第77章 EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN(2)

'I think I have met the gentleman,' said Mrs. Desborough sweetly; 'but I cannot imagine where it was.'

'Oh no,' cried Somerset fervently: 'I have no notion - I cannot conceive - where it could have been. Indeed,' he continued, growing in emphasis, 'I think it highly probable that it's a mistake.'

'And you, Challoner?' asked Harry, 'you seemed to recognise her too.'

'These are both friends of yours, Harry?' said the lady.

'Delighted, I am sure. I do not remember to have met Mr. Challoner.'

Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having groped after his cigar. 'I do not remember to have had the pleasure,' he responded huskily.

'Well, and Mr. Godall?' asked Mrs. Desborough.

'Are you the lady that has an appointment with old - ' began Somerset, and paused blushing. 'Because if so,' he resumed, 'I was to announce you at once.'

And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed into a small pavilion which had been added to the back of the house. On the roof, the rain resounded musically. The walls were lined with maps and prints and a few works of reference.

Upon a table was a large-scale map of Egypt and the Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on which, by the aid of coloured pins, the progress of the different wars was being followed day by day. A light, refreshing odour of the most delicate tobacco hung upon the air; and a fire, not of foul coal, but of clear-flaming resinous billets, chattered upon silver dogs.

In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat in a morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to the rain upon the roof.

'Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,' said he, 'and have you since last night adopted any fresh political principle?'

'The lady, sir,' said Somerset, with another blush.

'You have seen her, I believe?' returned Mr. Godall; and on Somerset's replying in the affirmative, 'You will excuse me, my dear sir,' he resumed, 'if I offer you a hint. I think it not improbable this lady may desire entirely to forget the past. From one gentleman to another, no more words are necessary.'

A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that grave and touching urbanity that so well became him.

'I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,' he said; 'and shall be still more so, if what were else a barren courtesy and a pleasure personal to myself, shall prove to be of serious benefit to you and Mr. Desborough.'

'Your Highness,' replied Clara, 'I must begin with thanks; it is like what I have heard of you, that you should thus take up the case of the unfortunate; and as for my Harry, he is worthy of all that you can do.' She paused.

'But for yourself?' suggested Mr. Godall - 'it was thus you were about to continue, I believe.'

'You take the words out of my mouth,' she said. 'For myself, it is different.'

'I am not here to be a judge of men,' replied the Prince;

'still less of women. I am now a private person like yourself and many million others; but I am one who still fights upon the side of quiet. Now, madam, you know better than I, and God better than you, what you have done to mankind in the past; I pause not to inquire; it is with the future I concern myself, it is for the future I demand security. I would not willingly put arms into the hands of a disloyal combatant; and I dare not restore to wealth one of the levyers of a private and a barbarous war. I speak with some severity, and yet I pick my terms. I tell myself continually that you are a woman; and a voice continually reminds me of the children whose lives and limbs you have endangered. A woman,' he repeated solemnly - 'and children.

Possibly, madam, when you are yourself a mother, you will feel the bite of that antithesis: possibly when you kneel at night beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you, heavier than any shame; and when your child lies in the pain and danger of disease, you shall hesitate to kneel before your Maker.'

'You look at the fault,' she said, 'and not at the excuse.

Has your own heart never leaped within you at some story of oppression? But, alas, no! for you were born upon a throne.'

'I was born of woman,' said the Prince; 'I came forth from my mother's agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings.

This, which you forgot, I have still faithfully remembered.

Is it not one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships at sea and a great dust of battles on shore; and casting anxiously about for what should be the cause of so many and painful preparations, spied at last, in the centre of all, a mother and her babe? These, madam, are my politics; and the verses, which are by Mr. Coventry Patmore, I have caused to be translated into the Bohemian tongue. Yes, these are my politics: to change what we can, to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions, and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.'

There was a silence of a moment.

'I fear, madam,' resumed the Prince, 'that I but weary you.

My views are formal like myself; and like myself, they also begin to grow old. But I must still trouble you for some reply.'

'I can say but one thing,' said Mrs. Desborough: 'I love my husband.'

'It is a good answer,' returned the Prince; 'and you name a good influence, but one that need not be conterminous with life.'