by Ouida
I learnt that much at least, and it is no mean lesson, though I must admit that, after having had my cross taken away, been gated times innumerable, having done all the books of Virgil by way of penance (paying little Crib, my wine-merchant’s son, to write them out for me), and been shown up before the proctor on no less than six separate occasions, I got rusticated in my fourth term, and finally took my name off the books. The governor laughed, preferred the Pewter I had to show, and my share in winning the Challenge Cup, to any Bell’s or Craven’s scholarships, and paid my debts without a murmur. Too good to be true, you will say, amt lecteur? No; there are fathers who can remember they have been young; though they are unspeakably rare — as rare as ladies who can let you forget it!
Now came the question, what should I do? “Nothing,” the correct thing, according to the governor. “Stand for the county,” my mother suggested. “Go as attaché to my cousin, the envoy to St. Petersburg,” my relatives opined, who had triumphed, with much unholy glory, over my rustication, as is the custom of relatives from time immemorial. As it chanced, I had no fancy for either utter dolce, the bray of St Stephen’s, or the snows of Russia, so I put down my name for a commission. We had plenty of interest to push it, and the “Gazette” soon announced, “ — th P O. Lancers, Arthur Vane Tierney Chevasney, to be Cornet, vice James Yelverton, promoted;” and the — th, always known in the service as the Dashers, was De Vigne’s regiment, my old Frestonhills hero.
The Dashers were then quartered at Kensington and Hounslow, and the first person I saw as I drove through Knightsbridge was De Vigne’s groom, Harris, riding a powerful thorough-bred, swathed in body-clothing, whom I recognized as the bay of the Euston Hollows run. As soon as my interviews with the Adjutant and the Colonel were over, I found out De Vigne’s rooms speedily. He had the drawing-room floor of a house in Kensington Gore, well furnished, and further crowded with crowds of things of his own, from Persian carpets bought in his travels, to the last new rifle sent home only the day before. I made my way up unannounced, and stood a minute or two in the open doorway. They were pleasant rooms, just as a man likes to have them, with all the things he wants about him, ready to his hand; no madame to make him miserable by putting his pipes away out of sight, and no housekeeper to drive him distracted by sorting his papers, and introducing order among his pet lumber. A setter, a retriever, and a couple of Skyes, were on the hearthrug, (veritable tiger-skin); breakfast, in dainty Sèvres, and silver, stood on one table, sending up an aroma of coffee, omelettes, and devils; the morning papers lay on the floor, a smokingcap was hung on a Parian Venus; a parrot, who apparently considered himself master of the place, was perched irreverently on a bronze Milton, and pipes, whips, pistols, and cards, were thrown down on a Louis Quinze couch, that Louise de Kéroualle or Sophie Arnould might have graced. From the inner room came the rapid clash of small-swords, while “Touche, touche, touche! riposte! holà!” was shouted, in a silvery voice, from a man who, lying back in a rocking-chair in the bay-window of the front room, was looking on at a bout with the foils that was taking place beyond the folding-doors. The two men who were fencing were De Vigne and a smaller, slighter fellow; the one calm, cool, steady, and never at a disadvantage, the other, skilful indeed, but too hot, eager, and rapid: for in fencing, whether with the foils or the tongue, the grand secret is to be cool, since, in proportion to your tranquillity, grows your opponent’s exasperation! The man in the bay-window was too deeply interested to observe me, so I waited patiently till De Vigne had sent his adversary’s foil flying from his hand.
He turned with one of his sunny smiles:
“Ah! dear old fellow, how are you? Charmed to see you. This is the best move you ever made, Arthur. Mr. Chevasney, Colonel Sabretasche, M. de Cheffontaine, a trio of my best friends. We only want Curly to make the partie carrée perfect. Sit down, old boy; we have just breakfasted, I am sorry to say, but here are the things, and you shall soon have some hot chocolate and fresh côtelettes.”
While he talked he forced me into an arm-chair, and I disregarding all my protests that I had already breakfasted twice — once at Longholme and once at a station — rang for his man. De Cheffontaine, a French attaché, flung himself on a sofa, and began with a mot on his own defeat; the fellow in the bay-window got lazily out of his rocking-chair and strolled over to us. De Vigne took his meerschaum, and we were soon talking away as hard as we could, of the belles of that season, the pets of the ballet, Richmond, the Spring Meetings, the best sales in the Yard, the last matches at Lord’s, the chances of Heliotrope’s being scratched, the certainty that Vane Stevens’s roan filly would lose the trotting-match, with other like topics of the Town and the Hour. Sabretasche was, I found, a Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, and Major of the Dashers, and a most agreeable man he seemed, lying back in his chair, making us laugh at witticisms which he spoke, quietly and indolently, in a soft, low, mellow voice. Had I been a woman that beautiful face would have done for me irretrievably, as, according to report, it had done for a good many. Reckless devil-may-care, the man looked, the recklessness of one who heeds nothing in heaven or earth; a little hardened by the world and its rubs, rendered cynical, perhaps, by injustice and wrong; but in the eyes there lay a kindness, and in the mouth a sadness which betokened better things. He might have been thirty, five-and-thirty, forty. One could no more tell his age than his character, though, looking at him, one could fancy it true what the world said of him — that no man ever found so faithful a friend, and no woman so faithless a lover, as in Vivian Sabretasche.
“Chevasney, who do you think is one of the reigning beauties up here!” asked De Vigne, pushing me some cubas.
“How should I know! The Cherryhinton barmaid!”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“The Trefusis, then!”
“Of course. She is still living with that abominable old Irish woman. They’re in Bruton-street; — a pleasant house, only everybody wonders where the Peeress finds the needful. They give uncommonly agreeable receptions. Don’t they, Sabretasche!”
“Oh, very!” answered the Colonel, with an enigmatical smile, “especially to you, I’ve no doubt; and the only tax levied on one for the entertainment is to pay a few compliments to mademoiselle, and a few guinea points to my lady. I can’t say all the guests are the best ton; there are too many ladies designated by the definite article, and too many gentlemen with cordons in their button-holes; but they know how to amuse one another, and the women, if not exclusive, are at least remarkably pretty. The Trefusis is more than pretty, especially smoking a cigarette. Shall you allow her cigars when you’re married to her, De Vigne!”
“Not when I am.”
“There’s an unjust fellow! How like a man that is!” cried Sabretasche. “What’s charming in any other woman becomes horrid in his wife. You remind me of Jessie Villars: when her husband smokes, she vows the scent will kill her; when Wyndham meets her on the terrace, taking his good-night pipe, she lisps there’s nothing so delightful as the scent of Latakia! Come, Mr. Chevasney, I don’t mind prying into my friends’ affairs before their faces. Have not De Vigne and the Trefusis had some nice little flirtation before now?”
“To be sure,” I answered. “It began to be rather a desperate affair; the Trinity backs could tell you many a tale, I dare say. He came down for Diana, and forsook her for Venus.”
“But you can’t say, old fellow, I ever deserted the Quiver for the Ceinture,” cried De Vigne. “The Viewaway was never eclipsed by the Trefusis!”
“I don’t know that. Have you taken up the affair where you left it?”
“I never reveal secrets that ladies share,” said De Vigne, with a demure air, “but I’ll be very generous, Arthur. I’ll take you to call on her.”
“Bien obligé. What do you think of this beauty, M. de Cheffontaine?” I asked of the lively little Baron.
“Oh!” laughed he, “all your English women are superb, divine, when they are not prudes!”
“And that is a fault
you cannot pardon?” asked Sabretasche, with his low silvery laugh.
“Nor you! but one cannot reproach the Trefusis with it!”
Sabretasche laughed again, and quoted
“Non, jamais tourterelle
N’aima plus tendrement.
Comme elle était fidèle
A — son dernier amant!”
De Vigne did not appear best pleased; he lifted his head to look out of the window into the park, and as he looked his annoyance seemed to increase. I followed his glance, and saw the Trefusis on a very showy bay, of not first-rate action, taking her morning canter.
“Ah, talk of an angel, you know! — there she is,” said Sabretasche. “Wise woman to show often en amazone; it suits her better than anything. She has met little Jimmy Levison, and taken him on with her. Poor Jimmy! between her smiles and old Fantyre’s honours he won’t come off the better for those Bruton-street soirées. Why, De Vigne, you look quite wrathful! You wouldn’t he jealous of little Jimmy, would you?”
I don’t suppose De Vigne was jealous of little Jimmy; but I dare say he was not flattered to see the same wiles given to trap that very young pigeon, which were bestowed to lure a fiery hawk like himself.
“It amuses me to see all those women taking their morning rides,” Sabretasche continued. “The Trefusis will tell us that she cannot exist without her morning trot on ‘dear Diamond,’ but, sans doute, she remembered that De Vigne would be pretty sure to be breakfasting by this window, not to mention that she had whispered to little Jimmy her wish to see his new grey hack. I always look under women’s words as I look under their veils; they mean them to embellish, but I don’t choose they should hide.”
“How do you act, Colonel,” laughed De Vigne, “when you come to a Shetland veil tied down very tight?”
“I never yet met one that hadn’t some holes!” said Sabretasche. “No women are long a puzzle; they are too inconsistent, and betray their artifices by overdoing them. She is out of sight now, De Vigne. Would you like your horse ordered?”
De Vigne laughed.
“Thank you, no. Do you go to the new opera tonight, Sabretasche?”
“Yes; though I should go with infinitely more pleasure, if I could get the glories of Gluck, and Mozart, instead of the sing-song ballads of Verdi and Balfe.”
“Music is the god of his idolatry!” said De Vigne, turning to me. “It is positively a passion! Your heaven will be composed of sweet sounds, eh, Sabretasche?”
“As yours of houris and of thorough-breds?”
“Perhaps! I should combine Mahomet’s and the Indian’s ideas into one — almond eyes and a good hunting-ground! Look here, Arthur, at this ‘Challenge.’ That man yonder did it Isn’t he a clever fellow — too good to lie still in a rocking chair, and talk about women?”
I looked at the “Challenge” — a little marble statuette from Landseer’s picture; and product of the Colonel’s chisel. It was really a wonderful little thing; every minutia, even each fine point of the delicate antlers, being most beautifully and perfectly finished.
“How immensely jolly to have such talent!” said I, involuntarily expressing my honest admiration. “What a resource it must be — what a refuge when other things pall?”
He smiled at my enthusiasm, and raised his eyebrows.
“Cut bono?” he said softly, as he rose and pushed back his chair.
The man interested me; and when he and the Baron were gone, I asked De Vigne what he knew of him, as we stood waiting for his tilbury, to go and call in Bruton-street.
“Of Vivian Sabretasche? I know much of him socially, little of himself; and of his history — if history he have — nothing. He is excessively kind to me; honourable and generous in all his dealings; a gentleman always. More of him I know not, nor, were we acquainted ten years, should I at the end, I dare say, know more.”
“Why?”
“Why? For this reason — that nobody does. Hollingsworth and he were cornets together; yet Hollingsworth is as much a stranger to the real man as you or I. There are some fellows, you know, who don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves; he is one, I am another. Men are like snowballs: to begin with, it’s a piece of snow, soft and pure and malleable, and easily enough melted; but the snowball soon gets kicked about and mixed up with other snow, and knocked against stones and angles, and hurried, and shoved, and pushed along till, in sheer selfdefence, it hardens itself into a solid, impenetrable, immovable block of ice!”
“Nonsense! You are not that.”
“Not yet, thank God!”
I should say he was not! The passionate blood of six-and-twenty, was more likely to be at boiling point, than at zero.
CHAPTER IV.
A subtle Poison Drunk in the Champagne at an Opera Supper.
VERY good style was the Bruton-street house, and very good style the Trefusis, with the rose light falling on her from the window, where she was surrounded by plants, and birds in cages and on stands, with a little fellow of the Guards, and a courtly French exile, lounging away their morning there.
She looked up with a smile of conscious power, gave her hand tenderly to De Vigne, with a full sweep of her superb eyes under their thick fringes; bent her head to me, and put her Pomeranian dog on his knee. Old Lady Fantyre was there playing propriety, if Propriety could ever be persuaded to let herself be represented by that hook-nosed, disreputable, detestable, amusing old woman, who sat working away at the tapestry-frame, with her gold spectacles on, occasionally lifting up her little keen brown eyes and mingling in the conversation, telling the old tale of “ma jeunesse,” of the Bath and the Wells, of Ombre and Quadrille, Sheridan and Selwyn, Talleyrand and Burke, “old Q.” and Lady Coventry.
“I remember you at Cambridge, Mr. Chevasney, and our merry luncheon too,” said the Trefusis, as if Cambridge belonged to some dim era of her childhood, which it was astonishing she could recall at all.
“What! my dear,” burst in Lady Fantyre, “you don’t mean to say you remember all your acquaintances, do you? If so, ye’ll have enough to do.”
“Certainly not But when they are as agreeable as Mr. Chevasney—”
“Of course — of course. Les présents out toujours raison,” continued the Viscountess, in her lively treble, “as true by the way, that is, as its twin maxim, Les absents out toujours tort; it would be hard, indeed, if we might not tell tales of our friends when they couldn’t hear us! But I know we used to give cuts by the dozen. I remember walking down the Birdcage Walk with Selwyn (poor dear Selwyn, there isn’t his like in this day; I remember him so well, though I was but a little chit then!), and a man, a very personable man, too — but Lord! my dear, not one of us — came up and reminded George he had known him in Bath. What do you think Selwyn did, my dear? Why, stared him in the face, of course, and said, ‘Well, sir, in Bath I may possibly know you again.’”
“That beats Brummel, when a lady apologised for keeping him so long standing by her carriage: ‘My dear lady, there is no one to see it!’” said De Vigne, laughing.
“Abominable!” cried the Trefusis. “If I had been that woman, I would have told him I had made sure of that, or I would not have hazarded my reputation by speaking to him!”
“Brummel would have been very willing to have been seen with you,” said De Vigne, fixing his eyes on her, and he knew pretty well how to make his eyes talk.
“There’s not one of you men now-a-days like Selwyn,” began the old raconteuse again, while the Trefusis bent her stately head to her boy Guardsman, and De Vigne balanced his cane thoughtfully on the Pomeranian’s nose. “You talk of your great wit Lord John Bonmot, why, he hasn’t as much wit in his whole body as there was in poor dear George’s little finger! Ah! there isn’t one half the verve among you new people there was in my young time. Where is the man among you, who can make laughter run down the table as my friend Sheridan could? Which of you can move heads, and hearts, like Billy Pitt! Where among those idle lads in the Temple, who smoke Cavendish, and drink Bass, t
ill they think nothing better than tobacco and beer, shall I see another Tom Erskine? Which among those brainless scribblers who print poems, that make one want a Tennyson’s Dictionary only to understand the foolish adjectives in ’em, can write like that boy Byron, with his handsome face and his wry foot? Lord! and what a fuss there was with him when he was first made a lion! And then to turn his coffin from the Abbey! Such comic verses as he made on my parrot too, he and young Hobhouse!” And old Fantyre, having fairly talked herself out of breath, at last halted; and De Vigne, annoyed first of all with little Jimmy in the morning, and secondly with the attention the Trefusis gave her Cornet, neglected her for the Viscountess, with much parade thereof.
“I fear you are right, madam,” he said, laughing. “Ours is an age of general action rather than individual greatness. We have a good catalogue of ships, but no Ulysses, no Atrides—”
“Ah! I don’t remember them; they weren’t in our set!” responded Lady Fantyre, naively.
“Or perhaps,” continued De Vigne, stroking his moustaches with laudable gravity, “it is rather that education is diffused so much more widely that the particular owners of it are not so much noticed. Arago may be as great a man as Galileo, but it is natural that a world which teaches the laws of gravitation in its twopenny schools, scarcely regards him with the same wonder as if they disbelieved in the earth’s movement, and were ready to burn him for his audacity.”
“Ours is an age of science and of money,” suggested the Frenchman, “whose chief aim is to economize labour and time; an age in which everything is turned to full account, from dead seaweed to living brains.”
“Yes,” said De Vigne, “we are eminently practical; we extract the veratrin from crocuses, and value Brunei more than Bulwer! We throw our millions into a scheme for cutting through an isthmus, but we should not spare our minutes to listen to the music of the spheres though Pythagoras were resuscitated to teach us them. So best! Many more of us find it, of much greater importance to get quickly to India, than to wait for all the learning of the schools; and Adam Smith, though infinitely more prosaic, is a much more useful philosopher than Bolingbroke.”