by Ouida
The Trefusis played her cards ably. A few days after she played her ace of trumps, and her opponents were obliged to throw up their hands. De Vigne did not ask his mother to invite her and Lady Fantyre there; infatuated though he was, and wisely careless on such subjects generally, I think he felt that the old ci-devant orange-girl, with her nasty stories, her dingy reputation, and her clever tricks with the four honours, was not a guest suitable to his high-born, high-bred mother. But a day or two after was his birthday, a day which, contrary to his own taste, but in accordance with old habit, had been celebrated, whether he was present or not, with wonderful éclat and magnificence. This year, as usual, “the County,” and parts of surrounding counties, too, came to a dinner and ball at Vigne; and since the Levisons had been included in the invitations a month before we went down, now, of course, the Trefusis would accompany them.
As De Vigne had not even the slight admixture of Roger de Coverley benevolence assumed by some county “men at the present time, as he had not the slightest taste for oats or barley, did not care two straws how his farms went or how his lands were let, and hated toadying and flummery as cordially as he hated bad wine, the proceedings of the day very naturally bored him immensely; and he threw himself down, after replying to his tenants’ speeches, on one of the couches of the smoking-room, with an anathema on the whole thing.
“What a happy fellow you are, Sabretasche!” said he to the Colonel, who had retired from the scene to one of the sofas with a pile of periodicals and a case of genuine Manillas. “You have nothing on your hands but your town-house, that you can shut up, and your Highland lodge, where you can leave your dogs for ten months in the year; and have no yeomanry, tenants, and servants, to look to you yearly for sirloins and October, and a speech that is more trouble to make than fifty parliamentary ones!”
“Ah! my dear fellow,” yawned Sabretasche, “I did stay in that tent pitying you beyond measure, till my feelings and my nerves couldn’t stand seeing you martyrized, and scenting that very excellent beef, and hearing those edifying cheers any longer; so, as I couldn’t help you, I took compassion on myself, shut myself up with the magazines, and thanked Heaven I was not born to that desideratum— ‘a fine landed property!”’
De Vigne laughed.
“Well, it’s over now! I shouldn’t mind it so much if they wouldn’t talk such bosh to one’s face — praising me for my liberality and noble-mindedness, and calling me public spirited and generous, and Heaven knows what They’re a good-hearted set of fellows, though, I believe—”
“Possibly,” said Sabretasche; “but what extent of good-heartedness can make up for those dreadfully broad o’s and a’s, and those terrific ‘Sunday-going suits.’ and those stubble-like heads of hair plastered down with oil?”
“Not to you, you confounded refiner of refined gold,” laughed De Vigne. “By-the-by, Sabretasche, don’t you sometimes paint lilies in your studio? The raffiné operation would suit you to a T. I suppose you never made love to a woman who was not the ultra-essence of good breeding and Grecian outline?”
Sabretasche gave a sort of shudder; at some recollection, or at the simple suggestion.
“Well,” said De Vigne; “Cupid has a vernacular of his own which levels rank sometimes; a pretty face, is a pretty face, whether it is under a Paris bonnet, or a cottage straw. But what I hate so, in this sort of affair, is the false light in which it makes one stand. Here am I, who don’t see Vigne for nine months out of the year, sometimes not at all, who delegate all the bother of it to my steward, who neither know nor care when the rents are paid, nor how the lands are divided, cheered by these people as if I were a sort of god and king over them — and, deuce take them! they mean it, too! Their fathers’ fathers worshipped my father’s fathers, and so they, in a more modern fashion, cheer and toast me as if I were a combined Cincinnatus and Titus! You know well enough I am nothing of the kind! I don’t think I have a spark of benevolence in my composition. I could no more get up an interest in model cottages, and prize fruit, than I could in Cochin-Chinas or worsted work, and the consequence is that I feel a humbug, and instead of returning thanks to-day to my big farmers, and my small retainers, I should have liked to have said to them, ‘My good fellows, you are utterly mistaken in your man. I am glad you are doing well, and I won’t let any of you be ground down if I know it; but otherwise I don’t care a jot about any of you, and this annual affair is a very great bore to me, whatever it may be to you; and I take this opportunity of assuring you that, far from being a demigod, I am a very graceless cavalry man, and instead of doing any good with my twenty thousand a year, I only make ducks and drakes of it as fast as I possibly can.’ If I had said that to them, I should have relieved myself, had no more toadying, and felt that the Vigneites and I understood one another. What a horrid bother it is one can’t tell truth in the world!”
“Most people find the bother lie, in having to tell the truth occasionally!” said the Colonel, with his enigmatical smile. “You might enjoy having, like Fénelon’s happy islanders, only to open your eyes to let your thoughts be read, but I am afraid such an exposé would hardly suit most of us. You don’t agree with Talleyrand, that language is given us to conceal our thoughts?”
De Vigne looked at him as he poked up his pipe.
“Devil take you, Sabretasche! Who is to know what you mean, or what you think, or what you are?”
“My dear fellow,” said the Colonel, cutting the Westminster slowly with one hand, and taking out his cigar with the other, “nobody, I hope, for I agree with Talleyrand, if you don’t.”
The County came — a few to dinner, many to the ball, presenting’ all the varied forms of that peculiar little oligarchy; a Duke, two Marquises, two Earls, four or five Barons, high-dried, grand old Dowagers, with fresh, pretty-looking daughters as ready for fun and flirtation as their maids; stiltified County Queens, with daughters long on hand, who had taken refuge in High-Churching their village, and starched themselves very stiff in the operation. Pretty married women, who waltzed in a nutshell, and had many more of us after them than the girls. County beauties, accustomed to carry all before them at race balls if not at Almack’s, and to be Empresses at archery fêtes if they were only units in Belgravia. Hunting Baronets, who liked the music of the pack when they threw up their heads, much better than the music of D’Albert’s waltzes. Members with the down hardly on their cheeks; other Members, whose mission seemed to lie much more in the saddle than the benches. Rectors by the dozen, who found a village dance on the green sinful, but a ball at Vigne a very pardonable error; scores of military men, who flirted more desperately and meant less by it than any fellows in the room; all the County, in fact, and among them little old Fantyre, with her hooked nose, and her queer reputation, her dirty, priceless lace, and her jewels got nobody knew how, and her daughter, niece, or companion, the intrigante, the interloper, but decidedly the belle of the rooms, the handsome and haughty Trefusis. Superbly, in truth, she looked in some dress, as light and brilliant as summer clouds, with the rose tint of sunset on them, ‘while her eyes, dark and lustrous as an Eastern’s, shot their dangerous languid glances. One could hardly wonder that De Vigne offended past redemption the Ladies-in-their-own-right, all the great heiresses, all the County princesses royal, all the archery-party beauties; and — careless of rank, right, or comment — opened the ball with the Trefusis. It was her crowning triumph, and she knew it She knew that what he dared to begin, he would dare to follow out, and that the more censure he provoked, the more certainly would he persevere in his own will.
“We have lost the game!” said Sabretasche to me, as he passed me, waltzing with Adelina Ferrers.
It was true. De Vigne was then waltzing that same valse with her; whirling her round, the white lilies of her bouquet de corsage crushed against his breast; her forehead resting on his shoulder, his moustaches touching her hair as he whispered in her ear, his face glad, proud, eager, impassioned; while the County feminine sneered, and whispered
behind their fans, “What could De Vigne possibly see in that woman?” and the County masculine swore what a deuced fine creature she was, and wondered what Trefusis she might be?
Then — that waltz over — De Vigne gave her his arm, and led her out of the ball-room to take some ice, and then strolled on with her into the conservatories, which, thanks to Lady Flora, were brilliant as the glories of the tropics, and odorous as a rich Indian night, with their fragrance exhaling from citron and cypress groves, and their heavy clusters of magnolias and mangoes. There, in that atmosphere, that hour, so sure to banish prudence and fan the fires of passion; there, to the woman beside him, glorious as one of the West Indian flowers above their heads, but chill and unmoved at heart as one of their brilliant and waxen petals — De Vigne poured out in terse and glowing words the love she had so strangely awakened, laying generously and trustfully, as a knight of old laid his spoils and his life, at his queen’s feet, his home, his name, his honour before the woman he loved. And she simulated tenderness to perfection; she threw it into her lustrous eyes, she forced it into her blushing cheek, it trembled in her softened voice, it glanced upwards under her dark lashes. It was all a lie, but a lie marvellously acted: — and while he bent over her, covering her lips with passionate caresses, drinking in with every breath a fresh draught of intoxication, his heart beating loud and quick with the triumph of success, was it a marvel that he forgot his past, his future, his own experience, others’ warnings, anything and everything, save the Present, in its full and triumphant delirium?
CHAPTER IX,
The Blow that a Woman Dealt.
“I SAY, Arthur — she has outwitted us!”
“The devil she has, Colonel!”
“Who would have believed him so mad!”
“Who would have believed her so artful?”
“Chevasney, men are great fools!”
“And women wonderful actresses, Colonel!”
“Right; but it is a cursed pity.”
“That De Vigne is taken in, or that women are embodied lies, sir — which?”
“Both!”
And with his equanimity most unusually ruffled, Sabretasche turned away out of the ball-room, which De Vigne and the Trefusis, after a prolonged absence, had just re-entered; his face saying plainly enough, that his cause was won; hers telling as clearly, that the estate and its master were captured.
When the dawn was rising, and the great gates had closed after the last carriage-wheels, De Vigne went to his mother in her dressing-room. He wished to tell, yet he shrank from paining her — it came out with a jerk at last— “My mother, wish me joy! I have won her, and I have no fear!”
And when his mother fully realized his words, she burst into the most bitter tears that she had ever shed for him, for whatever in his whole life his faults might be to others, in his conduct to his mother he had none. He let her tears have their way; he hardly knew how to console her; he only put his arm gently round her, as if to assure her that no wife should ever come between herself and him. When she raised her head she was deathly pale — pale, as if the whole of his future hung a dead and hopeless weight upon her. She said no more against it; it was done, and she was both too wise, and loved him too truly, to vex and chafe him with useless opposition. But she threw her arms round him, and kissed him long and breathlessly, as she had kissed him in his child’s cot long ago, thinking of his father lying dead on the Indian shore with the colours for his shroud.
“My darling! my darling! God bless you! God give you a happy future, and a wife who will love you, as you can love — will love!”
That passionate broken prayer was all his mother ever said to him of his marriage.
De Vigne received few congratulations; but that sort of thing was quite contrary to his taste, and on opposition, none of his relatives, not even the overbearing, knock-me-down, Marchioness of Marqueterie, who gave the law to everybody, dared to venture. She only expressed her opinion by ordering her own carriage for the hour, and the day, at which the Trefusis came for the first time to stay at Vigne. Lady Flora treated the Trefusis with a generous courtesy, which did its best to grow into something warmer, and watched her with a wistful anxiety which was very touching; But it was evident to everyone that the two could never assimilate, or even approach one another. This careful courtesy was all that would ever link them together, and, in this instance at least, the extremes did not touch.
However, for the three weeks longer that I remained there, on the surface all went on remarkably smooth. The Ferrers, of course, had left with their mother. The Trefusis, in manner, was irreproachable. Sabretasche was infinitely too polished a gentleman, to show disapproval of what he had no business with; and limited himself to an occasional satiric remark on her, so veiled in subtle wit and courtesy, that, shrewd as she was, she felt the sting, but could not find the point of attack clearly enough to return it. De Vigne, of course, saw everything in a rose light, and only chafed with impatience at the probation of an engagement; and his mother resigned herself to the inevitable, and did her very best, poor lady! to find out some trace of that beauty of heart, thought, and mind, which her delicate feminine instinct told her was wanting in the magnificent personal gifts with which nature had enriched the woman who was to be his wife.
So all went harmoniously on at Vigne throughout that autumn; and the County talked themselves hoarse, speculating on his union with an unknown, with no rank, prestige, history, or anything to entitle her to such an honour; in whom, whether she were daughter or protegee of that disreputable old woman, Sarah Lady Fantyre, Society could decide nothing for certain, nor make out anything at all satisfactory. No wonder the County were up in arms, and hardly knew which to censure the most — De Vigne for daring to make such a misalliance, or the Trefusis for daring to accept it! And the Colonel thought with the County.
“If I ever took the trouble (which I don’t, because hate is an exhausting and silly thing) to hate anybody, it would be that remarkably handsome and remarkably detestable Trefusis,” said Sabretasche, as he wrapped a plaid round his knees on the box of the drag, which was to convey him and me to the station, to take the train for those grass countries, well-beloved of every Englishman for the mere name of Pytchley, whither Sabretasche was going down for the five weeks that still remained of his leave, having invited me to accompany him; and where I enjoyed myself uncommonly, managing most days to be in at the finish, by dint of following that best of mottoes, for which we are indebted to the best Master of Hounds who ever went to cover, “Throw your heart over, and your horse will follow!”
Each hour I spent with him I grew more attached to the Colonel; the longer I saw him in his own house, so perfect a gentleman, so perfect a host; the longer I listened to his easy and playful talk on men and things, his subtle and profound satire on hypocrisies and follies. It was impossible not to get, as ladies say, fond of Sabretasche; his courtly urbanity, his graceful generosity, his ready wit, all made him so charming a companion; though of the real man it was difficult, as De Vigne said, to judge, through the nonchalance, indolence, and impassiveness, with which the Colonel chose to veil all that he said or did. He might have some secret or other in his past life, or his present career, which no man ever knew; he might be only, what he said he was, an idler, a trifler, a dilettante, a blasé and tired man of the world, a nil admirari-ist. Nobody could tell. Only this I could see, gay, careless, indolent though he was, that in spite of the refined selfishness, the exquisite epicureanism, the voluptuous enjoyment of life which his friends and foes attributed to him, Vivian Sabretasche, like most of the world’s merry-makers, was sometimes sad enough at heart “Friends? I don’t believe in friends, my dear boy,” said the Colonel, one night when we sat over the fire, after a splendid burst over the country, up wind, fifteen minutes alone with the hounds; and a kill in the open. “There are hundreds of good fellows who like Vivian Sabretasche, and run after him because he amuses them, and is a little of the fashion, and is held a good judge of t
heir wine, and their stud, and their pictures. But let Vivian Sabretasche come to grief to-morrow, let his Lares go to the Jews, and his Penates to the devil; let the Clubs, instead of quoting, black-ball him, and the Post, instead of putting him in the Fashionable Intelligence, cite him among the Criminal Cases, which of his bosom friends will be so anxious then to take his arm down St James’s-street? Which of them all will invite and flatter him then? Will Orestes send him haunches of venison? Will Iolaus uncork his Comet wine for him, and Pylades stretch out his hand to him, and pick his fallen pride out of the dirt of the gutter, and fight his battle for him when he has crippled himself? Pshaw! my dear Arthur, I take men at my valuation, not at their own. Don’t you know —
‘Si vous êtes dans la détresse
O mes amis, cachez-le bien,
Car l’homme est bon et s’intéresse
A ceux qui n’ont besoin de rien!’”
“It is a sad doctrine, Colonel,” said I, who was a boy, and wished to disbelieve him.
He laughed a little. “Sad? Oh, I don’t see that; nothing in life is worth calling sad. According to Heraclitus, everything is sad; according to Democritus, nothing is sad. The true secret is to take things as they come, and not trouble yourself sufficiently about anything to give it power to trouble you. Enjoy your youth. Take mine and your school-friend Ovid’s counsel —
Utendum est aetate. Cito pede labitur aetas...
Hac mihi de spina grata corona data est.’”
“But how’s one to keep clear of the thorns?”
“By flying butterfly-like, from rose to rose, and handling it so delicately, as not to give it time to prick you! Love makes a poetic and unphilosophic man, like Dante or Petrarca, unhappy; but do you suppose that Lauzun, Grammont, the Duc de Richelieu, were ever made unhappy by love? No, the very idea makes one laugh; the poets took it seriously, and suffered in consequence; the courtiers only made it their pastime, and enjoyed it proportionately. It all depends on the way one lays hold of the roses of life: some men only enjoy the dew and fragrance of the flower, others mismanage it somehow, and get only the thorns.”