by Ouida
Her face also was left to nature, in a very blamable degree for a woman of fashion. Her friends argued to her that any woman, however fair a skin she might have, must look washed out without enamel or rouge at the least. But the Lady Hilda, conscious of her own delicate bloom, was obdurate on the point.
“I would rather look washed out than caked over,” she would reply: which was cruel but conclusive. So she went into the world without painting, and made them all look beside her as if they had come out of a comic opera.
In everything else she was, however, as artificial as became her sex, her station, and her century.
She was a very fortunate woman; at least society always said so. The Clairvaux people were very terribly poor, though very noble and mighty. She had been married at sixteen, immediately on her presentation, to a great European capitalist of nondescript nationality, who had made an enormous fortune upon the Stock Exchanges in ways that were never enquired into, and this gentleman, whose wealth was as solid as it sounded fabulous, had had the good taste to die in the first months of their wedded life, leaving her fifty thousand a year, and bequeathing the rest of his money to the Prince Imperial. Besides her large income she had the biggest jewels, the choicest horses, the handsomest house in London, the prettiest hôtel in Paris, &c., &c., &c.; and she could very well afford to have a fresh toilette a-day from her friend Worth if she chose. Very often she did choose. “What a lucky creature,” said every other woman: and so she was. But she would have been still more so had she not been quite so much bored. Boredom is the ill-natured pebble that always will get in the golden slipper of the pilgrim of pleasure.
The Lady Hilda looked out of the window and found it raining heavily. When the sky of Floralia does rain, it does it thoroughly, and gets the disagreeable duty over, which is much more merciful to mankind than the perpetual drizzle and dripping of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, or Middlesex. It was the rain that had made her almost inclined to think she would write a novel; she was so tired of reading them.
She countermanded her carriage; had some more wood thrown on the fire; and felt disposed to regret that she had decided to winter here. She missed all her bibelots, and all the wonderful shades and graces of colour with which her own houses were made as rich, yet as subdued in tone as any old cloisonné enamel. She had the finest rooms, here, in an hôtel which had been the old palace of Murat; and she had sent for flowers to fill every nook and corner of them, an order which Floralia will execute for as many francs as any other city would ask in napoleons.
But there is always a nakedness and a gaudiness in the finest suites of any hôtel; and the Lady Hilda, though she had educated little else, had so educated her eyes and her taste that a criant bit of furniture hurt her as the grating of a false quantity hurts a scholar. She knew the value of greys and creams and lavenders and olive greens and pale sea blues and dead gold and oriental blendings. She had to seat herself now in an arm-chair that was of a brightness and newness in magenta brocade that made her close her eyelids involuntarily to avoid the horror of it, as she took up some letters from female friends and wondered why they wrote them, and took up a tale of Zola’s and threw it aside in disgust, and began to think that she would go to Algeria, since her doctors had agreed that her lungs would not bear the cold of Paris this winter.
Only there was no art in Algeria and there was plenty in Floralia, present and traditional, and so far as a woman of fashion can demean herself to think seriously of anything beyond dress and rivalry, she had in a way studied art of all kinds, languidly indeed and perhaps superficially, but still with some true understanding of it; for, although she had done her best, as became a femme comme il faut, to stifle the intelligence she had been created with, she yet had moments in which M. Worth did not seem Jehovah, and in which Society scarcely appeared the Alpha and Omega of human existence, as of course they did to her when she was in her right frame of mind.
“I shall go to Algeria or Rome,” she said to herself: it rained pitilessly, hiding even the bridges on the opposite side of the river; she had a dreadful magenta-coloured chair, and the window curtains were scarlet; the letters were on thin foreign paper and crossed; the book was unreadable; at luncheon they had given her horrible soup and a vol-au-vent that for all flavour it possessed might have been made of acorns, ship-biscuit and shalots; and she had just heard that her cousin the Countess de Caviare, whom she never approved of, and who always borrowed money of her, was coming also to the Hotel Murat. It was not wonderful that she settled in her own mind to leave Floralia as soon as she had come to it.
It was four o’clock.
She thought she would send round to the bric-à-brac dealers, and tell them to bring her what china and enamels and things they had in their shops for her to look at; little that is worth having ever comes into the market in these days, save when private collections are publicly sold; she knew the Hôtel Drouot and Christie and Manson’s too well not to know that; still it would be something to do.
Her hand was on the bell when one of her servants entered. He had a card on a salver.
“Does Madame receive?” he asked, in some trepidation, for do what her servants might they generally did wrong; when they obeyed her she had almost invariably changed her mind before her command could be executed, and when they did not obey her, then the Clairvaux blood, which was crossed with French and Russian, and had been Norman to begin with, made itself felt in her usually tranquil veins.
She glanced at the card. It might be a bric-à-brac dealer’s.
On it was written “Duca della Rocca.” She paused doubtfully some moments.
“It is raining very hard,” she thought; then gave a sign of assent.
Everybody wearied her after ten minutes; still when it was raining so hard —
CHAPTER II.
“THEY SAY,” the great assassin who slays as many thousands as ever did plague or cholera, drink or warfare; “they say,” the thief of reputation, who steals, with stealthy step and coward’s mask, to filch good names away in the dead dark of irresponsible calumny; “they say,” a giant murderer, iron-gloved to slay you, a fleet, elusive, vaporous will-o’-the-wisp, when you would seize and choke it; “they say,” mighty Thug though it be which strangles from behind the purest victim, had not been ever known to touch the Lady Hilda.
She seemed very passionless and cold; and no one ever whispered that she was not what she seemed. Possibly she enjoyed so unusual an immunity, first, because she was so very rich; secondly, because she had many male relations; thirdly, because women, whilst they envied, were afraid of her. Anyway, her name was altogether without reproach; the only defect to be found in her in the estimate of many of her adorers.
Married without any wish of her own being consulted, and left so soon afterwards mistress of herself and of very large wealth, she had remained altogether indifferent and insensible to all forms of love. Other women fell in love in all sorts of ways, feebly or forcibly, according to their natures, but she never.
The passions she excited broke against her serene contempt, like surf on a rocky shore. She was the despair of all the “tueurs de femmes” of Europe.
“Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” she said to her brother once, when she had refused the hereditary Prince of Deutschland; “I can do exactly as I like; I have everything I want; I can follow all my own whims; I am perfectly happy; why ever should I alter all this?
What could any man ever offer me that would be better?”
Lord Clairvaux was obliged to grumble that he did not know what any man could.
Unless you were to care for the man,” he muttered shamefacedly.
“Oh! — h! — h!” said the Lady Hilda, with the most prolonged delicate and eloquent interjection of amazed scorn.
Lord Clairvaux felt that he had been as silly and rustic as if he were a ploughboy. He was an affectionate creature himself, in character very like a Newfoundland dog, and had none of his sister’s talent and temperament; he loved her dearly, but
he was always a little afraid of her.
“Hilda don’t say much to you, but she just gives you a look; and don’t you sink into your shoes!” he said once to a friend.
He stood six feet three without the shoes, to whose level her single glance could so pathetically reduce him.
But except before herself, Lord Clairvaux, in his shoes or out of them, was the bravest and frankest gentleman that ever walked the earth; and the universal recollection of him and of his unhesitating habit of “setting things straight,” probably kept so in awe the calumny-makers, that he produced the miracle of a woman who actually was blameless getting the credit of being so. Usually snow is deemed black, and coal is called swans-down, with that refreshing habit of contrariety which alone saves society from stagnation.
It never occurred to her what a tower of strength for her honour was that good-looking, good-tempered, stupid, big brother of her’s, who could not spell a trisyllable were it ever so, and was only learned in racing stock and greyhound pedigrees; but she was fond of him in a cool and careless way, as she might have been of a big dog, and was prodigal in gifts to him of great winners and brood mares.
She never went to stay with him at Broomsdon; she disliked his wife, her sister-in-law, and she was always bored to death in English country houses, where the men were out shooting all day, and half asleep all the evening. The country people, the salt of the earth in their own eyes, were infinitesimal as ants in hers. She detested drives in pony-carriages, humdrum chit chat, and afternoon tea in the library; she did not care in the least who had bagged how many brace; the details of fast runs with hounds were as horribly tiresome to her as the boys home from Eton; and she would rather have gone a pilgrimage to Lourdes than have descended to the ball, where all sorts of nondescripts had to be asked, and the dresses positively haunted her like ghosts.
Five years before, at Broomsden, she had taken up her candlestick after three nights of unutterable boredom between her sister-in-law and a fat duchess, and had mentally vowed never to return there. The vow she had kept, and she had always seen Clairvaux in Paris, in London, in Baden — anywhere rather than in the home of their childhood, towards which she had no tenderness of sentiment, but merely recollections of the fierce tyrannies of many German governesses.
She would often buy him a colt out of the Lagrange or Lafitte stables; and always send half Boissier’s and Siraudin’s shops to his children at Christmas time. That done, she considered nothing more could be expected of her: it was certainly not necessary that she should bore herself.
To spend money was an easy undemonstrative manner of acknowledging the ties of nature, which pleased and suited her. Perhaps she would have been capable of showing her affection in nobler and more self-sacrificing ways; but then there was nothing in her circumstances to call for that kind of thing; no trouble ever came nigh her; and the chariot of her life rolled as smoothly as her own victoria à huit ressorts.
For the ten years of her womanhood the Lady Hilda had had the command of immense wealth. Anything short of that seemed to her abject poverty. She could theorise about making herself into Greuze or Gainsboro’ pictures in serge or dimity; but, in fact, she could not imagine herself without all the black sables and silver fox, the velvets and silks, the diamonds and emeralds, the embroideries and laces that made her a thing which Titian would have worshipped.
She could not imagine herself for an instant without power of limitless command, limitless caprice, ceaseless indulgence, boundless patronage, and all the gratifications of whim and will which go with the possession of a great fortune and the enjoyment of an entire irresponsibility.
She was bored and annoyed very often indeed because Pleasure is not as inventive a god as he ought to be, and his catalogue is very soon run through; but it never by any chance occurred to her that it might be her money which bored her.
When, on a very dreary day early in November, Lady Hilda, known by repute all over Europe as the proudest, handsomest, coldest woman in the world, and famous as an élégante in every fashionable city, arrived at the Hôtel Murat, in the town of Floralia, and it was known that she had come to establish herself there for the winter (unless, indeed, she changed her mind, which was probable), the stir in the city was extraordinary. She brought with her several servants, several carriage horses, immense jewel cases, and a pug dog. She was the great arrival of the season.
There was a Grand Duchess of Dresden, indeed, who came at the same time, but she brought no horses; she hired her coupé from a livery stable, and her star, notwithstanding its royalty, paled in proportion. Besides, the Grand Duchess was a very little, shabby, insignificant person, who wore black stuff dresses, and a wig without any art in it. She was music-mad, and Wagner was her prophet. The Club took no account of her.
There is a club in Floralia, nay, it is the Club; — all other clubs being for purposes gymnastic, patriotic, theatric, or political, and out of society altogether.
The Club is very fond of black-balling, and gives very odd reasons for doing so, instead of the simple and true one, that it wants to keep itself to itself. It has been known to object to one man because his hair curled, and to another because he was the son of a king, and to another because his boots were not made in Paris. Be its reasons, however, good, bad, or indifferent, it pleases itself; by its fiat newly-arrived women are exalted to the empyrean, or perish in obscurity, and its members are the cream of masculine Floralia, and spend all fine afternoons on the steps and the pavement, blocking up the passage way in the chief street, and criticising all equipages and their occupants.
When the Lady Hilda’s victoria, with the two blacks, and the white and black liveries, swept past the Club, there was a great stir in these philosophers of the stones. Most knew her by sight very well; two or three knew her personally, and these fortunate few, who had the privilege to raise their hats as that carriage went by, rose immediately in the esteem of their fellows.
“Je n’ai jamais rien connu de si épatant,” said the French Duc de St. Louis, who belongs to a past generation, but is much more charming and witty than anything to be found in the present one.
“Twelve hundred and fifty thousand francs a-year,” murmured the Marchese Sampierdareno, with a sigh. He was married himself.
“Here is your ‘affaire,’ Paolo,” said Don Carlo Maremma to a man next him.
The Duca della Rocca, to whom he spoke, stroked his moustache, and smiled a little.
“She is a very beautiful person,” he answered; “I have seen her before at the Tuileries and at Trouville, but I do not know her at all. I was never presented.”
“That will arrange itself easily,” said the Duc de St. Louis, who was one of those who had raised their hats; “Maremma is perfectly right; it is in every way the very thing for you. Moi, je m’en charge.”
The Duca della Rocca shrugged his shoulders a very little, and lighted a fresh cigar. But his face grew grave, and he looked thoughtfully after the black horses, and the white and black liveries.
At the English reception that night, which the Lady Hilda disdainfully likened in her own mind to a penal settlement, M. de St. Louis, whom she knew very well, begged to be permitted to present to her his friend the Duca della Rocca.
She was dressed like a mediaeval saint of a morning; at night she was a mediaeval princess.
She had feuille morte velvet slashed with the palest of ambers; a high fraise; sleeves of the renaissance; pointed shoes, and a great many jewels. Della Rocca thought she might have stepped down out of a Giorgione canvas, and ventured to tell her so. He gave her the carte du pays of the penal settlement around her, and talked to her more seriously for some considerable time. Himself and the Duc de St. Louis were the only people she deigned to take any notice of; and she went away in an hour, or rather less, leaving a kind of flame from her many jewels behind her, and a frozen sense of despair in the hearts of the women, who had watched her, appalled yet fascinated.
“Mais quelle femme impossible!” sa
id Della Rocca, as he went out into the night air.
“Impossible! mais comment done?” said the Duc de St. Louis, with vivacity and some anger.
The Duc de St. Louis worshipped her, as every year of his life he worshipped three hundred and sixty-five ladies.
“Impossible!” echoed Della Rocca, with a cigar in his mouth.
Nevertheless, the next day, when the rain was falling in such torrents that no female creature was likely to be anywhere but before her fire, he called at the Hôtel Murat, and inquired if Miladi were visible, and being admitted, as better than nothing, as she would have admitted the bric-à-brac man, followed the servant upstairs, and walked into an atmosphere scented with some three hundred pots of tea roses, lilies of the valley, and hothouse heliotrope. —
“Ah, ah! you have been to see her. Quite right,” said the Duc de St. Louis, meeting him as he came down the steps of the hotel in the rain, when it was half-past five by the clock. “I am going also so soon as I have seen Salvareo at the Club about the theatricals; it will not take me a moment; get into my cab, you are going there too? How is Miladi? You found her charming?”
“She was in a very bad humour,” replied Della Rocca, closing the cab door on himself.
“The more interesting for you to put her in a good one.”
“Would either good or bad last ten minutes? — you know her: I do not, but I should doubt it.”
The Duc arranged the fur collar of his coat.
“She is a woman, and rich; too rich, if one can say so. Of course she has her caprices—”
Della Rocca shrugged his shoulders.
“She is very handsome. But she does not interest me.”
The Duc smiled, and glanced at him.
“Then you probably interested her. It is much better you should not be interested. Men who are interested may blunder.”
“She is vain — she is selfish — she is arrogant,” said Della Rocca, with great decision.