by Ouida
“What a goose you are; — as if that showed anything! They can meet much better than in this place,” said Madame Mila, with a saucy laugh.
He turned on her with a heavy frown.
“Hang it, Mila! you don’t dare to mean—”
Madame Mila was frightened in an instant.
“Oh, dear, no; of course not; only I do assure you they’ve been always together ever since I’ve been in Floralia. I thought you knew—”
“Damn it, no!” he muttered. “I beg your pardon, I never see anything; I mean, I’m quite sure there’s nothing to see.”
“Well, ask her,” said Madame Mila: then she added sweetly, “you know I’m so fond of dear Hilda; and people do talk so horridly here for nothing at all; and Italians are not so scrupulous as we are.”
He went home in haste, and was told that Miladi had retired to bed full two hours before. In the morning he sent to ask when he could see her. She sent back word that she should be happy to see him at breakfast at twelve. At ten he received a telegram from his wife asking him to return, because his eldest boy, Cheviot, was unwell, and they feared typhoid fever.
“Damn it all, what a worry!” said Lord Clairvaux to himself, and then went out and smoked on the bank of the river, and looked over the stone parapet moodily.
“Bon-jour, monsieur,” a voice said, passing him.
Della Rocca was driving past with a fiery little horse on his way to Palestrina. Lord Clairvaux felt inclined to stop the horse; but what could he say if he did?
What a nuisance it was, he thought; but what could go right in a country where they shot their foxes, and called their brushes tails, and hung them under the ears of cart-mules and ponies? — a country where they treated the foxes as they did, to say nothing of the Holy Father, must be a land of malediction.
He smoked through two great cigars, and walked about the town unhappily, and when it was noon went upstairs to his sister. He did not dare to go a moment before the time.
“Dear Freddie, is it you?” said the Lady Hilda, listlessly; she looked very lovely and very languid, in a white cashmere morning gown, with a quantity of lace about it, and her hair all thrown back loosely, and tied like the Venere alla Spina’s.
“I have to go away by the night train. Poor little Cheviot’s ill,” he said disconsolately, as he took her hand; he never ventured on kissing her; years before she had taught him that such endearments were very ridiculous and disagreeable.
“Dear me, I am very sorry. Will you have coffee, or tea, or wine?” she asked absently, as she went to the table where the breakfast was.
“Chevy’s very ill,” said Lord Clairvaux, who thought she showed small sympathy. “You used to like Chevy.”
“He was a pretty little child. I hate boys.”
“You wouldn’t if you had them of your own,” said Lord Clairvaux, and grumbled inaudibly as he took some cutlets.
Lady Hilda coloured a little. “I have really not imagination enough to follow you: — will you have coffee? I hope it’s nothing serious with Cheviot?”
“Fever, his mother thinks; any way I must go. I saw your friend the Duca della Rocca this morning: he was out early.”
He thought this was approaching the subject in a masterly manner.
“Italians always rise early,” said the Lady Hilda, giving him his cup.
“And he was at the Veglione last night—”
“All Italians go to the Veglione.”
“You have seen a great deal of him, haven’t you?” asked Lord Clairvaux, looking at her across the table, and thinking how pretty all that white was which she had on, and what a difficult person she was to begin anything with; he had never felt so nervous since the time when he had once been called on to move the Address when Parliament opened.
“One sees a great deal of everybody in a small society like this.”
“Because you know people talk about you and him, — so they say at least.”
“They are very good, whoever they are: who are they?”
“Who? — Oh, I don’t know; I heard so.”
“How very nice of you to discuss me with other people!”
Lord Clairvaux cast a glance at her and was very much frightened at the offence he saw in her contemptuous face: how pale she was looking too, now he thought of it, and she had shadows underneath her eyes quite new to her.
“What sort of a fellow is he?” he muttered. He seemed a duffer to me about his fields — such ploughs, by heavens! — and such waste in the stackyards I never saw. But it isn’t farming here at all; it’s letting things go wild just anyhow—”
“It is not being wiser than Nature, and sacrifiring all loveliness to greed — if you mean that,” said Lady Hilda, with coldest disdain. “The life here has still the old Theocritan idyllic beauty, thank heaven.”
“Theocritus? Oh, I know; I never could construe him; but I do know a straight furrow and decently kept land when I see it. But I say, you know, I don’t want to be officious or anything; but do you think it’s wise to see so very much of him? You know he’s an Italian, and I dare say hasn’t a bit of principle, nor a penny in his pocket.”
The hazel eyes of the Lady Hilda flashed golden beams of wrath.
“How very grateful of you! — when he has entertained you to the best of his ability, and went out of his way to find sport for you, very little to his own pleasure, moreover, for I can assure you his soul does not lie in his gun-barrel!”
“I don’t want to say anything against him,” murmured Lord Clairvaux, who was the most grateful and most just of mortals. “He was very kind and courteous, and all that — and I don’t say he’s a bad shot, though he’s a bad farmer — and he is an awfully good-looking fellow, like an old picture, and all that. Only I must go to-night, Hilda, and I do want to speak to you.”
“You are speaking all this time I believe,” said Lady Hilda icily, looking across at him with the coldest challenge in her darkening eyes.
“I never could think why you didn’t take Deutschland,” he muttered, reverting to an old grievance.
“He didn’t please me. Is that all you wanted to say?”
“But I thought you’d have cared to be a reigning sovereign?”
“Of a small State?” said the Lady Hilda, with an eloquent lift of her eyebrows.
“Well, there was De Ribeaupierre; he was everything anybody could want; Vienna, too; I used to think an Ambassadress’s life would just suit you.”
“Always calling on people and writing notes? No life on earth more tiresome.”
“I suppose you want to be an Empress?”
“Oh dear no,” answered his sister. “I have known two Empresses intimately; and it is a career of great tedium: you can never do what you like.”
“Then, I suppose, you are content as you are?”
“I suppose so, if anybody ever is. I don’t think anyone is. I never met anybody who was. They say pigs are; but one sees so little of pigs that one can’t make much psychological study of them.”
Lord Clairvaux grumbled, sighed, and took his courage à deux mains.
“Well, never mind the other men; they are past and gone, poor wretches; what do you mean to do about this one?”
“This what?” said Lady Hilda, looking languidly at him through the flowers on the breakfast table. She knew quite well what he meant.
“What do you mean to do with him?” repeated Lord Clairvaux solemnly, pushing his plate away. “It’s all very pretty, I daresay.
Romeo and moonlight and poetry and all that sort of thing; Italians are the deuce and all for that, only I shouldn’t have thought you’d have cared for it; and besides, you know it can’t go on: — the man’s a gentleman, that I grant; and, by heaven, that’s a great deal now-a-days, such blackguards as we’re getting, — three card scandals in the club already this very winter, and George Orme’s was regular sharping, just what any cad might do, by Jove! But you know you can’t go on with it; you can’t possibly mean it seriously, no
w, do you?”
Lady Hilda laughed that little cold, contemptuous laughter which her brother always shivered under, and which Della Rocca had never heard.
“I don’t seriously mean to cheat at cards! My deal? Frederic, you must say what you mean, if you mean anything at all, a little more clearly, please. Why will all Englishmen get their talk into such odd confusion? I suppose it comes of never learning grammar at Eton.”
“Well, hang it then, I’ll say it clearly,” retorted Clairvaux, with some indignation. “Mila tells me you and this Italian that’s always after you, have taken a liking to one another: is it true? — and what do you mean to do with him? There!”
He was horribly frightened when he had said it, but what he thought was his duty, that he did: and he conceived it to he his duty to speak.
All the blood leapt into the fair face of the Lady Hilda, her nostrils dilated in a fine anger, her lips grew pale.
“Mila is a little wretch!” she said, with strong passion; then was still; she was too generous to quote her own generosity, or urge her past gifts as present claims. “She is a little fool!” she added, with bitter disdain; “and how can you cheapen my name by listening to her chattering folly? Besides, what have you to do with me — or what has she? I am not used to dictation — nor to interference!”
“Oh, I know,” said her brother, humbly.
“And I beg your pardon, you are sure, and all that; — only, just tell me, how will it end?”
“How will what end?”
“This fancy of yours.”
Lady Hilda grew very pale.
“My dear Clairvaux,” she said, with chilliest contempt, “you are not my keeper, nor my husband, nor anything else, except one of my trustees. I do not know that being a trustee gives you a title to be impertinent. You really talk as you might to your gamekeeper’s daughter, if you thought you saw the girl ‘going wrong.’ What M. Della Rocca feels for me is merely sympathy in ideas and tastes. But if it were anything else, whose business would it be?” Lord Clairvaux laughed.
“Yes! — you are a likely creature to inspire friendship! As if there were ever a woman worth looking at who could keep a man at that! — don’t let us fence about it, Hilda. Perhaps I haven’t any right to say anything. You’re your own mistress and all that, and answerable to nobody. Only, can you deny that I am your brother?”
“I have always understood you were! I confess you make me regret the circumstance.”
“Now that’s ill-natured, very ill-natured,” he murmured pathetically. “But you won’t make me quarrel. There must be two to quarrel, and I won’t be one. We have always been good friends, more than good friends. I thought I was the only person on earth you did like—”
“And, like everyone else, you consider that the liking you inspire confers a privilege to be impertinent,” said his sister, with all that disdainful anger flashing from her languid eyes, which none of her family ever cared very much to meet.
She had risen from her chair, and was moving to and fro with a restless, controlled impatience. She remained very pale. Clairvaux kept his position on the hearth-rug, with a dogged good humour, and an uneasy confusion blended together which, at any other time, would have diverted her.
“Perhaps I may be impertinent,” he said, humbly, “though, hang me, if I can see that that’s a natural sort of word to be used between a brother and sister. I know you’re a mighty great lady, and ‘a law to yourself,’ as some poet says; and never listen to anybody, and always go your own ways, and all that, — but still, if you never speak to me afterwards, I must say what I want to say. This man is in love with you, it’s my belief you’re in love with him — Mila says so, and she knows. Now, granted that it is so (if it isn’t there’s nothing to be angry about), what I say is, how do you mean it to end? Will you marry him?”
Her face changed, flushed, and then grew pale again.
“Of course not! You know it is impossible!”
“Does he know why it is impossible?”
“No — why should he? Really you do not know what you are talking about. You are interfering, in the most uncalled-for manner, where there is not the slightest necessity for any interference.”
“Then you are letting him fall in love with you in the dark, and when you have had enough of the sport will throw him over?”
“You grow very coarse, Clairvaux. Oblige me by dropping the subject.”
“I didn’t know I was coarse. That is what you are going to do. You accept all his court now — and then you’ll turn round on him some fine morning and say you’ve had enough of it. At least, I can’t see what else you will do — since you cannot marry him. You’ll hardly lower yourself to Mila’s level and all the other women’s — by heavens, if I thought you would, if I thought you had done, I’d soon see if this fellow were as fine a swordsman as they say!”
Lady Hilda turned her face full on him.
“So my brother is the first person that ever dared to insult me?” she said, with utmost coldness, as she rose from the breakfast table and swept his feet in passing with the lace that fringed the hem of her cashmere robes.
She gave him one parting look, and left the chamber.
He stood cowed by the golden fire of those superb imperious hazel eyes. He was nervous at what he had done, and unhappy and perplexed. He stood alone, pulling at his fair beard, in troubled repentance. He knew what her wrath would be. She was not a woman who quickly forgave.
“I’ve blundered; I always do blunder,” he thought sadly to himself. “She must care awfully about him to be so angry.”
He waited all alone many minutes; he was sincerely sorry; perhaps he had been coarse; he had not meant to be; only, the idea of her talked about, and with lovers! — just like all those other women whom their husbands or brothers ought to strangle — it was only fashion, they said, only the way of the world, all that immorality; “Damn the world,” he said to himself, ruffling his beard in sad bewilderment.
He scribbled a trite, rough, penitent note, and sent it to her by her maid. They brought him a closed envelope: when he opened it he found only his own note inside — sent back without any word.
Honest Clairvaux’s eyes filled with tears.
“She’ll never see me again before I go tonight,” he thought to himself, tossing his poor little rejected morsel into the wood fire. “And I must go to-night, because of poor little Chevy. How horrid it is! — I couldn’t be angry like that with her!”
He stood some moments more, knitting his fair, frank forehead, and wishing that he were less stupid in managing things; he had never in his life before presumed to condemn and counsel his sister — and this was the result!
Suddenly an idea struck him, and he rose.
“I will tell him,” he thought. “I will tell him himself. And then I shall see what sort of stuff he is made of; — I can fight him afterwards if he don’t satisfy me; — I’ll tell him as if I suspected nothing — I can make an excuse, but when he hears it he’ll show what he’s made of; — oh, Lord, if it were only an Englishman she’d taken a liking to! — and to think that she’s treated half the best men in Europe as if they were only so many stones under her feet!”
With a groan, Lord Clairvaux took up his hat, and went forth towards the Palazzo Della Rocca.
At six o’clock that evening he had to take his departure without seeing his sister again. He went away with a heavy heart.
“How extraordinary she is!” he thought. “Never even to ask me if I told the man anything or not. And never to bid one good-bye!
Well, I’ve done for the best — I can’t help it. She’ll be sorry if poor little Chevy should die.” But the boy did not die; so that his father never learned whether that event would have touched the heart of Lady Hilda or not.
All the following day she shut herself up in her rooms. She said she was ill; and, in truth, she felt so. Della Rocca called three times in the day, but she did not see him; he sent up a great bouquet of the pale yellow t
ea rose of which she was so fond; he had fastened the flowers together with an antique silver zone, on which was the Greek Love in relief; the Love of the early Hellenic poets, without wings and with a mighty sword, the Love of Anacreon, which forges the soul as a smith his iron, and steeps it in icy waters after many blows.
She understood the message of the Love, but she sent no message back.
It was a lovely day; underneath the windows the carriages were rolling; there was the smile of spring on the air as the fleecy clouds went sailing past; she could see the golden reaches of the river and the hyacinth-hued hills where Palestrina lay; her heart was heavy; her pulse was quick; her conscience was ill at ease; her thoughts were restless and perturbed. Solitude and reflection were so new to her; they appalled her. When she had been unwell before, which had been but seldom, she had always beguiled herself by looking over the jewels in their cases, sorting rare old Marcantonios and Morghens, skimming French feuilletons, or planning new confections for her vast stores of old laces. But now none of these distractions were possible to her; she sat doing nothing, weary, feverish, and full of a passionate pain.
The fact which her brother had told to Della Rocca was that, if she married again, all her riches would pass away from her.
At the time of her marriage her father had been deeply involved in debt; gambling, racing, and debts of every other kind had been about him like spiders’ webs; the great capitalist, Vorarlberg, had freed him on condition of receiving the hand of his young daughter in exchange. She was allowed to know nothing of these matters; but under such circumstances it was impossible for the family to be exacting as regarded sentiments: she was abandoned entirely to the old man’s power. Fortunately for herself, he was taken ill on the very day of the nuptials, and, after a lingering period of suffering, died, leaving her mistress of half of one of the finest fortunes in Europe. By birth he was a Wallachian Jew, brought up in London and Paris, but he had been naturalised in England, when a youth, for commercial objects, and the disposition of his property lay under his own control. A year or two after his death a later will was found by his lawyers, still leaving her the same income, but decreeing that in the event of her second marriage everything should pass away from her to the public charities, save alone her jewels, her horses, all things she might have purchased, the house in Paris, which had been a gift, and some eight hundred a year already secured to her. The new will was proved, and she was informed that she could enjoy her fortune only by this tenure. She was indifferent. She was quite sure that she would never wish to many any one. She loved her wealth and spent it magnificently; and when men proposed whose own position would have made the loss of her own money of no moment, she still repulsed them, thinking always “le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.”