by Ouida
It was curious to see the difference between men’s outer and inner lives. There was Sabretasche lying back in the very easiest chair in the room, witty, charming, urbane, with not a trace on his calm delicate features of the care within him that he had bade Violet Molyneux not tempt him to unveil. There was Tom Severn, of the Queen’s Bays, with twenty “in re’s” hanging over his head, and a hundred “little bills” on his mind, going to the dogs by express train, who had been playing away as if he had had Coutts’ to back him. There was Wyndham, with as dark and melancholy a past as ever pursued a man, a past of which I know he repented, not in ostentatious sackcloth and ashes, but bitterly and unfeignedly in silence and humility, tossing down Moet’s with a gay laugh and a ready jest, as agreeable in the card-room as he was eloquent in the Lower House. There was Charlie Fitzhardinge, who, ten years ago, had accidentally killed his youngest brother — a Benjamin tenderly and deeply loved by him, and had never ceased to be haunted by that fair distorted face, laughing and chatting as if he had never had a care on his shoulders. There was Vane Castleton, the worst, as I have told you, of all Tiara’s sons; with his low voice, his fair smooth brow, his engaging address, whom nobody would have thought would have hurt a fly, yet whom we called “Butcher,” because, in his petty malignity, he had hamstrung a luckless mare of his for not winning a Sweepstake’, and had shot dead the brother of a girl whom he had eloped with, and left three weeks after without a shilling to help herself, for trying, poor boy! to revenge his sister. There was De Vigne — yet no! De Vigne’s face was no mask, but was the type true enough of his character, and wore the truce of an unquiet fate.
“Halloa, De Vigne,” began Tom Severn, “a pretty story this is about you, you sly dog! So this painter of yours we were all called in to admire, a little time ago, is a little concealed Venus, eh?”
De Vigne looked up from helping me to some mayonnaise.. —
“Explain yourself, Tom; I don’t understand you.”
“Won’t understand, you mean. You know you’ve a little beauty locked up all to yourself at Richmond, and never have told it to your bosom friends. Shockingly shabby of you, De Vigne, to show us that water-colour and let us believe it was done by a young fellow in Poland-street! However, I suppose you don’t want any rivals poaching on your manor, and the girl is stunning, the blokes say, so we must forgive you.”
De Vigne looked supremely disdainful and a little annoyed.
“Pray, my dear Severn, may I ask where you picked up this cock-and-bull story?”
“Oh, yes. Winters, and Egerton, and Steele were making chaff about it in the Army and Navy this morning, saying Hercules had found his Omphale, and they were glad of it, for Dejanira was a devil!”
The blood flushed over De Vigne’s white forehead as Severn, in the thoughtlessness of his heart, spoke what he meant as good nature; even yet he could not hear unmoved the slightest allusion to the Trefusis, the one disgrace upon his life, the one stain upon his name.
“How they heard it I can’t tell you,” said Severn; “you must ask ’em. Somebody saw the girl looking after you at the gate, I believe. She’s a deuced pretty thing — trust you for that, though. But what do you call it a cock-and-bull story for? It’s too likely a one for you to deny it with any chance of our believing you, and Heaven”knows why you should try. You may hate women now, but everybody knows you never forswore them. We are all shepherds here, as Robin Hood says.” De Vigne was annoyed: in the first place, that this report, which could but be detrimental to her, should, in so brief a time, already have circulated about himself and Alma; in the second, any interference with him or his pursuits or plans always irritated him exceedingly; in the third, he knew that if he ever disabused their minds of his having any connexion with Alma, to know that a pretty woman was living alone and unprotected was for these fellows to ferret her out immediately, to which her métier of professional artist would give them the means at once. He was exceedingly annoyed; but he was too wise a man not to know that manifestation of his annoyance would be the surest way to confirm the gossip that had got about concerning them, which for himself, of course, didn’t matter two straws.
He laughed slightly. “We are, it is true, Tom; nevertheless, there is a fawn here and there that it is the duty of all of us, Robin Hoods though we be, to spare; don’t you know that? I assure you that the gossip you have heard is pure gossip, but gossip which annoys me, for this reason, that the lady who is the innocent subject of it is the granddaughter of a late friend of mine, Tressillian, of Weive Hurst, whom I met accidentally a few weeks ago. Her picture hangs in my room because she wished to have Sabretasche’s judgment upon it, as a dilettante. Beyond, I have no interest in her, nor she in me, and for the sake of my dead friend, any insult to her name I shall certainly consider as one to my own.”
He spoke quietly and carelessly, but his words had weight. De Vigne had never been known to condescend to a lie, not even to a subterfuge or a prevarication, and there was a haughty noli me tangere air about him.
“All right, old boy,” said Tom. “I didn’t know, you see; fellows will talk.”
“Of course they will,” said De Vigne, eating his marinade leisurely; “and in nine times out of ten they would have been right. I never set up to be a pharisee, God knows! However, I have no temptation now, for love affairs are no longer to my taste. I leave them to Corydons like Curly.”
“But, hang it! De Vigne,” said Vane Castleton, “Tom’s description of this little Trevelyan, Trevanion — what is it? — is so delightful, if you don’t care for her yourself, you might let your friends. Introduce us all, do.”
“Thank you, Castleton,” said De Vigne, drily. “Though you are a Duke’s son, I must say I don’t think you a very desirable addition to a lady’s acquaintance.”
He cordially detested Castleton, than who a vainer or more intensely selfish fellow never curled his whiskers nor befooled women, and he had only invited him because he had been arm-in-arm with Severn when De Vigne had asked Tom that morning in Regent Street Lord Vane pushed his fine fair curls off his forehead — an habitual trick of his; his brow was very low, and his blond hair, of which he took immense care, was everlastingly falling across his eyes. “Jealous, after all! A trifle of the dog in the manger, eh? with all your philosophy and a — a — what do you call it, chivalry?” he said, with a supercilious smile.
I knew De Vigne was growing impatient; his eyes brightened, his mouth grew set, and he pulled his left wristband over his wrist with a jerk. I think that left arm felt an intense longing in its muscles and sinews to “straighten from the shoulder;” with him, as with David, it was a great difficulty to keep the fire from “kindling.” But he spoke quietly, very quietly for him; more so than he would have done if no other name than his own had been implicated in it; for he knew the world too well not to know, also, that to make a woman the subject of a dispute or a brawl is to do her the worst service you can.
“I shall not take your speech as it might be taken, Castleton,” he said, gravely, with a haughty smile upon his lips. “My friends accept my word, and understand my meaning; what you may think of me or not is really of so little consequence that I do not care to inquire your opinion.”
Castleton’s eyes scintillated with that cold unpleasant glare with which light eyes sometimes kindle when angry. If he had been an Eton or Rugby boy, one would have called him “sulky;” for a man of rank and fashion the word would have been too small. A scene might have ensued, but Sabretasche — most inimitable tactician — broke the silence with his soft low voice:
“De Vigne, do you know that Harvey Goodwin’s steel greys are going for an old song in the Yard? I fancy I shall buy them.”
So the conversation was turned, and Alma’s name was dropped. Curly, however, half out of méchanceté, half because he never heard of a pretty woman without making a point of seeing her, never let De Vigne alone till he had promised to introduce him to her.
“Do, old fellow,” urged Curly, “b
ecause you know I remember her at Weive Hurst, and she had such deuced lovely eyes then. Do! I promise you to treat her as if she were the richest heiress in the kingdom and hedged round with a perfect abatis of chaperones. I can’t say more!”
So De Vigne took him down, being quite sure that if he did not show him the way Curly would find it for himself, and knowing, too, that Curly, though he was a “little wild,” as good-natured ladies phrase it, was a true gentleman; and when a man is that, you may trust him, where his honour is touched or his generosity concerned, to break through his outer shell of fashion, ennui, or dissipation, and “come out strong.”
So De Vigne, as I say, took him down one morning, when we had nothing to do, to St. Crucis. It was a queer idea, as conventionalities go, for a young girl to receive our visits without any chaperone to protect her and play propriety; but the little lady was one out of a thousand; she could do things that no other woman could, and she welcomed us with such a mixture of frank and child-like simplicity, with the self-possession, wit, and ease of a woman accustomed to society, that it was very pretty to see her. And we should have known but a very trifle of life if we had not felt how utterly distant from boldness of any kind was our Little Tressillian’s charming vivacity and candour — a vivacity that can only come from an unburdened mind, a candour that can only spring from a heart that thinks no ill because it means none. “To the pure all things are pure.” True words! Many a spotless rain-drop gleams unsoiled on a filthy and betrodden trottoir; many a worm grovels in native mud beneath an unspotted and virgin covering of fairest snow.
It was really pretty to see Alma entertain her callers. She was perfectly natural, because she never thought about herself. She was delighted to see De Vigne, and happy to see us as he had brought us — not quite as flattering a reason for our welcome as Curly and I were accustomed to receive.
“Have you walked every day, Alma, as I told you?” said De Vigne.
“Not every day,” said Alma, penitentially. “I will when the summer comes, but the eternal spring upon my canvas is much dearer and more tempting to me than your chill and changeable English spring.”
“You are very naughty, then,” said De Vigne; “you will be sorry ten years hence for having wasted your health. What is your aim in working eternally like this?”
“To make money to buy my shoes, and my gloves, and my dresses. I have nobody to buy them for me; that is aim practical enough to please you, is it not?”
“But that is not your only one, I fancy?” smiled Curly. “Miss Tressillian scarcely looks like the expounder of prosaic doctrine.”
“No; not my only one,” answered Alma, quickly, her dark blue eyes lighting up under their silky and upcurled lashes f”Thev say there is no love more tender than the love of an artist for his work, whether he is author, painter, or musician; and I believe it For the fruit of your talent you bear a love that no one, save those who feel it, can ever attempt to understand. You long to strengthen your wings, to exert your strength, to cultivate your powers, till you can make them such as must command applause; and when I see a masterpiece, of whatever genre, I feel as if I should never rest, till I, too, had laid some worthy offering upon the altar of Art.”
Ideal and enthusiastic as the words may seem, coldly considered; as she spoke them, with her eloquent voice and gesticulation, and her whole face beaming with the earnestness of her own belief; we, quickest of all mortals to sneer at “sentiment,” felt no inclination to ridicule here, but rather a sad regret for the cold winds that we knew would soon break and scatter the warm petals of this bright, joyous, Southern flower, and gave a wistful backward glance to the time when we, too, had like thoughts — we, too, like fervour!
De Vigne felt it; but, as his wont was, turned it with a laugh:
“Curly, you need not have started that young lady! In that fertile brain I ought to have warned you there is a powder-magazine of enthusiasm ready to explode at the mere hint of a firebrand, which one ought not to approach within a mile at the least. It will blow itself up some day in its own excessive energy, and get quenched in the world’s cold water!”
“Heaven forfend!” cried Curly. “The enthusiasm, which you so irreverently compare to gunpowder, is too rare and too precious not to be taken all the care of that one can. If the ladies of the world had a little of such fire, we, their sons, or lovers, or brothers, might be a trifle less useless, vapid, and wearied.”
“Quenched in the world’s cold water!” cried Alma, who had been pondering on De Vigne’s speech, and had never heard poor Curly’s. “It never shall be, Sir Folko. The fire of true enthusiasm is like the fires of Baku, which no water can ever attempt to quench, and which burn steadily on from night to day, and year to year, because their well-spring is eternal.”
“Or because the gases are poisonous, and nobody cares to approach them?” asked De Vigne, mischievously.
I noticed that Alma was the first who had brought back in any degree the love of merriment and repartee natural to him in his youth; the first with whom, since his fatal marriage-day, he had ever cordially laughed. She called him Sir Folko, because she persisted in the resemblance between him and her favourite knight which she had discovered in her childhood, and because, as she told him, “Major de Vigne” was so ceremonious. His manner with her, like that to a pretty spoilt child, had established a curiously familiar friendship between them, strangely different from the usual intercourse of men and young girls; for De Vigne received from her the compliments and frankly expressed admiration that come ordinarily from the man to the woman. Somehow or other, it seemed perfectly natural between them, and, après tout, Eve’s
My author and disposer! — what thou will’st,
Unargued I obey. God is thy law, is strangely touching, sweet, and natural.
Curly was enchanted with her; he went into tenfold more raptures about her than the beauties of the drawingroom, with their perfect tournures and sweeping trains, had ever extorted from him; she was “just his style;” a thing, however, that Curly was perpetually avowing of every different style of blonde and brunette, tall or small, statuesque or kittenish, as they chanced to chase one another in and out of his capacious heart “She is a little darling!” he swore earnestly, as we drove homewards, “and certainly the very prettiest woman I have ever seen.”
“Rather overdone that, Curly,” said De Vigne, drily, “considering all the regular beauties you have worshipped, and that Alma is no regular beauty at all.”
“No, she’s much better,” said Curly, decidedly. “Where’s the regular beauty that’s worth that little dear’s grace, and vivacity, and lovely colouring?”
De Vigne put up his eyebrows, as if he would not give much for the praise of such a universal admirer, as Curly was, of all degrees and orders.
CHAPTER XVII.
Le Chat qui Dormait.
“WHO is that little Tressillian they were talking of at De Vigne’s the other night!” Sabretasche asked me” one morning, in the window at White’s — his club, par excellence, where he was referee and criterion on all things of art, fashion, and society, and where his word could crush a belle, sell a picture, and condemn a coterie.
He shrugged his shoulders as I told him, and stroked his moustaches:
“Very little good will come of that; at least for her; for him there will be an amusement for a time, then a certain regret — remorse, perhaps, as he is very generous-hearted — and then a separation, and — oblivion.”
“Do you think so? I fancy De Vigne paid too heavy a price for passion to have any fancy to let its reins loose again.”
“Mon cher, mon cher!” cried Sabretasche, impatiently, “if Phaeton had not been killed by that thunderbolt, do you suppose that the bouleversement and the conflagration would have deterred him from driving his father’s chariot as often as Sol would let him have it?”
“Possibly not; but I mean that De Vigne is thoroughly steeled against all female humanity. The sex of the Trefusis cannot possibly, he
thinks, have any good in in it; and I believe he only takes what notice he does of Alma Tressillian from friendship for her old grandfather and pity for her desolate position.”
“Friendship — pity? For Heaven’s sake, Arthur, do not you, a man of the world, talk such nonsense. To what, pray, do friendship and pity invariably bring men and women! De Vigne and his protégée are walking upon mines.”
“Which will explode beneath them!”
“Sans doute. We are, unhappily, mortal, mon ami! I will go down and see this little Tressillian some day when I have nothing to do. Let me see; she is painting that picture for me, of course, that I ordered of him from his unknown artist. He must take me down: I shall soon see how the land lies between them.”
Accordingly, Sabretasche one day, when De Vigne and he were driving down to a dinner at the Castle, took out his watch, and found De Vigne’s clocks had been too fast.
“We shall be there half an hour too soon, my dear fellow. Turn aside, and take me to see this little friend of yours with the pretty name and the pretty pictures. If you refuse, I shall think Vane Castleton is right, and that you are like the famed dog in the manger. I have a light to see the artist that is executing my own order.” De Vigne nodded, and turned the horses’ heads towards St Crucis, not with an over-good grace, for he knew Sabretasche’s reputation, and the Colonel, with his fascination and his bonnes fortunes, was not exactly the man that, whether dog in the manger or not, De Vigne thought a very safe friend for his little Tressillian. But there was no possibility of resisting Sabretasche when he had set his mind upon anything. Very quietly, very gently, but very securely, he kept his hold upon it till he had it yielded up to him.