Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  His Dame chanced to have a niece — a niece, tradition says, with the loveliest complexion and the most divine auburn hair in the world, and with whom, when she visited her aunt, all Oppidans and Tugs, who saw the beatific vision, became straightway enamoured. Whether De Vigne was in love with her, I can’t say; he always averred not, but I doubt the truth of his statement; at any rate, he made her in love with him, being already rather skilled in that line of conquest, and all, I dare say, went merry as a marriage-bell, till the Dame found out the mischief, was scandalised and horrified at it, and confiding the affair to the tutor, made no end of a row in Eton. She would have pulled all the authorities about De Vigne’s ears if he had not performed that operation for himself. The tutor, having had a tender leaning to the auburn hair on his own account, was furious; and coming in contact with De Vigne and mademoiselle strolling along by the river-side, took occasion to tell them his mind. Now opposition, much less lecturing, De Vigne in all his life never could brook; and he and his tutor coming to hot words, as men are apt when they quarrel about a woman, De Vigne flung him into the water and gave him such a ducking for his impudence, as Eton master never had before, or since. De Vigne, of course, was expelled for his double crime; and to please his mother, as nothing would make him hear of three years of college life, he consented to live twelve months in the semi-academic solitude of Freston-hills, while his name was entered at the Horse Guards for a commission. So at the Chancery he had domiciled himself, more as a guest than a pupil, for the Doctor was a trifle afraid of his keen eyes and quick wit; since his pupil knew twenty times more of modern literature and valuable available information than himself, and fifty times more of the world and its ways. But Old Joey, like all people, be their tendencies ever so heavenward, had a certain respect for twenty thousand a year. De Vigne kept two hunters and a hack in Frestonhills. He smoked Cavendish under the Doctor’s own window; he read De Kock and Le Brun in the drawing-room before the Doctor’s very eyes (and did not Miss Arabella read them too, upon the sly, though she blushed if you mentioned poor “Don Juan!”); he absented himself when he chose, and went to shoot and hunt and fish with men he knew in the county; he had his own way, in fact, as he had been accustomed to have it all his life. But it was not an obstinate nor a disagreeable “own way:” true, he turned restive at the least attempt at coercion, but he was gentle enough to a coax; and though he could work up into very fiery passion, he was, generally speaking, sweet tempered enough, and had almost always a kind word, or a generous thought, or a laughing jest, for us less favoured young ones.

  I had a sort of boyish devoted loyalty to him then, and he deserved it. Many a scrape did a word or two from him get me out of with the Doctor; many a time did he send me into the seventh heaven by the loan of his magnificent four-year-old; more than once did fivers come from his hand when I was deep in debt for a boy’s fancies, or had been cheated through thick and thin at the billiard-table in the Ten Bells, where De Vigne paid my debts, refreshed himself by kicking the two sharpers out of the apartment, and threatened to shoot me if I offered him the money back again. A warm-hearted reverence I had for him in those boyish days, and always have had, God bless him! But I little foresaw how often in the life to come we should be together in revelry and in danger, in thoughtless pleasures and dark sorrow, in the whirl of fast life and din and dash of the battlefield, when I first saw the senior pupil smoking in the study of the old Chancery at Frestonhills.

  One sunny summer’s afternoon, while the Doctor dozed over his “Treatise on the Wise Tooth of the Fossil Hum-and-bosh Ichthyosaurus,” and Arabella watered her geraniums and looked interesting in a white hat with very blue ribbons, De Vigne, with his fishing-rod in his hand, looked into the study, and told Curly and me, who were vainly and wretchedly puzzling our brains over Terence, that he was going after jack, and we might go with him if we chose. Curly and I, in our adoration of our senior pupil, would have gone after him to martyrdom, and we sent Terence to the dogs (literally, for we shied him at Arabella’s wheezing King Charles), rushed for our rods and baskets, and went down to the banks of the Kennet. De Vigne had an especial tenderness for old Izaak’s gentle art; it was the only thing over which he displayed any patience, and even in this, he might have caught more, if he had not twitdied his line so often in anger at the slow-going fish, and sworn against them for not biting, roundly enough to terrify them out of all such intentions, if they had ever possessed any!

  How pleasant it was there beside Pope’s

  “Kennet swift, for silver eels renowned,”

  rushing through the sunny meadow lands of Berkshire; lingering on its way, beneath the chequered shadows of the oaks and elms, that rival their great neighbours, the beech-woods of Bucks; dashing swiftly, with busy joyous song, under the rough-hewn arch of some picturesque rustic bridge; flowing clear and cool in the summer sun through the fragrant woodlands and moss-grown orchards, the nestling villages and quiet country towns, and hawthorn hedges dropping their white buds into its changeful gleaming waters! How pleasant it was, fishing for jack among our Kennet meadows, lying under the pale willows and the dark wayfaring tree with its white starry blossoms, while the cattle trooped down to drink, up to their hocks in the flags and lilies and snowflakes fringing the river’s edge; and the air came fresh and fragrant over the swathes of new-mown grass and the crimson buds of the little dog-roses! Half its beauty, however, was lost upon us, with our boyish density to all appeals made to our less material senses; except, indeed, upon De Vigne, who stopped to have a glance across country as he stood trolling, spinning the line with much more outlay of strength and vehemence than was needed, or landing every now and then a ten-pound pike, with a violent anathema upon it for having dared to dispute his will so long; while little Curly lazily whipped the water, stretched full length on a fragrant bed of wild thyme. What a pretty child he was, poor little fellow; more like one of Pompadour’s pages, or a boy-hero of the Trouvères, with his white skin and his violet eyes, than an every-day slang-talking, lark-loving English lad!

  “By George! what a handsome girl,” said De Vigne, taking off his cap and standing at ease for a minute, after landing a great jack. “I’m not fond of dark women generally, but ‘pon my life she is splendid. What a contour! What a figure! Do for the queen of the gipsies, eh? Why the deuce isn’t she this side of the river?”

  The object of his admiration was on the opposite bank, strolling along by herself with a certain dignity of air and stateliness of step which would not have ill become a duchess, though her station in life was probably that of a dressmaker’s apprentice, or a small shopkeeper’s daughter, at the very highest. She was as handsome as one of those brunette peasant beauties in the plains of La Camargue, with a clear dark skin which had a rich carnation glow on the cheeks; large black eyes, perfect in shape and colour; and a form such as would develop with years — for she was now probably not more than sixteen or seventeen — into full Junoesque magnificence.

  “By Jove! she is very handsome; and she knows it, too,” began De Vigne again. “I have never seen her about here before. I’ll go across and talk to her.”

  Go he assuredly would have done, for female beauty was De Vigne’s weakness; but at that minute a short, square, choleric-looking keeper came out of the wood at our back, and went up to little Curly.

  “Hallo, you there — you young swell; don’t you know you are trespassing?”

  “No, I don’t,” answered Curly, in his pretty soft voice.

  “Don’t you know you’re on Mr. Tressillian’s ground?” sang out the keeper.

  “Am I? Well, give my love to him, and say I shall be very happy to give him the pleasure of my company at dinner to-night,” rejoined Curly, imperturbably.

  “You impertinent young dog — will you march off this ’ere minute!” roared the bellicose guardian of Mr. Tressillian’s rights of fishery.

  “Wouldn’t you like to see me!” laughed Curly, flinging his marchbrown into the stream.

&n
bsp; “Curse you, if you don’t, I’ll come and take your rod away,” sang out the keeper.

  “Will you really! That’ll be too obliging, you look so sweet and amiable as it is,” said Curly, with a provoking smile on his girlish little face.

  “Yes, I will; and take you up to the house and get you a month at the mill for trespass, you abominable little devil!” vowed his adversary, laying his great fist on Curly’s rod; but the little chap sprang to his feet and struck him a vigorous blow with his childish hand, which fell on the keeper’s brawny form, much as a fly’s kick might on the Apollo Belvidere. The man seized him round the waist, but Curly struck out right and left, and kicked and struggled with such hearty good will, that the keeper let him go; but, keeping his hand on the boy’s collar, he was about to drag him up to the lord of the manor, whose house stood some mile distant, when, at the sound of the scuffle, De Vigne, intent upon watching his beauty across the Kennet, swung round to Curly’s rescue: the boy being rather a pet of his, and De Vigne never seeing a fight between might and right without striking in with a blow for the weak one.

  “Take your hands off that young gentleman! Take your hands off, do you hear! or I will give you in charge for assault.”

  “Will yer, Master Stilts,” growled the keeper, purple with dire wrath. “I’ll give you in charge, you mean. You’re poaching — ay, poaching, for all yer grand airs; and I’ll be hanged if I don’t take you and the little uns, all of yer, up to the house, and see if a committal don’t’ take the rise out of yer, my game cocks!”

  Wherewith the keeper, whom anger must have totally blinded ere he attempted such an indignity with our senior pupil, whose manorial rights stretched over woods and waters twenty times the extent of Boughton Tressillian’s, let go his hold upon Curly, and turned upon De Vigne, to collar him instead.

  De Vigne’s eyes flashed, and the blood mounted hot over his temples, as he straightened his left arm, and received him by a plant in the middle of his chest, with a dexterity that would have done no discredit to Tom Sayers. Down went the man under the tremendous punishing, only to pick himself up again, and charge at De Vigne with all the fury which, in such attacks, defeats its own ends, and makes a man strike wildly and at random. De Vigne however had not had mills at Eton, and rounds with bargees at Little Surley, without becoming a boxer, such as would have delighted a Ring at Moulsey. He threw himself into a scientific attitude; and, contenting himself with the defensive for the first couple of rounds, without being touched himself, caught the keeper on the left temple, with a force which sent him down like a felled ox. There the man lay, like a log, on the thyme and ground-ivy and woodbine, till I fancy his conqueror had certain uncomfortable suspicions that he might have killed him. So he lifted him up, gave him a good shake, and finding him all right, though he was bleeding profusely, was frightfully vengeful, and full of most unrighteous oaths, though not apparently willing to encounter such another round, De Vigne pushed him on before him, and took him up to Mr. Tressillian’s to keep his word, and give him in charge.

  Weive Hurst, Boughton Tressillian’s manor-house, was a fine, rambling, antique old place, its façade looking all the greyer and the older in contrast to the green lawn, with its larches, fountains, and flower beds which stretched in front The powdered servant who opened the door looked not a little startled at our unusual style of morning visit; but gave way before De Vigne, and showed us into the library, where Mr. Tressillian sat — a stately, kindly, silver-haired old man. De Vigne sank into the easy chair wheeled for him, told his tale frankly and briefly, demonstrated, as clearly as if he had been a lawyer, our right to fish on the highway side of the river (an often-disputed point for anglers), and the consequent illegality of the keeper’s assault. Boughton Tressillian was open to conviction, though he was a county magnate and a magistrate, admitted that he had no right over that part of the Kennet, agreed with De Vigne that his keeper was in the wrong, promised to give the man a good lecture, and apologised to his visitor for the interference and the affront.

  “If you will stay and dine with me, Mr. De Vigne, and your young friends also, it will give me very great pleasure,” said the cordial and courteous old man.

  “I thank you. We should have been most happy,” returned our senior pupil; “but as it is, I am afraid we shall be late for Dr. Primrose.”

  “For Dr. Primrose?” exclaimed Tressillian, involuntarily. “You are not—”

  “I am a pupil at the Chancery,” laughed De Vigne.

  Our host actually started; De Vigne certainly did look very little like a pupil of any man’s; but he smiled ^ in return.

  “Indeed! Then I hope you will often give me the pleasure of your society. There is a billiard-table in wet weather, and good fishing and shooting in fine. It will be a great kindness, I assure you, to come and enliven us at Weive Hurst a little.”

  “The kindness will be to us,” returned De Vigne, cordially. “Good-day to you, Mr. Tressillian; accept my best thanks for your—”

  A shower of roses, lilies, and laburnums, pelted at him with a merry laugh, stopped his harangue. The culprit was a little girl of about two years old, standing just outside the low windows of the library — a pretty child, with golden hair waving to her waist, and no end of mischief in her dark blue eyes. Unlike most children, she was not at all frightened at her own misdemeanours, but stood her ground, till Boughton Tressillian stretched out his arm to catch her. Then, she turned round, and took wing as rapidly as a bird off a bough, her clear childish laughter ringing on the summer air; while De Vigne gave chase to the only child in his life he ever deigned to notice, justly thinking children great nuisances, and led her prisoner to the library, holding the blue sash by which he had caught her.

  “Here is my second captive, Mr. Tressillian — what shall we do to her?”

  Boughton Tressillian smiled.

  “Alma, how could you be so naughty? Tell this gentleman you are a spoilt child, and ask him to forgive you.”

  She looked up under her long black lashes half shyly, half wickedly.

  “Signor, perdonatemi!” she said, with a mischievous laugh, in broken Italian, though how a little Berkshire girl came to talk Neapolitan instead of English I could not imagine.

  “Alma, you are very naughty to-day,” said Tressillian, half impatiently. “Why do you not speak English? Ask his forgiveness properly.”

  “I will pardon her without it,” laughed De Vigne. “There, Alma, will you not love me now?”

  She pushed her sunny hair off her eyes and looked at him — a strangely earnest and wistful look, too, for so young a child. “Si! Alma vi ama!” she answered him with joyous vivacity, pressing upon him with eager generosity some geraniums the head-gardener had given her, and which but a moment ago she had fastened into her white dress with extreme admiration and triumph.

  “Bravo!” said Curly, as five minutes afterwards we passed out from the great hall door. “You are a brick, De Vigne, and no mistake. How splendidly you pitched into that rascally keeper!”

  De Vigne laughed.

  “It was a good bit of fun. Always stand up for your rights, my boy; if you don’t, who will? I never was done yet in my life, and never intend to be.”’

  With which wise resolution the senior pupil struck a fusee and lit his pipe; reaching home just in time to dress, and hand Arabella in to dinner, who paid him at all times desperate court, hoping, doubtless, to make such an impression on him with her long ringlets, and bravura songs, as might trap him in his early youth into such “serious” action as would make her mistress of Vigne and its long rent-roll. That Granville saw no more of her than he could help in common courtesy, and paid her not so much attention as he did to her King Charles, was no check to the young lady’s wild imaginings. At eight-and-twenty women grown desperate don’t stick to probabilities, but fly their hawks at any or at all quarries, so that “peradventure they may catch one!”

  Weive Hurst proved a great gain to us. Tressillian was as good as his wor
d, and we were at all times cordially welcomed there, when the Doctor gave us permission, to shoot and fish and ride about his grounds. He grew extremely fond of De Vigne, who, haughty as he could be at times, and impatient as he was at any of the Doctor’s weak attempts at coercion, had a very winning manner with old people; and played billiards, heard his tales of the Regency, and broke in his colts for him, till he fairly won his way into Tressillian’s heart. It was for De Vigne that the butler was always bid to bring the Steinberg and the 1815 port; De Vigne, to whom he gave a mare worth five hundred sovs., the most beautiful piece of horse-flesh ever mounted; De Vigne, who might have knocked down every head of game in the preserves if he had chosen; De Vigne, to whom little Alma Tressillian, the old man’s only grandchild, and the future heiress, of course, of Weive Hurst, presented with the darling of her heart — a donkey, minus head or tail or panniers.

  But De Vigne did not avail himself of the sport at Weive Hurst so much as he might have done had he no other game in hand. His affair with Tressillian’s keeper had prevented his going to make impromptu acquaintance with the handsome girl across the Kennet; but she had not slipped from his mind, and had made sufficient impression upon him for him to try the next day to see her again in Frestonhills, and find out who she was and where she lived, two questions he soon settled, by some means or other, greatly to his own satisfaction. The girl’s name was Lucy Davis; whence she came nobody knew or perhaps inquired; but she was one of the hands at a milliner’s in Frestonhills, prized by her employers for her extreme talent and skill, though equally detested, I believe, for her tyrannous and tempestuous temper. The girl was handsome enough for an Empress; and had wonderful style in her when she was dressed in her Sunday silks and cashmeres, for dress was her passion, and all her earnings were spent in imitating the toilettes she assisted in getting up to adorn the rectors’ and lawyers’ wives of Frestonhills. “The Davis” was handsome enough to send a much older man mad after her; and De Vigne, after meeting her once or twice in the deep shady lanes of our green Berkshire, accompanied her in her strolls, and — fell in love with her, as De Vigne had a knack of doing with every handsome woman who came near him. We all adored the stately, blackeyed, black-browed Davis, but she never deigned any notice of our boyish worship; and when De Vigne came into the field, we gave up all hope, and fled the scene in desperation. The Doctor, of course, knew nothing of the affair, though almost every one else in Frestonhills did, especially the young bankers and solicitors and grammar-school assistant-masters, who swore at that “cursed fellow at the Chancery” for monopolising the Davis — especially as the “cursed fellow” treated them considerably de haut en has. De Vigne was really in love, for the time being; one of those hot, vehement, short-lived attachments natural to his age and character; based on eye-love alone, for the girl had nothing else lovable about her, and had one of the worst tempers possible; which she did not always spare even to him, and which when his first glamour had a little cooled, made De Vigne rather glad that his departure from Frestonhills was drawing near, some four months after he had seen her across the Kennet, and would give him an opportunity to break off his liaison, which he otherwise might have found it difficult to make.