Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  “I thought very little of it,” answered Sabretasche. “Coralie has no grace; boys make a fuss with her because she happens to be pretty, but as for her dancing — faugh! scores of Castilian girls I have seen doing the fandango, under the village chesnut-trees, would beat her hollow.”

  “Glorious dance that fandango is!” said De Vigne.

  “I have danced the fandango; no more able to help myself when the girl and the castanets began, than the holy cardinals, who, when they came to Madrid to excommunicate the cachuca, ended by joining in it! Like the rest of us, I suppose, they found forbidding a thing to other people, very easy and pleasant, but going without it themselves rather more difficult.”

  “You never go without a thing you like, do you?” asked the Trefusis.

  “Certainly not. Why should I?”

  “I don’t know; only — boys who have revelled in Bath buns, sometimes rue it, when they realise Chromate of lead.”

  “Oh! as for that,” laughed De Vigne, “the moralists make out that a sort of Chromate of lead follows, as natural sequence, any Bath buns one may fancy to eat. I don’t see it myself.”

  “Your best Bath buns are women, De Vigne?” said Lady Fantyre, with her silent chuckle, “and you’ll be uncommonly lucky, my dear, if you don’t find some Chromate of lead, as you call it, after one or two of them.”

  “He will, indeed,” smiled Sabretasche. “Ladies are the exact antipodes of olives: the one begins in salt, and leaves us blessed with a delicious rose aroma; the other, with all due deference, is nectar to commence with, but how soon, through our fault entirely, of course, they turn into very gall!”

  Lady Fantyre chuckled again; she was a wise old woman, in her way, and enjoyed nothing more than a hit at her own sex. To be sure, she was leaving the field very fast, and perhaps grudged the new combatants her cast-off weapons.

  “True enough, Colonel; yet, if one may believe naughty stories, the flavour’s been one uncommonly to your taste?”

  Sabretasche shrugged his shoulders.

  “My dear lady, can one put aside the Falernian because there will be some amari aliquid at the bottom of the glass? Nobody loved the sex better than Mahomet, yet he learned enough from his favourite almond eyes to create his heaven without women!”

  “What a heathen you are, Sabretasche!” cried De Vigne. “If I were Miss Trefusis, I wouldn’t speak to you!”

  “My dear fellow, I could support it!” said Sabretasche, naïvely, with such delicious Brummelian impudence that I believe Lady Fantyre could have kissed him — a favour for which the Colonel would have been anything but grateful.

  The Trefusis’s eyes glared; De Vigne, sitting next her, did not catch their expression, or I think, though he might be getting mad about her, he would not have taken the trouble he did, to look so tenderly at her, and whisper, “If he could bear it, I could not.”

  “Yes, you could,” said the Trefusis, through her pearly teeth. “You would make me the occasion for an epigram on female caprice, and go and pay the same compliments to Lady Hautton or Coralie the danseuse. I never knew the man who could not support, with most philosophic indifference, the cruelty of one woman if he had another to turn to! — provided indeed she had not left him for some one else, when, perhaps, his pride might be a little piqued.”

  De Vigne smiled; he was pleased to see her annoyed.

  “Well! we are philosophic in self-defence, probably; but you are mistaken in thinking so lightly of the wounds you give: and I am sorry you should be so, for you will be more likely to refuse to what you fancy a mere scratch, the healing touch that you might, perhaps, be persuaded to accord if you were more fully aware of the harm you had done.”

  Sabretasche interrupted him.

  “Talking of wounds, De Vigne? My dear fellow, who gets them now? The surest way of wounding, if such a thing be possible when the softest little ingénue wears a chain-armour of practical egotism, is to keep invulnerable yourself. Miss Trefusis teaches us that.”

  “You know the world, Colonel,” smiled old Fantyre. “I like men who do: they amuse one. When one’s been behind the scenes oneself, those poor silly fools who sit in front of the stage, and believe in Talma’s strut and Siddons’s tears, in the rouge and the paint, and the tinsel and the trap-doors, do tire one so! You talk of your ingénues; I’m sure they’re the most stupid lot possible!” —

  “Except when they’re ingénues de Saint Lo,” laughed De Vigne.

  “Which most of them are,” said the Fantyre. “Take my word for it, my dear, if you find woman extra simple, sweet, and prudish, you will be no match for her! Sherry’s a very pleasant, light, innocent sort of wine, but strychnine’s sometimes given in it, you know, for all that; and if a girl cast her eyes down more timidly than usual, you may be pretty sure those eyes have looked on queerer scenes than you fancy.”

  “To be sure,” said De Vigne. “‘C’est trop contre un mari’ (or un amant) d’être coquette et dévote; une femme devrait opter.’”

  “Then when you marry, you will take your wife out of a casino rather than a convent?” asked the old lady, with a comical smile.

  The Trefusis shot a keen, rapid, hard glance at him, as he laughed, “Come, come, Lady Fantyre, is there no medium !”

  “Between prudes and Aspasias?” said her shrill little treble. “No, sir — not that I ever saw — and even, les extrêmes se touchent, you know.”

  “Hush! hush!” cried Sabretasche, “you will corrupt me, Lady Fantyre — positively you will — you will make me think shockingly of all my kind, soft-voiced, soft-skinned friends!”

  “Somebody has made you think as badly of women as you can,” said the sharp old woman. “Not I! What do you think of that Moselle, De Vigne?”

  He thought it good, but not so good as the Trefusis, who acted out the song, “Drink to me with thine eyes,” in a manner eminently calculated to intoxicate him more, than all the wine ever pressed from Rhenish vineyards. And when she took a little dainty cigarette between her lips, and leant back on her favourite rose couch, laughing at the Fantyre scandals, and flashing on De Vigne her brightest glances; even Sabretasche and I, who were set against her by that most dogged thing, a prejudice, could not deny that a finer woman had never worried a man’s peace of mind out of him, or sent him headlong into follies which shut out all chance of a fairer future or a wiser path.

  “Come in and smoke a pipe, Arthur,” said De Vigne, when we at length left the Fantyre petit souper, and Sabretasche had gone to his lansquenet at Hollingsworth’s. “’Tisn’t worth while going anywhere else, tonight; it’s three now. I have some splendid Glenlivet (how naturally one offers a Cantab something to drink! as naturally as to a cabman, I declare), and I shall like a chat with you. Hallo! where’s my number. Confound it! why do they build town-houses all alike, that one can’t know one’s own by a particular mark, as the mother. in the novels always knows her stolen child! Symmetry! Oh! that’s like Sabretasche. One wants symmetry in a racer, I allow, but in one’s lodging-house I could put up without it, rather than pull up Vivandière on her haunches twice for nothing. Where’s my latch-key! Right on, up the stairs; I’ll follow you. By George! who’s that smoking in my rooms! It can’t be Harris, because I gave him leave to go to Cremome, and not come home till morning, in time to fill my bath. It is tobacco, Arthur. What a devilish impertinence!”

  He pushed open the door. On De Vigne’s pet sofa, with a French novel in his hand, and a meerschaum in his lips, lay lazy, girlish-looking, lighthearted “Little Curly.”

  “Curly!” cried De Vigne. “By Jove, how delighted I am! Curly! Where, in Heaven’s name, did you spring from, my boy!”

  “I sprang from nowhere,” responded Curly, taking his pipe out of his mouth. “I’ve given up gymnastics, they’re too fatiguing. I drove down from Claridge’s, in a cab that privately informed me it had just taken six cases of scarlet fever, and three of small-pox, to the hospitals; I found you were out — of course I knew you would be — and with
the philosophy which always characterises my slightest movements, took Fevillet, found out a pipe (how well you brown yours, by the way), and made myself jolly.”

  “Quite right,” responded De Vigne, who was a perfect Arab for hospitality. “Delighted to see you. We’re quite a Frestonhills reunion. What a pity the Doctor is not here, and dear Arabella! But I say, Curly, have you got quit of Granta, like this disreputable fellow, or are you only run up on leave, or how is it?”

  “Don’t you remember my degree was given me this year because I am a Peer’s son?” asked Curly, reprovingly. “See what it is to be a Goth, without a classical education! You should have gone to Granta, De Vigne, you’d have been Stroke of the Cambridge Eight, not a doubt of it There’s muscle gone to waste! It’s very jolly, you see, being an Honourable, though I never knew it; one gets credit for brains whether one has them or not What an inestimable blessing to some of the pillars of the aristocracy, isn’t it? I suppose the House of Lords was instituted on that principle; and its members are no more required to know why they pass their bills, than we, their sons and heirs, are required to know why we pass our examinations, eh?”

  “And what are you going to do with yourself now;” put in De Vigne. “For the present you’ll keep on that sofa, and drink S. and B.; but après?”

  “Après? Well, the governor wanted me to go in for diplomacy, but I wasn’t up to it — lies are not my specialty, they’re too much trouble; so I demonstrated to him that it was clearly my mission to drink brandy, distract women, run into debt, curse parade, turn out on show days, and otherwise enjoy life, and swear at ennui with you fellows in the Queen’s. His mind was not open to it at first, but I soon improved his limited vision, and my name’s now down at the Horse Guards, where, after a little neat jobbery, I dare say the thing’ll soon be done.”

  “Your governor manageable?” said L Curly yawned, and opened his blue eyes a little wider.

  “Of course; I should cut him if he wasn’t. You see he’s a snob (I wanted him to put on his carriage-panel —

  Who’d have thought it?

  Cotton bought it!

  but he declined), and my mother’s a Dorset; gave her title for his yellows. Now my brother Gus, poor devil! is the regular parvenu breed; short, thick, red whiskers, snub nose, and all the rest of it; while I, as you see, gentlemen,” said Curly, glancing at himself with calm, complacent vanity, “am a remarkably good-looking fellow, eminently presentable and creditable to my progenitors: a second Spurina, and a regular Dorset Therefore, the governor hates Gus (sneaky, I consider it, as it is through his remarkable likeness to him that Gus is fit to frighten his looking-glass), but adores me, and lets me twist him round this little finger of mine, voyez-vous?”

  “And how’s Julia?” asked De Vigne.

  Curly looked as savage as he could look.

  “Julia? Confound her! how should I know? She’s been and hooked some old boy or other, I believe, poor devil!”

  “Who’s the poor devil?” laughed De Vigne; “the man for being caught, or you for being deserted? Take comfort, Curly; there never was a man jilted yet who didn’t return thanks for it twelve months after. When I was twenty, and went over to Canada for six weeks’ buffalo-hunting, I fell mad in love with a great Toronto beauty, a sheriffs widow. Such ankles she had, and didn’t she show them on the Ontario! It was really one of the most serious affairs I ever had, and she flirted me into a downright proposal. The most wide-awake man, is a donkey, when he is young. But who should come on the scene just then but a rich old fur-merchant, with no end of dollars, and a tremendous house at New York; and my little widow, thinking I was very young, and knowing nothing whatever of Vigne and its belongings, quietly threw me over, forswore all the pretty things we’d said to one another in sledging and skating, and went to live among the Broadway belles. I swore and suffered horribly; she turned the pampas into swamps, and absolutely made me utterly indifferent to bison. I lived on pipes and soda-water for a week, and recovered. But when I ran over to America last winter to see Egerton of the Rifles, I met in Quebec a dreadful woman, ten stone at the least, in a bright green dress, with blue things in her hair, and rubies for her jewels, her skin as yellow as gold, and as wrinkled as the Fantyre’s; and I might have married that woman, with her shocking broad English, and her atrocious ‘Do tell!’ What fervent thanks I returned for the fur-merchant’s creation and my own preservation! So will you, Curly, when, ten years hence, you happen to drop in at the Snoozeinrest Rectory, and find Julia as stiff as her brown-paper tracts, and as vinegar as the moral lessons she gives her parishioners, restricting her pastor and master to three glasses, and making your existence miserable at dessert by the entrance of four or five brats with shrill voices and monkey propensities, who make you look at them and their mother with a thrill of the deepest rapture, rejoicing that, thank Heaven, you are not a family man!”

  De Vigne spoke the truth. Why the deuce did not he remember that his passion for the Trefusis might be quite as utterly misplaced as his fancy for the Toronto widow, or the Cantab’s flirtation with Miss Julia! But, ah me! if the truth were always in our minds, or the future always plain before us, should we make the fifty false steps that the wisest man amongst us is certain to rue before half his sands are run? If they knew that before night was down the sea-foam would be whirling high, and the curlews screaming in human fear, and the gay little boat lying keel upwards on the salt ocean surf, would the pleasure-party set out so fearlessly in the morning sunshine, with champagne flowing and bright eyes glancing, and joyous laughter ringing over the golden sands and up to the fleecy heavens?

  CHAPTER V.

  What was under the Cards.

  THAT night, after we were gone, old Fantyre sat with her feet on the fender of her dressing-room, sans wig, teeth, rouge, cosmétique, velvet, or lace; and an uncommonly hideous old woman she must have looked in that guise, I am certain, though, thank Heaven! I cannot speak to the fact from ocular observation. The Trefusis sat there, too, looking all the handsomer for dishabille, in a cerise-hued peignoir and fur slippers, and her thick long raven hair unbraided, and hanging to her waist.

  “My dear,” began the Fantyre, “do you think you hold the trumps in that game you’re playing?”

  “Certainly I do. Why?”

  “Because I’m not so sure. You’re playing fast and loose with De Vigne, and that don’t always succeed. Brummel said to me, ‘If we pique a woman, she is ours.’ That’s true enough with us, because we’re such fools; nine times out of ten a woman don’t care a rush for a man who’s dying at her feet; while she’s crazy about some ugly brute, who takes no more notice of her than he does of his dirty boots. Women love to go to heel, and they’ll crawl after a man who double-thongs them, in preference to one who lets them rule him. Besides, we’re jealous; we hate one another like poison from our cradles; and if a man neglects us we fancy he likes somebody else, and, of course, that’s quite enough to make us want to trap him away from her, whoever she be! But with men sometimes it’s a dangerous game. They’re the most impatient creatures in creation, and if one trout won’t rise to the fly, they go off and whip another stream. All fish are alike pretty well to ’em, so that they fill their basket Men’s aim is Pleasure, and if you don’t give it to ’em they will go somewhere else for it.”

  “True enough,” said the Trefusis; “but, at the same time, to a good many men Difficulty is everything. Men of hot passion and strong will delight in pursuit, and soon grow tired of victory. They enjoy knocking the bird over; that done, it loses all interest for them. De Vigne is such a man; rouse his pride, you win him — yield easily, and you miss him.”

  “Maybe, my dear — may be! You know him better than I do, and must manage him as you choose. I dare say he does like climbing over spikes and chevaux-de-frise to get what he fancies; he’s the stamp of creature that’s never happy out of excitement or danger, and Montaigne thinks like you: ‘Elles nous battent mieux en fuyant, comme les Scythes.’ How racy his old Fre
nch is! I wish I had known that man! I say, those two friends of his shouldn’t be with him too much, for they don’t like us: that boy Chevasney—”

  “Boy, indeed!” echoed the Trefusis.

  “But De Vigne is fond of him!”

  “I believe so; but De Vigne is never influenced by anybody.”

  “I hope he may not be, except by you, and that won’t be to his advantage, poor fellow! He’s a very handsome pigeon, my dear — a very handsome one, indeed!” chuckled the old lady. “But the other one is more dangerous than Chevasney; I mean that beautiful creature — what’s his name? — Vivian Sabretasche. He don’t think much about us, I dare say; but he don’t like us. He sees through us, my dear, and, ten to one, he’ll put De Vigne on his guard.”

  “De Vigne listens to nobody who comes between him and his passion of the moment; and how is it possible that Sabretasche should see through us, as you term it?”

  “Not all our hand, my dear, but one or two cards. That calm nonchalant way of his conceals a wonderful deal of keen observation — too keen for us. Vivian Sabretasche is very witty and very careless, and the world tells very light stories of him; but he’s a man that not Satan himself could deceive.”

  “Well, nobody wants to deceive him.”

  “Don’t you want to marry his friend?”

  “Enough of that, Lady Fantyre! I will neither be lectured nor schooled. You agreed to help me, but you agreed, too, to let me succeed in my own way. I tell you, I know how to manage him, and that before this year is out, in spite of Chevasney, Sabretasche, or anybody — yes, in spite of himself — I shall be Granville de Vigne’s wife!”

  “I wish you may, my dear,” said the Fantyre, with another chuckle. “Well, don’t talk to me any more, child. Get Le Brun, will you, and read me to sleep.”

  CHAPTER VI.