by Ouida
The register lay on the table, under the arched Norman window of the vestry of the church where, twenty years before, we had fidgeted through the dreary periods of the rector’s cruel sermon full an hour long, and cast glances over our hymn-books at the pastrycook’s pretty daughters.
The great old register, ponderous and dusty, lay on the table, the sunbeams from the stained glass above falling on its leather binding and its thickly-written leaves, full of so many records of man’s joy and sorrow, crowded with so many names which now were empty sounds; penned by so many hands which were now crumbled to dust under the churchyard sods near by. The great register lay on its table in the dark, quiet, solitary vestry — the last he had seen was the one in which he had signed his doom, twelve years before, in the church at Vigne. The old sexton unlocked the book, and with shaking, infirm hand turned over the leaves one after the other. De Vigne leant against the table, watching for the entry, his breath short and laboured, his pulse beating, a mist before his eyes, a great agony of dread — the dread of deception tightening his heart, and oppressing him to suffocation. If the man’s story were not true — if this, too, were a hoax and a fraud! Breathless, trembling in every limb with fear and hope, he bent over the book, pushing the old man’s hand away; his agony of impatience could not brook the slow and awkward fumbling of leaf after leaf, by the palsied feebleness of age. He thrust the pages back, one after another, till he reached the year 18 — . Entry after entry met his eye; from lords of the manor, their ancestral names dashed across the page; from poor peasants, who could only make their mark; from feminine signatures, trembling and illegible; marriage after marriage met his eager glance, but not yet the one which was to loosen his fetters and set him free. He turned the leaves over, one after the other, his heart throbbing quick with wild hope and irrepressible fear. At last the setting sun, shining in through the rich hues, the rubies and the ambers, the heads of saints, and blazoned shields on the stained window above his head, flung radiant colours on one dim yellow sheet, illumining with its aureole of light the two signatures he sought — the words that gave him ransom — the names that struck off his chains:
CHARLES TREFUSIS.
LUCY DAVIS.
And as his eye fell upon the page which freed him from the wife who had so long cursed his life, and stained his honour, and made his name abhorrent in his sight because she bore it, De Vigne staggered forward, and, flinging the casement open, leant out into the calm, fresh evening, stunned by his sudden deliverance as by some mortal blow, and gasping for breath, while the warm westerly wind swept over him, like a man who has escaped from the lurid heat of fire into the pure, sweet air of a breaking dawn.
He was FREE! The life which he had so madly sought to spend like water, and fling off from him as an evil too bitter to be borne, among the jungles of Scinde and on the steppes of the Crimea, was once more rich, and precious, and beloved; — he learned at last what his wayward nature had been long ere it would believe, that the fate we deem a curse is oftentimes an angel in disguise, if we wait patiently for the unfolding of its wings from the darkness which enshrouds them.
CHAPTER XIX.
Nemesis.
Two days after there was a fête given at Enghein, at the princely maison de plaisance of an English Earl — a stout, bloated old man, lavish as the wind, and rich as a Russian, who, consequently, had all the most seductive Parisiennes to make love to him; Delilah caring very little who her Samson be, provided she can cut off his locks to her own advantage. The fête was of unusual magnificence, and the Empress of it was “the Trefusis,” as we call her, “that poor fellow De Vigne’s wife — a very fast lot, too,” as men in general called her— “ma Reine,” as the Earl of Morehampton called her, in that pleasant familiarity which she ever readily admitted to those good friends of hers, who emptied half the Palais Royal upon her in bijouterie, jewellery, and other innocent gifts of amity; — a familiarity that always stopped just short of the divorce court, over the water. The Trefusis reigned at Enghein, and remarkably well she looked in her sovereignty, her jewelled ivory parasol handle for her sceptre, and her handsome eyes for her droit de conquête. Only three nights before she had lain on the dank grass in the Royal Forest, where the mad agony of a man, whom she had goaded and taunted, had flung her off, bidding her thank God, not him, he had not murdered her in that ghastly temptation. Only three nights before! but to-day she sat under the limes at Enghein, the very memory of that hour cast behind her for evermore, save when she remembered how she had jeered, how she had triumphed — remembered in gloating glee, for her victim could not escape her snare. The Trefusis had rarely looked better — never felt more secure in her completed vengeance upon De Vigne, her omnipotent sway over Morehampton, and all her lordly clique, than now. She was beautifully rouged, the carnation tint rich and soft, and defying all detection; her black Chantilly lace sweeping around her superb form; a parure of amethysts glittering in her bosom as she drove down to the villa in the Earl’s carriage, and reigned under the limes in dominance and triumph, as she had reigned since the day she had first looked at her own face in the mirror, and sworn by that face, to rise, and to revenge.
In brilliant style Morehampton had prepared to receive her, for he admired the quasi-milliner of Freston-hills more than anything else, for the time being, to the extreme rage of La Baronne de Bréloques, Mademoiselle Céleste Papillon, of the Français, and many other fair Parisiennes. There was the villa itself, luxurious as Eugène Sue’s; and there were grounds with alcoves, and statues, and rosiers; there was a “pavillon des arts,” where some of the best cantatrici in Paris sang like nightingales; there was a déjeûner, with the best cookery in France — who can say more? — there were wines that would have made Rahab or Father Mathew swear, with Trimalchio, “Vita vinum est;” there were plenty of men, lions, littérateurs, and milords Anglais, who were not bored here, because they could say and do just what they pleased, with no restraint upon them whatever. And there were plenty of women (very handsome ones, too, for the Earl would never have wasted his invitations on plain faces), who smoked and laughed at grivoises tales, and drank the Johannisberg and the Steinberg very freely for such dainty lips, and imitated us with their tranchant manners, their slang, and their lionneism, in everything except their toilettes, which were exclusively feminine in their brilliance and voluminous extent The déjeûner was over, during which the noble Earl, as his friends in the Upper House termed him, when they were most politely damning him, was exceedingly devoted to the Trefusis, and thought he had never seen anything finer than those admirably-tinted eyes and beautifully-coloured cheeks. He did not care for your nymphs of eighteen, they were generally too shy and too thin for his taste; he liked bien conservées, full-blown, magnificent roses, like the ex-milliner. The déjeûner was over, at which the Trefusis had reigned with supreme contentment, laughed very loudly, and drank champagne enough for a young cornet just joined; at which old Fantyre had enjoyed the pâtés de foie gras and other delicacies, like an old gourmette as she was, told dirty stories in broad Irish-French, and chuckled in herself to see gouty old Morehampton playing the gallant; and at which Mademoiselle Papillon could have fainted with spite, but not willing to give the detested Englishwoman so enormous a triumph, resisted her feelings with noble heroism.
The déjeûner was over, and the guests had broken up into groups, dispersing themselves over the villa and its grounds. The Trefusis and Morehampton took themselves to the Pavillon des Arts; but, after hearing one song from the “Traviata,” Ma Reine was bored — she cared nothing for music — and she threw herself down on a seat under some linden-trees to take ice, listen to his private band, which was playing close by, and flatter him about his new barouche, which she knew would be offered her as soon as she had praised it. It was by such gifts as these she managed to eke out her income, and live au premier in the Champs Elysées. Morehampton flung himself on the grass at her feet, forgetful of gout and lumbago; other men gathered round her; she was “a
deuced fine woman,” they thought, but, “by George! they didn’t envy De Vigne.” The band played valses and Béranger airs; the Earl was diverted between admiration of the black eyes above, and rueful recollections of the damp turf beneath, him; Mademoiselle Papillon made desperate love to Leslie Egerton, of the Queen’s Bays, but never missed a word or a glance that went on under the lime-trees for all that, with that peculiar double set of optics and oral nerves with which women seem gifted. Very brilliant, and pleasant, and lively, and Watteau-like it all was; and, standing under an alcove at some little distance, mingling unnoticed with the crowd of domestics, stood Raymond, alias Charles Trefusis, come to claim his wife, as he had been bound to do on receipt of De Vigne’s reward — none the less weighty a one, you may be sure, because the man had been given only a promise, and not a bond. De Vigne’s honour in those matters was in exact inverse ratio to the world’s.
“By Jove! sir,” the fellow whispered to me — I had come with him to see he kept good faith, and did not give us the slip— “just look at her, what a dash she cuts, and what a fool she’s making of that old lord! That’s Lord Morehampton, ain’t it, sir? I think I remember him in Pall Mall. I suppose Lucy’s bewitched him. Isn’t she a wonderful woman, sir? Who’d think, to see her now, that she was ever the daughter of a beggar-woman, and a little milliner girl at Frestonhills, making bonnets and dresses for parsons’ wives!”
I looked at her as he spoke, and, though it seemed wonderful to him, it did not seem wonderful to me. Lucy Davis’s rise was such a rise as Lucy Davis was certain to make, favoured by opportunity as she had been — neither more or less of a rise than a hard-headed, unscrupulous, excessively handsome woman, determined to push her way, and able to take the best possible advantage of every turn of the wheel, was pretty sure to effect. She could not make herself a gentlewoman — she could not make herself a woman of talent or of ton. She was merely what she had been for the last dozen years, with the aid of money, dress, and assurance — a dashing, handsome, skilful intrigante, whose magnificence of form made men forget her style, and whose full-blown beauty made them content with the paucity of ideas, and the vulgar harshness of tone, in the few words which ever passed her lips, which were too wise to essay often, that sure touchstone of mind and education — conversation.
Raymond stood looking at her, a cunning, malicious gleam of satisfaction in his little light eyes. His wife had made a better thing of life than he: he detested her accordingly; he had many old grudges to pay off against her for bitter, snarling words, and money flung to him, because she feared him, with a sneer and an invective; he hated her for having lived in clover, while he had not even had a taste of luxury, save the luxuries of flunkeyism and valetdom, since they parted, and he enjoyed pulling her up in the midst of her glories with such malignant pleasure as was natural to his disposition. She had married him at two-and-twenty; she had made him repent of it before the honeymoon was out; she had played her cards since to her own glorification and his mortification; there was plenty in all that to give him no little enjoyment in throwing her back, with a jerk, in the midst of her race. He stood looking at her with a peculiar smile on his lips. I dare say he was thinking what a fool he had been to fall in love with the blackeyed milliner of Frestonhills, and what a far greater fool still was his lordship of Morehampton to waste so much time and so much money, such wines, such jewellery, and such adoration, on this full-blown rose, whom no one ever tried to gather, but they impaled themselves upon her dexterously moss-hidden thorns.
At last the Trefusis, tired of ices, cancans, and Morehampton’s florid compliments, rose to go into the house, and look at some Rose Du Bern vases that had belonged to Madame de Parabère; Morehampton sprung to his feet with boyish lightness and gallant disregard of the gout, and then — her husband stepped forward; and I doubt if Nemesis, though she often took a more imposing, ever assumed a deadlier guise than that of the ci-devant valet!
The Trefusis gave an irrepressible start as she saw him; the colour left her lips; her cheeks it could not leave. She began laughing and talking to Morehampton hurriedly, nervously, incoherently, but there was a wild, lurid gleam in her eyes, restless and savage. Her husband touched his hat submissively, but with a queer smile still on his face:
“I beg your pardon, my lord, but may I be allowed to relieve you of the escort of my wife?”
Morehampton twisted himself round, stuck his gold glass in his eye, and stared with all his might: the men crowded closer, stroking their moustaches in curiosity and surprise; the English women, who could understand the speech, suspended the spoonfuls of ice that were en route to their lips, and broke off their conversation for a minute; the Trefusis flushed scarlet to her very brow, her eyes scintillated and glared like a tigress just stung by a shot that inflames all her savage nature into fury — ever ready with a lie, she clung to Morehampton’s arm:
“My dear lord! I know this poor creature very well; he is a lunatic — a confirmed lunatic — a harmless one quite; it is one of his hallucinations that every woman he sees and admires is his wife, who ran away from him, and turned his brain with her infidelity. He is harmless — at least I have always heard so — but pray tell your servants to take him away. It is very horrible.”
It was an admirably-told falsehood! — told, too, with the most natural ease, the most natural compassion imaginable — and it passed muster with Morehampton, who signed to two of his lacqueys.
“Seize that fellow and turn him out of the grounds. How did he get in, Soames? Go for some gendarmes if he resist you,” said the Earl, aloud: then bent his head, and added (sotto voce), “How grieved I am, dearest, that you should be so absurdly annoyed. What a shockingly stupid fellow! Brain turned, you say — and for a wife?”
But Raymond signed off the two footmen, who were circling gingerly round him like two dogs round a hedgehog, not admiring their task, having a genuine horror of lunacy, and being enervated, probably, by the epicureanisms of plush-existence.
“That is a pretty story, my lord, only, unfortunately, it isn’t true. Ben trovato — but all a humbug! I am as ‘sane as anybody here; much too sane to have my brain turned because my wife ran away from me. Most men ‘would thank their stars for such a kind deliverance! I am come to claim mine, though, for a little business there is to be done, and she is on your arm, my lord.
She married me nineteen years ago, and made me repent of it before a month was out.”
“Dear, dear! how absurd, and yet how shocking! Pray send him away,” whispered the Trefusis, clinging. to the Earl’s arm, looking, it must be confessed, more like a demon than a divinity, for her lips were white and twitching savagely, and spots of rouge glared scarlet “Do you hear me, fellows? Turn that impudent rascal out!” swore Morehampton.
“That fellow’s wife! Why, she’s De Vigne’s wife. Everybody knows that!” muttered Leslie Egerton, sticking his glass in his eye. “Saw him married myself, poor wretch!”
“Mais qu’est-ce que c’est done?” asked Mademoiselle Papillon, edging herself in with a dim delicious idea that it was something detrimental to her rival.
“Kick him out!”
“Turn him out!”
“An escaped lunatic!”
“Impertinent rascal!”
“Ma foil qu’a-t-il done!”
“Mais comme c’est extraordinaire!”
“Dieul qu’est-ce que cela veut dire!” resounded on all sides from Morehampton’s guests and the Trefusis’s adorers.
“Major de Vigne’s wife?” repeated Raymond. “No, she’s not, gentlemen: he knows it now, too, and thanks Heaven for it. She married me, as I say, nineteen years ago; more fool I to let her! Twelve years ago she married Major de Vigne. So you see, my lord, she is my wife, not his, and I believe what she has done is given a nasty, coarse, impolite term by law. What I tell you is quite true. Here’s Captain Chevasney, my lord, who will tell you the same, and tell it better than I. Come, old girl, you’ve had a long holiday; you must come with me an
d work for a little while now.”
He spoke with a diabolical grin, and, thus appealed to, I went forward and gave Morehampton as succinctly as I could the outlines of the story. The Trefusis’s face grew grey as ashes, save where the rouge remained in two bright crimson spots fixed and unchanged, her eyes glittered in tiger-like fury, and her parasol fell to the ground, its ivory handle snapped in two as her hands clenched upon it, only with a violent effort restraining herself from flying at mine or her husband’s throat For the first time in her life, the clever Greek had her own marked card turned against her; her schemes of malice, of vengeance, of ambition, were all swept away like cobwebs, never to be gathered up again. De Vigne was free, and she was caught in her own toils!
She swung round, sweeping her black Chantilly lace round her, and scattering her sandal-wood perfume on the air, laughing:
“And do you believe this cock-and-bull story, Lord Morehampton?” Her voice came out in a low, fierce hiss, like a serpent’s, while her large, sensual, ruby lips curled and quivered with impotent rage. “Do you believe this valet’s tale, bribed by a man who would move heaven and earth to prove his lawful marriage false, and the corroborating story told so glibly by a gentleman who, though he calls himself a man of honour, would swear black were white to pleasure his friend?”