by Ouida
The fact of this later will was scarcely known beyond the precincts of the law and the circle of their own family; but since she had met Della Rocca, the remembrance of it had kept her awake many a night, and broken roughly many a daydream.
To surrender her fortune to become his wife never once occurred to her as possible. Ten years’ enjoyment of her every whim had made it seem so inalienably hers. She had entered so early into her great possessions, that they had grown to be a very part of her. The old man who had been her husband but in name was but a mere ghostly shadow to her. The freedom and the self-indulgence she had so long enjoyed had become necessary to her as the air she breathed. She could no more face the loss of her fortune than she could have done that of her beauty. It was not the mere vulgar vaunt or ostentation of wealth that had attraction for her; it was all the supremacy, the ease, the patronage, the habits, that great wealth alone makes possible; it was the reign which she had held throughout Europe; it was the charm of perfectly irresponsible power. To give up these and hear the cackle of all the fools she had eclipsed mocking at her weakness! — it would be beyond all endurance.
What was she to do?
The lax moralities of the women of her time were impossible to her proud and loftier character; and besides, she felt that a woman who preferred the world to him, would not find in Della Rocca a forgiving or a submissive lover. When he knew, what would he say?
She turned sick at the thought. After all, she had played with him and deceived him; he would have just cause of passionate reproach against her. His love had no wings, but it had a sword.
“Will Miladi be able to dine?” her maid asked her, vaguely alarmed at the strange stillness and the great paleness of her face.
“Was I to dine anywhere?” she said wearily She was to dine at the Archduchess Anna’s. The Archduchess Anna was passing through Floralia after three months at Palermo for health, and was staying in strict incognita, and infinite glee, as the Countess Von Feffers at the Hotel del Re; enjoying herself endlessly, as the gay-hearted lady that she was, even indulging once in the supreme delight of driving in a cab, and with no other recognition of her great rank than consisted in the attendance upon her of the handsomest of the king’s chamberlains.
“Dress me, then,” said Lady Hilda, with a sigh. She could not excuse herself to the Archduchess, whom she had known intimately for years, and who was to leave Floralia in a week.
“What gown does Madame select?” asked her maid.
“Give me any you like,” she answered.
She did not care how she would look; she would not meet him; she knew that he had no acquaintance with the imperial lady.
The maids, left to themselves, gave her the last new one from Worth; only six days arrived; a dress entirely white, with knots of purple velvet, exactly copied from a picture of Boucher, and with all the grace of dead Versailles in its folds. She put a rococo necklace on, with a portrait of Maria Theresa in it, and went listlessly to the dinner; she was not thinking about her appearance that night, or she would have said that she was too pale to wear all that white.
“Goodness me, Hilda, how ill you do look,” said Madame Mila, meeting her on the stairs, and who was going also.
“No, thanks, I won’t drive with you; two women can’t go in a carriage without one being chiffonnée. That’s an exquisite toilette; that white brocade is delicious — stamped with the lilies of France, — very pretty; only you’re too pale for it to-night, and it’s a pity to wear it only for the Archduchess. She never knows what anybody’s got on their backs. Is anything the matter, dear?”
“Nothing in the world.”
“Then you must have got a headache? You certainly do look very ill. I do so hope we shall get away in time for the Veglione. It’s the very last night, you know. I had such fan last time. I intrigué’d heaps of people, and Doggendorff I drove wild; I told him everything about his wife and Lelio Castelpucci, and all against himself that she’d ever told me. It was such fan — he’d not an idea who I was, for when we were at supper, he came running in breathless to tell us of a horrible little mask with a voice like a macaw’s; — you know I’d put a pebble under my tongue.”
“Very dangerous pastime, and a very vulgar one,” said the Lady Hilda, descending the staircase. “How can you go down into that horrible screeching mob, Mila? It is so very low.”
“My dear, I go anywhere to amuse myself, and Maurice was always near me, you know, so if I had been insulted — There’s eight o’clock striking.”
The Hotel del Rè was but ten minutes’ drive along the famous river-street, which has such an Arabian Nights-like beauty when the lamps are lighted, and gleam in long lines adown each shore, and mirror themselves in the water, whilst dome, and bell-tower, and palace-roof raise themselves darkly against the steel-blue sky of the night.
The Archduchess had been spending a long day in the galleries, studying art under the guidance of the handsome chamberlain; she was hungry, happy, and full of the heartiest spirits; she was a very merry and good-natured person, about five-and-forty years old, fat and fair, very badly dressed, and very agreeable, with a frank laugh, and a strong love of humour; she had had more escapades than any princess in Europe, and smoked more cigars than a French newspaper writer, and had married more daughters to German cousins than anybody else in the Almanac de Gotha.
Had she been any lesser being, Society would have turned its back on her; but, being who she was, her nod was elevation, and her cigar-ash honour, — and, to do her justice, she was one of the most amiable creatures in all creation.
“Ma chère, you are lovelier than ever! — and how do you like this place? — and is the dear little pug alive? I lost my sweet Zaliote of asthma in Palermo,” said the Archduchess, welcoming the Lady Hilda, as she did everything with ardour.
Lady Hilda, answering, felt her colourless cheeks grow warm; in the circle standing round she recognised Della Rocca. The Archduchess had taken a fancy to the look of him in the street, and had bade the chamberlain present him, and then had told him to come to dinner: she liked to surround herself with handsome men. From Madame Mila he had learned in the morning that her cousin would dine there at night.
Madame Mila concluded in her own mind that Freddie had had a row with his sister upon the matter, but that Della Rocca had had nothing said to him about it by either of them. Madame Mila concluded also that Hilda had grown sensible, and was doing like other women, though why she looked so ill about it, Madame Mila could not imagine. Madame Mila did not comprehend scruples.
It was very painful, for instance, to be allied to any one of the Greek Church, and a great grief to the Holy Father; but still it was very nice to be married to a Schismatic, because it enabled you to go to balls a fortnight longer: if it was still your husband’s carnival, you know, nobody could say anything.
Madame Mila thought you should always do your best to please everybody; but then you should take care that you pleased yourself first most of all. The world was easy enough to live in if you did not worry: there were always unpaid bills to be sure, and they were odious. But then Hilda never had any unpaid bills; so she never could have anything to annoy her.
Apropos of bills, she hoped Della Rocca would not use his influence with her cousin so as to prevent her paying other people’s bills. Of course he wouldn’t do this just at present; but when men had been lovers a little while, she reflected, they always turned the poetry into prose, and grew very nearly as bad as husbands.
Madame Mila watched them narrowly all through dinner.
“If I thought he’d make her stingy, I’d make her jealous of Giulia Malatesta to-morrow,” she thought to herself. Madame Mila on occasion had helped or hindered circumstance amongst her friends and enemies with many ingenious little devices and lucky little anonymous notes, and other innocent shifts and stratagems. It was no use being in the world at all unless you interfered with the way it went; to be a mere puppet in the hands of Fate, with the strings of accident da
ngling to and fro, seemed to her clever little brains quite unworthy the intelligence of woman.
She never meant to do any harm, oh, never; only she liked things to go as she wished them. Who does not? If a few men and women had been made wretched for life, and people who loved one another devotedly had been parted for ever, and suspicion and hatred had crept into the place of trust and tenderness in certain households, Madame Mila could not help that, any more than one can help other people being splashed with mud when one drives down a lane in bad weather. And nobody ever thought Madame Mila could do any harm; pretty, good-natured, loquacious, little Madame Mila, running about with her little rosebuds at fancy fairs, and saying so sweetly, “Pour nos pauvres — pour nos chers pauvres!”
“The best little woman in the world,” as everybody said, Madame Mila would kiss her female enemies on both cheeks wherever she met them; and when she had sent an anonymous letter (for fun), always sent an invitation to dinner just after it, to the same direction.
“I wish I knew how it is really between them,” she thought at the Archduchess’s dinner-table, divided between her natural desire to see her cousin let fall that “white flower of a blameless life,” which stinks as garlic in the nostrils of those who have it not, and her equally natural apprehension that Paolo della Rocca as a lover would not let his mistress pay other persons’ debts, and would also be sure to see all her letters.
“She’ll tell him everything about everybody,” thought Madame Mila, uncomfortably; for Della Rocca had a look in his eyes of assured happiness, which, to the astute experience of Madame Mila, suggested volumes.
Meantime she was also harassed by an apprehension that she would not be able to withdraw in time for the Veglione, where Maurice, a baignoir, and a supper-table awaited her. If the Archduchess should sit down to play of any sort hope was over, escape would be impossible till daydawn; and Madame Mila hated playing with the Archduchess; with such personages she was afraid to cheat, and was obliged to pay.
With all the ingenuity, therefore, of which she was mistress, she introduced the idea of the Veglione into the mind of her hostess, and so contrived to fascinate her with the idea, that the Archduchess, who had gone in her time to five hundred public masked balls, was as hotly animated into a desire to go to this one as though she had been just let out of a convent at eighteen years old.
Madame Mila delightedly placed her baignoir at the disposition of her imperial highness, and her imperial highness invited all her guests to accompany her; such invitations are not optional; and Lady Hilda, who hated noise as her horses hated masks, was borne off by the mirthful, chattering, and gay-hearted lady, who had no objection to noise, and loved fun and riot like a street boy.
Lady Hilda thought a Veglione, and a liking for it, both beneath contempt; yet she was not unwilling to avoid all chance of being alone with Della Rocca even for a moment. She knew what he would say — his eyes had said it all the evening a thousand times.
The Archduchess Anna and Madame Mila were both in the very highest spirits; they had taken a good deal of champagne, as ladies will, and had smoked a good deal and got thirsty, and had more champagne with some seltzer water, and the result was the highest of high spirits. Nothing could be more appropriate to a Veglione; as no reasonable being could stay by choice in one for an hour, it is strongly advisable that reason should be a little dethroned by a very dry wine before entering the dingy paradise. Of course nobody ever sees great ladies ‘the worse for wine’; they are only the better, as a Stilton cheese is.
Happy and hilarious, shrouded and masked beyond all possibility of identification, and ready for any adventure, the Archduchess Anna was no sooner in the box than she was out of it, and declared her intention of going down into the crowd. Madame Mila, only too glad, went with her, and some half-dozen men formed their escort. Lady Hilda excused herself on the plea of a headache, a plea not untrue, and alone with the Duc de St. Louis awaited the return of her hostess. She had only put on her mask for entry, and had now laid it beside her; she threw aside her domino, for the heat of the box was stifling, and the whiteness of her dress shone as lilies do at moonlight. She leaned her cheek on her hand, and looked down on to the romping, screaming, many-coloured throngs.
“You are not well to-night, Madame?” said the Duc, with the affectionate solicitude that he felt for all pretty women.
He was puzzled as to how her relations could stand with Della Rocca: the previous night he had thought everything settled, but now he did not feel quite so sure.
“The Archduchess is so noisy; it always gives me a headache to dine with her,” said Lady Hilda. “She is very good-natured; but her talking is — !”
“She is an admirable heavy dragoon — manqué,” said the Duc. “Most good-natured, as you say, but trying to the tympanum and the taste. So Clairvaux left last night?”
“Yes: Cheviot was taken ill.”
“I should have thought it was a racer taken ill by the consternation he seemed to be in. I saw him for a moment only.”
She was silent, watching the whirling of the pierrots, harlequins, scaramouches and dominoes, who were shrieking and yelling in the throng below.
“I think he liked his shooting with Paolo?” said the Duc, at a hazard.
“He likes shooting anywhere.”
“Certainly there is something wrong,” thought the Duc, stooping a little to look at her brocaded white lilies. “What an exquisite toilette! — is one permitted to say so?”
“Oh dear, no!” said the Lady Hilda petutantly. “The incessant talk about dress is so tiresome and so vulgar; the women who want their costumes praised are women who have only just begun to dress tolerably, and are still not quite sure of the effects!”
“You are right, as always,” said the Duc, with a little bow and a little smile. “But now and then perfection surprises us into involuntary indiscretion. You must not be too severe.”
“Somebody should be severe,” she said, contemptuously. “Society is a Battle of the Frogs, for rivality in dress and debt.”
The Duc laughed.
“What do you know about it, Madame? You who are as above rivals as above debts? By the way, you told me you wanted some old Pesaro vases. I found some yesterday at Biangini’s shop that might please you; they come out of an old pharmacy in Verona; perhaps the very pharmacy of Romeo’s apothecary; and there are some fine old pots too—”
“I am tired of buying things.”
“The weariness of empire! — nothing new. You must take to keeping hens and chickens, as the Emperor John Vatices did. How does Camille Odissot succeed with your ball-room frescoes?”
“I have no-idea. Very ill, I dare say.”
“Yes, it is a curious thing that we do not succeed in fresco. The grace is gone out of it; modern painters have not the lightness of touch necessary; they are used to masses of colour, and they use the palette knife as a mason the trowel. The art too, like the literature of our time, is all detail; the grand suggestive vagueness of the Greek drama and of the Umbrian frescoes are lost to us under a crowd of elaborated trivialities; perhaps it is because art has ceased to be spiritual or tragic, and is merely domestic or melodramatic; the Greeks knew neither domesticity nor melodrama, and the early Italian painters were imbued with a faith which, if not so virile as the worship of the Phidian Zeus, yet absorbed them and elevated them in a degree impossible in the tawdry Sadduceeism of our own day. By the way, when the weather is milder you must go to Orvieto; you have never been there, I think; it is the Prosodion of Signorelli. What a fine Pagan he was at heart! He admired masculine beauty like a Greek; he must have been a singularly happy man — few more happy—”
The Duc paused as the handle of the door turned; he was only talking because he saw that she was too weary or too languid to talk herself; the door opened, and Della Rocca entered the box again, having escaped from the Archduchess.
“We were speaking of Orvieto; you know more of it than I do. I was telling Miladi that she must
go there about Easter time,” said the Duc, hunting for his crush hat beneath the chair. “Take my seat, mon cher, for a moment; I see Salvareo in the crowd, and I must speak to him about her imperialissima’s supper. I shall be back in an instant.”
He departed, with no intention of returning, and was assailed in the corridor by a party of masks, who bore him off gaily between them down the staircase into the laughing, screaming, and capering multitude.
Della Rocca did not take his chair, but sank into the seat behind her, while his hand closed on hers.
“Will you not even look at me?” he murmured.
She drew her hand away, and put her mask on, slipping its elastic round her delicate ears.
“How the crowd yells!” she said, impatiently. “Will the Archduchess stay there long, do you think?”
With gentlest audacity and softest skill he had slipped off the mask and had laid it behind him before she had realised what he was doing; his hand had touched her as lightly as though a feather brushed a rose.
She rose in amazed anger, and turned on him coldly. —
“M. Della Rocca! how dare you presume so far? Give me my mask at once—”
“No,” he said, softly; and he took hold of her hands and drew her towards the back of the box where no eyes could reach them, and knelt down before her as she sat there in the dusky shadow of the dark red draperies.