by Ouida
De Vigne exchanged his reeking hack for his own hunter, a splendid thorough-bred, with as much light action, he said, as a danseuse, and as much strength and power as a bargeman. Then we rode up to talk to the M.F.H.’s wife, who was mounted on a beautiful little mare, and intended to follow her husband and his hounds over the Cambridge fences.
“Who is that lady yonder?” asked De Vigne, after he had chatted some moments with her.
“The one on the horse with a white star on his forehead? Lady Blanche Fairelesyeux. Don’t you know her? She is a widow, very pretty and very rich.”
“Yes, yes, I know Lady Blanche,” laughed De Vigne. “She married old Faire two years ago, and persuaded him to drink himself to death most opportunely. No, I meant that very handsome woman there, talking to your husband at this moment, mounted on a chesnut with a very wild eye.”
“Oh, that is Miss Trefusis!”
“And can you tell me no more than her mere name?”
“Not much. She is some relation — what I do not know exactly — of that detestable old woman Lady Fantyre, whose ‘recollections’ of court people are sometimes as gross anachronisms as the Comte de St. Germain’s. They are staying with Mrs. St. Croix, and she brought them here; but I do not like Miss Trefusis very much myself, and Mr. L’Estrange does not wish me to cultivate her acquaintance.”
“Then I must not ask you to introduce me?” said De Vigne, disappointedly.
“Oh yes, if you wish. I know her well enough for that; and she dines here to-night with the St Croix. But there is a wide difference, you know, between making passing acquaintances, and ripening them into friends. Come, Captain de Vigne, I am sure you will ride the hounds off the scent, or do something dreadful, if I do not let you talk to your new beauty,” laughed the young mistress of Euston Hollows, turning her mare’s head towards the showy chesnut, whose rider had won so much of De Vigne’s admiration.
She was as dashing and magnificent in her way as her horse in his, with a tall and voluptuously-perfect figure which her tight dark riding-jacket showed in all the beauty of its rounded outlines, while her little hat, with a single white feather, scarcely shadowed, and did not conceal, her clear profile, magnificent eyes, and lips by which Velasquez or Titian would have sworn. Splendid she was, and she had spared no pains to make the tableau; and though to a keen eye, her brilliant colour, which was not rouge, and her pencilled eyebrows, which were tinted, gave her a trifle of the actress or the lorette style, there was no wonder that De Vigne, impressible as a Southern by women’s beauty — and at that time as long as it was beauty, not caring much of what stamp or of what order — was not easy till Flora L’Est range had introduced him to her. So we rush upon our doom! So we, in thoughtless play, twist the first gleaming and silky threads of the fatal cord which will cling about our necks, fastened beyond hope of release, as long as our lives shall last!
The Trefusis (as she was called in the smoking-rooms), surrounded as she was by the best men of the Viewaway, ruling them by force of that superb form and face, bowed very graciously to De Vigne, and smiled upon him. He had caught her eyes once or twice before he had asked Mrs. L’Estrange who she was; and now, displacing the others with that calm, unconscious air of superiority, the more irritating to his rivals that it was invariably successful, he leaned his hand on the pommel of her saddle, and talked away to her the chitchat of the hour. The Trefusis intended to follow the hounds, as well as L’Estrange’s wife and Lady Blanche Fairelesyeux; so De Vigne and she rode off together as the hounds, symmetrical in form, and all in good condition though they were a provincial establishment, trotted away, with waving sterns and eager eyes, to draw the Euston Hollows covert.
The cheery “Halloo!” rang over coppice and brushwood and plantation; the white sterns of the hounds flourished among the dark-brown bushes of the cover; stentorian lungs shouted out the “Stole away! — hark for-r-r-r-rard!” and as the finest fox in the county broke away, De Vigne struck his spurs into his hunter’s flanks, and rattled down the cover, all his thoughts centered on the clever little pack that streamed along before him; while the whole field burst over the low pastures and oak fences and ox-rails, across which the fox was leading us. I dashed along the first three meadows, which were only divided by low hedges, with all the excitement and breathlessness of a first start; but as we crossed the fourth at an easy gallop, cooling the horses before the formidable leap which we knew the Cam, or rather a narrow sedgy tributary of it, would give us at the bottom, I took time, and looked around. Before any of us, De Vigne was going along, as straight as an arrow’s flight, working his bay up for the approaching trial; never looking back, going into the sport before him as if he never had had, and never could have had, any other interest in life. The Trefusis, riding as few women could, sitting well down in her saddle, like any of the Pytchley or Belvoir men, was some yards behind him, “riding jealous,” I could see; rather a hopeless task for a young lady with a man known in the hunting-field as he was. The M.F.H. was, of course, handling his hunter in masterly style, his little wife keeping gallantly up with him, though she and her mare looked as likely to be smashed by the first staken-bound fence as a Sèvres figure or a Parian statuette. Curly, who, thanks to his half-broken hunter, had split four strong oak bars, and been once pitched neck and crop into Cambridge mud, was coming along with his pink sadly stained; while Lady Blanche and four of the men were within a few paces of him, and the rest of the field were scattered far and wide: quaint bits of scarlet, green, and black, dotting the short brown turf of the pasture lands.
Splash! went the fox into the sedgy waters of this branch of classic Cam, and scrambled up upon the opposite bank. For a second the hounds lost the scent; then, they threw up their heads with a joyous challenge, breasted the stream, dashed on after him, and sped along beyond the pollards on the opposite side far ahead of us, streaming out like the white tail of a comet. De Vigne put his bay at the leap, but before he could lift him over, the Trefusis cleared it, with unblanched cheek and unshaken nerve. She looked back with a laugh, not of gay girlish merriment, such as Flora L’Estrange would have given, but a laugh with a certain gratified malice in it: and he gave a muttered oath at being “cut down” by a woman as he landed his bay beside her.
I cleared it, so did the M.F.H., and, by some species of sporting miracle, so did his wife and her little mare. One of the yeomen found a watery bed among the tadpoles, clay, and rushes — it might be a watery grave, for anything I know to the contrary — and poor dear Curly was tumbled straight off his young one, and lay there, a helpless mass of human and equine flesh, while Lady Blanche lifted her roan over him, with a gay, unsympathising “Keep still, or Mazeppa will damage you!”
The run had lasted but ten minutes and a half as yet, and the hounds, giving tongue in joyous concert, led the way for those who could follow them, over blackthorn hedges, staken-bound fences, and heavy ploughed lands, while the fox was heading for Sifton Wood, where, once lodged, we should never unearth him again. On we went at a killing pace; De Vigne leading the first flight, by two lengths, up to a cramped and awkward leap; a high, stiff, straggling hedge, with a double ditch, almost as wide as a Leicestershire bullfinch. Absorbed as I was in working up my hunter for the leap, I looked to see if the Trefusis funked it Not she! — and she cleared it, too, lifting her chesnut high in the air, over the ugly blackthorn boughs; but on the slippery marshy ground the horse fell, heavily and awkwardly, flinging her forward; so at least they told me afterwards. The courtly M.F.H. stopped to offer her assistance, but she waved him on; De Vigne had forgotten all his chivalry, and led straight ahead without looking back; while picking up her hunter, the Trefusis remounted, nothing daunted by her fall. Lady Blanche’s Mazeppa refused to leap; and with a little petulant French oath, she rode further down, to try and find a gap; while my luckless underbred one flung me over his head, rolling on his back in rushes, nettles, mud, and duckweed, and before either he or I could recover ourselves and shake off the slough, the
fox was killed, and the whoop of triumph came ringing far over plantations and pastures on the clear October air.
With not a few unholy oaths, less choice than Lady Blanche’s, I rode through the gap lower down, and made my way to the finish. The brush was awarded to De Vigne by the old huntsman, who might have given it to the Trefusis, for she was only a yard or two behind him; but Squib had no tenderness for the sex; indeed, he looked on them as having no earthly business in the field, and gave it with a gruff word of compliment to Granville, who of course handed it to Miss Trefusis, but claimed the right of sending it up to town, to be mounted on ivory for her. That dashing Amazon herself, sat on her trembling and foam-covered chesnut, with the dignity and royal beauty of Cynisca, returning in her chariot from the Olympic games, and De Vigne seemed to think nothing more attractive than this haughty, triumphant, imperial woman, who had skill and pluck worthy a Pytchley Nestor. I preferred little Flora’s girlish pity for the “poor dear fox,” and her pathetic lamentation to her husband that she “dearly loved the riding, but she would rather never see the finish.” However, as De Vigne said the morning before, chacun à son goût; if we all liked the same style of woman where should we be? We rival and jostle and hate each other enough as it is, about that centre of all mischief, the Beau Sexe, Heaven knows!
We had another run that day, but it was a very slow affair. We killed the fox, but he made scarcely any running at all, and we might have scored it almost as a blank day; but for our first glorious twenty minutes, one of the fastest things I ever knew, from Euston Hollows up to Sifton Wood. Lady Blanche went back in ill-humour: missing that ditch had put the pretty widow in dudgeon for all the day; but the Trefusis! — it’s my firm conviction that Mazeppa’s gallop could not have tired that woman. She rode, as De Vigne observed admiringly to me, with as firm a seat and as strong a hand as any rough-rider. Excellence in his own art pleased him, I suppose, for he watched her more and more; and rode back to Euston Hollows with her, through the gloaming, some nine miles from where the last fox was killed, looking down on her beauty with bold, tender glances.
CHAPTER III.
In the Academic Shades of Granta.
LTESTRANGE had bid us send our things over to his house, and make our toilettes there, after the day’s sport; and when we went down into the drawing-room, we found the Trefusis sitting on an amber satin couch, queening it over the county men, a few college fellows or professors, and the borough Members. There were Mrs. St. Croix and her two daughters, showy, flighty, hawked-about women, and the Gwyn-Erlens, fresh, nice-looking girls; and Lady Blanche, recovered from her ill-humour, and ready to shoot down any game worth or not worth the hitting; and the Countess of Turquoise, who thought very few people knew what fun was, she told me, and instanced the dreary social torture called dining out; and Mrs. Fitzrubric, a bishop’s wife, staying in the neighbourhood, who considered the practice of giving buns at school feasts sensual, but showed herself no disrelish for champagne and mock turtle. And there was that “detestable old woman,” according to Flora, the Lady Fantyre, widow of an Irish peer, — a little, shrivelled, witty, nasty-thinking, and amusing-talking old lady, with a thin, sharp face, a hooked nose, very keen, bright, cunning, quizzical eyes, a very candid wig, and unmistakable rouge. She chattered away, in a shrill treble, of intimate acquaintance with court celebrities, some of whom certainly she could never have known, for the best of reasons, that they were dead before she was born; and, having seen a vast deal of life, not all of the nicest, and picked up a good deal of information, she passed current in nine cases out of ten, with her apocryphal stories and well-worn title, which covered a multitude of sins, as coronets do and charity doesn’t. But she was “not visited” where her departed lord’s rank might have entitled her to be, partly because she had a rather too marked skill at cards; but chiefly, I have no doubt, because she had no balance at any bank save Homburg and Baden, and was obliged to live by her wits, those wits being represented by the four honours and the odd trick. If poor old Fantyre had had a half million or so at Barclay’s, I dare say the charitable world would have let her buy oblivion for all the naughty secrets hidden in her old wigged head.
“Diana turned to Venus, and no mistake,” whispered Curly to me, as we looked at the Trefusis, her beauty heightened by her toilette, which was as tasteful as a Parisienne’s, and would have chimed in with M. Chevreuils artistic notions. De Vigne, the moment he entered, crossed over to her, and, seating himself, began to talk. Whether the lustrous gaze of his eyes, which knew how to express their admiration, got their admiration returned; or whether she had wit enough to appreciate his conversation, where the true gold of sense, and talent, rang out in distinction to the second-hand platitudes, or Punch-cribbed mots, of the generality of people, I will not pretend to decide. At any rate, by some spell or other, he distanced his rivals by many lengths., They naturally spoke of the run of that morning, and the Trefusis, flirting her fan with stately movement, and turning her full glittering eyes upon him, asked very softly, “What do you think you did this morning that pleased me?”
De Vigne expressed his happiness that any act of his should do so.
“It was when we took that ditch by Sifton Wood, and my stupid chesnut fell with me. You rode on, and never looked back; your thoughts were with the hounds, not with me!”
“You are more forgiving to my discourtesy than I can be to myself,” smiled De Vigne. “What you are so generous as to pardon I cannot recall without shame.”
“Then you are very silly,” she interrupted him. “A man in a time of excitement or danger should have something better to think about than a woman.”
“It is difficult, with Miss Trefusis before us, to think there can be anything better than a woman,” whispered De Vigne.
She looked at him and smiled, too; with something of malice in it as when she had cleared the Cam before him — a smile that at once repulsed, and fascinated; annoyed and piqued him. Just then dinner was announced as served. L’Estrange took away my bewitching Countess of Turquoise; Curly led in Julia St. Croix, with whom he seemed wonderfully struck, Heaven knows why, except that young fellows will go down before any battered or war-worn arrows at times; and De Vigne gave his arm to the Trefusis, to whom he talked during all the courses with a devotion which must have interfered with his proper appreciation of the really masterly productions of the Euston Hollows chef and the very excellent hock and claret of L’Estrange’s cellar. Whether he had much response I cannot say — for I was absorbed in looking at Lady Turquoise from far too respectful a distance to please me: but I should fancy not, for the Trefusis was never, that I heard, much famed for conversation; still someway or other she fascinated him with her basilisk beauty, and when Flora gave the move she looked into his eyes rather warmly for an acquaintance not twelve hours old as yet. We were some little time before we followed them, for De Vigne and the Members got on the Reform Bill, and did not get off it again in a hurry; and though Lady Turquoise was bewitching, and the Trefusis’ eyes magnificent, and the St Croix very effective as they sang duets in studied poses, Château Margaux and unfettered talk proved more -attractive to us. When we returned to the drawing-room, however, De Vigne took up his station beside the Trefusis again, paying her marked attention, while Flora L’Estrange sang charming little French chansons, and Julia St Croix tortured us with bravuras, and the cruel Countess of Turquoise flirted with the county Member. What an intolerably empty-headed coxcomb, he seemed to me, I remember!
“What a fine creature that Trefusis is!” said De Vigne, as he drove us back to Cambridge in a dog-cart. “On my life, she is a magnificent woman! Arthur, she reminds me of somebody or other — I can’t tell whom — somebody, I dare say, I saw in Spain or in Italy, or in India, perhaps.”
“Shall I tell you!” said Curly.
“Yes, pray do; but you’ve never been about with me, old boy, how should you know!”
“I was with you at the Chancery, and I haven’t forgotten Lucy Davis.”
“The Davis!” exclaimed De Vigne, the light of old days breaking in upon him, half faded, half familiar. “By Jove! she is something like that girl; I declare I had forgotten that schoolboy episode, Curly. So she is like her, — if Lucy had been a lady instead of a dressmaker. The deuce! I hadn’t bad taste then, boy as I was! How many things of that kind one forgets—”
“Lucy didn’t look like a woman who’d allow herself to be forgotten. She’d make you remember her by fair means or foul,” said Curly.
“What! do you recollect her so well, young one?” laughed De Vigne. “I must say, she seems to have made more impression upon you, than she has done on me. There was the very devil in that girl, poor thing, young as she was! She was bold, bad, hardened to the core. But this Trefusis, Curly! — she does bring that girl to my mind, certainly, and there is in her something there was in Lucy Davis — a something intangible which repels, while her exterior beauty allures one. Perhaps it is in both alike — a cold heart within.”