by Ouida
I went to the ball late; De Vigne chose instead to go to a card party at Wyndham’s, where play was certain to be high. He preferred men’s society to women’s at all times, and I must say I think he showed his judgment! The first person I saw was Violet, on Curly’s arm, with whom she had been waltzing. Brilliant and lovely she looked, with all her high-bred grace and finish about her; but she had lost her colour, there was an absence of all that free spontaneous gaiety, and there was a certain distraction in her eyes, which made me guess the Colonel’s abrupt departure had not been without its effect upon our most radiant beauty. She had promised me the sixth dance the previous day in the Park, and as I waltzed with her, pour m’amuser I mentioned Sabretasche’s name casually, when, despite all her sang-froid, a slight flush in her cheeks showed she did not hear it with indifference. When I resigned her to Regalia, I strolled through the rooms with the other beauté régnante of the night, Madame la Duchesse de La Vieillecour. Good Heavens! what relationship was there between that stately, haughty-eyed woman, with her Court atmosphere about her calm but finished coquetteries, and bright-faced, blithe-voiced Gwen Brandling, who had given me that ring under the trees in Kensington Gardens ten years before? Ah, well! Time changes us all. The ring was old-fashioned now; and Madame and I made love more amusingly and more wisely, if less truly than earnestly, than in those old silly days when we were in love, before I had learned experience and she had taken up prudence and ducal quarterings!
I was sitting under one of the luxuriant festoons of creepers in the winter garden with her Excellency; revenging, perhaps, a little more naturally than rightly, on Madame de La Vieillecour the desertion of Gwen Brandling; and I suppose I was getting a trifle too sarcastic in the memories I was recalling to her, for she broke off our conversation suddenly, and not with that subtle tact which Tuileries air had taught her.
“Look! Is it possible! Is not that Colonel Sabretasche? I thought he was gone to Biarritz for his health?”
I looked; it was Sabretasche, to my supreme astonishment, for his leave had not nearly expired; and in a letter De Vigne had had from him a day or two previous, there had been no mention of his intending to return.
“How charming he is, your Colonel!” said Madame de La Vieillecour, languidly. “I never met anybody handsomer or more witty in all Paris. Bring him here, I want to speak to him.”
“Surprised to see me, Arthur?” said Sabretasche, laughing, as I went up to him, obedient to her desires. “I always told you never to be astonished at anything I do. Madame de La Vieillecour there? She does me much honour. Is she trying to make you singe your wings again?”
He came up to her with me, of course, and stood chatting some minutes.
“I am only this moment arrived,” he said, in answer to her. “When I reached Park-lane this evening, I found Lady Puffdoff’s card; so I dined, dressed, and came off, for I knew I should meet all my old friends here. Yes, I am much better, thank you; the sweet air of the Pyrenees must always do one good, and then they give all the credit to the Biarritz baths! Shockingly unjust, but what is just in this world?”
He stayed chatting some moments, though his eyes glanced impatiently through the rooms. The air of the Pyrenees had indeed done him good; his listless melancholy, which had grown on him so much during the last month, had entirely worn off; there was a clear mind-at-ease look about him as if he were relieved of some weight that had worn him down, and there was a true ring about his voice and laugh which had not been there, gay as he was accounted, since I had known him, even when he was ten years younger than he was now. He soon left Madame de La Vieillecour, and lounged through the rooms, exchanging a smile, or a bow, or a few words with almost every one he met, for Sabretasche had a most illimitable acquaintance.
Violet Molyneux was sitting down after her waltz with Regalia, leaning back on a couch, fanning herself slowly, and attending Very little to the crowd of men who had gathered, as they were certain to do, round the beauty of the season. She generally laughed, and talked, and jested with them all, so that her pet friends called her a shocking flirt, but to-night she was listless and silent, playing absently with her bouquet, though admiring glances enough were bent upon her, and delicate flattery enough breathed in her ears, to have roused the Sleeping Beauty herself from her trance.
It required more, however, to rouse her; that little more she had, in a voice well accustomed to give meaning to such words, which whispered:
“How can I hope I have been remembered when you have so many to teach you to forget!”
She looked up; her wild-rose colour came back into her cheeks; she gave him her hand without a word, and one of her vassals, a young Viscount, in the Rifles, relinquished his place beside her to Sabretasche. Then she talked to him, quietly enough, on indifferent subjects, as if neither remembered their last strange interview in the Water-colour Exhibition, as if the Francesca were not in both their minds, as if love were not lying at the heart and gleaming in the eyes of each of them!
Sabtetasche asked her to waltz; she could not, since she had only the minute before refused Regalia; but she took his arm and strolled into the winter-garden, leaving the full rise and swell of the ball-room music with the subdued hum and murmur of Society in the distance.
He spoke of trifles as they passed the different groups that were laughing, chatting, or flirting in the several rooms; but his eyes were on hers, and spoke a more eloquent language. Violet never asked him of his sudden return or his abrupt departure. She was too happy to be with him again to care through what right or reason she was so. Gradually they grew silent, as they strolled on through the conservatories till they were alone. One side of the winter-garden was open to the still night, where the midnight stars shone on trees and statues, with lamps gleaming between, while the nightingales sang their chants of love, which give utterance in their unknown tongue to those diviner thoughts, that yearning sadness, which lie far down unseen in Human nature.
The night was still, there was no sound save the distant music and the sweet gush of the nightingales’ songs close by; the wind swept gently in till the air was full of the dreamy and voluptuous fragrance which lulls the senses and woos the heart to those softer moments which, could they but last, would make men never need to dream of heaven. Such hours are rare; what wonder if, to win them, we risk all, if in them we cry with the Lotus Eaters,
“Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things sûre taken from us and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall, and cease.
Give us long rest or death; dark death or dreamful ease.”
He, in the still beauty of the night, could listen to every breath and hear each heart-throb of the woman he loved, as he looked into her face with its delicate and impassioned beauty — the beauty of the Francesca. All the passion that was in him stirred and trembled at it; the voluptuous spell of the hour stole over his thoughts and senses: he stooped towards her:
“Violet!”
It was only one word he spoke: but in it all was uttered to them both.
He drew her to his heart, pressing his lips on hers in kisses long and passionate as those that doomed Francesca. And the stars shone softly, and the nightingales sang under the early roses in the fair spring night, while two human hearts met and were at rest.
* * * * * *
When they went back into the ball-room the waltz had its charm, the music its melody, the flowers their fragrance, again, for Violet; for a touch of the hand, a glance of the eyes, were sufficient eloquence between them, and his whispered Good night, as he led her to her carriage, was dearer to her than any flattery poet or prince had ever breathed. Nay, she was so happy that she even smiled brightly on Regalia, to her mother’
s joy — so happy, that when she reached the solitude of her chamber, she threw herself on her knees in her glittering gossamer ball-dress, with as unchecked and impetuous tears of rapture as if she had been Little Alma in her cottage home, rather than the beauty of the Season, with Coronets at her feet.
Lord Molyneux was a poor Irish peer; Sabretasche was rich, of high family, a man whose word was law, whose pre-eminence in fashion and tone was acknowledged, whose admiration was honour, and at whose offer of marriage any one would feel proud. His social position was so good, his settlements would be so unexceptionable, why! even our dear saint, the Bishop of Comet-Hock, though he shook his head over Sabretasche’s sins, and expressed his opinion with considerable certainty concerning the warmth of his ultimate reception — you know where — would have handed him over with the greatest eagerness either of his pretty, extravagant daughters, had the Colonel deigned to ask for one of them. Therefore, when Sabretasche called the morning after, and made formal proposals for Violet, Jockey Jack, though considerably astonished; as society had settled that Sabretasche would never marry, as decidedly as it had settled that he was Mephistopheles in fascinating guise; was excessively pleased, assented readily, and had but one drawback on his mind — telling his wife — that lady having set her affections on things above, namely, little Regalia’s balls and strawberry-leaves.
When he came out of Molyneux’s study that morning, he naturally took his way to where his young love sat alone. She sprang up as he entered, with so fond a smile and so bright a blush, that Sabretasche thought he had never seen anything of half so much beauty, sated as he had been with beauty all his days.
“How lovely you are!” he said, involuntarily, some minutes after, as he sat beside her on the couch, passing his hand over the soft perfumed hair that rested against his arm.
“Oh! do not tell me that So many do!” cried Violet “I like you to see in me what no one else sees.”
“I see a great deal in you that no one else sees; whole tableaux of heart and mind, that no one else can have a glance at,” said Sabretasche, smiling. “But I am proud of your beauty, my lovely Francesca, for all that; though it may be a fact patent to all eyes.”
“Then I am glad I have it! I would be a thousand times worthier of you if I could.”
“The difficulty ‘to be worthy’ is not on your side,” said he, with a shade of his old sadness. “I cannot bear to think that a life so pure as yours should be dedicated to a life so impure as mine. How spotless is your past, Violet — how dark is mine!”
“But how few have been my temptations — how many yours!” she interrupted him, softly. “I shall not love you the less, through whatever fires you may have passed. A woman’s office is to console, not to censure; and if a man have trust in her enough to reveal his past sins or sorrows, her pleasure should be to teach him to forsake them and forget them.”
“God bless you! If my care and tenderness can repay, your future shall reward you,” he whispered. “What I have chiefly to tell you, is of wrongs done to me — wrongs that have sealed my lips to you till now — wrongs that have weighed on me for more than twenty long years, and made me the enigmatical and wayward man I probably have seemed. It is a long story, but one I would rather you should know before you fully give yourself to me.”
She looked up at him with a silent promise that in heart she was already given to him; and leaning against him, Violet listened to the story — which every different scandal-monger had guessed at, and each separate coterie tried, and vainly tried, to probe — the story of the Colonel’s early life.
“You know,” began Sabretasche, “that I was born and educated in Italy; indulged in all things by my father, and accustomed to every luxury, I grew up with much of the softness, voluptuousness, and passion of the Italian character, while at fifteen I knew life as many a man of five-and-twenty, brought up in seclusion and puritanism here, does not But though I was in the Neapolitan service, and first in pleasure and levity among the young noblesse, I was still impressionable and romantic, with too much of the poetry and imagination of the country in me to be blasé, though I might be inconstant I never recall the memory of my youth, up to three-and-twenty, without regret, it was so full of enjoyment In the summer of my four-and-twentieth year I left Naples, during the hot season, to stay with a friend of mine, whose estates lay in Tuscany. You were in Tuscany last year. How fair the country is under the shadow of the Apennines, with its brown olive woods and its glorious sunsets! It is strange how the curse of its ingratitude to its noblest sons still clings to it, so favoured by nature as it is! Della Torre’s place was some six or seven miles from Sienna. I had gone up to Florence previously with my father, whose oldest friend was consul there; and travelling across Tuscany where malaria was then rife, a low fever attacked me. I was travelling vetturino — there were no railways there in those days — and my servant, finding that I was much too ill to go on, stopped of his own accord at a village not very far from Cachiano. The single act of a servant, who would have died to serve either me or my father, grew into the curse of my life! The name of the village was Montepulto. I dare say you passed through it; it is beautifully placed, its few scattered houses, with their high peaked roofs, standing among the great groves of chestnuts and the grey thickets of olives, with vineyards and woods of genista and myrtle lying in the glowing sunlight There Anzoletto stopped of his own accord. I was too ill to dissent; and as the carriage pulled up before the single wretched little inn the place afforded, the priest of the village, who was passing, offered me the use of his own house. I had hardly power to accept or refuse, but Anzoletto seized on the offer eagerly; and I was conveyed to the house, where, for many days, I knew nothing of what passed, except that I suffered and dreamt When I awoke from sleep one evening into consciousness, I saw the red sunset streaming through the purple vine around my lattice, Anzoletto asleep by my bedside, and a woman of great beauty watching me: of great beauty, Violet, but not your beauty. It seemed to me then the face of an angel: afterwards, God forgive her! I knew it as the face of a fiend. She was the niece, some said the daughter, of the priest of Montepulto. She was then five-and-twenty — when men love women their own age, or older, no good can come of it — and very beautiful: a Tuscan beauty, with blonde hair, and long, large, dark eyes; a lovely woman, in fact, with a certain languid grace which charmed one like music. She had, too, a certain aristocracy of air. The priest himself was of noble though decayed family; a sleek, silent, suave man, discontented with his humble position in Montepulto, but meek and lowly-minded, according to his own telling, as a religieux could be. I awoke to see Sylvia da’ Castrone by my bedside. I recovered to have her constantly beside me, to gaze on her dangerous charms in the equally dangerous lassitude of convalescence. There is a certain languid pleasure in recovery from illness when one is young that makes all things seem couleur de rose; to me, with my impressionable senses and my Southern temperament, there was something in this seclusion, shared with one as beautiful as the scenes among which I found her, which appealed irresistibly at once to poetry and passion, then the two dominant elements in my character; and to my desires, with which no ambitions greater than those of pleasure, and no pains harsher than those of love, had at that time mingled. Sufficient to say, I began to love this woman; as I recovered my love grew, till sense, prudence, pride, all that might have restrained me, were submerged in it. I loved her tenderly, honourably, as ever man could love woman. I decked her in all the brilliant hues of a poet’s fancy, I thought her the realization of all my sweetest ideals, I believed I loved for all eternity! I never stopped to learn her nature, her character, her thoughts; I never paused to learn if she in any way accorded to all my requirements and ideas; I loved her — I married her! Heavens, what that madness has cost me!”
The memory came over him with a deadly shudder; at its recollection the fell shade it had so long cast on him returned again, and he pressed Violet convulsively to his heart, as if with her warm, young love to crush
out the burden of that cold and cruel dead one; the intelligence of his marriage cast a death-like chill over her, but even in its pain her first impulse was to console him. She lifted her head and kissed his cheek, the first caress she had ever offered him, as if to show more tenderly than words could give them, her sympathy and her affection. As silently he thanked her; then with an effort he resumed his story.
“We were married — by the priest Castrone, and for a few weeks I believed my fairest dreams were realised. Violet, do not let my story pain you. All men have many early loves before they reach that fuller and stronger one which is the crown of their existence. I. was happy then, when I was a boy, and when you were not born, my darling! — but you will give me greaterhappiness, as passionate, and more perfect. We were married; and for a week or two the surrender of my liberty seemed trifling pay indeed for the rapture it had brought me. The first shock back to actual life was a letter from my father. I dared not tell him of my hasty step; not from any anger that I should have met, but from the grief it would have caused him, for the only thing he had ever interdicted to me was an early or an unequal marriage. Fortunately, the letter was only to ask me to go to England on some business for him. I went, of course, taking Sylvia with me; and while in London, at her suggestion (it did not occur to me, or I should have made it), we had the ceremony again performed in a Protestant church. She said it pleased her to be united to me by the religion of my country as well as of her own. I loved her, and believed her, and was only too happy to make still faster, if I could, the fetters which bound me to a woman I idolised! We were a month or two in England; then we returned, and I bought her a little villa just outside Naples, where every spare moment that I had formerly given to dissipation or amusement, or idle dreaming by the seashore, I now gave to my wife. Oh, my love! my love! that any should have borne that title before you! Gradually now dawned on me the truth which she had carefully concealed during our earlier intercourse; that, graceful, gentle as she was in seeming, her temper was the temper of a fiend, her passions such as would have disgraced the vilest woman in a street brawl! Fancy what it was to me, with my taste, over-refined, accustomed at home to the gentlest tones and softest voices, abhorring what was harsh, vulgar, or unharmonious; to hear the woman I worshipped meet me, if I was a moment later than she expected, or the presents I brought her a trifle less costly than she had anticipated — meet me with a torrent of reproaches and invectives, her beautiful features distorted with fury, her soft eyes lurid with flame, her coral lips quivering with deadly venom, railing alike at her dogs, her servants, and her husband! — a fury! — a she-devil! Good Heavens! what fiercer torment can there be for man than to be linked for life with a vixen, a virago? None can tell how it wears all the beauty of his life away; how surely, like the dropping of water on a stone, it eats away his peace; how it lowers him, how it degrades him in his own eyes, how it drags him down to her own level, until it is a miracle if it do not rouse in him her own coarse and humiliating passions! Looking back on those daily scenes of disgrace and misery, which grew, as week and month rolled by, each time worse and worse, as my words ceased to have the slightest weight, I wonder how I endured them as I did; yet what is more incredible still, I yet loved her despite the hideous deformity of her fiendish nature, for a virago is a fiend, and of the deadliest sort Still, though my life grew a very agony to me, and the weight of my secret from my father unbearable — I dared not tell him, for he was in such delicate health that the shock might have been fatal — I was never neglectful of her. Strange as it seems, little as the world would believe it, I was most constant to, and patient with her. I have done little good in my life, God knows, but in my duty as a husband to her, boy as I was, I may truly say I never failed. Some twelve months after our marriage she gave birth to a daughter. I was very sorry. I am not domestic — never shall be — and a child was the last inconvenience and annoyance I should have wished added to the ménage. I hoped, however, that it might soften her temper. It did not; and my life became literally a curse.