The Newcomes
Page 51
having shown Lord Kew the letter the moment after she had done that act,
of which the poor young lady could not calculate the consequences that
were now to ensue.
Lord Kew, on glancing over the letter, at once divined the quarter whence
it came. The portrait drawn of him was not unlike, as our characters
described by those who hate us are not unlike. He had passed a reckless
youth; indeed he was sad and ashamed of that past life, longed like the
poor prodigal to return to better courses, and had embraced eagerly the
chance afforded him of a union with a woman young, virtuous, and
beautiful, against whom and against heaven he hoped to sin no more. If we
have told or hinted at more of his story than will please the ear of
modern conventionalism, I beseech the reader to believe that the writer's
purpose at least is not dishonest, nor unkindly. The young gentleman hung
his head with sorrow over that sad detail of his life and its follies.
What would he have given to be able to say to Ethel, "This is not true"
His reproaches to Miss Newcome of course were at once stopped by this
terrible assault on himself. The letter had been put in the Baden
post-box, and so had come to its destination. It was in a disguised
handwriting. Lord Kew could form no idea even of the sex of the scribe.
He put the envelope in his pocket, when Ethel's back was turned. He
examined the paper when he left her. He could make little of the
superscription or of the wafer which had served to close the note. He did
not choose to caution Ethel as to whether she should burn the letter or
divulge it to her friends. He took his share of the pain, as a boy at
school takes his flogging, stoutly and in silence.
When he saw Ethel again, which he did in an hour's time, the generous
young gentleman held his hand out to her. "My dear," he said, "if you had
loved me you never would have shown me that letter." It was his only
reproof. After that he never again reproved or advised her.
Ethel blushed. "You are very brave and generous, Frank," said, bending
her head, "and I am captious and wicked." He felt the hot tear blotting
on his hand from his cousin's downcast eyes.
He kissed her little hand. Lady Anne, who was in the room with her
children when these few words passed between the two in a very low tone,
thought it was a reconciliation. Ethel knew it was a renunciation on
Kew's part--she never liked him so much as at that moment. The young man
was too modest and simple to guess himself what the girl's feelings were.
Could he have told them, his fate and hers might have been changed.
"You must not allow our kind letter-writing friend," Lord Kew continued,
"to fancy we are hurt. We must walk out this afternoon, and we must
appear very good friends."
"Yes, always, Kew," said Ethel, holding out her hand again. The next
minute her cousin was at the table carving roast-fowls, and distributing
the portions to the hungry children.
The assembly of the previous evening had been one of those which the
fermier des jeux at Baden beneficently provides for the frequenters of
the place, and now was to come off a much more brilliant entertainment,
in which poor Clive, who is far into Switzerland by this time, was to
have taken a share. The Bachelors had agreed to give a ball, one of the
last entertainments of the season: a dozen or more of them had subscribed
the funds, and we may be sure Lord Kew's name was at the head of the
list, as it was of any list, of any scheme, whether of charity or fun.
The English were invited, and the Russians were invited; the Spaniards
and Italians, Poles, Prussians, and Hebrews; all the motley frequenters
of the place, and the warriors in the Duke of Baden's army. Unlimited
supper was set in the restaurant. The dancing-room glittered with extra
lights, and a profusion of cut-paper flowers decorated the festive scene.
Everybody was present, those crowds with whom our story has nothing to
do, and those two or three groups of persons who enact minor or greater
parts in it. Madame d'Ivry came in a dress of stupendous splendour, even
more brilliant than that in which Miss Ethel had figured at the last
assembly. If the Duchess intended to ecraser Miss Newcome by the superior
magnificence of her toilet, she was disappointed. Miss Newcome wore a
plain white frock on the occasion, and resumed, Madame d'Ivry said, her
role of ingenue for that night.
During the brief season in which gentlemen enjoyed the favour of Mary
Queen of Scots, that wandering sovereign led them through all the paces
and vagaries of a regular passion. As in a fair, where time is short and
pleasures numerous, the master of the theatrical booth shows you a
tragedy, a farce, and a pantomime, all in a quarter of an hour, having a
dozen new audiences to witness his entertainments in the course of the
forenoon; so this lady with her platonic lovers went through the complete
dramatic course,--tragedies of jealousy, pantomimes of rapture, and
farces of parting. There were billets on one side and the other; hints of
a fatal destiny, and a ruthless, lynx-eyed tyrant, who held a demoniac
grasp over the Duchess by means of certain secrets which he knew: there
were regrets that we had not known each other sooner: why were we brought
out of our convent and sacrificed to Monsieur le Duc? There were frolic
interchanges of fancy and poesy: pretty bouderies; sweet reconciliations;
yawns finally--and separation. Adolphe went out and Alphonse came in. It
was the new audience; for which the bell rang, the band played, and the
curtain rose; and the tragedy, comedy, and farce were repeated.
Those Greenwich performers who appear in the theatrical pieces
above-mentioned, make a great deal more noise than your stationary
tragedians; and if they have to denounce a villain, to declare a passion,
or to threaten an enemy, they roar, stamp, shake their fists, and
brandish their sabres, so that every man who sees the play has surely a
full pennyworth for his penny. Thus Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry perhaps a
little exaggerated her heroines' parts liking to strike her audiences
quickly, and also to change them often. Like good performers, she flung
herself heart and soul into the business of the stage, and was what she
acted. She was Phedre, and if in the first part of the play she was
uncommonly tender to Hippolyte, in the second she hated him furiously.
She was Medea, and if Jason was volage, woe to Creusa! Perhaps our poor
Lord Kew had taken the first character in a performance with Madame
d'Ivry; for his behaviour in which part it was difficult enough to
forgive him; but when he appeared at Baden the affianced husband of one
of the most beautiful young creatures in Europe,--when his relatives
scorned Madame d'Ivry,--no wonder she was maddened and enraged, and would
have recourse to revenge, steel, poison.
There was in the Duchess's court a young fellow from the South of France,
whose friends had sent him to faire son droit at Paris, where he had gone
through the usual course of pleasure and studies of the young inhabitants
had fired his shot with distinction at St. Meri. He was a poet of some
little note--a book of his lyrics, Les Rales d'un Asphyxie, having made a
sensation at the time of their appearance. He drank great quantities of
absinthe of a morning; smoked incessantly; played roulette whenever he
could get a few pieces; contributed to a small journal, and was
especially great in his hatred of l'infame Angleterre. Delenda est
Carthago was tattooed beneath his shirt-sleeves. Fifine and Clarisse,
young milliners of the students' district, had punctured this terrible
motto on his manly right arm. Le leopard, emblem of England, was his
aversion; he shook his fist at the caged monster in the Garden of Plants.
He desired to have "Here lies an enemy of England" engraved upon his
early tomb. He was skilled at billiards and dominoes, adroit in the use
of arms, of unquestionable courage and fierceness. Mr. Jones of England
was afraid of M. de Castillonnes, and cowered before his scowls and
sarcasms. Captain Blackball, the other English aide-de-camp of the
Duchesse d'Ivry, a warrior of undoubted courage, who had been "on the
ground" more than once, gave him a wide berth, and wondered what the
little beggar meant when he used to say, "Since the days of the Prince
Noir, monsieur, my family has been at feud with l'Angleterre!" His family
were grocers at Bordeaux, and his father's name was M. Cabasse. He had
married a noble in the revolutionary times; and the son at Paris himself
himself Victor Cabasse de Castillonnes; then Victor C. de Castillonnes;
then M. de Castillonnes. One of the followers of the Black Prince had
insulted a lady of the house of Castillonnes, when the English were lords
of Guienne; hence our friend's wrath against the Leopard. He had written,
and afterwards dramatised a terrific legend describing the circumstances,
and the punishment of the Briton by a knight of the Castillonnes family.
A more awful coward never existed in a melodrama than that felon English
knight. His blanche-fille, of course, died of hopeless love for the
conquering Frenchman, her father's murderer. The paper in which the
feuilleton appeared died at the sixth number of the story. The theatre of
the Boulevard refused the drama; so the author's rage against l'infame
Albion was yet unappeased. On beholding Miss Newcome, Victor had fancied
a resemblance between her and Agnes de Calverley, the blanche Miss of his
novel and drama, and cast an eye of favour upon the young creature. He
even composed verses in her honour (for I presume that the "Miss Betti"
and the Princess Crimhilde of the poems which he subsequently published,
were no other than Miss Newcome, and the Duchess, her rival). He had been
one of the lucky gentlemen who had danced with Ethel on the previous
evening. On the occasion of the ball, he came to her with a highflown
compliment, and a request to be once more allowed to waltz with her--a
request to which he expected a favourable answer, thinking, no doubt,
that his wit, his powers of conversation, and the amour qui flambait dans
son regard, had had their effect upon the charming Meess. Perhaps he had
a copy of the very verses in his breast-pocket, with which he intended to
complete his work of fascination. For her sake alone, he had been heard
to say that he would enter into a truce with England, and forget the
hereditary wrongs of his race.
But the blanche Miss on this evening declined to waltz with him. His
compliments were not of the least avail. He retired with them and his
unuttered verses in his crumpled bosom. Miss Newcome only danced in one
quadrille with Lord Kew, and left the party quite early, to the despair
of many of the bachelors, who lost the fairest ornament of their ball.
Lord Kew, however, had been seen walking with her in public, and
particularly attentive to her during her brief appearance in the
ballroom; and the old Dowager, who regularly attended all places of
amusement, and was at twenty parties and six dinners the week before she
died, thought fit to be particularly gracious to Madame d'Ivry upon this
evening, and, far from shunning the Duchesse's presence or being rude to
her, as on former occasions, was entirely smiling and good-humoured. Lady
Kew, too, thought there had been a reconciliation between Ethel and her
cousin. Lady Anne had given her mother some account of the handshaking.
Kew's walk with Ethel, the quadrille which she had danced with him alone,
induced the elder lady to believe that matters had been made up between
the young people.
So, by way of showing the Duchesse that her little shot of the morning
had failed in its effect, as Frank left the room with his cousin, Lady
Kew gaily hinted, "that the young earl was aux petits soins with Miss
Ethel; that she was sure her old friend, the Duc d'Ivry, would be glad to
hear that his godson was about to range himself. He would settle down on
his estates. He would attend to his duties as an English peer and a
country gentleman. We shall go home," says the benevolent Countess, "and
kill the veau gras, and you shall see our dear prodigal will become a
very quiet gentleman."
The Duchesse said, "my Lady Kew's plan was most edifying. She was charmed
to hear that Lady Kew loved veal; there were some who thought that meat
rather insipid." A waltzer came to claim her hand at this moment; and as
she twirled round the room upon that gentleman's arm, wafting odours as
she moved, her pink silks, pink feathers, pink ribands, making a mighty
rustling, the Countess of Kew had the satisfaction of thinking that she
had planted an arrow in that shrivelled little waist, which Count
Punter's arms embraced, and had returned the stab which Madame d'Ivry had
delivered in the morning.
Mr. Barnes, and his elect bride, had also appeared, danced, and
disappeared. Lady Kew soon followed her young ones; and the ball went on
very gaily, in spite of the absence of these respectable personages.
Being one of the managers of the entertainment, Lord Kew returned to it
after conducting Lady Anne and her daughter to their carriage, and now
danced with great vigour, and with his usual kindness, selecting those
ladies whom other waltzers rejected because they were too old, or too
plain, or too stout, or what not. But he did not ask Madame d'Ivry to
dance. He could condescend to dissemble so far as to hide the pain which
he felt; but did not care to engage in that more advanced hypocrisy of
friendship, which for her part, his old grandmother had not shown the
least scruple in assuming.
Amongst other partners, my lord selected that intrepid waltzer, the
Graefinn von Gumpelheim, who, in spite of her age, size, and large
family, never lost a chance of enjoying her favourite recreation. "Look
with what a camel my lord waltzes," said M. Victor to Madame d'Ivry,
whose slim waist he had the honour of embracing to the same music. "What
man but an Englishman would ever select such a dromedary?"
"Avant de se marier," said Madame d'Ivry
, "il faut avouer que my lord se
permet d'enormes distractions."
"My lord marries himself! And when and whom?" cried the Duchesse's
partner.
"Miss Newcome. Do not you approve of his choice? I thought the eyes of
Stenio" (the Duchess called M. Victor, Stenio) "looked with some favour
upon that little person. She is handsome, even very handsome. Is it not
so often in life, Stenio? Are not youth and innocence (I give Miss Ethel
the compliment of her innocence, now surtout that the little painter is
dismissed)--are we not cast into the arms of jaded roues? Tender young
flowers, are we not torn from our convent gardens, and flung into a world
of which the air poisons our pure life, and withers the sainted buds of
hope and love and faith? Faith! The mocking world tramples on it,
n'est-ce pas? Love! The brutal world strangles the heaven-born infant at
its birth. Hope! It smiled at me in my little convent chamber, played
among the flowers which I cherished, warbled with the birds that I loved.
But it quitted me at the door of the world, Stenio. It folded its white
wings and veiled its radiant face! In return for my young love, they gave
me--sixty years, the dregs of a selfish heart, egotism cowering over its
fire, and cold for all its mantle of ermine! In place of the sweet
flowers of my young years, they gave me these, Stenio!" and she pointed
to her feathers and her artificial roses. "Oh, I should like to crush
them under my feet!" and she put out the neatest little slipper. The
Duchesse was great upon her wrongs, and paraded her blighted innocence to
every one who would feel interested by that piteous spectacle. The music
here burst out more swiftly and melodiously than before; the pretty
little feet forgot their desire to trample upon the world. She shrugged
the lean little shoulders--"Eh!" said the Queen of Scots, "dansons et
oublions;" and Stenio's arm once more surrounded her fairy waist (she
called herself a fairy; other ladies called her a skeleton); and they
whirled away in the waltz again and presently she and Stenio came bumping
up against the stalwart Lord Kew and the ponderous Madame de Gumpelheim,
as a wherry dashes against the oaken ribs of a steamer.
The little couple did not fall; they were struck on to a neighbouring
bench, luckily: but there was a laugh at the expense of Stenio and the
Queen of Scots--and Lord Kew, settling his panting partner on to a seat,
came up to make excuses for his awkwardness to the lady who had been its
victim. At the laugh produced by the catastrophe, the Duchesse's eyes
gleamed with anger.
"M. de Castillonnes," she said to her partner, "have you had any quarrel
with that Englishman?"
"With ce milor? But no," said Stenio.
"He did it on purpose. There has been no day but his family has insulted
me!" hissed out the Duchesse, and at this moment Lord Kew came up to make
his apologies. He asked a thousand pardons of Madame la Duchesse for
being so maladroit.
"Maladroit! et tres maladroit, monsieur," says Stenio, curling his
moustache; "c'est bien le mot, monsieur!
"Also, I make my excuses to Madame la Duchesse, which I hope she will
receive," said Lord Kew. The Duchesse shrugged her shoulders and sunk her
head.
"When one does not know how to dance, one ought not to dance," continued
the Duchesse's knight.
"Monsieur is very good to give me lessons in dancing," said Lord Kew.
"Any lessons which you please, milor!" cries Stenio; "and everywhere
where you will them."
Lord Kew looked at the little man with surprise. He could not understand
so much anger for so trifling an accident, which happens a dozen times in
every crowded ball. He again bowed to the Duchesse, and walked away.
"This is your Englishman--your Kew, whom you vaunt everywhere," said