by Ouida
I laughed. “Don’t ever get married yourself, Colonel, for the sake of Heaven, women, and consistency!”
He smiled, too, as he answered:
“‘A young man married is a man that’s marred.’ That’s a golden rule, Arthur; take it to heart. Anne Hathaway, I have not a doubt, suggested it; experience is the sole abestos, only unluckily one seldom gets it before one’s hands are burnt irrevocably. Shakespeare took to wife the ignorant, rosy-cheeked, Warwickshire peasant girl, at eighteen! Poor fellow! I picture him, with all his untried powers, struggling like new-born Hercules for strength and utterance, and the great germ of poetry within him, tinging all the common realities of life with its rose hue; genius giving him power to see with God-like vision, the ‘fairies nestling in the cowslip chalices,’ and the golden gleam of Cleopatra’s sails; to feel the ‘spiced Indian air’ by night, and the wild working of kings’ ambitious lust; to know by intuition, alike the voices of nature unheard by common ears, and the fierce schemes and passions of a world from which social position shut him out! I picture him in his hot imaginative youth, finding his first love in the yeoman’s daughter at Shottery, strolling with her by the Avon, making her an ‘odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds,’ and dressing her up in the fond array of a boy’s poetic imaginings! Then — when he had married her, he, with the passionate ideals of Juliets and Violas, Ophelias and Hermiones in his brain and heart, must have awakened to find that the voices so sweet to him were dumb to her. The ‘cinque spotted cowslip-bells’ brought only thoughts of wine to her. When he was watching ‘certain stars shoot madly from their spheres, she most likely was grumbling at him for mooning there after curfew-bell. When he was learning Nature’s lore in ‘the fresh cup of the crimson rose,’ she was dinning in his ear that Hammet and Judith wanted worsted socks. When he was listening in fancy to the ‘sea-maid’s song,’ and weaving thoughts to which a world still stands reverentially to listen, she was buzzing behind him, and bidding him go card the wool, and weeping that, in her girlhood, she had not chosen some rich glover or ale-taster, instead of idle, useless, wayward Willie Shakspeare! Poor fellow! He did not write, I would swear, without fellow feeling, and yearning, over souls similarly shipwrecked, that wise saw ‘A young man married is a man that’s marred!’ My dear Arthur, I beg your pardon! I am keeping you a most unconscionable time, but really your eyes are very troublesome. I say, some men are coming here for lansquenet to-night, will you come tool and do bring De Vigne if you can. One sees nothing of him now, and there are few so well worth seeing. Au revoir, mon cher. I have an immense deal of work before me.
I am going to the Yard to bid for Steel Patterson’s cream filly; then to the Twelfth’s mess luncheon; next I have an appointment to meet the Godolphin — all town’s talking of that fair lady, so I reveal no secret; and après, I must dress to dine in Eaton-square; and I much question if any of them are worth the exertion they will cost me, except, indeed, the cream filly!”
Wherewith the Colonel dismissed me. As I saw him that night when De Vigne and I went there for the promised lansquenet, courteous, urbane, gay, nonchalant, witty, I saw no trace of any mysterious secret, nor any lingering touch of the haughty anger and impatient disgust which he had shown to his singular companion of the morning. But then — no more did I see, what all the world said they saw, that Vivian Sabretasche was a heartless libertine, an unprincipled gambler, an egotist, a sceptic, a sinner of the deepest dye, to be condemned immeasurably in boudoir scandals and bishops’ dinners, and only to be courted and visited, and have his crimes passed over, because he was rich, and was the fashion.
CHAPTER VII.
The Little Queen of the Fairies.
“ARTHUR, who do you think has gone to the dogs through that rascally British Beggars’ Bank?” said De Vigne one afternoon, unharnessing himself after one of the greatest bores in life — a field-day in Hyde Park — and talking from his bedroom to me, as I sat drinking sherry and seltzer, before going into my rooms in the barracks.
“How should I know, out of half-a-million!”
“Do you remember old Tressillian, of Weive Hurst?”
“Of course. The devil; you don’t mean him?”
“I am sorry to say I do; he has lost every penny. To think of that scoundrel, Sir John Lacquers, flinging Bible texts at your head, thrusting his charities into your face, going to church every Sunday as regularly as a verger, and to morning prayers on a week-day, building his almshouses, and attending his ragged schools! And now he’s cut off to Boulogne, with a neat surplus, I’ll be bound, hidden up somewhere; and widows, and children, and ruined gentlemen will reap the harvest he has sown. Bah! it makes one sick of humanity!”
“And is Tressillian one of his victims?”
“I believe you! I saw his name on the list some days ago, and on Monday I met him with the child that used to be at Weive Hurst — daughter; no, granddaughter — wasn’t she?”
“Little Alma. Yes. We used to say she’d be a pretty woman. Well, go on!”
“I was very pleased to see him. You know I always liked him exceedingly. I asked him where he was living;” he said, with a smile, ‘In lodgings, in Surrey-street; you know I can’t afford Maurigy’s now;’ and I called on him there yesterday: such a detestable lodging-house, Arthur! Brummagem furniture and Irish maids! He is just the same simple, courtly old man as ever. I’m not a susceptible fellow; but, I give you my honour, it cut me to the heart to see that gallant old gentleman beggared through that psalm-singing, pharisaical swindler; and bearing his reverses like the plucky French noblesse that my father used to shelter at Vigne after the’92.”
“And has he nothing now?”
“Nothing. His entire principal was placed in Lacquers’s hands; Weive Hurst is gone to pay his creditors, and one can do nothing to aid him: he is so deucedly — no! so rightly proud. Come with me to-day and see him; we shall drive there in ten minutes, and we must be doubly attentive to him now. There will be just time between this and mess, if you ring, and tell them to bring the tilbury round.”
The tilbury soon came round, and the new steel greys tandem set us down in Surrey-street.
One of the Irish maids who had so excited De Vigne’s disgust showed us up-stairs. Tressillian was not at home, but was expected in every minute; and we sat down to wait for him. Through the Windows, on those dismal leads which admit to the denizens of Surrey-street a view of the murky Thames and steam transports of the Cockneys, the little girl was standing, who, as soon as she caught sight of De Vigne, ran into the room and welcomed him with exceeding warmth and an accession of colour that might have flattered him much had she been a few years older.
She was about nine or ten, an awkward and angular age; but she had neither angles nor awkwardness, and was as pretty as they ever are in their growing time, with hair of glistening gold, bright in shade as in sunshine, and deep blue eyes, brilliant and dark under her black silken lashes, which promised, in due time, to do a good deal of damage. In her little dainty Paris-mode dress of soft white muslin and floating azure ribbons, the child looked ill-fitted for the gloomy atmosphere of Surrey-street Poor little thing! a few weeks before she had been the heiress of Weive Hurst, now, thanks to that goodly creature Sir John Lacquers, her future promised to be a struggle almost for daily bread.
“I am glad you are come!” she exclaimed, running up to De Vigne. “Grandpapa will be pleased to see you, and you will do him good. When he is alone he grows so sad, and I can do nothing to help him. I am no companion for him, and if I try to amuse him — if I sing to him, or talk, or draw — I think it only makes him worse: he remembers Weive Hurst still more!”
“Do you not miss Weive Hurst, Alma?” asked De Vigne.
The child’s eyes filled with tears, and the blood rushed over her face.
“Miss Weive Hurst! Oh, you do not guess how much, or you would not ask me! My beautiful, darling home, with its trees, and its flowers, and its sunshine! Miss Weive Hurst! In this cold, dark, smoky place, wher
e I never see the sun, or hear the birds, or feel the summer wind!”
And the little lady stopped in her vehement oration, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
“What an excitable little thing!” said De Vigne, raising his eyebrows; then he bent gently towards her, as courteously as if she had been a Duchess. “I beg your pardon, Alma; I am sorry if I have vexed you. I could not know how much you loved your home; and, perhaps — who knows — you will go back to it again some day.”
She raised her head eagerly.
“Ah! if I could hope that!”
“Well, we will hope it!” smiled De Vigne. “Some of those flowers which you love so much, will tell the fairies that sleep in’ their buds, to come and fetch you back, because they want to see their little Queen.”
She looked at him half in surprise.
“Ah! you believe in fairies, then? I love you for that.”
“Thank you. Do you, then?”
“Of course,” said Alma, with the reproving tone of a believer in sacred creed, to a heathenish sceptic. “Shakspeare did, you know. He writes of Ariel and Puck, Peas-blossom and Cobweb, who ‘pluck the wings from painted butterflies,’ and ‘kill cankers in the musk rosebuds.’ Milton, too, believed in Fairy Mab, and the Goblin, whose shadowy flail had threshed the com that ten day-labourers could not end.’ Flowers would not be half flowers to me without their fairies, and, besides,” continued Alma, with the decision of a person who clinches an argument, “I have seen them, too!”
“Indeed! But so have I.”
“Where?” asked Alma, breathless as a dilettante to whom one breathes tidings of a lost Correggio.
“There!” said De Vigne, lifting her up in his iron grasp before the high mirror on the mantelpiece.
She laughed, but turned upon him with injured indignation.
“What a shame! You do not believe in them — not the least more than grandpapa. I will not love you now — no, never again!”
“My dear child,” laughed De Vigne, “even your sex don’t love and unlove, quite in such a hurry. Don’t you care for your grandpapa, then, because he has never seen fairies?”
“Care for grandpapa! Oh yes!” she cried, passionately, “as much as I hate — hate! — those cruel men who have robbed him of his money. I would try not to care for Weive Hurst if he were happy, but he will never be happy without it any more than!”
“Do you remember me, Alma?” I asked, to change her thoughts.
She shook her head.
“Do you remember him?”
She looked very tenderly and admiringly on De Vigne.
“Oh yes! When I read ‘Sintram,’ I thought of him as Sir Folko.”
De Vigne laughed.
“You bit of a child, what do you understand of ‘Sintram?’”
“I understand Sir Folko, and I wish I had been Gertrude.”
“Then you wish you had been my wife, mademoiselle?”
Alma considered gravely for a moment, looking steadily in De Vigne’s face.
“Yes; I think I should like to have you to take care of me, as he took care of Gertrude.”
We went off into shouts of laughter, which Alma could not understand. She could not see that she had said anything laughable.
“I thought you were never going to love me again, Alma? A wife ought to love her husband,” said De Vigne.
Alma made a moue mutine and turned away, her blue ribbons and her gold hair fluttering impatient defiance. Just then her grandfather came in, the stately old master of Weive Hurst.
“How do you do?” cried De Vigne. “I am having an offer made me, Mr. Tressillian, though it is not leap year. I hope you will give your consent!”
“I will never marry anybody who does not believe in fairies!” interrupted Alma, running back again to her leads.
“If she make a like proposal five or six years hence to any man, she’ll hardly have it neglected,” said I, when Tressillian had recalled who I was, and shaken hands with me.
Tressillian smiled sadly. “Her love will be a curse to her, poor child, for she will love too well; as for her being neglected, she will not have the gilding necessary to make youth protected, beauty appreciated, or talent go down, if she should chance to have the two latter as she grows older.”
“Which she is pretty sure to have, unless she alters dreadfully.”
Boughton Tressillian sighed. “Yes, she is pretty enough, and she is clever. I believe she already knows much more than young ladies who have just ‘finished.’ She would learn even better still if she were not so wildly imaginative. Povtrina! she is ill-fitted to grapple with the world. Whether I spend my few years between four bare walls or not, matters little; but hers — Well, De Vigne, what news to-day? Is the Ministry going to keep in or not?”
De Vigne stayed some half-hour chatting with him, telling him all the amusing on dits of the Clubs, and all the fresh political tittle-tattle of the morning, while Tressillian, after that single expression of regret for Alma, alluded no more to his own affairs, and discussed current topics with the intelligence and interest of a man of intellect; entertaining us with the same cheerful ease as he had done at Weive Hurst, meeting his reverses with a philosophy of the highest, yet of the simplest order. De Vigne was more courtly, more delicate, more respectful to the ruined gentleman, than he was to many a leader of high ton, for, haughty and imperious on occasion as he was, there was a touch of true chivalry in his character. Go down in the world, De Vigne stretched out his hand to you, be you what you might; rise high, and he cut you, or snubbed you, as he might see fit De Vigne was not like the world, messieurs!
“How I should enjoy straightening my left arm for the benefit of that cursed hypocrite of the British Beggars’ Bank,” began De Vigne, tooling the tilbury back again through the Strand; and, so far forgetting himself in his irritation as to venture to use the whip to his wheeler, who revenged the insult by a pas et extase, which produced frightful commotion among the omnibuses, whose conductors swore in inelegant language at “the confounded break-neck nob!”
“The morality of the age is too ridiculous! For the banker’s clerk, who, with a sick wife and starving children, yields to one of the fiercest temptations that can beset a man, and takes one drop out of the sea of gold around him, it thinks penal servitude too kind a boon! To the Banker himself, who has reduced forty thousand people to want, the world is lenient, because he stuck his name on missionary lists, and came to public meetings with the Bible on his lips: and, after a little time has slipped away, men will see him installed in a Roman palace, or a Paris hotel, and will flock to his soirées by the dozens!”
“Of course; don’t you think that if Mephistopheles set up here in Belgravia, and gave the best dinners in London, he would get us all to dine with him?”
“To be sure. Men measure you by what you give them. If you’re a poor devil with only small beer in your cellar you are ostracized, though you be the best and wisest man in Allens; if you’ve good claret, they will come and drink it with you, and only discuss your sins behind your back; and if by any chance you have pipefuls of Johannisberg and Tokay, you will have all the cardinal virtues voted to you, without your giving testimony to your even recognizing the cardinal virtues at all! Hallo! gently, gently, Psyche! what a hard mouth she has. Confound her! she will set Cupid off again, and I shall figure in the police reports as taken up for furious driving. I say, what can Tressillian do?”
“Do?”
“Yes. What can he do that I can find him? he is a gentleman and a scholar, but his age shuts him out from any post such as he could ever accept He has no money — he must do something. I shall talk to Sabretasche; he has no end of interest everywhere if he would only exert it I think he would if I asked him, so that we might get some pleasant gentlemanlike sinecure for the old man, where he would not have much to remind him painfully of his reverses. I’ll see! By the way, Chevasney, have you got your leave? It’s a horrid bore, but I can’t get mine till August I wanted it a month
earlier.”
“To go to Ryde?” I knew the last week in June would see the Fantyre and Trefusis transplanted from Bruton-street.
He laughed. “Well, Ryde’s very pleasant in its season. However, we must make up for it among the turnips and stubble; I think my preserves are the best in the county. You must come down, Arthur, I can’t do without you; it’s a crying cruelty to coop military men up in the shooting season; besides, you are a great pet of my mother’s.”
“Doesn’t she ever come to town!”
“Oh, yes; but her health is delicate. She has no daughters to bring out, and I think she prefers the country in the spring and summer. Here one loses Summer altogether. We don’t know such a word; it is merged into the Season, and the flowers grow on ladies’ bonnets instead of meadow lands. Well! I like it best. I prefer society to solitude. St. Simon Stylites had very fine meditations, I dare say, and a magnificent bird’s-eye view of the country; but I must say Rabelasian Philosophies would seem more like life to me, and I fancy I see more of human nature in the Pré Catalan than the Prairies.”
“Yet you go mad after nature sometimes, you odd fellow?”
“Of course. There is a grandeur about the wide stretch of sea in a sunny dawn, or the sweep of hills and birch woods on a Highland moor, beside which the fret and flippery of human life are miserably insignificant. No man, who has any manhood in him at all, but feels the better for the fresh rush of a mountain wind. But for all that, I am neither poet nor philosopher enough, to live with nature always, and forswear the coarser elements of life; lansquenet, racing, Coralies, champagne, and all one’s other habitual agréments. Hang it, Arthur, why do you set me defining; can’t you let me enjoy? Ten years hence I will theorize on life as much as you please, just now I prefer taking it as it comes. There! we did the distance in no time.”