by Ouida
“Miss Molyneux, with all due deference to your sex, there are few men I fear, who, if they told you the truth, would not have to confess having found, that those warm and charming feelings with which you young ladies start fresh in life, have a knack of disappearing in the atmosphere of society, as gold disappears melted and swallowed up in aqua regia.”
“Will you let your pure gold be lost in this metaphorical aqua regia?” whispered the Colonel, half smiling, half sadly, as he handed her out, at her own house.
“Oh! never!”
“You mean it now, but — Well, we shall see!” And Sabretasche led her up the steps with his low, careless laugh. “When you are Madame la Princess d’Hautecour, or her Grace of Regalia, perhaps you will not smile so kindly on your old friends!”
She turned pale; her large eyes filled with unshed tears. She thought of the violets she had given him a. few days before.
“You are unkind and unjust, Colonel Sabretasche,” she said haughtily. “I thought you more kind, more true—”
“I am neither,” said Sabretasche, abruptly for that ultra suave and tender squire of dames. “Ask your mamma for my character, and believe what she will tell you. I would rather you erred in thinking too ill — though that people would say is impossible — than too well of me.”
“I could never think ill of you—”
“You would be wrong, then,” said Sabretasche, gravely.
Just then her mother and De Vigne entered, and the Colonel, with his light laugh, turned round to them with some jest. Violet could not rally quite so quickly.
That night, at a loo party at Sabretasche’s house, De Vigne and I told the other fellows of Violet’s impulsive action in St. James’s-street; while the Colonel went on with his game in silence.
“She’s a great deal too impulsive; it’s horrid bad ton,” yawned little Lord Killtime, an utterly blasé gentleman of nineteen.
“I like it,” said Curly. “It’s a wonderful treat now-a-days to see a girl natural.”
“She is very lovely, there is no doubt about that,” said De Vigne. “I dare say they mean to set her up high in the market. Her mother is trying hard for Regalia.”
“He’s a lost man, then,” said Wyndham, who had cut the Lower House and Red Tape for the lighter loves of Pam and Miss. “I never knew the Molyneux, senior, make hard running after any fellow but what she finished him (she’s retreated into the bosom of the Church now, and puts up with portly bishops and handsome popular preachers: women often do when they get passées; the Church is not so difficile as the laity, I presume!); but ten or less years ago I vow it was dangerous to come within the signal of her fan, she’d such a clever way of setting at you.”
“Jockey Jack didn’t care,” laughed St. Lys, of the Eleventh. “Well, her daughter’s no manœuvrer; and, by George, it’s worth a guinea a turn to waltz with her.”
“She’s not bad looking,” sneered Vane Castleton, the youngest son of his Grace of Tiara, the worst of all those by no means incorruptible, and very far from stainless pillars of the state, the “Castleton family.”
“But, by George, I never came across so bold, off-hand, spirited a young filly.”
Sabretasche looked up, anger in his languid, tired eyes.
“Permit me to differ from you, Castleton.’ Your remark, I must say, is as much signalised by knowledge of character as it is by elegance of phraseology! Young fellows like Killtime may make such mistakes of judgment; we who know the world should be wiser.”
De Vigne, sitting next him, looked up and raised his eyebrows at the Colonel’s unusual interference and warmth.
“Et tu, Brute!”
Sabretasche understood, and gave him an admonitory kick under the table.
“Whose portrait is that, Sabretasche?” asked De Vigne, to stop Vane Castleton’s tongue, pointing to a portrait over the mantelpiece in the inner drawing-room, where we were playing; the portrait of a very pretty woman.
“My mother, when she was twenty. Didn’t you know it? It was taken just before she married. I believe it was an exact likeness, but I don’t remember her.”
“It reminds me of somebody — I cannot think of whom. I beg your pardon, I take ‘miss.’”
“Why will you talk through the game,” said L “Don’t you think the picture is like that girl, who occasioned Violet’s championship this morning? That’s whom you are thinking of, I dare say.”
“Who’s talking now, I wonder?” said De Vigne. “Heart’s trumps? I did not notice that girl; I was too amused to see Miss Molyneux. No, it is somebody else, but who, I cannot think, for the life of me.”
“Nor can I help you,” said Sabretasche, “for there is not a creature related to my mother living. But now Arthur mentions it, that little girl was not unlike her; at least, I fancy she had the same coloured hair. A propos of likenesses, there will be a very pretty picture of Lady Geraldine Ormsby in the Exhibition this year. I saw it, half finished, at Maclise’s yesterday.”
“Why don’t you exhibit, Sabretasche!” said Wyndham. “You paint a deuced deal better than half those Fellows and Associates!”
“Bien obligé!” cries the Colonel. “I should be particularly sorry to hang up my pets of my easel, to be put level with people’s boots, or high above their possible vision, or — if honoured with the ‘second row’ — be flanked by shocking red-haired pre-Raphaelite angels and staring portraits of gentlemen in militia uniform; and criticised by a crowd of would-be cognoscenti and dilettante cockneys, with a catalogue in their hand and Ruskin rules in their mind, who go into ecstasies over cottage scenes with all Teniers’ vulgarities, and none of Teniers’ redeeming talent. Exhibit my pictures? The fates forfendS Wyndham, help yourself to that Chateau Cos, and, De Vigne, there is some of our pet Madeira. How sorry I am Madeira now grows graves instead of grapes! Nonsense. Don’t any of you think of going yet Let us sit down again for a few more rounds.”.
We did, and we played till the raw February dawn was growing gray in the streets, while we laughed and talked over Sabretasche’s wine — laughs that might have jarred on Violet’s ear, and talk that might have made her young heart heavy, coming from her hero’s lips. But when we were gone, and the fire was burning low, the Colonel sat before the dying embers with his dog’s head upon his knee, and thought, I believe:
“What a fool I am! Women, wine, cards, art, play — are they all losing their enchantment? Are my rose-leaves beginning to lose their scent, and crumple under me? That girl — child she is to me — has been the only one who has had penetration enough to see that the bal masque has ceased its charm. She reads me truer than all of them. She will believe no ill of me. She almost makes me wish there were no ill for her to believe! Shall she be the first woman to whom I have shown mercy, the first for whom I have renounced self? Cid, old boy! is your master wholly dead to generosity and honour because the world happens to say he is?”
That night De Vigne and I smoked our pipes together over his fire in the Albany, where he had taken a suite. Vigne had been shut up since his mother’s death, and he rarely alluded, even distantly, to the scene of his folly and his wrongs; I do not think he could have endured to revisit, far less to live in it “Is Sabretasche really getting touched by that bewitching Irish girl?” said I to him, as we sat smoking.
“God knows! He was rather touchy about her, wasn’t he? But that might only be for the pleasure of setting down Castleton, a temptation I don’t think I could forego myself. According to his own showing, he’s never in love with any woman, but he makes love to almost all he copies across.”
“Oh, he’s a deuced fellow for women! — but he might be really caught at last, you know.”
“Certainly,” assented De Vigne; “none are so wise that they may not become fools! Socrates, when he was old, sage that he was, did not read in the same book with a woman without falling in love with her.”
“You are complimentary to love? Is it invariably a folly?”
“I think so. At lea
st, all I wish for is to keep clear of it all the rest of my life.”
“Why?”
“Good God! need you ask? From my boyhood I was the fool of my passions. To love a woman was to win her. I stopped for no consideration, no duty, no obstacle; I let nothing come between me and my will. I was as obstinate to those who tried ever to stop me in any pursuit, as I was weak and mad in yielding up my birthright at any price, if I could but buy the mess of porridge on which I had for the time being set my fancy. Scores of times I did that — scores of times some worthless idol became the thing on which I staked my soul. Once I did it too often! It is such eternal misery that that woman, so low-born, so low-bred, shameless, degraded, all that I know her to be, should bear my name, should proclaim abroad all the folly into which my reckless passions led me. Thank God I knew it when I did — thank God I left her as I did — thank God that no devils like herself were born to perpetuate my shame, and make me loathe my name because they bore it! Then you ask me if I am steeled to love! It has changed my whole nature — the misery of that loathsome connexion! It is not the tie I care for — it is the shame, Arthur — the bitter, burning, shame! It is the odium of knowing that she bears my name, the humiliation that twice in my life have I been fooled by her beauty; it is the agony that my mother, the only pure, the only true friend whom fate ever gave me, was murdered by my reckless passions!”
His hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and the black veins swelled upon his face; it looked as though cast in chill, grey stone. It was my first glimpse of those ghastly dark hours, which, exorcised or invisible, in society and ordinary life, fastened relentlessly upon him in his hours of solitude; of that sleepless and merciless Remorse which dogged his steps by day, and made night horrible.
At that same hour, in a little bed whose curtains and linen were white and pure as lilies, a young girl slept, like a rosebud lying on new-fallen snow; her golden hair fell over her shoulders, her blue eyes were closed under their black, silky lashes, a bright, happy smile was on her lips, and as she turned in her dreams, she spoke unconsciously in her sleep two words— “Sir Folko!”
CHAPTER XIII.
The Queen of the Fairies is found in Richmond.
NOT content with his house in Park-lane, Sabretasche had lately bought, beside it, a place at Richmond that had belonged to a rich old Indian millionnaire. It had been originally built and laid out by people of good taste, and the merchant had not lived long enough in it to spoil it: he had only christened it the “Dilcoosha,” which title, being out of the common, Sabretasche retained. It was very charming, with its gardens sloping down to the Thames, and was a pet with the Colonel; a sort of Strawberry-hill, save that his taste was much more symmetrical and graceful than Horace’s; and he spent plenty of both time and money, touching it up and perfecting it till it was beautiful in its way as Luciennes. De Vigne and I drove down there one morning, towards the end of February, to see the paces tried, on a level bit of grass-land outside the grounds, of a chesnut Sabretasche had entered for Ascot. Stable slang and the delights of “ossy men” were not refined enough for the Colonel’s taste, but he liked to keep a good racing stud; and he wished to have De Vigne’s opinion on Coronet, who had run a good second at the “Two Thou;” for De Vigne, who was very well known in the Ring and the Rooms, was one of the surest prophets of success or failure that ever talked over a coming Derby on a Sunday afternoon at Tattersall’s. —
“What trick do you think my man Harris served me yesterday?” said De Vigne, as we came near Richmond.
“Harris — that good-natured fellow? What has he done?”
“Cut and run with a dozen of my shirts, three morning, two dress-coats; in fact, a complete wardrobe; and twenty pounds or so — I really forget how much exactly — that I had left on the dressing-table when I went to mess last night. And that man I took out of actual starvation at Bombay! — have forgiven him fifty peccadilloes, let him off when I found him taking a case of my sherry, because he blubbered and said it was for his mother, found up the poor old woman, who wasn’t a myth, and wrote to Stevens at Vigne to give her an almshouse; and then this fellow walks off with my goods! And you talk to me of people’s gratitude! Bah! How can you have the face, Arthur, to ask me to admire human nature?”
“I don’t ask you to admire it — Heaven forfend! — I don’t like it well enough myself. What a rascal! Ton my life there seems a fate in your seeing the dark side of humanity.”
“The dark side? Where’s any other? I never found any gratitude yet, and I don’t expect any. People court you while you’re of use to them; when you are not, you may go hang. Indeed, they will help to swing you off the stage, to lessen their own sense of obligation. By Jove! we’re half-an-hour too early for the Colonel.”
“Too early?” said I. “Then let us go and see that pretty little artist of St. James’s-street. I always meant to look her up; and you said she lived somewhere near here.”
“I think she did; St. Crucis something or other. What a naughty fellow you are, Arthur,” laughed De Vigne. “We’ll try and find her out, if you like; though I don’t think it’s worth while. Hallo! my good man; is there a place called St. Crucis anywhere in Richmond?”
“St Crucis-on-the-hill be you meaning, sir? a little farm?” said the hedge-cutter he asked, who was sitting in the sun eating his dinner. “Take the road to your left, then the turning to the right, and a mile straight on will see you there.” De Vigne tossed him half-a-crown, tooled the greys in the direction told him, and we soon arrived in the quiet lane where the little farmhouse stood; turned in at the gate — it was as much as the dashing mail-phaeton could do to pass it — and into a small paved court on one side of which stood the house, long, low, thatched, and picturesque, more like Hampshire than Middlesex; with a garden, an orchard, and a paddock adjoining; all now black and bare in the chill February morning.
“Does a young lady, an artist, reside here?” De Vigne inquired at the door; scarcely had he spoken than the young girl herself, looking temptingly pretty in-doors, came out of an inner room and ran up to him. “Ah! it is you? how glad I am! Do come in, pray do?”
“What a strange little thing!” whispered De Vigne to me, as we followed her through the house to a room at the west end, a long, low chamber with an easel standing in its bay-window, and water-colour etchings, pastels, études, pictures of all kinds, hung about its walls; while some books, and casts, and flowers, gave a refinement to its plain simplicity, often wanting in many a gilt and gorgeous drawing-room which I have entered.
“So you recognised me? How kind of you to come!” said the girl, looking up in De Vigne’s face.
De Vigne was wholly surprised; he looked at her for some moments.
“Recognise you? I am ashamed to say I do not.”
“Ah! and yet you have called on me. I do not understand!” said the little artist, with a sunny smile, but very marked bewilderment in her eyes and words. “I have never forgotten you, Sir Folko. I knew you the other day, when that young lady’s servant knocked down my portfolio. Have you quite forgotten little Alma? I am so glad to see you — you cannot think how much!”
And Alma Tressillian held out both her hands to him, with a bright, joyous welcome on her upraised face.
“Little Alma!” repeated De Vigne. “Yes, yes! I remember you now. Where could my mind have gone not to recognise you at once? You are not the least altered since you were a child. But how can you have come from Lorave to London? Come, tell me everything? My dear child, you axe not more pleased to see me than I am to see you!”
Alma was little altered since her childhood: now, as then, her golden hair and eloquent dark-blue eyes, with the constant change, and play, and animation of all her features, made her greatest beauty. They were not regularly beautiful as Violet Molyneux’s, their mobility and extreme intellectuality of expression was their chief charm, after all. She was not so tall as Violet, nor had she that exquisite and perfect form which made the belle of the season compare
d with Pauline Bonaparte; but she had something graceful and fairy-esque about her, and both her face and figure were instinct with a life, an intelligence, a radiance of expression which promised you a rare combination of sweet temper and hot passions, intense susceptibility, and highly-cultivated intellect. You might not have called her pretty: you must have called her much more — irresistibly winning and attractive.
“Come, tell me everything about yourself,” repeated De Vigne, as he pushed a low chair for her, and threw himself down on an arm-chair near. “You must re member Captain Chevasney as well as you do me. We shall both of us be anxious to hear all you have to tell; though, I am ashamed to say that in taking the liberty to call on the fair artist whose pictures I picked up, I had no idea I should meet my little friend the Queen of the Fairies!”
“Indeed! Then I wonder you came, though I am very glad to see you! Why should you call on a stranger? Yes, I recollect Captain Chevasney,” smiled Alma, with a pretty bend of her head (she did not add “as well”). “I was so sorry when you did not see me that day in Pall Mall; I thought I might never come across you again.”
“But where is your grandpapa? — is he in town?”
She looked down, and her lips quivered:
“Grandpapa has been dead three years.”
“Dead! My dear child, how careless of me! I am grieved, indeed!” exclaimed De Vigne, involuntarily.
“You could not tell,” answered Alma, looking up at him, great tears in her blue eyes. “He died more than three years ago, but it is as fresh to me as if it were but yesterday. Nobody will ever love me as he did. He was so kind, so gentle, so good. In losing him I lost everything; I prayed day and night that I might die with him; he was my only friend!”
“Poor little Alma!” said De Vigne, touched out of that haughty reserve now habitual to him. “I am grieved to hear it, both for the loss to you of your only protector, and the loss to the world of as true-hearted a man as ever breathed. If I had been in England he would have seen me at Lorave, as I promised, but I have been in India since we parted. I wish I had written to him; I ought to have done so; but one never knows things till too late.”