Colonel Quaritch, V.C.: Chapter 13

Chapter 13

ABOUT ART

Edward Cossey drove from the Castle in a far from happy frame of mind.
To begin with, the Squire and his condescending way of doing business
irritated him very much, so much that once or twice in the course of
the conversation he was within an ace of breaking the whole thing off,
and only restrained himself with difficulty from doing so. As it was,
notwithstanding all the sacrifices and money risks which he was
undergoing to take up these mortgages, and they were very considerable
even to a man of his great prospects, he felt that he had been placed
in the position of a person who receives a favour rather than of a
person who grants one. Moreover there was an assumption of superiority
about the old man, a visible recognition of the gulf which used to be
fixed between the gentleman of family and the man of business who has
grown rich by trading in money and money's worth, which was the more
galling because it was founded on actual fact, and Edward Cossey knew
it. All his foibles and oddities notwithstanding, it would have been
impossible for any person of discernment to entertain a comparison
between the half-ruined Squire and the young banker, who would shortly
be worth between half a million and a million sterling. The former was
a representative, though a somewhat erratic one, of all that is best
in the old type of Englishmen of gentle blood, which is now so rapidly
vanishing, and of the class to which to a large extent this country
owes her greatness. His very eccentricities were wandering lights that
showed unsuspected heights and depths in his character--love of
country and his country's honour, respect for the religion of his
fathers, loyalty of mind and valour for the right. Had he lived in
other times, like some of the old Boisseys and de la Molles, who were
at Honham before him, he would probably have died in the Crusades or
at Cressy, or perhaps more uselessly, for his King at Marston Moor, or
like that last but one of the true de la Molles, kneeling in the
courtyard of his Castle and defying his enemies to wring his secret
from him. Now few such opportunities are left to men of his stamp, and
they are, perhaps as a consequence, dying out of an age which is
unsuited to them, and indeed to most strong growths of individual
character. It would be much easier to deal with a gentleman like the
Squire of this history if we could only reach down one of those suits
of armour from the walls of his vestibule, and put it on his back, and
take that long two-handled sword which last flashed on Flodden Field
from its resting-place beneath the clock, and at the end see him die
as a loyal knight should do in the forefront of his retainers, with
the old war cry of "/a Delamol--a Delamol/" upon his lips. As it is,
he is an aristocratic anachronism, an entity unfitted to deal with the
elements of our advanced and in some ways emasculated age. His body
should have been where his heart was--in the past. What chance have
such as he against the Quests of this polite era of political economy
and penny papers?

No wonder that Edward Cossey felt his inferiority to this symbol and
type of the things that no more are, yes even in the shadow of his
thirty thousand pounds. For here we have a different breed. Goldsmiths
two centuries ago, then bankers from generation to generation, money
bees seeking for wealth and counting it and hiving it from decade to
decade, till at last gold became to them what honour is to the nobler
stock--the pervading principle, and the clink of the guinea and the
rustling of the bank note stirred their blood as the clank of armed
men and the sound of the flapping banner with its three golden hawks
flaming in the sun, was wont to set the hearts of the race of Boissey,
of Dofferleigh and of de la Molle, beating to that tune to which
England marched on to win the world.

It is a foolish and vain thing to scoff at business and those who do
it in the market places, and to shout out the old war cries of our
fathers, in the face of a generation which sings the song of capital,
or groans in heavy labour beneath the banners of their copyrighted
trade marks; and besides, who would buy our books (also copyrighted
except in America) if we did? Let us rather rise up and clothe
ourselves, and put a tall hat upon our heads and do homage to the new
Democracy.

And yet in the depths of our hearts and the quiet of our chambers let
us sometimes cry to the old days, and the old men, and the old ways of
thought, let us cry "/Ave atque vale/,--Hail and farewell." Our
fathers' armour hangs above the door, their portraits decorate the
wall, and their fierce and half-tamed hearts moulder beneath the
stones of yonder church. Hail and farewell to you, our fathers!
Perchance a man might have had worse company than he met with at your
boards, and even have found it not more hard to die beneath your
sword-cuts than to be gently cozened to the grave by duly qualified
practitioners at two guineas a visit.

And the upshot of all this is that the Squire was not altogether wrong
when he declared in the silence of /his/ chamber that Edward Cossey
was not quite a gentleman. He showed it when he allowed himself to be
guided by the arts of Mr. Quest into the adoption of the idea of
obtaining a lien upon Ida, to be enforced if convenient. He showed it
again, and what is more he committed a huge mistake, when tempted
thereto by the opportunity of the moment, he made a conditional
bargain with the said Ida, whereby she was placed in pledge for a sum
of thirty thousand pounds, well knowing that her honour would be equal
to the test, and that if convenient to him she would be ready to pay
the debt. He made a huge mistake, for had he been quite a gentleman,
he would have known that he could not have adopted a worse road to the
affections of a lady. Had he been content to advance the money and
then by-and-bye, though even that would not have been gentlemanlike,
have gently let transpire what he had done at great personal expense
and inconvenience, her imagination might have been touched and her
gratitude would certainly have been excited. But the idea of
bargaining, the idea of purchase, which after what had passed could
never be put aside, would of necessity be fatal to any hope of tender
feeling. Shylock might get his bond, but of his own act he had
debarred himself from the possibility of ever getting more.

Now Edward Cossey was not lacking in that afterglow of refinement
which is left by a course of public school and university education.
No education can make a gentleman of a man who is not a gentleman at
heart, for whether his station in life be that of a ploughboy or an
Earl, the gentleman, like the poet, is born and not made. But it can
and does if he be of an observant nature, give him a certain insight
into the habits of thought and probable course of action of the
members of that class to which he outwardly, and by repute, belongs.
Such an insight Edward Cossey possessed, and at the present moment its
possession was troubling him very much. His trading instincts, the
desire bred in him to get something for his money, had led him to make
the bargain, but now that it was done his better judgment rose up
against it. For the truth may as well be told at once, although he
would as yet scarcely acknowledge it to himself, Edward Cossey was
already violently enamoured of Ida. He was by nature a passionate man,
and as it chanced she had proved the magnet with power to draw his
passion. But as the reader is aware, there existed another
complication in his life for which he was not perhaps entirely
responsible. When still quite a youth in mind, he had suddenly found
himself the object of the love of a beautiful and enthralling woman,
and had after a more or less severe struggle yielded to the
temptation, as, out of a book, many young men would have done. Now to
be the object of the violent affection of such a woman as Belle Quest
is no doubt very flattering and even charming for a while. But if that
affection is not returned in kind, if in short the gentleman does not
love the lady quite as warmly as she loves him, then in course of time
the charm is apt to vanish and even the flattery to cease to give
pleasure. Also, when as in the present case the connection is wrong in
itself and universally condemned by society, the affection which can
still triumph and endure on both sides must be of a very strong and
lasting order. Even an unprincipled man dislikes the acting of one
long lie such as an intimacy of the sort necessarily involves, and if
the man happens to be rather weak than unprincipled, the dislike is
apt to turn to loathing, some portion of which will certainly be
reflected on to the partner of his ill-doing.

These are general principles, but the case of Edward Cossey offered no
exception to them, indeed it illustrated them well. He had never been
in love with Mrs. Quest; to begin with she had shown herself too much
in love with him to necessitate any display of emotion on his part.
Her violent and unreasoning passion wearied and alarmed him, he never
knew what she would do next and was kept in a continual condition of
anxiety and irritation as to what the morrow might bring forth. Too
sure of her unaltering attachment to have any pretext for jealousy, he
found it exceedingly irksome to be obliged to avoid giving cause for
it on his side, which, however, he dreaded doing lest he should
thereby bring about some overwhelming catastrophe. Mrs. Quest was, as
he well knew, not a woman who would pause to consider consequences if
once her passionate jealousy were really aroused. It was even doubtful
if the certainty of her own ruin would check her. Her love was
everything to her, it was her life, the thing she lived for, and
rather than tamely lose it, it seemed extremely probable to Edward
Cossey that she would not hesitate to face shame, or even death.
Indeed it was through this great passion of hers, and through it only,
that he could hope to influence her. If he could persuade her to
release him, by pointing out that a continuance of the intrigue must
involve him in ruin of some sort, all might yet go well with him. If
not his future was a dark one.

This was the state of affairs before he became attached to Ida de la
Molle, after which the horizon grew blacker than ever. At first he
tried to get out of the difficulty by avoiding Ida, but it did not
answer. She exercised an irresistible attraction over him. Her calm
and stately presence was to him what the sight of mountain snows is to
one scorched by continual heat. He was weary of passionate outbursts,
tears, agonies, alarms, presentiments, and all the paraphernalia of
secret love. It appeared to him, looking up at the beautiful snow,
that if once he could reach it life would be all sweetness and light,
that there would be no more thirst, no more fear, and no more forced
marches through those ill-odoured quagmires of deceit. The more he
allowed his imagination to dwell upon the picture, the fiercer grew
his longing to possess it. Also, he knew well enough that to marry a
woman like Ida de la Molle would be the greatest blessing that could
happen to him, for she would of necessity lift him up above himself.
She had little money it was true, but that was a very minor matter to
him, and she had birth and breeding and beauty, and a presence which
commands homage. And so it came to pass that he fell deeply and yet
more deeply in love with Ida, and that as he did so his connection
with Mrs. Quest (although we have seen him but yesterday offering in a
passing fit of tenderness and remorse to run away with her) became
more and more irksome to him. And now, as he drove leisurely back to
Boisingham, he felt that he had imperilled all his hopes by a rash
indulgence in his trading instincts.

Presently the road took a turn and a sight was revealed that did not
tend to improve his already irritable mood. Just here the roadway was
bordered by a deep bank covered with trees which sloped down to the
valley of the Ell, at this time of the year looking its loveliest in
the soft autumn lights. And here, seated on a bank of turf beneath the
shadow of a yellowing chestnut tree, in such position as to get a view
of the green valley and flashing river where cattle red and white
stood chewing the still luxuriant aftermath, was none other than Ida
herself, and what was more, Ida accompanied by Colonel Quaritch. They
were seated on campstools, and in front of each of them was an easel.
Clearly they were painting together, for as Edward gazed, the Colonel
rose, came up close behind his companion's stool made a ring of his
thumb and first finger, gazed critically through it at the lady's
performance, then sadly shook his head and made some remark. Thereupon
Ida turned round and began an animated discussion.

"Hang me," said Edward to himself, "if she has not taken up with that
confounded old military frump. Painting together! Ah, I know what that
means. Well, I should have thought that if there was one man more than
another whom she would have disliked, it would have been that
battered-looking Colonel."

He pulled up his horse and reflected for a moment, then handing the
reins to his servant, jumped out, and climbing through a gap in the
fence walked up to the tree. So engrossed were they in their argument,
that they neither saw nor heard him.

"It's nonsense, Colonel Quaritch, perfect nonsense, if you will
forgive me for telling you so," Ida was saying with warmth. "It is all
very well for you to complain that my trees are a blur, and the castle
nothing but a splotch, but I am looking at the water, and if I am
looking at the water, it is quite impossible that I should see the
trees and the cows otherwise than I have rendered them on the canvas.
True art is to paint what the painter sees and as he sees it."

Colonel Quaritch shook his head and sighed.

"The cant of the impressionist school," he said sadly; "on the
contrary, the business of the artist is to paint what he knows to be
there," and he gazed complacently at his own canvas, which had the
appearance of a spirited drawing of a fortified place, or of the
contents of a child's Noah's ark, so stiff, so solid, so formidable
were its outlines, trees and animals.

Ida shrugged her shoulders, laughed merrily, and turned round to find
herself face to face with Edward Cossey. She started back, and her
expression hardened--then she stretched out her hand and said, "How do
you do?" in her very coldest tones.

"How do you do, Miss de la Molle?" he said, assuming as unconcerned an
air as he could, and bowing stiffly to Harold Quaritch, who returned
the bow and went back to his canvas, which was placed a few paces off.

"I saw you painting," went on Edward Cossey in a low tone, "so I
thought I would come and tell you that I have settled the matter with
Mr. de la Molle."

"Oh, indeed," answered Ida, hitting viciously at a wasp with her paint
brush. "Well, I hope that you will find the investment a satisfactory
one. And now, if you please, do not let us talk any more about money,
because I am quite tired of the subject." Then raising her voice she
went on, "Come here, Colonel Quaritch, and Mr. Cossey shall judge
between us," and she pointed to her picture.

Edward glanced at the Colonel with no amiable air. "I know nothing
about art," he said, "and I am afraid that I must be getting on. Good-
morning," and taking off his hat to Ida, he turned and went.

"Umph," said the Colonel, looking after him with a quizzical
expression, "that gentleman seems rather short in his temper. Wants
knocking about the world a bit, I should say. But I beg your pardon, I
suppose that he is a friend of yours, Miss de la Molle?"

"He is an acquaintance of mine," answered Ida with emphasis.

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