Вальтер Скотт
Peveril of the Peak
“Well, Colonel,” said the Duke, “we have been long strangers – how have matters gone with you?”
“As with other men of action in quiet times,” answered the colonel, “or as a good war-caper25 that lies high and dry in a muddy creek, till seams and planks are rent and riven.”
“Well, Colonel,” said the Duke, “I have used your valour before now, and I may again; so that I shall speedily see that the vessel is careened, and undergoes a thorough repair.”
“I conjecture, then,” said the Colonel, “that your Grace has some voyage in hand?”
“No, but there is one which I want to interrupt,” replied the Duke.
“Tis but another stave of the same tune. – Well, my lord, I listen,” answered the stranger.
“Nay,” said the Duke, “it is but a trifling matter after all. – You know Ned Christian?”
“Ay, surely, my lord,” replied the Colonel, “we have been long known to each other.”
“He is about to go down to Derbyshire to seek a certain niece of his, whom he will scarcely find there. Now, I trust to your tried friendship to interrupt his return to London. Go with him, or meet him, cajole him, or assail him, or do what thou wilt with him – only keep him from London for a fortnight at least, and then I care little how soon he comes.”
“For by that time, I suppose,” replied the Colonel, “any one may find the wench that thinks her worth the looking for.”
“Thou mayst think her worth the looking for thyself, Colonel,” rejoined the Duke; “I promise you she hath many a thousand stitched to her petticoat; such a wife would save thee from skeldering on the public.”
“My lord, I sell my blood and my sword, but not my honour,” answered the man sullenly; “if I marry, my bed may be a poor, but it shall be an honest one.”
“Then thy wife will be the only honest matter in thy possession, Colonel – at least since I have known you,” replied the Duke.
“Why, truly, your Grace may speak your pleasure on that point. It is chiefly your business which I have done of late; and if it were less strictly honest than I could have wished, the employer was to blame as well as the agent. But for marrying a cast-off mistress, the man (saving your Grace, to whom I am bound) lives not who dares propose it to me.”
The Duke laughed loudly. “Why, this is mine Ancient Pistol’s vein,” he replied.
– “Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become,
And by my side wear steel? – then Lucifer take all!”
“My breeding is too plain to understand ends of playhouse verse, my lord,” said the Colonel suddenly. “Has your Grace no other service to command me?”
“None – only I am told you have published a Narrative concerning the Plot.”
“What should ail me, my lord?” said the Colonel; “I hope I am a witness as competent as any that has yet appeared?”
“Truly, I think so to the full,” said the Duke; “and it would have been hard, when so much profitable mischief was going, if so excellent a Protestant as yourself had not come in for a share.”
“I came to take your Grace’s commands, not to be the object of your wit,” said the Colonel.
“Gallantly spoken, most resolute and most immaculate Colonel! As you are to be on full pay in my service for a month to come, I pray your acceptance of this purse, for contingents and equipments, and you shall have my instructions from time to time.”
“They shall be punctually obeyed, my lord,” said the Colonel; “I know the duty of a subaltern officer. I wish your Grace a good morning.”
So saying, he pocketed the purse, without either affecting hesitation, or expressing gratitude, but merely as a part of a transaction in the regular way of business, and stalked from the apartment with the same sullen gravity which marked his entrance. “Now, there goes a scoundrel after my own heart,” said the Duke; “a robber from his cradle, a murderer since he could hold a knife, a profound hypocrite in religion, and a worse and deeper hypocrite in honour, – would sell his soul to the devil to accomplish any villainy, and would cut the throat of his brother, did he dare to give the villainy he had so acted its right name. – Now, why stand you amazed, good Master Jerningham, and look on me as you would on some monster of Ind, when you had paid your shilling to see it, and were staring out your pennyworth with your eyes as round as a pair of spectacles? Wink, man, and save them, and then let thy tongue untie the mystery.”
“On my word, my Lord Duke,” answered Jerningham, “since I am compelled to speak, I can only say, that the longer I live with your Grace, I am the more at a loss to fathom your motives of action. Others lay plans, either to attain profit or pleasure by their execution; but your Grace’s delight is to counteract your own schemes, when in the very act of performance; like a child – forgive me – that breaks its favourite toy, or a man who should set fire to the house he has half built.”
“And why not, if he wanted to warm his hands at the blaze?” said the Duke.
“Ay, my lord,” replied his dependent; “but what if, in doing so, he should burn his fingers? – My lord, it is one of your noblest qualities, that you will sometimes listen to the truth without taking offence; but were it otherwise, I could not, at this moment, help speaking out at every risk.”
“Well, say on, I can bear it,” said the Duke, throwing himself into an easy-chair, and using his toothpick with graceful indifference and equanimity; “I love to hear what such potsherds as thou art, think of the proceeding of us who are of the pure porcelain clay of the earth.”
“In the name of Heaven, my lord, let me then ask you,” said Jerningham, “what merit you claim, or what advantage you expect, from having embroiled everything in which you are concerned to a degree which equals the chaos of the blind old Roundhead’s poem which your Grace is so fond of? To begin with the King. In spite of good-humour, he will be incensed at your repeated rivalry.”
“His Majesty defied me to it.”
“You have lost all hopes of the Isle, by quarrelling with Christian.”
“I have ceased to care a farthing about it,” replied the Duke.
“In Christian himself, whom you have insulted, and to whose family you intend dishonour, you have lost a sagacious, artful, and cool-headed instrument and adherent,” said the monitor.
“Poor Jerningham!” answered the Duke; “Christian would say as much for thee, I doubt not, wert thou discarded tomorrow. It is the common error of such tools as you and he to think themselves indispensable. As to his family, what was never honourable cannot be dishonoured by any connection with my house.”
“I say nothing of Chiffinch,” said Jerningham, “offended as he will be when he learns why, and by whom, his scheme has been ruined, and the lady spirited away – He and his wife, I say nothing of them.”
“You need not,” said the Duke; “for were they even fit persons to speak to me about, the Duchess of Portsmouth has bargained for their disgrace.”
“Then this bloodhound of a Colonel, as he calls himself, your Grace cannot even lay him on a quest which is to do you service, but you must do him such indignity at the same time, as he will not fail to remember, and be sure to fly at your throat should he ever have an opportunity of turning on you.”
“I will take care he has none,” said the Duke; “and yours, Jerningham, is a low-lived apprehension. Beat your spaniel heartily if you would have him under command. Ever let your agents see you know what they are, and prize them accordingly. A rogue, who must needs be treated as a man of honour, is apt to get above his work. Enough, therefore, of your advice and censure, Jerningham; we differ in every particular. Were we both engineers, you would spend your life in watching some old woman’s wheel, which spins flax by the ounce; I must be in the midst of the most varied and counteracting machinery, regulating checks and counter-checks, balancing weights, proving springs and wheels, directing and controlling a hundred combined powers.”
“And your fortune, in the meanwhile?” said Jerningham; “pardon this last hint, my lord.”
“My fortune,” said the Duke, “is too vast to be hurt by a petty wound; and I have, as thou knowest, a thousand salves in store for the scratches and scars which it sometimes receives in greasing my machinery.”
“Your Grace does not mean Dr. Wilderhead’s powder of projection?”
“Pshaw! he is a quacksalver, and mountebank, and beggar.”
“Or Solicitor Drowndland’s plan for draining the fens?”
“He is a cheat, —videlicet, an attorney.”
“Or the Laird of Lackpelf’s sale of Highland woods?”
“He is a Scotsman,” said the Duke, – “videlicet, both cheat and beggar.”
“These streets here, upon the site of your noble mansion-house?” said Jerningham.
“The architect’s a bite, and the plan’s a bubble. I am sick of the sight of this rubbish, and I will soon replace our old alcoves, alleys, and flower-pots by an Italian garden and a new palace.”
“That, my lord, would be to waste, not to improve your fortune,” said his domestic.
“Clodpate, and muddy spirit that thou art, thou hast forgot the most hopeful scheme of all – the South Sea Fisheries – their stock is up 50 per cent. already. Post down to the Alley, and tell old Mansses to buy £20,000 for me. – Forgive me, Plutus, I forgot to lay my sacrifice on thy shrine, and yet expected thy favours! – Fly post-haste, Jerningham – for thy life, for thy life, for thy life!”26
With hands and eyes uplifted, Jerningham left the apartment; and the Duke, without thinking a moment farther on old or new intrigues – on the friendship he had formed, or the enmity he had provoked – on the beauty whom he had carried off from her natural protectors, as well as from her lover – or on the monarch against whom he had placed himself in rivalship, – sat down to calculate chances with all the zeal of Demoivre, tired of the drudgery in half-an-hour, and refused to see the zealous agent whom he had employed in the city, because he was busily engaged in writing a new lampoon.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Ah! changeful head, and fickle heart!
– PROGRESS OF DISCONTENT.
No event is more ordinary in narratives of this nature, than the abduction of the female on whose fate the interest is supposed to turn; but that of Alice Bridgenorth was thus far particular, that she was spirited away by the Duke of Buckingham, more in contradiction than in the rivalry of passion; and that, as he made his first addresses to her at Chiffinch’s, rather in the spirit of rivalry to this Sovereign, than from any strong impression which her beauty had made on his affections, so he had formed the sudden plan of spiriting her away by means of his dependents, rather to perplex Christian, the King, Chiffinch, and all concerned, than because he had any particular desire for her society at his own mansion. Indeed, so far was this from being the case, that his Grace was rather surprised than delighted with the success of the enterprise which had made her an inmate there, although it is probable he might have thrown himself into an uncontrollable passion, had he learned its miscarriage instead of its success.
Twenty-four hours had passed over since he had returned to his own roof, before, notwithstanding sundry hints from Jerningham, he could even determine on the exertion necessary to pay his fair captive a visit; and then it was with the internal reluctance of one who can only be stirred from indolence by novelty.
“I wonder what made me plague myself about this wench,” said he, “and doom myself to encounter all the hysterical rhapsodies of a country Phillis, with her head stuffed with her grandmother’s lessons about virtue and the Bible-book, when the finest and best-bred women in town may be had upon more easy terms. It is a pity one cannot mount the victor’s car of triumph without having a victory to boast of; yet, faith, it is what most of our modern gallants do, though it would not become Buckingham. – Well, I must see her,” he concluded, “though it were but to rid the house of her. The Portsmouth will not hear of her being set at liberty near Charles, so much is she afraid of a new fair seducing the old sinner from his allegiance. So how the girl is to be disposed of – for I shall have little fancy to keep her here, and she is too wealthy to be sent down to Cliefden as a housekeeper – is a matter to be thought on.”
He then called for such a dress as might set off his natural good mien – a compliment which he considered as due to his own merit; for as to anything farther, he went to pay his respects to his fair prisoner with almost as little zeal in the cause, as a gallant to fight a duel in which he has no warmer interest than the maintenance of his reputation as man of honour.
The set of apartments consecrated to the use of those favourites who occasionally made Buckingham’s mansion their place of abode, and who were, so far as liberty was concerned, often required to observe the regulations of a convent, were separated from the rest of the Duke’s extensive mansion. He lived in the age when what was called gallantry warranted the most atrocious actions of deceit and violence; as may be best illustrated by the catastrophe of an unfortunate actress, whose beauty attracted the attention of the last De Vere, Earl of Oxford. While her virtue defied his seductions, he ruined her under colour of a mock marriage, and was rewarded for a success which occasioned the death of his victim, by the general applause of the men of wit and gallantry who filled the drawing-room of Charles.
Buckingham had made provision in the interior of his ducal mansion for exploits of a similar nature; and the set of apartments which he now visited were alternately used to confine the reluctant, and to accommodate the willing.
Being now destined for the former purpose, the key was delivered to the Duke by a hooded and spectacled old lady, who sat reading a devout book in the outer hall which divided these apartments (usually called the Nunnery) from the rest of the house. This experienced dowager acted as mistress of the ceremonies on such occasions, and was the trusty depositary of more intrigues than were known to any dozen of her worshipful calling besides.
“As sweet a linnet,” she said, as she undid the outward door, “as ever sung in a cage.”
“I was afraid she might have been more for moping than for singing, Dowlas,” said the Duke.
“Till yesterday she was so, please your Grace,” answered Dowlas; “or, to speak sooth, till early this morning, we heard of nothing but Lachrymæ. But the air of your noble Grace’s house is favourable to singing-birds; and to-day matters have been a-much mended.”
“Tis sudden, dame,” said the Duke; “and ‘tis something strange, considering that I have never visited her, that the pretty trembler should have been so soon reconciled to her fate.”
“Ah, your Grace has such magic, that it communicates itself to your very walls; as wholesome Scripture says, Exodus, first and seventh, ‘It cleaveth to the walls and the doorposts.’”
“You are too partial, Dame Dowlas,” said the Duke of Buckingham.
“Not a word but truth,” said the dame; “and I wish I may be an outcast from the fold of the lambs, but I think this damsel’s very frame has changed since she was under your Grace’s roof. Methinks she hath a lighter form, a finer step, a more displayed ankle – I cannot tell, but I think there is a change. But, lack-a-day, your Grace knows I am as old as I am trusty, and that my eyes wax something uncertain.”
“Especially when you wash them with a cup of canary, Dame Dowlas,” answered the Duke, who was aware that temperance was not amongst the cardinal virtues which were most familiar to the old lady’s practice.
“Was it canary, your Grace said? – Was it indeed with canary, that your Grace should have supposed me to have washed my eyes?” said the offended matron. “I am sorry that your Grace should know me no better.”
“I crave your pardon, dame,” said the Duke, shaking aside, fastidiously, the grasp which, in the earnestness of her exculpation, Madam Dowlas had clutched upon his sleeve. “I crave your pardon. Your nearer approach has convinced me of my erroneous imputation – I should have said nantz – not canary.”
So saying, he walked forward into the inner apartments, which were fitted up with an air of voluptuous magnificence.
“The dame said true, however,” said the proud deviser and proprietor of the splendid mansion – “A country Phillis might well reconcile herself to such a prison as this, even without a skilful bird-fancier to touch a bird-call. But I wonder where she can be, this rural Phidele. Is it possible she can have retreated, like a despairing commandant, into her bedchamber, the very citadel of the place, without even an attempt to defend the outworks?”
As he made this reflection, he passed through an antechamber and little eating parlour, exquisitely furnished, and hung with excellent paintings of the Venetian school.
Beyond these lay a withdrawing-room, fitted up in a style of still more studied elegance. The windows were darkened with painted glass, of such a deep and rich colour, as made the midday beams, which found their way into the apartment, imitate the rich colours of sunset; and, in the celebrated expression of the poet, “taught light to counterfeit a gloom.”
Buckingham’s feelings and taste had been too much, and too often, and too readily gratified, to permit him, in the general case, to be easily accessible, even to those pleasures which it had been the business of his life to pursue. The hackneyed voluptuary is like the jaded epicure, the mere listlessness of whose appetite becomes at length a sufficient penalty for having made it the principal object of his enjoyment and cultivation. Yet novelty has always some charms, and uncertainty has more.
The doubt how he was to be received – the change of mood which his prisoner was said to have evinced – the curiosity to know how such a creature as Alice Bridgenorth had been described, was likely to bear herself under the circumstances in which she was so unexpectedly placed, had upon Buckingham the effect of exciting unusual interest. On his own part, he had none of those feelings of anxiety with which a man, even of the most vulgar mind, comes to the presence of the female whom he wishes to please, far less the more refined sentiments of love, respect, desire, and awe, with which the more refined lover approaches the beloved object. He had been, to use an expressive French phrase, too completely blasé even from his earliest youth, to permit him now to experience the animal eagerness of the one, far less the more sentimental pleasure of the other. It is no small aggravation of this jaded and uncomfortable state of mind, that the voluptuary cannot renounce the pursuits with which he is satiated, but must continue, for his character’s sake, or from the mere force of habit, to take all the toil, fatigue, and danger of the chase, while he has so little real interest in the termination.
Buckingham, therefore, felt it due to his reputation as a successful hero of intrigue, to pay his addresses to Alice Bridgenorth with dissembled eagerness; and, as he opened the door of the inner apartment, he paused to consider, whether the tone of gallantry, or that of passion, was fittest to use on the occasion. This delay enabled him to hear a few notes of a lute touched with exquisite skill, and accompanied by the still sweeter strains of a female voice, which, without executing any complete melody, seemed to sport itself in rivalship of the silver sound of the instrument.
“A creature so well educated,” said the Duke, “with the sense she is said to possess, would, rustic as she is, laugh at the assumed rants of Oroondates. It is the vein of Dorimont – once, Buckingham, thine own – that must here do the feat, besides that the part is easier.”
So thinking, he entered the room with that easy grace which characterised the gay courtiers among whom he flourished, and approached the fair tenant, whom he found seated near a table covered with books and music, and having on her left hand the large half-open casement, dim with stained glass, admitting only a doubtful light into this lordly retiring-room, which, hung with the richest tapestry of the Gobelines, and ornamented with piles if china and splendid mirrors, seemed like a bower built for a prince to receive his bride.
The splendid dress of the inmate corresponded with the taste of the apartment which she occupied and partook of the Oriental costume which the much-admired Roxalana had the brought into fashion. A slender foot and ankle, which escaped from the wide trowser of richly ornamented and embroidered blue satin, was the only part of her person distinctly seen; the rest was enveloped, from head to foot, in a long veil of silver gauze, which, like a feathery and light mist on a beautiful landscape, suffered you to perceive that what it concealed was rarely lovely, yet induced the imagination even to enhance the charms it shaded. Such part of the dress as could be discovered was, like the veil and the trowsers, in the Oriental taste; a rich turban, and splendid caftan, were rather indicated than distinguished through the folds of the former. The whole attire argued at least coquetry on the part of the fair one, who must have expected, from her situation, a visitor of some pretension; and induced Buckingham to smile internally at Christian’s account of the extreme simplicity and purity of his niece.
He approached the lady en cavalier, and addressed her with the air of being conscious, while he acknowledged his offences, that his condescending to do so formed a sufficient apology for them. “Fair Mistress Alice,” he said, “I am sensible how deeply I ought to sue for pardon for the mistaken zeal of my servants, who, seeing you deserted and exposed without protection during an unlucky affray, took it upon them to bring you under the roof of one who would expose his life rather than suffer you to sustain a moment’s anxiety. Was it my fault that those around me should have judged it necessary to interfere for your preservation; or that, aware of the interest I must take in you, they have detained you till I could myself, in personal attendance, receive your commands?”
“That attendance has not been speedily rendered, my lord,” answered the lady. “I have been a prisoner for two days – neglected, and left to the charge of menials.”
“How say you, lady? – Neglected!” exclaimed the Duke. “By Heaven, if the best in my household has failed in his duty, I will discard him on the instant!”
“I complain of no lack of courtesy from your servants, my lord,” she replied; “but methinks it had been but complaisant in the Duke himself to explain to me earlier wherefore he has had the boldness to detain me as a state prisoner.”
“And can the divine Alice doubt,” said Buckingham, “that, had time and space, those cruel enemies to the flight of passion, given permission, the instant in which you crossed your vassal’s threshold had seen its devoted master at your feet, who hath thought, since he saw you, of nothing but the charms which that fatal morning placed before him at Chiffinch’s?”
“I understand, then, my lord,” said the lady, “that you have been absent, and have had no part in the restraint which has been exercised upon me?”
“Absent on the King’s command, lady, and employed in the discharge of his duty,” answered Buckingham without hesitation. “What could I do? – The moment you left Chiffinch’s, his Majesty commanded me to the saddle in such haste, that I had no time to change my satin buskins for riding-boots.27 If my absence has occasioned you a moment of inconvenience, blame the inconsiderate zeal of those who, seeing me depart from London, half distracted at my separation from you, were willing to contribute their unmannered, though well-meant exertions, to preserve their master from despair, by retaining the fair Alice within his reach. To whom, indeed, could they have restored you? He whom you selected as your champion is in prison, or fled – your father absent from town – your uncle in the north. To Chiffinch’s house you had expressed your well-founded aversion; and what fitter asylum remained than that of your devoted slave, where you must ever reign a queen?”
“An imprisoned one,” said the lady. “I desire not royalty.”
“Alas! how wilfully you misconstrue me!” said the Duke, kneeling on one knee; “and what right can you have to complain of a few hours’ gentle restraint – you, who destine so many to hopeless captivity? Be merciful for once, and withdraw that envious veil; for the divinities are ever most cruel when they deliver their oracles from such clouded recesses. Suffer at least my rash hand – ”
“I will save your Grace that unworthy trouble,” said the lady haughtily; and rising up, she flung back over her shoulders the veil which shrouded her, saying, at the same time, “Look on me, my Lord Duke, and see if these be indeed the charms which have made on your Grace an impression so powerful.”
Buckingham did look; and the effect produced on him by surprise was so strong, that he rose hastily from his knee, and remained for a few seconds as if he had been petrified. The figure that stood before him had neither the height nor the rich shape of Alice Bridgenorth; and, though perfectly well made, was so slightly formed, as to seem almost infantine. Her dress was three or four short vests of embroidered satin, disposed one over the other, of different colours, or rather different shades of similar colours; for strong contrast was carefully avoided. These opened in front, so as to show part of the throat and neck, partially obscured by an inner covering of the finest lace; over the uppermost vest was worn a sort of mantle, or coat of rich fur. A small but magnificent turban was carelessly placed on her head, from under which flowed a profusion of coal-black tresses, which Cleopatra might have envied. The taste and splendour of the Eastern dress corresponded with the complexion of the lady’s face, which was brunette, of a shade so dark as might almost have served an Indian.
Amidst a set of features, in which rapid and keen expression made amends for the want of regular beauty, the essential points of eyes as bright as diamonds, and teeth as white as pearls, did not escape the Duke of Buckingham, a professed connoisseur in female charms. In a word, the fanciful and singular female who thus unexpectedly produced herself before him, had one of those faces which are never seen without making an impression; which, when removed, are long after remembered; and for which, in our idleness, we are tempted to invent a hundred histories, that we may please our fancy by supposing the features under the influence of different kinds of emotion. Every one must have in recollection countenances of this kind, which, from a captivating and stimulating originality of expression, abide longer in the memory, and are more seductive to the imagination, than ever regular beauty.
“My Lord Duke,” said the lady, “it seems the lifting of my veil has done the work of magic upon your Grace. Alas, for the captive princess, whose nod was to command a vassal so costly as your Grace! She runs, methinks, no slight chance of being turned out of doors, like a second Cinderella, to seek her fortune among lackeys and lightermen.”
“I am astonished!” said the Duke. “That villain, Jerningham – I will have the scoundrel’s blood!”
“Nay, never abuse Jerningham for the matter,” said the Unknown; “but lament your own unhappy engagements. While you, my Lord Duke, were posting northward, in white satin buskins, to toil in the King’s affairs, the right and lawful princess sat weeping in sables in the uncheered solitude to which your absence condemned her. Two days she was disconsolate in vain; on the third came an African enchantress to change the scene for her, and the person for your Grace. Methinks, my lord, this adventure will tell but ill, when some faithful squire shall recount or record the gallant adventures of the second Duke of Buckingham.”
“Fairly bit and bantered to boot,” said the Duke – “the monkey has a turn for satire, too, by all that is piquante. – Hark ye, fair Princess, how dared you adventure on such a trick as you have been accomplice to?”
“Dare, my lord,” answered the stranger; “put the question to others, not to one who fears nothing.”
“By my faith, I believe so; for thy front is bronzed by nature. – Hark ye, once more, mistress – What is your name and condition?”
“My condition I have told you – I am a Mauritanian sorceress by profession, and my name is Zarah,” replied the Eastern maiden.
“But methinks that face, shape, and eyes” – said the Duke – “when didst thou pass for a dancing fairy? – Some such imp thou wert not many days since.”
“My sister you may have seen – my twin sister; but not me, my lord,” answered Zarah.
“Indeed,” said the Duke, “that duplicate of thine, if it was not thy very self, was possessed with a dumb spirit, as thou with a talking one. I am still in the mind that you are the same; and that Satan, always so powerful with your sex, had art enough on our former meeting, to make thee hold thy tongue.”
“Believe what you will of it, my lord,” replied Zarah, “it cannot change the truth. – And now, my lord, I bid you farewell. Have you any commands to Mauritania?”
“Tarry a little, my Princess,” said the Duke; “and remember, that you have voluntarily entered yourself as pledge for another; and are justly subjected to any penalty which it is my pleasure to exact. None must brave Buckingham with impunity.”
“I am in no hurry to depart, if your Grace hath any commands for me.”
“What! are you neither afraid of my resentment, nor of my love, fair Zarah?” said the Duke.
“Of neither, by this glove,” answered the lady. “Your resentment must be a pretty passion indeed, if it could stoop to such a helpless object as I am; and for your love – good lack! good lack!”
“And why good lack with such a tone of contempt, lady?” said the Duke, piqued in spite of himself. “Think you Buckingham cannot love, or has never been beloved in return?”
