by Ouida
Every vestige of colour fled from her face as she spoke; her fingers were clasped together till her rings cut into the skin; and there was that in her voice, which might have touched into sympathy, even the coldest nature. But (I do not think one can blame my Lady Molyneux; if she was born without feelings, perhaps she was hardly more responsible for the non-possession of them, than the idiot for the total absence of brain) her mother was not even silenced.
“Is that your final decision?” she said, with a sneer. “Very well, then! I will tell Vallenstein that my daughter intends to lead a semi-conventual life, with the celibacy, but not the holy purpose, of a nun, because she is dying for a handsome roui who happens to be a married man. I dare say he will enjoy telling the story at the Tuileries; and there are plenty of women, my love, who will like nothing better than a laugh against you.”
“You can say what you please,” answered Violet, between her teeth.
But that she was her mother, the Viscountess would have had a far sharper retort “Of course I can! And stories grow strangely in passing from mouth to mouth! Dear me, is it three o’clock? And I was to be at Notre-Dame by half-past, to hear that divine creature, Alexis Dupont!” And my lady floated out of the room, while her daughter leant her head upon the mantelpiece, the tears she had forced back while in her mother’s presence falling hot and thick on the chill marble — not more chill than the natures that surrounded her in the gay world of which she was weary. Her heart was sick within her, the burden of her life grew heavier than she knew how to bear.
How long she stood there she did not know, till hands as soft as her own touched hers, a face as fair as her own was lifted to hers, a voice whispered, “Why are you in pain? For you, of all, life should be bright and beautiful!”
Violet Molyneux stooped and touched with her lips the brow that had once flushed beneath De Vigne’s caresses.
“Alma, tell me, what do you call fidelity?”
“Fidelity?” repeated ‘Alma, with that instantaneous flash of responsive feeling on her mobile features which it had been De Vigne’s pleasure to summon up and watch at his will. “There is little of it in the world, I fancy. A marriage is to me null and void without fidelity, not only of act, but of thought, of mind, of heart; and fidelity makes in God’s sight a marriage tie holier than any man can forge, and one which no human laws can sever. What do I call fidelity? I think it is to keep faithful through good report and evil report, through suffering, and, if need be, through shame; it is to credit no evil of the one loved from other lips, and if told that such evil is true by his own, to blot it out as though it never had been; to keep true to him through all appearance, however against him, through silence, and absence, and trial; never to forsake him even by one thought, and to brave all the world to serve him; that is what seems fidelity to me, — nothing less — nothing less!”
Her eyes flashed, her lips quivered. A tender love, an undying sorrow, were spoken on her face, as, turned full to Violet, the sunlight fell upon it Violet looked at her and sighed; she was too unselfish not to regret, even amidst her own sorrow, that another should share a similar fate; and she felt little doubt either that De Vigne cared nothing for his former protégée, or that he had left her, with his love spoken but his marriage told. She liked the depth of feeling and delicacy of nature which had made Alma hold her attachment to him too sacredly to speak of it, and hear his name, when it was occasionally mentioned in the Molyneux circle, without betraying “the secret wound beneath the cloak,” loving the hand that had given that wound too well to murmur to others at its pain. The similarity of their fate touched her. She stooped over Alma and passed her hand over the golden hair that De Vigne had drawn through his fingers — those shining silken threads that had held him closer than chains of iron.
“You are right! We must give ‘nothing less.’”
This was all that passed between them, then or afterwards on what lay nearest to the hearts of both, yet that little was enough to awake a close sympathy between them, none the less real because it was silent To Alma life was very bitter now. Twelve months had passed, and she was still as far from De Vigne as when she lay chained to her sick-bed. The letter she had written at Montressor’s had miscarried; De Vigne had never had it Hearing nothing from him, she had written again — a letter which would have touched a heart far harder and more steeled against her than his. That letter she received back, sealed again, and directed to her in a writing which she knew but too well, firmly, boldly, with not a trace allowed to appear in the clear caligraphy of the agony in which the words were penned. She knew then that he believed her false to him; that the circumstantial evidence which had told so strongly against her had crushed out all faith and trust and tenderness in his heart towards her. It was the most cruel wound Alma had ever had, to find herself so readily doubted, so harshly given up, so unjustly denied even a hearing. Injustice was always very bitter to her; it roused all that was dark and fiery in her character. From anybody else she would never have forgotten or pardoned it; certainly never have stooped to clear herself from it De Vigne she forgave, and thought less of her own wrong than of all she knew that he endured.
Alma, with all her impulsiveness and expansiveness, was sensitive to all touch of those more delicate feelings that she sheltered in her heart; over them she was haughty, proud, reserved. She had, moreover, great self-control. De Vigne’s name was too dear to her to be breathed before others. She had resided twelve months with the Molyneux; and they never knew, though he was often mentioned casually, that his name merely spoken by another’s voice struck like steel to her heart Alma’s principles of honour and of trust were far more acute and refined than those of most people; the love De Vigne had lavished on her was sacred to her; a treasure reposed in her alone, not to be spread out before other eyes. Violet, — the only one who would have translated the dilated terror of her eyes when the morning papers came in, the anguish of her face when she bent over the Returns of killed and wounded, the gleam of her eyes whenever De Vigne’s name was mentioned by any man who had come back from the Crimea from ill-health or to bring despatches, — Violet was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice what passed beside her, or at least to reflect upon it She was kind to her, as she would have been to any one in a subordinate situation; still more so one, to whom she had always had a certain attraction, ever since she had heard of her as the artist of the Louis Dix-Sept But, until the moment when Alma’s definition of fidelity unwittingly betrayed her, Violet had noticed her but little, and never discovered her secret.
It was a peculiar position that Alma occupied in the Molyneux household in Paris. The Hon. Rushbrooke, admiring her chevelure dorée, had thought he could make much the same love to her as to his mother’s maid, whenever that soubrette chanced to be a pretty one; and Lady Molyneux had scarcely ever spoken to her, save when, struck with her great taste in dress, she would fain have had her turned into a sort of chef de toilette. But Jockey Jack vowed she was as much of a lady as any of them; swore he’d known Tressillian in early days; by George, he would have them civil to the little girl, and was civil to her himself, in his bluff, blunt, kindly-meant way; and Violet, won towards her as months passed on, sought refuge in her society from the inanities, frivolities, scandals, and manœuvres constantly poured into her ears by her mother, and from the whirl of a circle whose gaieties were now so foreign to her, until a tacit sympathy and a sincere regard grew up between them — the friendless artiste and the fashionable aristocrate.
CHAPTER XII.
The Tortures of Tantalus.
IT was Christmas night — Christmas-eve — and the midnight mass was rising and falling in its solemn chant through the long aisles of Notre Dame. The incense floated upwards to the dim vaulted roof, the starry lights glittered on the gorgeous high altar, while the sweet swell of the cathedral choir rose on the still, hushed air, as through Paris, under the winter stars, there tolled one by one the twelve strokes of the midnight hour.
Midnight
mass in Notre Dame! — it were hard to hear it bursting in its glorious harmony, after the dead silence of the assembled multitude, once from priest and people, choir and altar, without something of that sadness and that veneration which lie in most of us, though too often lost and silenced in the fret and hurry of our life.
One by one the midnight strokes tolled slowly out upon the Christmas air; hushed as though no human heart beat amongst them, the gathered thousands knelt in prayer; the last stroke fell and lingered on their ears, and then, over their bowed heads, rolled the rich cadence of the choir and the full swell of the organ-notes. Among the multitude knelt Violet Molyneux and Alma, their thoughts far from creeds or formularies, from religious differences or religious credulities, but their hearts bowed in prayer for those far distant. What was to them church, place, creed? thus they prayed in the solitude of their own chambers; thus they would have prayed beside the sick-beds of Scutari; thus they now prayed in the hushed aisles of Notre Dame, where, if forms differed, human hearts at least beat beside them and around with hopes, fears, griefs, passions, pleading for mercy, as in theirs!
As they passed out of the great door to the carriage, in the frosty starlit night, both started, and a voice whispered by their side:
“Per Carità? date la limosina per amor del Figlio di Dio!”
They scarcely saw the beggar’s face, coming out of the gas glare into the moonlit night, but they heard the voice, broken, almost fierce — perhaps with hunger! — in its supplication, and both instinctively, and contrary to the custom of either, stretched out their hands with an alms on Christmas-eve. As it chanced, Alma was the nearer to the suppliant, who caught her offered gift, but did not see Violet’s. The crowd following, pushed them on; and their carriage rolled away, while the woman, with Alma’s coin in her hand, looked after them with a strange expression on her haggard face, partly curiosity, partly hate, partly fear, yet with a tinge of regret and pain, as she muttered in Tuscan:
“Santa Maria! questo sorriso mi fa pensare di gli! E presagio della morte — ma — per chi?”
The wild gaze of the Italian’s fierce dark eyes, the haunting tone ofthat shrill “Carità! Carità!” still lingered in Alma’s mind as she rolled through the gay gas-lighted streets of Paris; and her young eyes closed with a despairing sigh, and a sickening shudder of dread, at this mysterious Human Life, which is so short in years, so long in suffering.
The Paris winter passed; passed as Paris winters ever do, with a gay whirl of glittering life for the rich, with cold, and hunger, and suffering for the poor; the gas flowers of Mabille, burning at the same hour, with the candle that gleamed its sickly light on the dead bodies at the Morgue. The Paris winter passed, and Violet Molyneux was still the empress of its soirées; that chill hauteur which in self-defence she had assumed, was no barrier between her and the love that was pressed upon her from all quarters and highest ranks, evident though it was by her equable coldness to all, that her exquisite loveliness would never be given to any. In February, Lord Molyneux received a letter with the stately royal seal of the Vallenstein-Seidlitz, requesting the honour of his daughter’s hand. It came to him when they were at dinner; even with the length of the table between them, his wife knew, or thought she knew, the armorial bearings of the seal, as it lay upwards unopened, and congratulated herself, though with a rapid cast forwards as to how many hundreds the trousseau would cost; but the trousseau would be one final expense, and Violet’s dress in the present state of things was an annual destruction of what without her my lady would have had for her own silks and laces, jewellery and point. As they took their coffee, preparatory to going to a ball at the British Embassy, Jockey Jack broke the seal, perused the missive, and in silence handed it to his daughter. Violet read it, with pain, for she foresaw that she should not be allowed to reject this, as she had done others, without contention and upbraiding; and gave it back to him as silently, but the thin, jewelled hand of her mother intercepted it, with a snappish sneer:
“Is your own wife, Lord Molyneux, to be excluded from all your confidences with your daughter?”
“What answer, Vy?” asked Jockey Jack, turning a deaf ear to his lady, who had a knack of bringing forward her relationship to him on any disagreeable occasion, such as opening his notes or referring her creditors to him, but on all others ignored it very completely.
“The same as usual, papa,” answered Violet, bending down to him.
Lady Molyneux read Vallenstein’s formal and courtly letter with calm deliberation through her gold eye-glass; and Alma rose and left the room, guessing, with intuitive tact and delicacy of perception, that this was some matter which they would prefer to discuss alone. Lady Molyneux read the letter, then folded it up and put it in its envelope.
“Violet, would it be too much for me to ask to be allowed to share the confidence you gave your papa just now? Might I inquire what reply you send to Vallenstein?”
Violet gave one sigh of inexpressible weariness; she was so tired of this ceaseless contention, the continual dropping of water on a stone; this jangling and upbraiding; the martyrdom of daily petty badgering and polished vituperation.
“Certainly you may, mamma. I thank Prince Carl for the honour he has done me; and I reject his offer with all the gratitude for his generosity that it merits.”
Lady Molyneux shrugged her shoulders, and did not condescend to answer her. She turned to her husband, who was beating an impatient tattoo on the back of his couch.
“My dear Molyneux, do you intend, too, to refuse Prince Carl’s proposals?”
Jockey Jack looked up with a curse on women’s tongues, and on their tomfoolery of marriage and giving in marriage, ready to dissent from his wife at a moment’s notice.
“Vallenstein does not propose for me, my dear. I have nothing to do with it, except to tell him, as decently as I can, that Vy is very much obliged to him, but would rather be excused.”
“Then you mean to countenance her in her folly?”
“I don’t know what you mean by countenancing her; she is old enough to judge for herself, especially about her own husband. I dare say a royal marriage would have had great attractions for you, Helena, but if your daughter thinks differently there is no reason for you to quarrel about it,” said Jockey Jack, who did not see why one man was not as good as another to Violet, nor yet, if they were not, why she should be bullied about it “/see one if you do not,” said his wife, frigidly. “It is of the greatest importance that she should marry soon and marry well. The singularly unfortunate circumstances that attended her lamentable engagement — an engagement that would never have been entered into if I had been listened to — have laid her open to a great deal of remark, never beneficial to any woman—”
“Do you speak feelingly?” interrupted Lord Molyneux, sotto voce.
“Indeed, very prejudicial,” continued his wife, imperturbably. “Violet has now been out three years; girls that were débutantes with her have settled well long ago. Beatrice Carteret, with not a tithe of her advantages, married the Duke of St. Orme in her first season; and that remarkably ordinary little Selina Albany drew Whitebait into a proposal, and he settled a hundred thousand upon her for pin-money—”
“That’ll do, that’ll do,” cut in Molyneux, impatiently. St. Orme is an old brute, who bullied his first wife into consumption, and as for Whitebait, he’s a young fool, whom his uncle tried to get shut up for idiotcy; if Vy can’t do better than that, I would rather she lived and died a Molyneux. If you’ve no better arguments for marriage, Helena—”
“At all events,” said my lady, with her nastiest sneer, “they would either of them make as good husbands as your favourite would have done with a wife in petto! She has been immensely admired; she has made more conquests, I have no doubt, than any woman of her years; but men will not go and recount their own rejections; other ladies will not believe me when I tell them whom she might have married — very naturally, too — and all the world knows of her is her devotion to a married
man! I leave it to her own sense to determine, whether that is a very advantageous report to cling to her in circles, where women dislike her as their rival, and men whom she has rejected are not very likely to be over-merciful in their terms of speaking of her. Of course it is all hushed when I draw near, but I have overheard more than one remark very detrimental to her. In a little time men will become very shy of making one their wife, whose name has been so long in connexion with a married man’s, and whose ridiculous dévouement to Colonel Sabretasche has been the most amusing theme in salons where he has been so famous for love not quite so constant! Therefore, I say it is most important she should marry soon, and marry well; and to reject such proposals as Prince Carl’s would be madness — a man who could wed, if he chose, with one of the royal houses of Europe! A letter of refusal shall never be sent to Vallenstein.”
“Ah! well, I’m sure I don’t know,” said poor Jockey Jack, bewildered with this lengthened lecture. “Come, Vy, your mamma speaks reasonably — for once! You know I am very much attached to Sabretasche — very much — and I admit you don’t see any other man so handsome or so accomplished, and all that sort of thing; and he was deuced mad about you, poor fellow! But then, you see, as long as there’s that confounded wife of his in the way, and her life’s just as good as his, he can’t marry you, with our devilish laws; and, ten to one if ever the time come that he can, he won’t care a straw about you — that’s very much the way with us men — and you’ll have wasted all your youth and your beauty for nothing, my poor pet! You see, we are not rich, and if you were well married — it’s most women’s ambition, at the least! Come, Vy, what do you say?”