Gallantry | Page 8

had better not refer
to that boy-and-girl affair. You cannot blame me for your debauched
manner of living. I found before it was too late that I did not love you. I
was only a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in
my fancies."
The Vicar had caught her by each wrist. "You don't understand, of
course. You never understood, for you have no more heart than one of
those pink-and-white bisque figures that you resemble. You don't love
me, and therefore I will go to the devil' may not be an all-rational

deduction, but 'tis very human logic. You don't understand that, do you,
Anastasia? You don't understand how when one is acutely miserable
one remembers that at the bottom of a wineglass--or even at the bottom
of a tumbler of gin,--one may come upon happiness, or at least upon
acquiescence to whatever the niggling gods may send. You don't
understand how one remembers, when the desired woman is lost, that
there are other women whose lips are equally red and whose hearts are
tenderer and--yes, whose virtue is less exigent. No; women never
understand these things: and in any event, you would not understand,
because you are only an adorable pink-and-white fool."
"Oh, oh!" she cried, struggling, "How dare you? You insult me, you
coward!"
"Well, you can always comfort yourself with the reflection that it
scarcely matters what a sot like me may elect to say. And, since you
understand me now no more than formerly, Anastasia, I tell you that
the lover turned adrift may well profit by the example of his
predecessors. Other lovers have been left forsaken, both in trousers and
in ripped petticoats; and I have heard that when Chryseis was reft away
from Agamemnon, the cnax andrôn made himself tolerably
comfortable with Briseis; and that, when Theseus sneaked off in the
night, Ariadne, after having wept for a decent period, managed in the
ultimate to console herself with Theban Bacchus,--which I suppose to
be a courteous method of stating that the daughter of Minos took to
drink. So the forsaken lover has his choice of consolation--in wine or in
that dearer danger, woman. I have tried both, Anastasia. And I tell
you--"
He dropped her hands as though they had been embers. Lord Rokesle
had come quietly into the hall.
"Why, what's this?" Lord Rokesle demanded. "Simon, you aren't
making love to Lady Allonby, I hope? Fie, man! remember your cloth."
Simon Orts wheeled--a different being, servile and cringing. "Your
Lordship is pleased to be pleasant. Indeed, though, I fear that your ears
must burn, sir, for I was but now expatiating upon the manifold

kindnesses your Lordship has been so generous as to confer upon your
unworthy friend. I was admiring Lady Allonby's ruffle,
sir,--Valenciennes, I take it, and very choice."
Lord Rokesle laughed. "So I am to thank you for blowing my trumpet,
am I?" said Lord Rokesle. "Well, you are not a bad fellow, Simon, so
long as you are sober. And now be off with you to Holles--the rascal is
dying, they tell me. My luck, Simon! He made up a cravat better than
any one in the kingdom."
"The ways of Providence are inscrutable," Simon Orts considered; "and
if Providence has in verity elected to chasten your Lordship, doubtless
it shall be, as anciently in the case of Job the Patriarch, repaid by a
recompense, by a thousandfold recompense." And after a meaning
glance toward Lady Allonby,--a glance that said: "I, too, have a
tongue,"--he was mounting the stairway to the upper corridor when
Lord Rokesle called to him.
"By my conscience! I forgot," said Lord Rokesle; "don't leave
Stornoway without seeing me again, I shall want you by and by."
II
Lord Rokesle sat down upon the long, high-backed bench, beside the
fire, and facing Lady Allonby's arm-chair.
Neither he nor Lady Allonby spoke for a while.
In a sombre way Lord Rokesle was a handsome man, and to-night, in
brown and gold, very stately. His bearing savored faintly of the hidalgo;
indeed, his mother was a foreign woman, cast ashore on Usk, from a
wrecked Spanish vessel, and incontinently married by the despot of the
island. For her, Death had delayed his advent unmercifully; but her
reason survived the marriage by two years only, and there were those
familiar with the late Lord Rokesle's [Footnote: Born 1685, and
accidentally killed by Sir Piers Sabiston in 1738; an accurate account of
this notorious duellist, profligate, charlatan, and playwright is given in
Ireson's Letters.] peculiarities who considered that in this, at least, the

crazed lady was fortunate. Among these gossips it was also esteemed a
matter deserving comment that in the shipwrecks not infrequent about
Usk the women sometimes survived, but the men never.
Now