by Ouida
“You have only to be seen to have your first wish,” said Curly, softly, “and only to be known to have much more than your second.”
Alma turned away impatiently; she had a sad knack of showing when she was annoyed.
“Really you are intolerable, Colonel Brandling. You spoil conversation utterly. I say those things because I mean them, not to make you flatter me. I shall talk only to Sir Folko, for he understands me, and answers me properly.”
With which lecture to Curly she twisted her low chair nearer to De Vigne, and looked up in his face, much as spaniels look up in their master’s, liking a kick from them better than a caress from a stranger.
“Have you seen Miss Molyneux lately?”
“Yes; and not long ago I heard Miss Molyneux envying you!”
“Me! I envy her, if you like. How does she know me! What has she heard about me? Who has told her anything of me?”
“Gently, gently, de grâce! I don’t know that she has heard anything of you, or that anybody has told her anything about you; but she has seen something of yours, and admired it exceedingly.”
“Ah! my picture!” cried Alma, joyously, her envy and her wrongs passing away like summer shadows off a sunny landscape. “What has been said about it? Who has seen it? Do the papers mention it? Have the—”
“One question at a time, please, then perhaps I may contrive to answer them,” said De Vigne, smiling; “though the best answer to them all will be for you to read these. Here, see how you like that!”
He took a critique by a well-known Art-critic out of his pocket, and gave it to her, pointing out, among many condemnatory notices of other works, the brief words in praise of her own, worth more than whole pages of warmer laudation but less discriminating criticism, which Alma read with her eyes beaming, and her whole face in a rose flush of delight “Wait a minute; reserve your raptures,” said De Vigne, putting the ‘Times’ and other papers before her. “If the first review sends you into such a state of exultation, we shall lose sight of you altogether over these.”
“Ah, they make me so happy!” she cried, with none of the dignity and tranquil pride becoming to a successful artist, but with a wild, gleeful triumph amusing to behold. “I used to think my pictures would be liked if people saw them; but I never hoped they would be admired like this; and it is all owing to you; without you I should never have had it!”
“Indeed you would, though. You have-nothing to thank me for, I can assure you.”
“I have! You knew how I could exhibit it; you did it all for me; but for you my picture would now be hanging here, unnoticed and unpraised; and you know well enough that your few words are of more value to me than all these!” With which Alma tossed over the table, with contemptuous energy, the reviews which had charmed her a minute or two before.
“Very unwise,” said De Vigne, drily. “These will make your fame and your money; my words can do you no good whatever.”
She twisted herself away from him with one of her rapid, un-English movements.
“How courteous he is! You are very forbearing, Miss Tressillian, to put up with him!” said Curly, who had been listening, half amusedly, half irritably, to this conversation, which excluded him.
Alma was angry with De Vigne herself, but she was not going to let any one else be so too.
“Forbearing? What do you mean? I should be very ungrateful if I were not thankful for such a friend.”
“Now that is too bad,” said Curly, plaintively. “I, who really admire your most marvellous talent, only get tabooed for being a flatterer, while he is thought perfection, and pleases by being most abominably rude.”
“You had better not measure yourself with him, Colonel Brandling,” said Alma, with that mischievous impudence which sat well upon her, though no other woman, I believe, could have had it with such impunity.
“Vous me piquez, mademoiselle,” said Curly. “You will tempt me by your very prohibition to enter the lists with him. I should not care to dispute the belt with him in most things, but for such a prize—”
“What nonsense are you talking, Curly,” said De Vigne, with that certain chill hauteur now so customary to him, but which Alma had never yet seen in him. “A prize to be fought for must be disputed. Don’t bring hot-pressed compliments here to spoil the atmosphere.”
“That’s right, take my part,” interrupted Alma, not understanding his speech as Curly understood it. “You see, Colonel Brandling, that sort of high-flown flattery is no compliment; if the man mean it, it says little for his intellect, for we are none of us angels without wings, as you call us; and if he do not mean it, it says little for ours, for it is easy to tell when any one is really liking or only laughing at us.”
“Indeed!” said Curly. “I wish we were as clear when ladies were liking or laughing at us; it would save us a good many disappointments, when enchanting forms of life and light, who have softly murmured tenderest words when they stole our hearts away in tulle illusion at a hunt ball, bow to us as chillily as to a first introduction when we meet them afterwards en Amazone in the Ride, with somebody as rich as he is gouty on their off-side.”
“Serve you right for being so credulous,” said De Vigne. “Women are either actresses or fools; if they are amiable they are stupid, and if they are clever they are artful.”
“Like Thackeray’s heroines,” suggested Curly.
“Exactly; shows how well the man knows life. The first thing the world teaches a clever woman is to banish her heart Women may thrive on talent, they are certain to go to rack and ruin on feeling.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said Alma, looking up, ready for a combat “Don’t you, petite?” laughed De Vigne, “I think you will when you have a few more years over your head, and have seen the world a little.”
“No, I do not,” returned the Little Tressillian, decidedly, “I believe that in proportion as you feel so do you suffer; but I deny that all clever women are actresses. Where will you go for all your noblest actions but to women of intellect and mind? Sappho’s heart inspired the genius which has come down to us through such lengthened ages. Was it not love and genius in one, which immortalised Héloïse? Was it not intellect, joined to their love for their country, which have placed the deeds of Polycrita, Hortensia, Hersillia, Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucauld, among the records of patriotism ‘One of the truest affections we have heard of was that of Vittoria Colonna for Pescara, of the woman who ranks only second to Petrarch, the friend of Pope, and Bembo, and Catarini, the adored of Michael Angelo, the admired of Ariosto! Oh, you are very wrong; where you find the glowing imagination, there, too, will you find as ardent affections; where there is expansive intellect, there, and there only, will be charity, tolerance, clear perception, just discrimination; with a large brain, a large heart, the more cultured the intelligence, the more sensitive the susceptibilities! Lucy Edgermond would make your tea for you tolerably, and head your table respectably, and blush where she ought, and say Yes and No like a well-bred woman: but in Corinne alone will you find passion to beat with your own, intellect to match with your own, sympathy, comprehension, elevation, all that a woman should give to the man she loves!”
A Corinne in her own way I can fancy she looked, too, her blue eyes scintillating like stars in her earnestness, and her voice rising and falling in impassioned vehemence, accompanied with her vivacious and unconscious gesticulation, a trick, probably, of her foreign blood. Curly listened to her with amazement, this was something quite new to him; it was not so new to De Vigne, but it touched him with something deeper, more like regret than amusement A glimpse of the golden land is pain when we know the door is locked, and the key irrevocably lost.
“Do you suppose, petite,” he said, with a bitter smile, “that if there were Corinnes in the land men would be such fools as to go and take the Lucies of modern society in their stead? Heaven knows, if there were women such as you describe, we might be better men; more earnest in our lives, more faithful in our loves! But you draw
from the ideal, I from the real, two altitudes very far wide apart; as far apart, my child, as dawn and midnight.”
His tone checked and saddened Alma’s bright and enthusiastic nature. She gave a heavy sigh.
“It is midnight with you, I am afraid, and I so want it to be noon!”
He answered with a laugh.
“If it be, it is like midnight at a bal cP Opéra y with plenty of gaslights, transparencies, music, and amusement enough to send the sun jealous, and making believe the day has dawned!”
“But don’t the gaslights, and transparencies, and all the rest of your bal d’Opéra look tawdry and garish when the day is really up and on them?”
“We never let the daylight in,” laughed De Vigne; “and won’t remember that we ever had any brighter light than our coloured lamps. Why should we? They do well enough for all intents and purposes.”
Alma shook her head:
“They won’t content you always.”
“Oh yes, they will; I have no desires now but to live without worry, and die in some good hard fight in harness, like my father. What! are you going, Curly? I’ll come with you.”
“Yes, I must,” said Curly. “I’m going to a confounded déjeûner in Palace Gardens, at that little flirt’s, Jerry Maberly. I shall barely get back in time. How time slips in some places! If I promise to leave compliments, i.e.. in your case, truth, behind me, may I not come again? Pray be merciful, and allow me.”
“How can I prevent you?” said Alma, in a laughing unconsciousness of Curly’s meaning. “Certainly, come if you like; it is kind of you, for I am very dull here alone. I am no philosopher, and cannot make a virtue of necessity, and pretend to take my tub and cabbage-leaves in preference to a causeuse and delicate mayonnaise.”
“Capricious, like all your sex. You are asking for compliments now, Alma. ‘On ne loue d’ordinaire que pour être loué,”’said De Vigne, drily.
“Am I? I did not mean it so,” answered the girl, innocently.
“Nor did I take it so,” said Curly, bending towards her as he took her hand; “so I shall not say how I thank you for your permission, but only avail myself of it as often as I can.”
De Vigne stood looking disdainfully on, stroking his moustaches; and thinking, I dare say, what arrant flirts all women were at heart, and what fools men were to pander to their vanities.
He bid her good morning with that careless hauteur which he had often with everybody else, but very rarely with her. While he stood at the door waiting for his groom, he heard Alma’s voice:
“Come back a minute.”
He went back, as in courtesy bound.
“Why did you speak so crossly to me?”
“I! I was not aware of it.”
“But I was, and it was not kind of you, Sir Folko.”
“Why will you persist in calling me like that knight sans ptur et sans reprocheP” said De Vigne, impatiently. “I tell you I have nothing in common with him — with his pure life and his spotless shield. He did no evil; I do — Heaven knows how much! He surmounted his temptations; I have always succumbed to mine. He had a conscience at ease; mine might be as great a torture as the rack. His past was one of wise thoughts and noble deeds; mine can show neither the one nor the other.”
“Of your life you know best; but in your character I choose to see the resemblance,” replied Alma, always resolute to her own opinion. “Was he not a man who feared nothing, who was fierce to his foes and generous to those who trusted him? As for his past, he had probably drawn experience from error, as men ever do; and learnt wisdom out of folly. And as for his stainless shield, is not your haughty De Vigne honour as unsullied as when it passed to you?”
“No” said De Vigne, fiercely. “My folly stained it, and the stain is the curse of my life. Child, why will you speak of such things? If you care for my friendship, you must never allude to my past.”
Deadly memories were stirring in him. Most women might have been afraid of him in his haughty anger. She was not. She looked up at him, bewildered, it is true, but with a strange mingling of girlish tenderness and woman’s passion, both unconscious of themselves.
“Oh, I will not! Do forgive me!”
“Yes, yes, I forgive you,” said De Vigne, hastily. “Don’t exalt me into a god, Alma, that’s all; for I am very mortal.”
He laid his hand on her shoulder, with the familiar kindness he had grown into with her.
In another second he was across his horse’s back, and riding out of the court-yard with Curly, while she stood in the doorway looking after him, shading her eyes from the May sun, which touched up her golden hair and her bright-hued dress into a brilliant tableau, under the low, dark porch of her home.
Curly rode on quietly for some little way, busying his mind with rolling the leaves round a Manilla, and lighting it en route, while De Vigne puffed away at a giant Havannah, between regulating which and keeping his fidgety Grey Derby quiet (he usually rode horses that would have thrown any other man but him or M. Rarey), he had little leisure for roadside conversation.
At last Curly broke silence, flicking his mare’s ears thoughtfully.
“Well, De Vigne! I don’t know what to make of it!”
“Don’t know what to make of what?” demanded De Vigne, curtly.
He was a little impatient with his Frestonhills pet. One may not care two straws for pheasant-shooting — nay, one may even have sprained one’s arm, so that it is a physical impossibility to lift an Enfield to one’s shoulder — and yet, so dog-in-mangerish is human nature, that one could kick a fellow who ventures to come in and touch a head of our défendu or uncared-for game!
“Of that little thing,” returned Curly musingly. “I don’t understand her.”
“Very possibly!”
“Why very possibly! I know a good deal of women, good, bad, and indifferent, but I’ll be hanged if I can understand that Little Tressillian. She is so frank and free one might take no end of advantage of her; and yet, somehow, deuce take it, one can’t. The girl’s truth and fearlessness are more protection to her than other women’s pruderies and chevaux-de-frise.”
De Vigne did not answer, but smoked silently.
“She is a little darling,” resumed Curly, meditatively. “One feels a better fellow with her — eh?”
“Can’t say,” replied De Vigne. “I have generally looked on young ladies, for inflammable boys like you, as dangerous stimulants rather than as calming tonics.”
“Confound your matter-of-fact,” swore Curly. “You may laugh at it if you like, but I mean it. She makes me think of things that one pooh-poohs and forgets in the bustle of the world. She’s a vast lot too good to be shut up in that brown old house, with only a kitten to play with, and an old nurse to take care of her.”
“She seems to have made an impression on you!”
“Certainly she has!” said Curly, gaily. “And, ‘pon my life, what makes still more impression on me, De Vigne, is, that you and I should be going calling on and chatting with her as harmlessly as if she were our sister, when we ought to be making desperate love to her, if she hadn’t such confounded trusting eyes of hers that they make one ashamed of one’s own thoughts!’Pon my life, it’s very extraordinary!”
“If extraordinary, it is only honour,” said De Vigne, with his coldest hauteur, “towards a young, guileless girl, utterly unprotected, save by her own defencelessness. For my own part, as a ‘married man’ (how cold his sneer grew at those words!), I have no right to ‘enter the lists’ with you, as you poetically phrased it to-day; and for yourself, you are too true a gentleman, Curly, though it is ‘our way’ to be unscrupulous in such matters, to take unfair advantage of my introduction. Indeed, if you did, I, to whom Mr. Tressillian appealed for what slight assistance I have it in my power to afford her, should hold myself responsible for having made you known to her, and should be bound to take the insult as to myself.”
Curly, at the beginning of De Vigne’s very calm, but very grandiose speec
h, opened his lazy violet eyes, and stared at him; but as he went on, he turned to his old Frestonhills hero with his smile, — so young in its brightness:
“Quite right, De Vigne. You are a brick; and if I do any harm to that dear little Tressillian, I give you free leave to shoot me dead like a dog, and I should richly deserve it too. But go and see her I must, for she is worth all the women we shall meet at Jerry’s today, though they do count themselves the crème de la crime?
“The creme de la crime can be, at the best, only skim!” said De Vigne, with his ready fling of sarcasm; “but I am not going to the Maberlys’, thank you. Early strawberries and late on dits are both flavourless to my taste; the fault of my own palate perhaps. I shall go and lunch at the U. S., and play a game or two at pool. How pleasant the wind is! Grey Derby wants a gallop.”
Palamon and Arcite were not truer or warmer friends than De Vigne and Curly; but, when a woman’s face dazzled the eyes of both, the death-blow was struck to friendship, and the seeds of feud were sown.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Skeleton which Society had never seen.
ON the 12th of May, Leila Countess of Puffdoff gave a ball, concert, and sort of moonlight fête, all three in one, at her charming dower-house at Twickenham. All our set went, and all of Ours, for le feu Puffdoff had been in the Dashers, and out of a tender memory of him, his young widow made pets of all the Corps; not, one is sure, because we were counted the handsomest set of men in all Arms, but out of pure love and respect for our late gouty Colonel, who, Georges Dandin in life, became a Mausolus when under the sod. Who upholds that the good is oft interred with our bones. ’Tisn’t true though it is Shakspeare who says it; if you leave your family or your pet hospital a good many thousands, you will get the cardinal virtues, and a trifle more, in letters of gold on your tomb; though if you have lived up to your income, or forgotten to insure, any penny-alining La Monnoye will do to scribble your epitaph, and break off with “C’est trop mentir pour cinq écus!” Le feu Puffdoff became “my poor dear lord,” as soon as the grave closed over him; pour cause— “my poor dear lord” had left his Countess most admirably well off, and with some of this “last bequest” the little widow gave us a charming fête on this 12th of May.