Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  If De Vigne set his mind on doing anything, whether it was taking a cropper, or winning a woman, hooking a salmon, or canvassing a county, he never rested till it was done; therefore, having taken Boughton Tressillian’s cause steadily to heart, he set all the levers going which were available, to find something suitable to the old man’s broken fortunes and refined tastes. He never let Sabretasche alone till the Colonel, who knew everybody, used his interest too, a thing he detested doing, because, as he said, it “gives you so much trouble, and lays you under Obligation; a debt nobody ever allows you to forget that you owe them.” To please De Vigne, however, he exerted himself; and between them they procured a consulate for Tressillian, at a large pleasant town on the Mediterranean shore, which had of late years become almost an English settlement, “whose climate was exquisite, scenery perfect, combined with admirable English and Italian society,” according to the elegant language of the guide-books, who told no lies about it for a wonder.

  Anybody who wanted to see the side of De Vigne’s character that made those who really knew him love him with the love of Jonathan for David, should have seen him offering his consulship to Tressillian, with the most delicate tact and feeling, so that the ruined gentleman could feel no obligation which could touch his pride, and could receive it only as a thoughtful forestalling of his wishes. That Tressillian felt it deeply I could see, but De Vigne refused all thanks, and the old man felt the kindness all the deeper for his disclaimer of it. “You are a noble fellow,” he said heartily; “you will find your reward some day.”

  “My dear sir,” laughed De Vigne — when he felt things at all he generally turned them off in a jest— “I get many more rewards than I deserve, I fancy; my life’s all prizes and no blanks, except now and then, the blank of satiety. I am not one of those who ‘do good and blush to find it known;’ for the simple reason that I never do any good at all, and have not blushed since I was seven, and fell in love with my mother’s lady’s-maid, a most divine Frenchwoman, with gold ear-rings, who eventually took up with the butler — bad taste, after me, was it not! You won’t desert me for anybody I hope, Alma? You will see sublime Italians at Lorave.”

  “They will not be as handsome as you are, Sir Folko,” responded Alma Tressillian, with frank admiration.

  “Thank you, cher enfant; you will teach me to blush if you flatter me so much. Will you take me in, Alma, if I and my yacht call upon you any time?”

  “Oh, do! do!” cried Alma, vehemently, “and sail me on the sea, and I will show you the mermaids under the waves, with their necklets of sea-shells, and their fans of pink weed! You will see them, indeed you will, if you will only believe in them!”

  “Most apt illustration of faith,” laughed De Vigne. “People see tables turn, and violins dance with broomsticks, and hear Shakspeare talk through a loo-table, by sheer force of believing in them! When will that child ever learn to come down to the coarse realities of everyday existence?”

  “No,” said Tressillian, “I am afraid I have hardly taken the best way of educating her for the real world. She should have gone to school, to learn the sober practicalities, and wise inanities of English school-girls. Her solitary life, with books and flowers, has encouraged the enthusiasm, and imagination, which come, I suppose, with her foreign blood; but then, I always thought she would be raised above heeding, or considering, the world! much more above ever working in it!”

  A few days afterwards, Tressillian, with his granddaughter and an English governess he had engaged for her, set off for Lorave. De Vigne and I saw them at the South-Eastern station, and little Alma cried as bitterly at parting with him as any of the women who loved him could have done; only the tears were not got up for effect, and washed off no rouge, like most of theirs! De Vigne consoled her with the promise of a yachting trip to Lorave, and came away from the station to drive the Trefusis down to dinner at the Star and Garter, where he gave an entertainment of which the Trefusis was undisputed Queen, and looked it too, drinking Badminton with much the same air as Juno must have worn drinking Ambrosia, and outshining all the women in beauty, and figure, and toilette: for which, the women of course hated her, and respected her in one breath: for, cordially as a lady detests a handsome sister, it is notable that she no less despises an ill-dressed or ugly one. To be handsome a woman thinks an unpardonable crime in her rival; but to be plain is a most contemptible faux pas! I can remember De Vigne now, sitting at the head of the table, that bright June evening, at Richmond. How happy he looked! — his forehead flushed with pleasure and triumph, his eyes flashing fire, or beaming softness and tenderness on the Trefusis, his voice ringing out with a careless, happy harmony. Life’s best gifts seemed to lurk for him in that goblet of Claret Cup, which he lifted to his lips, with a fond pledge (by the eyes) to the woman he loved. Yet, if he had known his future, he would have filled the glass with hemlock rather than have coupled the Badminton with her name! Ah, well, mes frèreg! he is not the only man for whom, the name that rang so sweetly, breathed in the toast of love, has chimed a bitter death-knell through all his after-life!

  The Trefusis did her best to lure him into “definite action” that night, as he sat by her at dinner, and leaned out of the window afterwards beside her; the delicate perfume of her hair mingling with the fragrance of roses and heliotropes from the garden below, the low jug-jug of the nightingale joining with their own low voices, and the summer starlight gleaming on both their faces — his, impassioned, eager, earnest; hers, fair indeed, but fair with the beauty of the rock-crystal, which will melt neither for wintry frost nor tropic sunshine. She did her best; and the hour and the scene alike favoured her. She bent forward; she looked up in his face, and the moon’s rays gave to her eyes a liquid sweetness never their own: he began to lose control over himself; the passion within him took the reins; he who all his life through had denied himself nothing; neither knew nor cared how to check it He bent towards the Trefusis, his fiery pulses beating loud; while his moustaches touched her brow: Heaven knows what he might have said, but I went up to them, ruthlessly:

  “De Vigne, the horses are put to, and Miss Trefusis wants to be in town by eleven, in time for Mrs. Delany’s ball; everybody’s gone or going.”

  A fierce oath was muttered under his moustaches — he can be fiery enough if he’s crossed. The Trefusis gave me a look — well! such as you, madame, will never give a man, if you are prudent, even though he be your lover’s fidus Achates, and comes in just when he is not wanted. Then she rose, drawing on her gloves with a sweet, courteous smile:

  “Oh! thank you, Mr. Chevasney; how kind of you to come and tell us! I would not be late at dear Mrs. Delany’s for the world; you know she is a very pet friend of mine.”

  I had saved him that time, and, idiot-like, triumphed at my success. Might I not have known that no forty-horse power can keep a man from committing himself, if he is bent upon it? and might I not have known that if a fellow enter himself for any stakes with a woman, she will have cantered in and carried off the Cup before he has saved half the distance, let him pride himself upon his jockeyship never so highly?

  I had saved De Vigne, and I don’t think he bore me any good will for it, for he drove me and a couple of other men back in his phaeton to Kensington, in gloomy silence. He could not go to Mrs. Delany’s, for the best of all reasons — that he was not asked. Ladies never do invite with their pet friends the quarry their pet friends are trying the hardest to lure; not from envy, pretty little dears! — who would think of accusing them of that? Do they ever, by any chance, break the Tenth Commandment, and covet their neighbour’s carriage, horses, appointments, diamonds, point, flirtations, or anything that she has?

  And the day after that the Trefusis went down to Ryde, to drive the yachting men distracted.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  The Forging of the Fetters.

  WHAT De Vigne did or did not do at Ryde I knew not. On the 31st of August, however, I found myself swinging down in the express to his own place in
the south.

  Vigne was about eighty miles from London; a pretty picturesque village, of which nearly every rood belonged to him; and his park was almost as magnificent a sweep of land as Holcombe or Longleat It was with something warmer than pride, that he looked across, over his wide woodlands glowing in the sunset, the great elm-trees throwing their wide cool shadows far over the rich pasture land beneath; the ferns, high as a man’s elbow, waving in the breeze; the deer trooping away into the deep forest glades; and the lengthened avenues, stretching off in aisles of burnished green and gold, like one of Creswick’s English landscapes. A mile and a half of one of those magnificent elm-avenues, brought us to the house, which was more like Hardwick Hall in exterior than any other place I know, standing grandly, too, something as Hardwick does; but in interior, luxurious and modern to the last degree, with every elegance and comfort which upholstery and science have taught the nineteenth century to look upon as absolute requirements.

  De Vigne threw the ribbons of the drag to a groom, and sprang down, while the deep bay of the dogs in the kennels some way off, gave him a welcome. In the hall he had another: as his mother, Lady Flora, a soft, delicate woman, with eyes and voice of great beauty and sweetness, came out from a morning-room to meet him, with both her hands outstretched, and a fond smile on her face. De Vigne loved his mother tenderly and reverentially. She had been a wise woman with him: as a child, she had stimulated his energies instead of repressing them, and, with strong self-command, let him risk a broken limb, rather than teach him his first idea of fear, a thing of which De Vigne was as profoundly ignorant as little Nelson. As a boy, she had entered into all his sports and amusements, listening to his tales of rounders, ponies, cricket, and boating, as if she really understood them. As a man she had never attempted to interfere with him. She knew that she had trained him in honour and truth, and was too skilled in human nature to seek to pry into a young man’s life. The consequence was, that she kept all her son’s affection, trust, and confidence, and, when she did speak, was always heard gently and respectfully; indeed, he would often tell her as naturally of his errors and entanglements as he had, when a child, told her of his faults to his servant or his Shetland.

  The house was full, chiefly of men come down for the shooting, with one or two girls of the Ferrers family, Lady Flora’s nieces, who would have liked very well to have caught their cousin, for their father, though he was a Marquis, was as poor for a peer, as a curate with six daughters and no chance of preferment But their cousin was not to be caught — by their trolling, at least “I am delighted to see you, Mr. Chevasney,” said Lady Flora, when I went down to the drawing-room after my bath and hot coffee. “You know you were always a favourite of mine, at first, ne vous en déplaise, because you were a friend of Granville’s, and then for your own sake. There will be some people here to-morrow to amuse you, though you gentlemen never seem to me so happy as when you are without us. Shut you up in your smoking, or billiard, or card-room, and you want nothing more!”

  “True enough!” laughed De Vigne. “It is an ungallant admission, but it is a fact, nevertheless. See men at college wines, in the jollity and merriment of a camp, in the sans gêne enjoyment of a man dinner! Deny it who will, we can be happy without ladies, but ladies cannot be happy without us!”

  “How conceited you are, Granville!” cried Adelina Ferrers, a handsome blonde, who thought very well of herself. “I am quite sure we can!”

  “Can you, Lina?” said De Vigne, leaning against the mantelpiece, and watching his mother’s diamond rings flash in and out, as she did some beadwork. “Why do we never hear of ladies’ parties, then? Why, when we come in after dinner, do we invariably find you all bored to the last extent, and half asleep, till you revive under our kindly influence? Why, if you are as happy without us, do we never see you establish Women Clubs to drink tea, or eau de Cologne, or sal volatile; to read new novels and talk over dress?”

  “Because we are too kind. Our society improves you so much, that, through principle, we do not deprive you of it,” answered Lady Lina, with a long glance of her large azure eyes.

  “That’s a pity, dear,” smiled De Vigne, “because, if we thought you were comfortably employed, we could go off to the partridges to-morrow with much greater pleasure; whereas to know, as we do, that you will all be victims of ennui till we come back again, naturally spoils sport to men like myself, of tender conscience and amiable disposition!”

  “This is the fruit of Miss Trefusis’s flattery, I suppose,” sneered Blanche Ferrers, the other cousin, who could not stand fun, and who had made hard running after De Vigne a season ago.

  “Miss Trefusis never flatters,” said De Vigne, quietly.

  “Indeed!” said Lady Blanche. “I know nothing of her. I do not desire!”

  The volumes expressed in those four last words were such, as only women like Blanche Ferrers, could possibly compress in one little sneering sentence. De Vigne felt all that was intended in it; his eyebrows contracted, his eyes flashed fire; he had too knightly a heart not to defend an absent woman, and a woman he loved; as dearly as he would his own honour.

  “It would be to your advantage, Blanche, if you had that pleasure. Miss Trefusis would make any one proud to know her; even the Ladies Ferrers, though the world does say they are fond of imagining the sun created solely that it may have the honour of shining on them.”

  He spoke very quietly, but sarcastically. His mother looked up at him hastily, then bent over her work; Blanche coloured with annoyance, and smiled another sneer.

  “Positively, Granville, you are quite chivalrous in her defence! I know it is the law at Vigne for nobody to disagree with you; nevertheless, I shall venture, for I must assure you, that far from esteeming it an honour to know Miss Trefusis, I should deem it rather a — dishonour!”

  How like a lion fairly roused, and longing to spring, he looked! He kept cool, however, but his teeth were set hard.

  “Lady Blanche, it is rather dishonour to yourself, to dare to speak in that manner of a lady of whom you have never heard any evil, and who is my friend. Miss Trefusis is as worthy respect and admiration as yourself, and she shall never be mentioned in any other terms in my presence.”

  Gallant he looked, with his steady eyes looking sternly down at her, and his firm mouth set into iron! A whole history of love and trust, honour and confidence, the chivalry which defended the absent, the strength which protected the woman dear to him, were written on his face. Was she, who was absent and slandered, worthy it?

  Blanche laughed derisively, but a little timidly; it was not easy even for her to be rude to him.

  “Respect and admiration! Really, Granville, one would believe report, and imagine you intended to give Lady Fantyre’s — what? — niece, dependent, companion — which is it? — your name?”

  “Perhaps I do. As it is, I exact the same courtesy for her, as my friend, that I shall do if ever she be — my wife!”

  He spoke slowly and calmly, still leaning on the mantelpiece; but his face was white with passion, and his dark eyes glowed like fire. A dead silence followed on his words: the silence of breathless astonishment, of unutterable dismay: Lady Flora turned as white as her beadwork, and she did not trust herself to look at her son, but in a moment or two she spoke, with gentle dignity.

  “Blanche, you forget what you are saying. You can have no possible right to question your cousin’s actions or opinions. Let this be the last I hear of such a discussion. Mr. Chevasney, if you wish to be useful, will you be kind enough to hold this skein of floss silk for me?”

  Just at that moment some of the men came in and surrounded Adelina and Blanche; it was a relief to everybody: Lady Flora went on winding her silk, not daring to look up at her son, and he stayed where he was, leaning on die mantelpiece, playing with a setter’s ears, till dinner was announced as served: then he gave his arm to the Marchioness, and was especially brilliant and agreeable all the evening.

  That night, however, when most of
us had gone oft to the bachelor wing, De Vigne rapped at the door of his mother’s dressing-room. She expected it, and admitted him at once. He sat by the fire for some moments, holding her hand in his own; De Vigne was very gentle with what he loved. His mother looked up at him, with a few words: “Dearest, is it true?”

  “Yes.” Where he meant much, he also generally said few words.

  His mother was silent. Perhaps, until now, she had never realized how entirely she would lose her son to his wife; how entirely the new passion would sweep away and replace the old affection; how wholly and how justly, his confidences, his ambitions, his griefs, his joys, would go to another instead of to herself. Perhaps she knew how unfit De Vigne was to be curbed and tied; how much his fiery nature would shrink from the burden of married life, and his fiery heart refuse to give the love exacted as a right: perhaps she knew, by knowledge of human nature, and experience of human life, how true it is that “a young man married is a man that’s marred.”

  “Your wife!” she said, at last, tears in her voice and in her eyes. “Granville, you little guess all those words sound to me; how much I have hoped, how much I have feared, how much I have prayed for, in — your wife! Forgive me, dear; I can hardly accustom myself to it yet.”

  And she bent her head, and sobbed bitterly. May we believe with Madame de Girardin? —