by Ouida
“C’est en vain que l’on nomme erreur,
Cette secrète intelligence,
Qui portant la lumière au fond,
Sur des maux ignorés nous fait gémir d’avance!”
De Vigne bent his head, and kissed her. It was very rarely he saw his mother’s tears; and in proportion to their rarity they always touched him. They were both of them silent The next question she asked, came with the resignation of a woman, to a man whose purpose she knew she could never alter, or even sway, any more than she could stir the elm-trees in the avenues, from the beds that they had lain in for lengthened centuries.
“You really love her, then!”
“More passionately than I have ever loved a woman yet!”
That sealed the sentence. Lady Flora knew, that never in love, as in sport, had De Vigne checked his fancy, or turned back from his quarry.
“God help you then!”
He started at the uncalled-for prayer; it was an involuntary utterance of the trembling tenderness, the undefined dread with which she regarded his future. He smiled down gaily at her. “Why, mother, what is there so dreadful in love? One would fancy you thought shockingly of your sex, to view my first thought of marriage, through smoked glasses.”
She tried to smile. “It is such a lottery!”
“Of course it is; but so are all games of chance; and, if one ventures nothing, one may go without play all one’s life. As for happiness, that is at very uncertain odds at all times, and the only wise thing one can do is to enjoy the present Does not La Bruyère tell us that no man ever married yet, who did not in twelve months’ time wish he had never seen his wife? It is true enough for that matter; so that, whether one does it sooner or later, one is equally certain to repent.” He spoke with a light laugh and a fearless confidence in his own future which went to his mother’s heart. She took both his hands in hers.
“Granville, you know I never seek to interfere with your opinions, plans, or actions. You are a man of the world, far fitter to judge for yourself than I am to judge for you; but no one can love you better than I?”
“Indeed no,” said De Vigne, tenderly, “none so well.”
“And no one cares for your future life as I? Therefore, will you listen to me for a minute?”
“Sixty, if you like.”
“Then, tell me,” said his mother, gently, “do you really think yourself that you are fitted for married life, or married life fitted for you?”
“Don’t put it in that way!” cried De Vigne, impatiently. “Married life? No! not if I were chained down into dull domesticity; but in our position marriage makes little or no difference in our way of life. We keep the same society, have the same diversions as before. We are not chained together like two galley-slaves, toiling away at one oar, without change of scene or of companion. She must be my wife, because, if she is not, I shall go mad; but she is no woman only fit ‘to suckle fools and chronicle small beer,’ and she would be the last to deprive me of that liberty, of which, you are quite right in thinking, I should chafe incessantly at the loss! But I am talking myself, not listening to you. What else were you going to say?”
“I was going to say — are you sure you will never love again?”
De Vigne grew impatient again. He threw back his head; these were not pleasant suggestions to him.
“Really, my dear mother, you are looking very far into futurity! How can I, or any man, by any possibility, answer such a question] We are not gods, to foresee what lies before us. I know that I love now — love more deeply than I have ever done yet, and that is enough for me!”
“That is not enough for me,” answered his mother, with a heavy sigh. “I can foresee your future, for I know your nature, your mind, your heart You will marry now, in the mad passion of the hour; marry as a thousand men do, giving up their birthright of free choice and liberty, and an open future, for a mess of porridge of a few hours’ delight! I know nothing of Miss Trefusis, nor do I wish to say anything against her; but I know you. You marry her, no doubt, from eye-love; for her magnificent beauty, which report says is unrivalled. After a time that beauty will grow stale and tame to you; it will not be your fault; men are born inconstant, and eye-love expires, when the eye has dwelt long enough on it, to grow tired and satiated. Have you not, times out of number, admired and wearied before, Granville? Then there will come long years of regret, impatience of the fetters once joyfully assumed; perhaps, for you require sympathy and comprehension, miserable years of wrangling and reproaches, such as you are least fitted of all men to endure. You will see that your earlier judgment was crade, your younger taste at fault; then, with your passions strengthened, your discernment matured, you will love again — love with all the tenderness, the depth of later years — love, to find the crowning sorrow of your life, or to drag another in to share the curse you already have brought upon yourself. Can you look steadily at such a future?”
A chill of ice passed through his veins as he heard her — the true foreshadowing of a most bitter doom! Then he threw the presentiment off, and his hot blood flowed on again in its wilful and fiery course; he answered her passionately and decidedly.
“Yes! I have no fear of any evil coming to me through my love. If she will, she shall be my wife, and whatever my future be, I accept it.”
The day after our arrival I found the reason for De Vigne’s throwing over Brighton for his own home. The Trefusis and Lady Fantyre came down to stay at Follet, a place some three or four miles from Vigne, with some friends of the Fantyre, whose acquaintance she had made on the Continent; people whom he knew but slightly, but whom he now cultivated, more than he generally troubled himself to do, much more exclusive members of that invariably stiltified, stuck-up, and pitiably-toadied thing, the County.
The 1st of September came, gray, soft, still, as that delightful epoch of one’s existence always should, and up with the dawn we swallowed seltzer or coffee, devils or omelettes, too hastily to appreciate them, and went out, in a large party; for Sabretasche had come there the night before, with several other men, to knock the birds over, in De Vigne’s princely preserves. What magic is there in sport to make us so mad after it! A strange charm there is — a charm we enjoy too much to analyse; and De Vigne, whose head and heart were full of different game, and Sabretasche, who hated rising before two P.M., alike swore to the truth of it, with the dogs and the beaters round them in the open, or lying in the shade of some great hedge-trees, discussing Bass and a cold luncheon, with more appetite than they ever had for the most delicious breakfast at the Maison Dorée, or the daintiest hors d’œuvre at Tortoni’s.
When twilight had put an end to the overlonged-for First, and we had returned to the bachelor’s wing to dress for dinner, I met De Vigne, and he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Well, Arthur, hadn’t we awfully good drives? Isn’t it beautiful to see Sabretasche knock down the rocketers’ such a lazy fellow as he is, too?”
“He’s not a better shot than you?”
“Don’t you think so? But then he’s a disciple of the dolce, and I always go hard at anything I take in hand.”
“You don’t sell your game?” I asked, knowing I might just as well ask him if he sold hot potatoes!
“Sell it? No, thank you; I am not a poulterer! I have sport, not trade; the fellows who sell the birds their friends help them to kill, should write up over their lodge-gates, ‘Game sold here, by men who would like to be thought gentlemen, but find it a losing concern.’ I would as soon send my trees up to London for building purposes as my partridges to Leadenhall. The fellows who do that sort of thing must have some leaven of old Lombards, or Chepe goldsmiths in them; and though they have an Escutcheon instead of a Sign now, can’t get rid of the trader’s instinct!”
I loved to set De Vigne up on his aristocratic stilts, they were so deliciously contradictory to the radical opinions he was so fond of enunciating! The fact was, he was an aristocrat at his heart, a radical by his head, and the two Creeds some
times had a tilt, and upset one another.
“Is anybody coming to dinner to-night!” I was half afraid somebody was, whom I detested to see near him at all.
“Yes,” he answered curtly. “There are the Levisons, Lady Fantyre, and Miss Trefusis, Cavendish and Ashton.”
For my life I couldn’t help a long whistle, I was so savage at that woman getting the better of us all so cleverly!
“The deuce! De Vigne, your mother and that nasty, gambling, story-telling old Fantyre will hardly run in couples!”
For a second his cheek flushed.
“It is my house, I invite whom I see fit As for my mother, God bless her! she will hardly find a woman good or true enough to run in couples with her. She is too good and true to be prudish or censorious. I have always noticed that it is women who live in glass houses who learn quickest to throw stones, I suppose in the futile hope of inducing people to imagine that their dwellings are such as nobody could possibly assail.”
“Why the devil, De Vigne,” said I, “are you so mad about that woman! What is it you admire in her!”
He answered with the reckless passion which was day by day getting more mastery over him.
“How should I define? I admire nothing — I admire everything! I only know that I will move heaven and earth to gain her, and that I would shoot any man dead who ventured to dispute her with me!”
“Is she worth all that?”
His eyes grew cold and annoyed; I had gone a step too far. He took his hand off my shoulder, and saying with that hauteur which no man could assume more chillingly, “My dear Chevasney, you may apply the lesson I gave Lady Blanche yesterday, to yourself; I never allow any remarks on my personal concerns,” passed down before me into the hall: where, just alighted from the Le visons’ carriage, her cloak dropped off one shoulder, something shining and jewelled wreathed over her hair, the strong wax-light gleaming on her face, with its rich geranium-hue in the cheek, and its large luminous eyes, and its short, curved, upper lip, stood in brilliant relief against the carved oak, dark armour, and deep-hued windows of the hall — the Trefusis. De Vigne went down the wide oak staircase and across the tesselated pavement to her side, to welcome her to Vigne; and she thought, ‘I dare say, as she glanced round, that it would be a conquest worth making: the master and — the home.
Lady Flora looked earnestly at her as she entered. It was the first time she had seen her, for the Trefusis had been driving when, by her son’s request, she had called on the Levisons, with whom she had not more acquaintance than an occasional dinner, or rencontre at some county gathering. Beautiful woman as the Trefusis looked — and that she was this her worst enemies could never deny — in that hard though superb profile, in those lips curved downwards while of such voluptuous beauty, in those eyes so relentless and defiant though of such perfect hue and shape, his mother found how little to hope, how much to fear!
Yet the Trefusis played her cards well. She was very gentle to Lady Flora. She did not seem to seek De Vigne, nor to try and monopolize him; and with the Ladies Ferrers she was so calm, so self-possessed, and yet had so little assumption, that hard as Lina and Blanche were studying to pick her to pieces, they could not find where to begin, till she drew off her glove at dinner, when Blanche whispered to Sabretasche, who had taken her in, “No race there, but plenty of almond paste!” to which the Colonel, hating the Trefusis, but liking De Vigne too well to give the Ferrers a handle against their possible future cousin, replied, “Well, Lady Blanche, perhaps so — but one is so sated with high race and low intelligence, that one is almost grateful for a change!”
Whereat Blanche, all her Paris governesses not having succeeded in drilling much understanding into her brain, was bitterly wrathful, and, in consequence, smiled extra pleasantly.
The Trefusis acted her part admirably that night, and people of less skill in society and physiognomy than Lady Flora would have been blinded by it.
“What a master-spirit of intrigue that woman would be in a court!” said Sabretasche to me. “No man — certainly no man in love with her — can stand against the strong will and skilful artifices of an ambitious and designing intrigante. Solomon tells you, you know, Arthur, that the worst enemy you young fellows have is Woman, and I tell you the same.”
“Yet, if report speak truly, Colonel, the sex has no wanner votary than you?”
“Whenever did report speak truly? Perhaps I may be only revenging myself; how should you know? It is the fashion to look on Pamela as a fallen star, and on Lovelace as a horrid cruel wretch. I don’t see it always so, myself Stars that are dragged from heaven by the very material magnets of guineas, cashmeres, love of dress, avarice, or ambition for a St John’s Wood villa, are not deeply to be pitied; and men who buy toys at such low prices are little to be censured for not estimating their goods very high. The price of a virtuous woman is rarely above rubies; it has only this difference, that the rubies set as a bracelet will suffice for Coralie, while they must go round a coronet to win Lady Blanche! A propos l — whatever other silly things you do, Chevasney, never make an early marriage.”
“I never intend, I assure you,” I said, tartly. I thought he might have heard of Gwendolina, and be poking fun at me; and Gwen, I knew, was not for me, but for M. le Duc de Vieillecour, a poor, wiry, effete old beau, who had been about Charles X.
“Very well, so far; but you need not look so indignant, no man can tell into what he may be drawn. No one is so secure, but that next year he may commit the sin he utterly ridicules this. Look at De Vigne; six months past he would have laughed in your face if you had spoken to him of marriage. Now he would be tempted to knock you down if you attempted to dissuade him from marriage! What will he gain by it; what won’t he lose? If she were a charming woman, he would lose his liberty, his pleasant bachelor life, his power of disposing of himself how and where he chooses, without query or comment With a woman like the Trefusis he will lose more; he will lose his peace, his self-respect, his belief in human nature; and it will be well if he lose not his honour! He will have always beside him a wife from whom his whole soul revolts, but to whom his hotheaded youth has fettered him, till one or the other shall lie in the grave. There is no knowing to what madness, what misery, his early marriage may not lead him, to what depths of hopelessness, or error, it may not drag him. Were he a weak man, he would collapse under her rein, and be henpecked, cheated, and cajoled; being a strong one, he will rebel, and, still acting and seeing for himself, he will find out in too short a time, that he has sacrificed himself, and life, and name, to — a Mistake.”
He spoke so earnestly for the listless, careless, nonchalant, indolent Sabretasche, that I stared at him, for he was almost proverbially impassive; he caught my eye, and laughed.
“What do you think of my sermon, Arthur? Bear it in mind if you are in danger, that is all. Will you come out into the card-room, and have a game or two at écarté? You play wonderfully well for so young as you are; but then you say a Frenchman taught you? I hate to play with a man who cannot beat me tolerably often; there is no excitement without difficulty. The Trefusis knows that! Look at her flirting with Monckton in her stately style, while De Vigne stands by, looks superbly indifferent, and chafes all the time like a hound held in leash, while another is pulling down the stag!”
“She will not make you happy, Granville!” said his mother that night, when De Vigne bid her good night in her dressing-room, as was his invariable custom.
He answered her stiffly. “It is unfortunate you are all so prejudiced against her.”
“I am not prejudiced,” she answered, with a bitter sigh. “Heaven knows how willingly I would try to love any one who loves you, but a woman’s intuition sees farther sometimes than a man’s discernment can penetrate, and in Miss Trefusis, beyond beauty of form and feature, I see nothing that will satisfy you: there is no beauty of mind, no beauty of heart! The impression she gives me is, that she is an able schemer, a clever actress, quick to seize on the weak points of those a
round her, and turn them to her own advantage; but that she is — forgive me! — illiterate, ambitious, and heartless!”
“You wrong her and you wrong yourself!” broke in De Vigne, passionately. “Your anxiety for me warps alike your own penetration and charity of feeling. I should have thought you were above such injustice!”
“I only wish I may do her injustice,” answered his mother, gravely. “But oh, Granville, I fear — I fear! Dearest, do not be angry, none will ever love you more unselfishly than I! If I tremble for your future, it is only that I know your character so well. I know all that, as years go on, your mind will require, your heart exact, from the woman who is your wife. I know how quickly the glamour fades in the test of constant intercourse. A commonplace, domestic woman would drive you from her side to another’s; a hard, tyrannous, beautiful woman will freeze you into ice, like herself. I, who love you so dearly, how can I look calmly on to see the shipwreck of your life? My darling! my darling! I would almost as soon hear that you had died on a battle-field, as your father did before you, as hear that you had given your fate into that woman’s hands!”
His mother’s tenderness and grief touched De Vigne deeply; he knew how well she loved him, and that this was the first time she had sought to cross his will, but — he stooped and kissed her with fond words, and rose, of the same persuasion still! It were as easy to turn the west wind from its course, as it sweeps wild and free over the sea and land, as by words or counsel, laws or warnings, to attempt to stem the self-willed, headlong current of a man’s mad passion.
Had any whispered warning to Acis of his fate, would he have ever listened or cared when, in the sunset glow, he saw the witching gleam of Galatea’s golden hair! When the son of Myrha gazed up into the divine eyes, and felt his own lips glow at the touch of “lava kisses,” could he foresee, or, had he foreseen, would he have ever heeded, the dark hour when he should lie dying, on those same Idalian shores?