The Rising Storm

Knowing his friend's highly strung nature, Droopy was much against his going to the country, as he feared that there he would brood over his dismissal. He urged that, while there was no hurry to settle on anything, Roger ought to remain in London, as only in it was he likely to meet people in a situation to offer him some post suitable to his talents, and that if he could first collect a few ideas to think over he would later enjoy a visit to his home much more.

In consequence, instead of staying at Amesbury House for only a few nights, Roger remained on; and, in the company of the foppish, short-sighted, but extremely astute Droopy, once more entered the idle round of pleasure that made up the life of London society.

In the latter half of February fresh impetus was given to interest in the Belgian situation by the arrival of the news of the Emperor Joseph's death; and few vigorous, intelligent, Liberal-minded Monarchs have died in such sad circumstances. He had started out with high hopes of consolidating his vast, scattered dominions and bringing liberty to all his subjects. Diplomatic defeats had prevented him from achieving the former and the backwardness of the peoples he governed prevented the latter. At the time of his death Belgium had declared her independence; the nobles of Hungary had forced him to cancel all his reforms with the single exception of the abolition of serfdom; he was at war with Turkey in the south; his only ally, Catherine II of Russia, was in no situation to help him; and the Turks had just concluded an alliance with the Prussians, who, in conjunction with the Poles, were now mass­ing an army with the intention of invading Austria from the north. So it looked as if the whole Habsburg Empire was about to fall into ruins.

He was succeeded by his younger brother, Leopold of Tuscany; and Roger wondered if even the outstanding abilities of the equally Liberal-minded but much more cautious Grand Duke would prove up to pulling the Empire out of the mess it was in. He wondered, too, if the beautiful Donna Livia had accompanied Leopold to Vienna; and recalled his brief affaire with her as one of the most amusing and delightful adventures of its kind that fortune had ever sent him.

Early in March his memories of another titian-haired lady with whom he had dallied, although in a more discreet manner, were revived with much greater directness. At a ball at Chandos House he ran into Amanda Godfrey.

Somehow he had never associated her with London, so he was all the more struck by seeing her for the first time in such a setting and dressed in the height of fashion. Her tall figure and graceful carriage lent themselves well to fuller petticoats and a higher headdress than she ever wore in the country; yet she retained her natural, imperturbable manner, which made her even more outstanding among the affected young women who were flirting their fans and sniffing their salts near by.

Roger at once asked her for a dance, and she said with her usual vagueness that she had no idea if she had any left, but would be enchanted if he cared to snatch her sometime during the evening; so snatch her he did, and to avoid possible trouble with other claimants to her company they sat out three dances running in an alcove off the refreshment-room.

After they had been talking for some twenty minutes she said: 'Roger, my dear, you are mightily improved since we last met, and I am happy indeed to find you so much more like the man you were a twelvemonth back.'

'That is easy to explain,' he laughed. 'I am no longer in love. Except, of course, in being newly smitten with your fair self.'

'You foolish fellow,' she smiled languidly. 'But I am glad to hear it. That you are no longer in love, I mean. 'Tis a plaguey wearing business.'

He sighed. 'There is certainly no other to compare with it for depriving a man of his normal faculties, and reducing him to a morose, hag-ridden shadow of himself.'

'Or a woman either. I pray God that I may never again be afflicted with the disease in virulent form.'

'So you, too, have known that agony?'

She nodded. 'I thought I would ne'er recover when first we met, but your gallant attentions over that Christmas did much to help me. They were flattering without being serious enough to cause me any perturbation, so the very tonic needed to restore my amour propre’

'I am glad,' said Roger seriously, 'that I should have been even the unconscious means of assisting your recovery.'

'I would that I could have done as much for you,' she replied, 'but your amour propre needed no restoring.'

'Your kindness in allowing me the status of a favoured beau last summer, while knowing that my heart was set elsewhere, was truly generous, and helped me mightily.'

'Nay; not in the healing of your wound.' She shook her head, then went on thoughtfully: 'I had been near desperate with love for a man who would have none of me. He thought me a fool. Mayhap he is right in that, for I know well that at times I both say and do the most plaguey stupid things. 'Twas my hard lot to have to play gooseberry to a cousin of mine while he courted and married her. She has a bookish cleverness that I shall ever lack; but a mean, petty mind; and that made it all the harder.

'Then there came Christmas at Lymington, and yourself. I knew full well that your intentions were not serious; but you were the hand­somest beau in the district, so well enough to flirt with. And it was, I think, the very fact that you were not obsessed with my physical attractions that made you talk to me the more. I mean, apart from the usual persiflage of gallantry. You would not recall it, but you asked my opinion upon a hundred matters, ignored my vagueness about things that are of little account, and showed a genuine interest in all I had to say. On one occasion you said to me: ' 'Tis the combination of such femininity with so clear and deep a mind as yours, Amanda, that enables great courtesans to rule Empires.' Oh, Roger, had you been the ugliest man on earth I could have kissed you for that!'

He placed a hand gently over hers. 'My dear, I vow to you I meant it.'

She smiled. 'The way you said it at the time convinced me of that; and although clever I shall never be, no one will ever again make me believe that at bottom I am a fool. But your case last summer was very different. You were in love with a woman who returned your love, but debarred by circumstances from attaining your mutual desires. Con­sciously or unconsciously I could do nothing to aid you in such a pass. Yet I find you now recovered. Tell me; how have you managed to free yourself from the grip of this ghastly malady that is praised by poets with such stupendous unreason?'

'I hardly know myself,' Roger confessed. 'In part, perhaps, 'tis because when I was last abroad I met the lady of my love again, under unexpected and most-favourable conditions. Yet since we were little more than a week together 'tis no case of having satiated our passion, on either side. I moved heaven and earth in an attempt to persuade her to fly with me, but she would not; and her refusal was no slight upon her love, as she considered herself tied from the fact that in a few weeks now she is to bear her husband a child.'

'You could rejoin her later; visit her from time to time and seize such opportunities as offer to renew your transports.'

'Nay. What kind of a life would that be? 'Tis better, far, that she should build a new life round her child; and that I should consider myself free to marry.'

'If you marry—even had you been able to marry her—do you believe that you would remain faithful to a wife?'

Roger laughed. 'You have me there! I fear 'tis most unlikely.'

'I am glad you have the honesty to admit it,' Amanda smiled, 'for all I have ever learnt of men has led me to believe that 'tis against nature in them to be monogamous. Granted then that you would be unfaithful to a wife, why should you not marry if you have a mind to it, and still at intervals indulge your passion for your Spanish mistress, rather than for some other?'

'Your logic is unanswerable,' Roger replied, after a moment. 'But recently my circumstances have changed, and in future 'tis probable that my work will lie here in London. Were I to marry, 'tis hardly likely that my wife would be agreeable to my going gallivanting alone on the Continent.'

'Then she would be a ninny,' Amanda declared serenely. 'A wife whose husband deceives her only when he is abroad should count herself lucky. At least she is spared the sweet innuendoes of her friends when his latest affairebecomes common knowledge in her own circle. I only pray that I may be sent a husband who betakes himself once or twice a year to foreign parts and confines his infidelities to his absences from England.'