. The origin of the creative act is in the Father, the medium in the Son, the consummation in the Holy Spirit. The almighty word of intelligence and volition calling the nonexistent universe into existence, proceeding from the Father as the origin of infinite and finite essence, in the Word is the creative ideal and measure of all the intelligible and intelligent creation, in the Spirit is the cause and principle of all created good. The formal principiation of the divine essence, proceeding from the Father and the Son as its active principle, whose term is the person of the Holy Spirit, is pure Love. Love is the consummation of the infinite being of God, and its eternal efflorescence is beatitude, the perfect possession of boundless life which is a boundless good, totally, existing in a present whose duration is without any before or after, without beginning or end or successive parts, and unchangeable by any increase or diminution. It is a maxim of philosophy that operation is in accordance with the nature of the operator. An artist produces a work corresponding to the nature of his art. The work of the Holy Spirit is like himself. The divine essence in his person being love, the consummation of the divine work in creation effected by him must be good; and that good in its last result is beatitude. He is “The Lord and Giver of life.” The life of the intelligent creature is like the life of God. He is finite, and therefore his duration is not eternity. It has a beginning, and a before and after, and its totality is not possessed all at once in one present, but its parts succeed each other without end. Although he cannot possess his past and future at one time, he possesses always his present, which glides with him through all time, and is an imitation of the eternal, ever-enduring present of eternity. The perfect possession of all that constitutes his life, without any fear of losing it, constitutes his beatitude. Divine love, diffusive of the good of being out of its own plenitude, can have no other end in creation, in so far as this end is contained within the creation itself, except the beatitude of intellectual creatures.

The idea from which creation receives its form is in the Word, and intellectual creatures are specially made in his image. In the Incarnation, the Word united to his divine nature a rational nature, consubstantial with that which is common to the whole human race, and allied generically to the highest as well as to the lowest orders of created beings, that is, both to the spiritual and the corporeal extremes of nature. The created nature thus assumed into personal unity with the divine nature in Immanuel, who is the only-begotten Son of God the Father from eternity, has become the nature of God, and as such entitled to receive from the divine nature the communication of its plenitude of being and of good, in so far as this is communicable in a finite mode and measure. The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Son, both in the eternal order of the Trinity and in the temporal order of creation, is communicated to the human nature of Immanuel as the principle of life and beatitude. The hypostatic union of created and uncreated nature in the person of Jesus Christ is the masterpiece of the Lord and Giver of life, the ultimate term of his creative act. The beatitude which he imparts to the human nature of Jesus Christ is the supreme participation of its rational intelligence and will in the divine act of comprehensive vision of the divine essence and infinite complacency in its absolute beauty, which constitutes divine beatitude. The angels were destined to the same beatitude, and, those excepted who forfeited their right by sinning, they have attained it. The human race was created for the same destination, and the elect will receive their perfect consummation in the same sempiternal glory and blessedness which belongs of right to the humanity of the Eternal Son, on the day of the universal resurrection.

It is evident that this supernatural beatitude in God completely fulfils the definition of beatitude given by St. Thomas as _bonum perfectum quod totaliter quietat appetitum_. The object of the rational human appetite, that is, of the will, is universal good, which is in God in the most absolute and perfect plenitude. But universal good is also in creatures by participation, and presents a proper object of complacency to the will in perfect harmony with its primary object of beatific love. Our Lord Jesus Christ in his human mind and human heart not only has the immediate intuition of God and of all things in God, together with the love which accompanies this highest mode of knowledge, but also the mode of knowledge and love which is strictly natural. He delights in the contemplation of the beauty of his own human nature, in the works which he performed through it, in its dignity and exaltation, in the splendor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the angels and the saints, in his entire and universal kingdom both of mind and matter. He delights in loving his companions in celestial glory, and in receiving their love, in radiating light and beauty and happiness all around himself through countless realms of space and numberless multitudes of beings. His human nature was not essentially changed at the resurrection, but only glorified. He has therefore that sublimated corporeal and sensitive life which is proper to the nature which he assumed, with the sensitive cognition and enjoyment resulting naturally from its attributes and faculties.

The kingdom of heaven has therefore its visible and natural as well as its divine aspect. Natural beatitude in the possession of universal created good, in the enjoyment of the works of God, in science, in the sentiment of the beautiful in created objects, in activity, in society and friendship, co-exists with the uninterrupted contemplation of the divine essence, and the perfect quietude of everlasting repose on the bosom of God. The quiet and repose of the spirit in beatitude by no means signifies inaction and the slumber of the faculties. God, who is immutable, is most perfect act, and the first mover of all things. The rest of beatitude is in opposition to the restless inquietude of a spirit which has not found its equilibrium, and is impelled by unsatisfied longings to seek for its perfect good. Its rest consists in its having found its equilibrium in the stable possession of the perfect good. But the presence of the due object to the intellect and the will calls forth their most perfect and intense activity, and the very qualities of the glorified bodies of the blessed saints in heaven prove that they also will be active, and not for ever standing still in one posture or reclining indolently on grassy meads, as some seem to imagine is the Christian belief. It is indeed most difficult to form any imaginary pictures of the future life which are in any way satisfactory to reason. But whatever we can represent to ourselves by such efforts which can give some idea of a glory and a beatitude worthy of rational beings in a perfect state, assuredly will be realized in a way far beyond our conceptions.