by Ouida
“What is a bar?”
“Oh! pray don’t keep asking me questions like that. You make my head whirl. A bar is where they sell things to drink, and her brothers have a great pig-killing place ‘down west,’ wherever that is.”
“And she refused my cousin!”
“Dear, yes! This is the charming topsy-turvy world we live in — you will get used to it, my dear. They made a fuss because a tailor got to court last year. I am sure I don’t know why they did; if he’d been an American tailor nobody’d have said anything; they wouldn’t even have thought it odd. All the world over you meet them; they get in the swim somehow; they have such heaps of money, and their women know how to wear things. They always look like — what they shouldn’t look like — to be sure; but so most of us do, and men prefer it.”
Vere understood not at all; but she did not venture again to ask for an explanation.
Her mother yawned and brushed the flies away pettishly, and called to Lord Jura, who was riding beside their carriage, and had lagged a trifle behind in the narrow sandy road that ran level between green hedges. The high metal roof and gilded vanes of Félicité were already shining above the low rounded masses of distant woods. It stood on the sea-coast, a little way from Villers-sur-Mer.
Vere did not understand why Lord Jura always went with them as naturally as the maids did and the dressing-boxes; but he was kind, if a little rough. She liked him. Only why did her mother call him Jack, and quarrel with him so, and yet want him always with her?
Vere thought about it dimly, vaguely, perplexedly, especially when she saw the frank, blue eyes of Jura looking at herself, hard, and long, with a certain sadness and impatience in the gaze, as if he pitied her.
The reception at Félicité seemed to Vere to be a whirl of bright hues, pretty faces, and amiable words. The Princess Nadine Nelaguine was out on the terrace with her guests, and the Princess kissed her with effusion, and told her she was like a Gainsborough picture. The Princess herself was a fairy-like little woman, with a bright odd Calmuck face and two little brown eyes as bright as a marmosets. Vere was presented to so many people that she could not tell one from another, and she was glad to be left in her room while her mother, having got into a wonderful gold-embroidered Watteau sacque that she called a tea-gown, went to rejoin the other ladies amongst the roses and the perfumes, and the late afternoon light.
When Vere herself, three hours later, was dressed for dinner, and told to tap at her mothers door, she did not feel nervous, because it was not in her nature to be easily made so, but she felt oppressed and yet curious.
She was going into the world.
And the counsels of Corrèze haunted her.
Lady Dolly said sharply, “Come in!” and Vere entering, beheld her mother for the first time in full war-paint and panoply.
Lady Dolly looked sixteen herself. She was exquisitely painted; she had a gown cut en coeur which was as indecent as the heart of woman could desire; jewels sparkled all over her; she was a triumph of art, and looked as exactly like Colifichet of the Bouffes in her last new piece, as even her own soul could aspire to do.
“What are you staring at, child?” she asked of Vere, who had turned rather pale. “Don’t you think I look well? What is the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Vere, who could not answer that it hurt her to see so much of her mother’s anatomy unveiled.
“You look as if you saw a ghost,” said Lady Dolly impatiently; “you have such a horrid way of staring. Come!”
Vere went silently by her side down the wide staircase, lighted by black marble negroes holding golden torches. After the silence, the stillness, the gloom, of her Northumbrian home, with the old servants moving slowly through the dim oak-pannelled passages, the brilliance, the luxury, the glittering lustre, the va-et-vient of Félicité seemed like a gorgeous spectacle. She would have liked to have stood on that grand staircase, amongst the hothouse flowers, and looked on it all as on a pageant. But her mother swept on into the drawing-rooms, and Vere heard a little murmur of admiration, which she did not dream was for herself.
Lady Dolly in her way was an artist, and she had known the right thing to do when she had had Vere clad in white cachemire, with an old silver girdle of German work, and in the coils of her hair a single silver arrow.
Vere was perfect in her stately, serious, yet childlike grace; and the women watching her felt a pang of envy.
Sergius Zouroff, her host, advancing, murmured a “divinement belle!” and Lady Stoat, watching from a distant sofa, thought to herself, “What a lovely creature! really it is trying for poor little pussy.”
Vere went in to her first great dinner. She said little or nothing. She listened and wondered. Where she sat she could not see her mother nor anyone she knew. The young French diplomatist who took her in tried to make himself agreeable to her, but she replied by monosyllables. He thought how stupid these lovely ingénues always were. He had not the open sesame of Corrèze to the young mute soul.
Dinner over, Lady Stoat took possession of her in the charming motherly affectionate way for which she was celebrated with young girls. But even Lady Stoat did not make much way with her; Veres large serious eyes were calmly watching everything.
“Will you show me which is Miss Leach?” she said suddenly. Lady Stoat laughed and pointed discreetly with a fan.
“Who has told you about Fuschia Leach?” she said amusedly. “I will make you known to her presently; she may be of use to you.”
Vere’s eyes, grave as a child’s awakened out of sleep into the glare of gas, fastened where her fan had pointed, and studied Miss Leach. She saw a very lovely person of transparent colouring, of very small features, of very slight form, with a skin like delicate porcelain, an artistic tangle of artistically coloured red gold hair, a tiny impertinent nose, and a wonderful expression of mingled impudence, shrewdness, audacity and resolution. This person had her feet on an ottoman, her hands behind her head, a rosebud in her mouth, and a male group around her.
“I shall not like her; I do not wish to know her,” said Vere slowly.
“My dear, do not say so,” said Lady Stoat. “It will sound like jealousy, you know — one pretty girl of another—”
“She is not a lady,” said Vere once more.
“There you are right,” said Lady Stoat. “Very few people are, my love, nowadays. But that is just the sort of thing you must not say. It will get quoted against you, and make you, make you — oh! such enemies, my love!”
“Does it matter?” said Vere dreamily. She was wondering what Corrèze would have thought or did think of Miss Fuschia Leach.
“Does it matter to have enemies!” echoed Lady Stoat. “Oh, my sweet Vere! does it matter whether there is a pin sticking into one all day? A pin is a very little thing, no doubt, but it makes all the difference between comfort and discomfort.”
“She is not a lady,” said Vere again with a passing frown on her pretty brows.
“Oh, my dear! if you wait for that!” Lady Stoats smile expressed that if she did wait for that she would be more exacting than society. “As for not knowing her — nonsense — you must not object to anybody who is in the same house-party with yourself.”
“She is extremely pretty,” added Lady Stoat. “Those American girls so very often are; but they are all like the poupées de modiste. The very best of them are only very perfect likenesses of the young ladies that try the confections on for us at Pingat’s or Worths, and the dress has always a sort of look of being the first toilette they ever had. I don’t know why, for I hear they dress extremely well over there, and should be used to it, but it has that look, and they never get rid of it. No, my dear, no; you are right. Those new people are not gentlewomen any more than men’s modern manners are like the Broad Stone of Honour. But do not say so. They will repeat it, and it will not sound kind, and unless you can say what is kind, never say anything.”
“I would rather have anyone I did not respect for an enemy than for a friend,�
�� said Vere with a child’s obstinacy. Lady Stoat smiled.
“Phrases my love! — phrases! you have so much to learn, my child, as yet.”
“I will not learn of Miss Leach.”
“Well, I do not admire her very much myself But then I belong to an old school, you know. I am an old woman, and have prejudices,” said Lady Stoat sweetly. “Miss Leach has the world at her foot, and it amuses her to kick it about like a tennis ball, and show her ankles. I daresay you will do the same, love, in another six months, only you will not show your ankles. All the difference will be there.”
And then Lady Stoat, who though she called herself an old woman would have been extremely angry if anybody else had called her so, thought she had done enough for once for poor little Pussy’s daughter, and turned to her own little mild flirtations with a bald and beribboned ambassador.
Vere was left alone, to look and muse.
Men glanced at her and said what a lovely child she was; but they kept aloof from her. They were afraid of an ingénue, and there was Fuschia Leach, whose laughter was ringing up to the chandeliers and out to the conservatories — Fuschia Leach, who had never been an ingénue, but a coquette at three years old, and a woman of the world at six.
Jura alone came up and seated himself by Vere.
“How do you like it?” he said with an odd little smile.
“It is very pretty to look at,” answered Vere.
“Ah, to be sure. As good as a play when you’re new to it, and awfully like a treadmill when you’re not. What do you think of Fuschia Leach?”
Vere remembered Lady Stoat’s warning, and answered merely:
“I think she is handsome.”
“I believe you; she threw over your cousin Mull, as if he were dirty boots; so she does heaps of them. I don’t know what it is myself; I think it is her cheek. I always tell Dolly so — I beg your pardon — I mean your mother.”
Vere had heard him say “Dolly” very often, and did not know why he apologised.
“My mother admires her?” she said with a little interrogation in her voice. Jura laughed.
“Or says she does. Women always say they admire a reigning beauty. It looks well, you know. They all swear Mrs. Dawtry is divine, and I’m sure in their hearts they think her rather ugly than otherwise.”
“Who is Mrs. Dawtry?”
“Don’t you know? Good heavens! But, of course, you don’t know anything of our world. It’s a pity you ever should. Touch pitch — what is it the old saw says?”
It was the regret of Corrèze, differently worded.
“But the world, as you call it, means men and women? It must be what they make it. They might make it good if they wished,” said Vere with the seriousness that her mother detested.
“But they don’t wish, you see. That is it,” said Jura with a sigh. “I don’t know how it is, when once you are in the swim you can’t alter things; you must just go along with the rest. One does heaps of things one hates only because others do them.”
“That is very contemptible,” said Vere, with the disdain that became her very well coming on her pretty proud mouth.
“I think we are contemptible,” said Jura moodily; and to so frank a confession there was no reply or retort possible, Vere thought.
“It is strange; he said much the same,” she murmured, half aloud. “Only he said it like a poet, and you — speak in such an odd way.”
“How do I speak?” asked Jura amused.
“You speak as if words cost too much, and you were obliged to use as few and choose as bald ones as you could find; English is such a beautiful language, if you read Milton or Jeremy Taylor, or Beaumont and Fletcher, or any of the old divines and dramatists—”
She stopped, because Jura laughed.
“Divines and dramatists! My dear child, we know nothing about such things; we have St. Albans and French adaptations; they’re our reading of divinity and the drama. Who was ‘he’ that talked like a poet while I talk like a sweep?”
“I did not say you talked like a sweep — and I meant the Marquis de Corrèze.”
“Oh! your singer? Don’t call him a Marquis. He is the prince of tenors, that’s all.”
“He is a Marquis,” said Vere, with a certain coldness. “They were a very great race. You can see all about it in the ‘Livre d’Or’ of Savoy; they were like the Marquises Costa de Beauregard, who lost everything in ‘ninety-two. You must have read M. de Beauregard’s beautiful book, Un homme d’autrefois?”
“Never heard of it. Did the tenor tell you all that rubbish?”
“Where is mamma, Lord Jura?” said Vere. “I am tired of sitting here.”
“That’s a facer,” thought Jura. “And, by Jove, very well given for such a baby. I beg your pardon,” he said aloud. “Corrèze shall be a prince of the blood, if you wish. Your mother is over there; but I doubt if she’ll thank you to go to her; she’s in the thick of it with them; look.”
He meant that Lady Dolly was flirting very desperately, and enjoying herself very thoroughly, having nearly as many men about her as Miss Fuschia Leach.
Vere looked, and her eyes clouded.
“Then I think I may go to bed. She will not miss me. Goodnight.”
“No, she won’t miss you. Perhaps other people will.”
“There is no one I know, so how can they?” said Vere innocently, and rose to go; but Sergius Zouroff, who had approached in the last moment, barred her passage with a smiling deference.
“Your host will, Mademoiselle Herbert. Does my poor house weary you, that you think of your own room at ten o’clock.”
“I always go to bed at ten, monsieur,” said Vere. “It is nothing new for me.”
“Let me show you my flowers first,” at last said Prince Zouroff. “You know we Russians, born amidst snow and ice, have a passion for tropical houses; will you not come?”
He held out his arm as he spoke. Would it be rude to refuse? Vere did not know. She was afraid it would, as he was her host.
She laid her fingers hesitatingly on his offered arm, and was led through the rooms by Prince Zouroff.
Fuschia Leach took her hands from behind her head, and stared; Lady Dolly would have turned pale, if she had not been so well painted; Lady Stoat put her eye-glass up, and smiled.
Prince Zouroff had a horror of unmarried women, and never had been known to pay any sort of attention to one, not even to his sisters guest, Fuschia Leach the irresistible.
Prince Zouroff was a tall large man of seven and thirty; loosely built, and plain of feature. He had all the vices, and had them all in excess, but he was a very polished gentleman when he chose; and he was one of the richest men in Europe, and his family, of which he was the head, was very near the throne, in rank and influence; for twenty years, ever since he had left the imperial Corps de Pages, and shown himself in Paris, driving his team of black Orlofs, he had been the idolatry, the aspiration, and the despair of all the mothers of maidens.
Veres passage through his drawing-rooms on his arm was a spectacle so astonishing, that there was a general lull for a moment in the conversation of all his guests. It was a triumph, but Vere was wholly unconscious of it; which made her charming in the eyes of the giver of it.
“I think that’s a case!” said Miss Fuschia Leach to her admirers. She did not care herself. She did not want Zouroff, high, and mighty, and rich, and of great fashion though he was; she meant to die an English duchess, and she had only thrown over the unhappy Mull because she had found out he was poor. “And what’s the use of being a duchess, if you don’t make a splash?” she said very sensibly to his mother, when they talked it over. She had flirted with Mull shamelessly, but so she did with scores of them; it was her way. She had brought the way from America. She had young men about her as naturally as a ratcatcher has ferrets and terriers; but she meant to take her time before choosing one of them for good and all.
“What a beautiful child she is,” thought Prince Zouroff, “and so indifferent! Can she
possibly be naughty Dolly’s daughter?”
He was interested, and he, being skilled in such ways, easily learned the little there was to know about her, whilst he took her through his conservatories, and showed her Japan lilies, Chinese blossoms that changed colour thrice a day, and orchids of all climes and colours.
The conservatories were really rare, and pleased her; but Prince Zouroff did not. His eyes were bold and cold, at once; they were red too, and there was an odour of brandy on his breath that came to her through all the scent of the flowers. She did not like him. She was grave and silent. She answered what he asked, but she did not care to stay there, and looked round for a chance of escape. It charmed Zouroff, who was so used to see women throw themselves in his path that he found no pleasure in their pursuit.
“Decidedly she has been not at all with naughty Dolly!” he said to himself, and looked at her with so much undisguised admiration in his gaze, that Vere, looking up from the golden blossoms of an Odontoglossum, blushed to the eyes, and felt angry, she could not very well have told why.
“Your flowers are magnificent, and I thank you, monsieur; but I am tired, and I will say good night,” she said quickly, with a little haughtiness of accent and glance which pleased Zouroff more than anything had done for years.
“I would not detain you unwillingly, mademoiselle, one moment,” he said, with a low bow — a bow which had some real respect in it. “Pardon me, this is your nearest way. I will say to miladi that you were tired. To-morrow, if there be anything you wish, only tell me, it shall be yours.”
He opened a door that led out of the last conservatory on to the foot of the great staircase; and Vere, not knowing whether she were not breaking all the rules of politeness and etiquette, bent her head to him and darted like a swallow up the stairs.
Sergius Zouroff smiled, and strolled back alone through his drawing-rooms, and went up to Lady Dolly, and cast himself into a long, low chair by her side.