by Ouida
“Why don’t you stand for your county?” asked the Trefusis, playing with her breloques, and looking truly magnificent in her rose-velvet setting.
“Because I’m before my time,” laughed De Vigne. “If I could have a select Cabinet of esprits forts I should be delighted to join them, and help them to seminate liberty and tolerance; but really to settle Maynooth grants, to quarrel on ‘rags or no rags,’ to settle whether we shall confine ourselves to ‘corks squared for rounding’ or admit rounded corks into the country, to hear one noble lord blackguard his noble friend opposite, and one hon member split hairs with another hon member — it would be beyond me, it would indeed! I would as soon go every night to an old ladies’ tea-fight, where bonnets were rancorously discussed and characters mercilessly blackened over Souchong and muffins!”
“Come!” said the Trefusis, “you find such fault with your generation, you should set to work and regenerate it? Hunting with the Viewaway, and lounging about drawing-rooms, won’t do much towards improving your species?”
“Why should I? As Sabretasche, says, ‘Cui bono?’” answered De Vigne, annoyed at her sarcastic and nonchalant tone.
“Then you have certainly no business to sit at home at ease and laugh at other men over your claret and cigars! Why may not other geniuses have equal right to that easy put off of yours, ‘Cui bono?’”
“They have not equal right, if they have once assumed to be geniuses. Let a man assert himself to be something, be it a great man or a scoundrel, and the world expects him to prove his assertion. But an innocent man like myself, who troubles nobody, and never sets up for a mute inglorious Milton, declining to sing, only because his audience isn’t good enough for him, has a right to be left to his claret and cigars, and not to be worried, because it happens he is not what he never pretended to be.”
The Trefusis looked at him maliciously; there was the very devil in that woman’s eye.
“And are you content to be lost in the bouquet of the wine, and buried in the smoke of the tobacco? Are you satisfied with spending your noble existence in an allegorical lounging chair, picking out the motes and never remembering the beam?”
The tone was provoking in the extreme; it put up De Vigne’s blood, as the first touch of the snaffle does a young thorough-bred. He stroked his long moustaches.
“That depends upon circumstances. When I have had my full swing of devilries, extravagances, dissipations, pleasures, Trefusises, and other charming flowers which beset the path of youth, I may, perhaps, turn to something better!”
It was an abominably rude speech; and though De Vigne spoke in the soft, courteous tone he used to all women, whether peeress or peasant, eighty or eighteen, it had its full effect on the Trefusis. She flushed deeply, then turned pale, and I should not have cared to provoke the malignant glance those superb eyes shot upon him. She took no notice, however, and, turning to her Guardsman, thanked him for a bouquet which he had sent to her, and pointed it out to him, set on a console near.
De Vigne drove the tilbury from the door supremely gloomy and silent.
“I say, Arthur,” he said at last, “Victor Hugo says, somewhere, that we are women’s playthings, and women are the devil’s. I fancy Satan will get the worse of the bargain, don’t you?”
“The deuce I do! — that’s to say, if the war’s in words; though I must say you polished off the Trefusis neatly enough just now. Did you see the look she gave you?”
“Yes,” said De Vigne, shortly. “However — anything’s better than a milk-and-water woman. I should grow sick of a girl who always agreed with me. They look so pretty when their blood’s up! Where shall we go now? Suppose we turn into the Yard, and take a look at those steel greys Sabretasche mentioned? I want a new pair to run tandem. And then we can take a turn or two round the Ring, and I’ll show you the women worth cultivating, young one.”
We followed out his programme, bargained for the greys at two hundred and fifty — and immensely cheap, too, for they were three-parts thorough-bred, with beautiful action — drove half-a-dozen times round the Ring, where fifty pair of bright eyes gleamed softly on De Vigne, from the Marchioness of Hautton in her stately barouche, to little Coralie of Her Majesty’s ballet in her single horse brougham; and then went to mess, where the Dashers (being as crack a corps as the Tenth, the Eleventh, or the Blues,) had a peculiar pattern for their plate, a Cordon bleu for their cook, and a good claret connoisseur in their Colonel. The claret was better than Cambridge port, the dinner was rather superior to Hall, and the men furnished wit choicer than Monckton’s Joe Miller jokes, and Phil Herveys Simon the Cellarer, at our Wines. I liked this dash of my new life at any rate, and I regretted leaving the table when Sabretasche invited me to go with him to the Opera, for I didn’t care two pins for music; I did not dare, however, to refuse the first favour from such an exclusive man, and, besides, having just seen little Coralie in the Ring, I consoled myself with the thought of the ballet to be given in the new opera. De Vigne was going too, for reasons best known to himself; and went to his stall, while I followed the Colonel to his box, in the middle of the second act Sabretasche spoke not at all while Grisi was on the stage, and I put my lorgnon up and took a glance round the house. I always think Her Majesty’s, on a grand night, with all the boxes filled with the handsomest and best-dressed women in town, one of the prettiest sights going; and I did the grand tier deliberately, going from loge to loge; and in one of its centre boxes, with the scarlet folds of an opera cloak floating round her, and scarlet camellias against her white lace dress, and in her rich dark hair, sat the Trefusis, with little bright-eyed, hooked-nosed, bewigged, and black Mechlin’d, old Fantyre as a foil.
Presently the Trefusis raised her bouquet to her lips quite carelessly, to take its perfume, I presume! I happened to look down at De Vigne: his lorgnon was fixed on her too. He smiled, left his stall, and in a minute or two I saw him displacing young Lascelles of the Blues and bending down over the Trefusis.
“What do you think of that affair, Chevasney?” said the Colonel to me, as the curtain came down.
“I don’t know how it stands. Enlighten me, will you!”
Sabretasche shook his head.
“I know no more than yourself. De Vigne, like all wise men, is silent upon his own business, and I never attempt to pry into it I see the thing on its surface, and it seems to me that the lady is serious, whatever he be.”
“Serious! Oh, hang it! he can’t be serious.”
“Tant pis pour lui if he be,” said the Colonel, smiling. “But, my dear boy, you do not know women as yet; how should you, in two-and-twenty years, have read that enigmatical book, which is harder to guess at than Sanscrit or Black letter! You can never fathom the deep game that a clever one like the Trefusis, if I mistake her not, can play when she chooses.”
I, the most knowing hand in Granta — I, who if I did pique myself on any one thing, piqued myself on my skill and knowledge in managing the beau sexe — I, to be told I did not know women! I pocketed the affront, however, as best I might, for I felt a growing respect for the Colonel, with his myriad talents, his brilliant reputation, and mysterious reserve; and told him I did not believe De Vigne cared an atom more for the Trefusis than for twenty others before her.
“I hope so,” he answered; “but that chess they are playing yonder ends too often in checkmate. However, we will not prophesy so bad a fate for our friend; for worse he could not have than to fall into those soft hands. By the way, though, her hands are not soft, they are not the hands of a lady.”
“You have a bad opinion of the Trefusis, Colonel!”
“Not of the Trefusis in particular.”
“Of her sex, then!”
“I may have cause,” he answered briefly. “How full the house is, and how few of those people come for music! How few of them would care if it were dance trash of D’Albert’s, if the dance-music chanced to be most in fashion. Make it the rage, and three-quarters of the music lovers here would run after a ba
rrel-organ ground on that stage, as they are now doing after Mario. Half England, if the Court, the Peerage, and Belgravia voted the sun a bore, and a rushlight comme il faut, would instantly shut their shutters and burn rushlights while the fashion lasted! And then people care for the world’s opinion!”
“Because they can’t get on without it.”
“True enough! — they despise it, but they must bow to it before they can use it and turn it to their own ends; those must, at least, who live by sufferance on it, and through it Thank God, I want nothing from it, and can defy it at my leisure; or rather forget and neglect it; defying is too much trouble. A man who defies is certain to raise a hue and cry at his heels, whose bray and clamour is as senseless as it is deafening, and no more able to declare what it has come out after than Dogberry. Ah, you are studying that girl in the fifth from the centre. That is little Eulalie Papillon. Does she not look a pretty, innocent dove? Yet she will cost those three fellows with her more than a racing stud, and she is as avaricious as Harpagon! I should like to make a computation of how many of these people come for music. That old man there, who droops his head and takes snuff during the entr’actes; those fellows on the ground-tier taking shorthand notes for the daily journals; one or two dilettante ladies who really know something of fugues and symphonies: those are all, I verily believe. Little Eulalie comes to show herself, and carry Bevan off to her petit souper, for fear any fairer Lais should pounce on him; those décolletées and diamondized old ladies come because it is one of the Yards where their young fillies tell best, and may chance to get a bid. Lady Ormolu there, that one with marabouts in her hair, comes because her lord is a Georges Dandin, and she has no chance of meeting Villiers, who is her present lover, anywhere else. Mrs. Lacquers is here because there was a rumour that her husband’s Bank would not stand, and he, who is a Bible Society president and vessel of grace, but who still keeps one eye open on terrestrial affairs, has told her to exhibit here to-night, and be as lively as possible, with plenty of rubies about her, so that he may get off to Boulogne. Dear man! he remembers ‘Aide-toi et Dieu t’aidera.’”
“Have you a private Belphégor in your pocket, sir?” said I, dropping my lorgnon, “to help you unroof the houses and unlock your acquaintances’ brains?”
“My Belphégor is Experience,” laughed Sabretasche. “And now hush, if you please, Chevasney; there is Grisi again, and as I come for music, though nobody else may, I like to be quiet.”
It was curious to note the change that came over his melancholy expressive countenance, as he listened to the prima donna, and I saw the gaze of many women fixed upon him, as, with his eyes half-closed, and his thoughts far away, he leaned back in his chair. They said he was dangerous to women, and one could hardly wonder if he were. A gallant soldier in the field; a charming companion in club or mess-room; accomplished in music, painting, sculpture, as in the hardier arts of rifle and rod; speaking most continental languages with equal facility; his manners exquisitely tender and gentle, his voice soft as the Italian he best loved to speak, his face and form of unusual beauty; and, to back him, all that subtler art which is only acquired in the Eleusinia of the boudoir, no marvel if women, his pet playthings, did go down before Vivian Sabretasche. He had been born in Italy, where his father, having spent what money he had at the green tables, lived to retrench — retrenchment being always synonymous in English minds with the Continent, though whether a palace, even a little tumbledown, ortolans, lachrymachristi, and nightly réunions, do tend to tighten pursestrings and benefit cheque-books, is an open question. Luckily for Sabretasche, his uncle, a rich old roué, of the Alvanley and Pierrepoint time, went off the stage without an heir, and he came in for all the property, a princely balance at Barclay’s, a town house, and a moor up in Inverness-shire. On his accession, he left the Neapolitan Hussars, entered the Queen’s, and took the position to which his old name and wealth entitled him. It was always the popular idea that Sabretasche had some history or other, though why he should have nobody could probably have told you: but everybody loved him, from the charger that followed him like a dog and ate out of his hand, to the young comets who, in their debts and their difficulties, always found a lenient judge and a kind friend in gay, liberal, highly-gifted, and ultra-fashionable Vivian Sabretasche.
When he had drunk his fill of music, and I had clapped little Coralie to my heart’s content; an ovation that young lady little needed, having a hired claque of her own in omnibus-boxes, not to mention some twenty men who threw her bouquets with genuine bracelets and bramssime; Sabretasche and I, passing through the crush-room, or rather the draughty, catarrh-conferring passages which answer to that portion of Her Majesty’s now-a-days, came close to De Vigne with the Trefusis on his arm, while little Lascelles escorted Lady Fantyre, nowise enraptured apparently at the charge of that shrewd old dame, with her sandalwood perfume, and her old lace, of a price, and dirt, untold. Lady Fan tyre’s carriage was not yet up, and we stood and chatted together, the Trefusis smiling very graciously on us, but reserving all her most telling glances for De Vigne, on whose arm she hung with a sort of proprietorship, for which I cursed her with most unchristian earnestness.
“Come home to supper with us,” whispered the Trefusis, as their carriage was at last announced.
De Vigne accepted the invitation, and old Fantyre extended it to Sabretasche and to me. The Colonel smiled, bowed his acquiescence, and told his man to drive us to Bruton-street, as De Vigne sprang into the Fantyre brougham.
“I was engaged to what I liked much better, lansquenet at Hollingsworth’s; but I want to see how the game lies in Bruton-street. I fancy that woman’s moves will be worth watching,” said Sabretasche, throwing himself back on his cushions. “By the way, who is she — do you know?”
“The devil I don’t! Somebody up at Cambridge said she was old Fantyre’s companion; others whispered her daughter, others her niece, others, what the old woman said herself, that she is the child of her brother — a John, or James, or something monosyllabic, Trefusis.”
“No very exalted lineage that,” returned Sabretasche; “for if report be true — and I believe it is — the Fantyre at sixteen was an orange-girl, crying, ‘Who’ll buy ’em, two a penny!’ up St. James’s-street; that Fantyre, the most eccentric of eccentric Irishmen (and all Hibernians have a touch of madness!) beheld her from his window in Arthur’s, fell in love with her foot and leg, walked out, offered to her in the street, was accepted of course, and married at seventy-five. What fools there are in the world, Chevasney! She pushed her way cleverly enough, though as to knowing all the exclusives she talks about, she no more knew them than my dog did. She heard of them, of course; saw some of the later ones at Ranelagh and the Wells; very likely won francs at piquet from poor Brummel, when he was in decadence at Caen, to put him in mind of the palmy days when he fleeced Coombe of ponies; possibly entertained Talleyrand when he was glad of an English asylum: and, of course, would get together Moore, and Jeffreys, and Tom Erskine, and all the young fellows; for a pretty woman and a shrewd woman can always make men forget she sprang from the gutter. But as to the others — pooh! she was no more intimate with them than I; old Fantyre himself was in far too mal odeur, and left his widow to live by her wits rather than to figure as a leader of ton. Here we are; it will all be very comme il faut. I bet you, Chevasney, Lady Fantyre is afraid of my eye-glass!”
It was all comme il faut. De Vigne was sitting beside the Trefusis, his glowing passionate eyes fixed on hers; while in her face was merely the look of calm, conscious beauty, gratified at triumph and exigeant of homage; a beauty the embodiment of tyranny; a beauty which would exult in denying the passion it excited; a beauty only a tool in the hands of its possessor, to pioneer a path for her ambitions, and draw within her reach the prizes that she coveted.
De Vigne did not look best pleased to see us. I dare say he would have preferred a tête-à-tête supper with old Lady Fantyre dozing after her champagne! Such, however, was denied to him; per
haps they knew how to manage him better than to make his game too easy. Do any of us care for the tame pheasants knocked over at our feet in a battue, as we do for an outlying royal that has led us many hours’ weary toil, through burn and bracken, over rock and furze? We knock down the pheasants to swell our score, and leave them where they fall, to be picked up after us; but difficulty and excitement warm our blood and fire our pride, and we think no toil or trouble too great to hear the ping of the bullet, and see the deer grallocked at last!
We had a very pleasant supper. Opera-suppers are always pleasant to my mind; there is a freedom about them that gives a certain pointe à la sauce, which it would be better for ladies to put down among their items for entertainment, a good deal oftener than they do. There was plenty of champagne, and, under its genial influences the Fantyre tongue was loosened, and Sabretasche amused himself with the old lady’s shrewd wit and not overparticular stories; — a queer contrast enough himself to the little snuffy, rouged, and wigged Irish peeress, with his delicate beauty of feature, and indolent refinement of tone; while De Vigne, fired by the Parthian glances which had been so freely bestowed on him, and the proximity of that superb Trefusis, his idol — at least for the present — talked with the wit of which, when he chose, no man on earth could give out more brilliant coruscations. The Trefusis never said very much; hers was chiefly silent warfare.
“What did you think of the ballet, Colonel?” asked old Fantyre, peering up into his face. At seventy-six women are still much kinder to a handsome man than to a plain one.