by Ouida
“He left a letter for you, in case I should ever meet you. You were the only person kind to us after the loss of his fortune,” said Alma, as she sprang across the room — all her movements were rapid and foreign — knelt down before a desk, and brought an unsealed envelope to De Vigne, directed to him by a hand now powerless for ever.
“This for me? I wish I had seen him,” said De Vigne, as he put it away in the breast of his coat “I ought to have written to him; but my own affairs engrossed me, and — we are all profound egotists, you know, to whatever unselfishness we may pretend. What was the cause of his death? Will it pain you to tell me?”
“Paralysis. He had a paralytic stroke six months before, which ended in congestion of the brain. But how gentle, how good, how patient he was through it all!” She stopped again; the tears rolled off her lashes. She was quite unaccustomed to conceal what she felt, and she did not know that feeling is bad ton!
“And you have been in England ever since?” asked De Vigne, to divert her thoughts.
“Oh no!” she answered, brushing the tears off her lashes. “You know the governess grandpapa took for me to Lorave? She has been extremely kind. She was with me at his death. I was fifteen then, and for a year afterwards she stayed with me in Lorave; I loved the place so dearly, dearer still after his grave was there, and I could not bear to leave it. But Miss Russell had no money, and no home. She works for her living, and she could not waste her time on me. She was obliged to look for another situation, and when she came over to it — it is in a rector’s family near Staines — I came with her, and she placed me here. My old nurse has this farm; grandpapa bought it for her many years ago, when she left us and married. Her husband is dead, but she still keeps the farm, and makes bread to send into town. It was the only place we knew of, and nurse was so delighted to let me have the rooms, that I have been here ever since.”
“Poor little thing, what a life!” cried De Vigne involuntarily. “How dull you must be, Alma!”
She raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders. Gesticulation was natural to her, and she had caught it from the Italians at Lorave.
“Buried alive! Sylvo to talk to, and the flowers to talk to me; that is my society. But wherever I might have been, I should have missed him equally, and I can never be alone while I have my easel and my books.”
“Have you painted these?” I exclaimed, in surprise, for there were masterly strokes in the sketches on the walls that would have shamed more than one “Associate.”
“Yes. An Italian artist, spending the summer at Lorave, saw me drawing one day, something as Cimabue saw little Giotto, and had me to his studio, and gave me a regular course of instruction. He told me I might equal Elizabetta Sirani. I shall never do that, I am afraid, but I find a very good sale for my sketches; they take them at Ackermann’s and Rowney’s, and I work hard. I sketch every day out of doors, to catch the winter and summer tints. But I hate winter; it is so unkind, so cheerless! I always paint Summer in my pictures; not your poor pale English season, but summer golden and glorious, with the boughs hanging to the ground with the weight of their own beauty, and the vineyards and corn-fields glowing with their rich promise!”
“Enthusiastic as ever?” laughed De Vigne. “How are our friends the fairies, Alma?”
“Do you suppose I shall give news of them to a disbeliever?” said Alma, with a toss of her head. “I have not forgotten your want of faith. Are you as great a sceptic now?”
“Ten times more — not only of fairy lore, but of pretty well everything else. Fairies are as well worth credence as all the other faiths of the day; I would as soon credit Queen Mab as a ‘doctrinal point!’ What do you think of the fairies now?”
“Look! Do you not think I sketched that from sight?” said Alma, turning her easel to him, where she had drawn a true Titania, such as “on pressed flowers does sleep,” for whom “the cowslips tall her pensioners be:”
“Where oxlips and the nodding violets grow.
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine,
Lulled in those flowers with dances and delight;”
the veritable fairy queen of those dainty offsprings of romance, who used to meet
“In grove or green,
By fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen.”
“How splendidly you draw, Alma!” exclaimed De Vigne. “If you exhibited at the Water-Colour Society, you would excite as much wonder as Rosa Bonheur. And do these pay you well?”
“Yes; at least, what seems so to me.”
“Pauvre enfant!” smiled De Vigne; her ideas of wealth and his were strikingly different “A friend of mine is a great connoisseur of these things. I must show them to him some day; but I cannot stay now, for I have an engagement at two, and it is now striking.”
“But you will come and see me again,” interrupted Alma, beseechingly. “Pray do. You cannot think how lonely I am. I have no friends, you know.”
“Oh yes, I will come,” answered De Vigne. “I have much more to hear about you and your pursuits. How could you know us, Alma, after so long?”
“I did not know Captain Chevasney,” said the little lady, with uncomplimentary frankness, “but I knew you perfectly. The first picture I could sketch was one of you for Sir Folko. You know I always thought you like him! Besides, grandpapa talked of you so constantly, and I was so expecting you to come to Lorave with your yacht, as you had promised, that it was impossible for me to forget you. I was so grieved when you did not notice me in Pall Mall. I called you, but you did not hear. You were thinking of that young lady. How lovely she was! Who is she?”
“Lord Molyneux’s daughter. I was not thinking of her, though, but that the pair of horses in her carriage were not worth half what I heard they gave for them,” said De Vigne, laughing, as he offered her his hand; “and now, good-bye. I am very pleased to have found you out, and you must pardon us our impertinence in calling on one whom we thought a stranger, since it has led us to one whom we may fairly claim as an old friend!”
Alma looked gratefully in his face, and bid him, with a radiant smile, not defer his visit to St. Crucis, as he had done his yachting to Lorave. She guessed little enough what had prevented that yachting to Lorave.
“Strange we should have lighted on that child! That’s your doing, Arthur, going after the beaux yeux!” said he, as we drove to the Dilcoosha. “She is the same frank, impulsive, enthusiastic little thing as when we first saw her. She was the heiress of Wieve Hurst then; now she has to work for her bread. Who can prophesy the ups and downs of life? Boughton Tressillian was game to the backbone. Perhaps she inherits some of his pluck — it is to be hoped so — she will want it. A woman, young, unprotected, and attractive as she looks, is pretty sure to come to grief some way or other. Her very virtues will be her ruin! She is not one of your sensible, prudent, cold, common-place women, who go through the world scathless; too wise to err, too selfish to sacrifice themselves! Alma will come to grief, I am afraid. Here, take the reins, Arthur, and I will see what her grandfather says.”
He tore open the letter, and gave a long whistle. “What’s the matter?” said I.
“She isn’t hie grandchild after all.”
“Not? His daughter, I suppose?”
“No; no relation at all. The letter is broken off unfinished; probably where his hand failed him, poor old man. He says my name recurred to him as the only person who had not heeded his decline of fortune, and the only man of honour whom he could trust. Out of his income as consul he contrived to save her a few hundreds — voilà tout! ‘He must leave her, of course, to struggle for herself; and this is what weighs so heavily upon him, because, it seems, he adopted this child when she was two years old, believing he would make her an heiress; and, according to his view of the case, he considers he has done her a great wrong. Who she is he does not tell me, except that she was a little Italian girl. He was going, no doubt, to add more, as he began the letter by s
aying he wished her secret to be known to some one, and having heard much of my mother, appealed to her, through me, to aid and serve Alma if she would; but here the sentence breaks off unfinished.”
“Do you think Alma knows it; she calls him her grandfather still?”
“Can’t say — yet of course she does,” said De Vigne, with a cynical smile. “No woman’s curiosity ever allowed her to keep an unsealed letter three years and never look into it! Here we are. It will be as well not to tell Sabretasche of his neighbour, eh? He is such a deuced fellow for women, and she would be certain to go down before his thousand-and-one accomplishments! Not that it would matter much, perhaps; she will be somebody’s prey, no doubt, and she might as well be the Colonel’s, save that he is a little quicker fickle than most, knowing better than most the value of his toys.”
With which concluding sarcasm De Vigne threw the reins to his groom, who met him at the door, and entered that abode of perfect taste and epicurean luxury, known as the Dilcoosha, where Sabretasche and luncheon were waiting for us. And where, after due discussion of Strasbourg pâtés, Comet Hock, Bass, and the news of the day, we inspected the chesnut’s paces, pronounced him pretty certain, unless something unforeseen in the way of twitch and opium-ball occurred, to win, and drove back to town together, De Vigne to dine at the’ Rag, go to a theatre for half an hour, and end at Pratts’, and I to call on a certain lady who had well-nigh broken my heart, when it was young and breakable, who had exchanged rings with me under the Kensington Garden trees, when she was fresh, fair, Gwen Brandling, and who was now staying in town as Madame la Duchesse de la Vieillecour, black velvet and point replacing the muslin and ribbons, dignity in the stead of girlish grace, and a fin sourire of skilled coquetry in lieu of that heartfelt smile, Gwen’s whilom charm. I take it’ doves are sold by the dozen on the altar-steps of St George’s? but — it is true that the doves have a strange passion for the gold coins that buy them, and would not fly away if they could.
N’importe! Madame de la Vieillecour and I met as became people living in good society; if less fresh she was, perhaps, more fascinating, and though one begins life tender and transparent as Sèvres, one is stone-china, luckily, long before the finish, warranted never to break at any blows whatever.
CHAPTER XIV.
How a Wife talked of her Husband.
IN a very gay and gaudy drawing-room in the Champs Elysées, in an arm-chair, with her feet on a chaufferette, in a rich cashmere and laces, looking a very imposing and richly-coloured picture, sat De Vigne’s wife, none the less handsome for the wear of Paris life, intermixed with visits to the Bads, where she was almost as great an attraction as the green tables, and the sound of her name as great a charm as the irresistible “Faites votre jeu, messieurs/” A little fuller about the cheek and chin, a trifle more Juno-esque in form, a little higher tinted in the carnation hue of her roses, but otherwise none the worse for the ten years that had passed since she wore the orange-blossoms and the diamond ceinture on her marriage morning.
She had an English paper in her hand, and was running her eye over the fashionable intelligence. Opposite to her was old Fantyre, her nose a little more hooked, her eye sharper, her rouge higher, a little more dirty, witty, and detestable than of yore; taking what she called a demie-tasse, but which looked uncommonly like cognac uncontaminated by Mocha. And these two led a very pleasant life in Paris; with the old lady’s quick wits, questionable introductions, and imperturbable impudence, and the younger one’s beauty, riches, and excessive freedom!
“What’s the matter, my dear?” asked Lady Fantyre; “you don’t look best pleased.”
“I am not pleased,” said the Trefusis (such I must call her), her brow dark, and her full under-lip protruded. “De Vigne is back.”
“Dear, dear! how tiresome!” cried the Fantyre; “and just when you’d begun to hope he’d been killed in India. Well, that is annoying. It’s a nice property to be kept out of, ain’t it? But you see, my dear, strong men of his age are not good ones to be heir to, even with all the chances of war. So he’s come back, is he? What for, I wonder?”
“Here it is, among the arrivals: ‘Claridge’s Hotel: Major de Vigne.’ He is come back because he is tired of the East, probably. I wonder if he will come to Paris? I should like to meet him.” And the Trefusis laughed, showing her white teeth.
“Why, my dear? To give him a dose of aconite? No, you’re too prudent to do anything of that sort Whatever other commandments you break, my dear, it won’t be the Sixth, because there’s a capital punishment for it,” said the old lady, chuckling at the idea. “You’d like to meet him, you say — I shouldn’t. I don’t forget his face in the vestry! Lord! how he did look! his face as white as a corpse, and as fierce as the devil’s.”
“Did you ever see the devil?” sneered the Trefusis.
“Yes, my dear — in a scarlet cashmere; and very well he looks in women’s clothes, too,” said the Fantyre, with a diabolical grin.
The Trefusis laughed too.
“He has found me dangerous, at any rate.”
“Well, yes: everybody has, I think, that has the pleasure of your acquaintance,” chuckled Lady Fantyre. “But I don’t think so much of your revenge, myself. Very poor! What’s three thousand a year out of his property? And as for not letting him marry, I think that’s oftener kindness than cruelty to a man. Don’t you think it would have been better to have queened it at Vigne, and had an establishment in Eaton-square, and spent his twenty thousand a year for him, and made yourself a London leader of fashion, and ridden over the necks of those haughty Ferrers people, and all his stiff-necked friends — that beautiful creature, Vivian Sabretasche, among ’em. What do you think, eh?”
“It might have been better for me, but it would have spoilt my revenge. He would have left me sooner or later, and as he is infinitely too proud and reserved a man to have told any living soul the secret of his disgrace, I should have lost the one grand sting in my vengeance — the humiliation before the world.”
“Pooh, pooh, my dear, a man of fortune is never humiliated; the world’s too fond of him! The sins of the fathers are only visited on the children where the children are going down in the world.” (The Fantyre might be a nasty old woman, but she spoke greater truths than most good people.) “So, you sacrificed your aggrandisement to your revenge? Not over sensible, that.”
“You can’t accuse me of often yielding to any weakness,” said the Trefusis, with a look in her eye like a vicious mare’s. “However, ray revenge is not finished yet.”
“Eh? Not? What’s the next act? On my word, you’re a clever woman, Lucy. You do my heart good.”
The first time, by the way, that Lady Fantyre ever acknowledged to a heart, or the Trefusis received such a compliment.
“This. I know his nature — you do not. Some day or other De Vigne will love again, and passionately.
Then he will want to be free; then, indeed, he shall realise the force of the fetters by which I hold him.”
The old lady chuckled over the amusing prospect “Very likely, my dear. It’s just what they can’t do, that they always want to do. Tell a man wine’s good for him, and forbid him water, he’d forswear his cellar, and run to the pump immediately! And if you heard that he’d fallen in love, what would you do?”
“Go to England, and put myself between her and him, as his deserted, injured, much enduring, and loving wife.”
Old Fantyre drank up her coffee, and nodded approvingly.
“That’s right, my dear! Play your game. Play it but; only take care to keep the honours in your own hand, and never trump your partner’s card.”
“Not much fear of my doing that,” said the Trefusis, with a smile.
There was not, indeed; she marked her cards too cleverly, for she was keen enough to be Queen of the Paris Greeks.
CHAPTER XV.
“L’Amitié est L’Amour sans Ailes.”
SCARCELY anyone was in town except a few very early birds, heralds
of the coming season, and the Members, victims to an unpitying nation; but there were still some people one knew dotted about in Belgravia and Park-lane, others in jointure-houses or villas up “Tamese Ripe,” among them a very pretty widow, Leila Lady Puffdoff, who dwelt in the retirement of her dower-house at Twickenham, and enlivened the latter portion of her veuvage by matinées musicales, breakfasts, and luncheons for some of those dear friends who had been the detestation of le feu Puffdoff. To a combination of all three, Sabretasche, De Vigne, Curly, a man called Monckton, and myself, drove in De Vigne’s drag a day or two after our rencontre with little Alma Tressillian.
“An amateur affair, isn’t it?” asked De Vigne. “Artistes’ morning concerts are bad enough, where Italian singers barbarise ‘Annie Laurie’ into an allegro movement with shakes and aspeggios, and English singers scream Italian with vile British o’s and a’s; but amateur matinées musicales, where highly-finished young beauties in becoming morning toilettes excruciate one’s ears, whether they have melody in their voices or no, just because they have been taught by Garcia or Gardoni, are absolutely unbearable. Don’t you think so, you worshipper of harmony?”
“I? Certainly,” responded Sabretasche. “As a rule, I shun all amateur things. Where professional people, who have applied sixteen hours a day, all their energies, and all their capabilities, to one subject, even then rarely succeed, how is it possible but that the performances of those who take up the study as a pastime must be a miserable failure, or at best but second-rate? Occasionally, however (indeed, whenever you see it, but the sight is so rare!), talent will do for you without study more than study ever will—”
“As you will show us in your songs this morning, I suppose?” laughed Monckton.