by Ouida
“Oh, about that, I don’t know,” said Lady Dolly. “Your idea of a gentleman, I believe, is a man who makes himself up as Faust or Romeo, and screams for so many guineas a night. We won’t discuss that.”
Veres face burned, but she was mute. It seemed to her that her mother had grown coarse as well as cruel. There was a hardness in her mother that she had never felt before. That her letter should have been read by Serge Zouroff, yet make no impression on him, seemed to her so dastardly that it left her no hope to move him; no hope anywhere except in her own resistance.
Three days later, Prince Zouroff drove over to Le Caprice, and saw Lady Dolly alone.
Vere was not asked for, and was thankful. Her eyes wistfully questioned her mother’s when they met, but Lady Dolly’s were unrevealing and did not meet her gaze.
The house was full of movement and of mirth; there were sauteries every evening, and distractions of all kinds. Lady Dolly was always flirting, laughing, dancing, amusing herself; Vere was silent, grave, and cold.
“You are much younger than your daughter, Madame Dolly,” said an old admirer; and Lady Dolly ruffled those pretty curls which had cost her fifty francs a lock.
“Ah! Youth is a thing of temperament more than of years. That I do think. My Vera is so hard to please, and I — everything amuses me, and everyone to me seems charming.”
But this sunny, smiling little visage changed when, every evening before dinner, she came to her daughter’s room, and urged, and argued, and abused, and railed, and entreated, and sobbed, and said her sermon again, and again, and again; all in vain.
Vere said but few words, but they were always of the same meaning.
“I will not marry Prince Zouroff,” she said always. “It is of no use to ask me. I will not.”
And the little frown deepened between her eyes, and the smile that Corrèze had seen upon her classic mouth now never came there. She grew harassed and anxious.
Since her letter had made no impression on him how could she escape this weariness?
One evening she heard some people in the drawing-rooms talking of Corrèze.
They said that he had been singing in the “Fidelio,” and surpassing himself, and that a young and beautiful Grand Duchess had made herself conspicuous by her idolatry of him; so conspicuous that he had been requested to leave Germany, and had refused, placing the authorities in the difficult position of either receding ridiculously or being obliged to use illegal force; there would be terrible scandal in high places, but Corrèze was always accapareur des femmes!
Vere moved away with a beating heart and a burning cheek; through the murmur of the conversation around her she seemed to hear the exquisite notes of that one divine voice which had dropped and deepened to so simple and tender a solemnity as it had bidden her keep herself unspotted from the world.
“What would he say if he knew what they want me to do!” she thought. “If he knew that my mother even — my mother — !”
For, not even though her mother was Lady Dolly, could Vere quite abandon the fancy that motherhood was a sweet and sacred altar on which the young could seek shelter and safety from all evils and ills.
The week at Le Caprice came to an end, and the four days at Abbaye aux Bois also, and, in the last hours of their two days at the Abbaye, Lady Dolly said to her daughter:
“To-morrow is the Princes’ ball at Félicité, I suppose you remember?”
Vere gave a sign of assent.
“That is the loveliest frock La Ferrière has sent you for it; if you had any heart you would kiss me for such a gown, but you have none, you never will have any.”
Vere was silent.
“I must speak to you seriously and for the last time here,” said her mother. “We go back to Félicité, and Sergius will want his answer. I can put him off no longer.”
“He has had it.”
“How?” said Lady Dolly, forgetting for the moment the letter she had burned. “Oh, your letter? Of course he regarded it as a baby’s boutade; I am sure it was badly worded enough.”
“He showed it you then?”
“Yes; he showed it me. It hurt him, of course; but it did not change him,” said her mother, a little hurriedly. “Men of his age are not so easily changed. I tell you once for all, Vere, that I shall come to you tonight for the last time for your final word, and I tell you that you must be seen at that ball to-morrow night as the fiancée of Zouroff. I am quite resolute, and I will have no more shillyshallying or hesitation.”
Vere’s face grew warm, and she threw back her head with an eager gesture.
“Hesitation! I have never hesitated for an instant. I tell you, mother, and I have told you a hundred times, I will not marry Prince Zouroff.”
“You will wear the new gown and you shall have my pearls,” pursued her mother, as though she had not heard; “and I shall take care that when you are presented to his Royal Highness he shall know that you are already betrothed to Zouroff; it will be the best way to announce it nettement to the world. You will not wear my pearls again, for Zouroff has already ordered yours.”
Vere started to her feet.
“And I will stamp them to pieces if he give them to me; and if you tell the Prince of Wales such a thing of me I will tell him the truth and ask his help; he is always kind and good.”
“The pearls are ordered,” said her mother unmoved: “and you really are too silly for anything. The idea of making the poor Prince a scene! — you have such a passion for scenes, and there is nothing such bad form. I shall come to you to-night after dinner, and let me find you more reasonable.”
With that Lady Dolly went out of the room, and out of the house, and went on the sea with her adorers, laughing lightly and singing naughty little chansons not ill. But her heart was not as light as her laugh, and, bold little woman as she was when she had nerved herself to do wrong, her nerves troubled her as she thought the morrow was the last, the very last, day on which she could any longer procrastinate and dally with Serge Zouroff.
“I will go and talk to her,” said Lady Stoat, who had driven over from Félicité, when she had been wearied by her dear Dolly’s lamentations, until she felt that even her friendship could not bear them much longer.
“But she hates him,” cried Lady Dolly, for the twentieth time.
“They always say that, dear,” answered Lady Stoat tranquilly “They mean it, too, poor little things. It is just as they hated their lessons, yet they did their lessons, dear, and are all the better for having done them. You seem to me to attach sadly too much importance to a child’s boutades.”
“If it were only boutades! But you do not know Vere.”
“I cannot think, dear, that your child can be so very extraordinarily unlike the rest of the human species,” said her friend with her pleasant smile. “Well, I will go and see this young monster. She has always seemed to me a little Puritan, nothing worse, and that you should have been prepared for, leaving her all her life at Bulmer Chase.”
Lady Stoat then went upstairs and knocked at the door of Vere’s chamber, and entered with the soft, silent charm of movement which was one of the especial graces of that graceful gentlewoman. She kissed the girl tenderly, regardless that Vere drew herself away somewhat rudely, and then sank down in a chair.
“My child, do you know I am come to talk to you quite frankly and affectionately,” she said in her gentle, slow voice. “You know what friendship has always existed between your dear mother and myself, and you will believe that your welfare is dear to me for her sake — very dear.”
Vere looked at her, but did not speak.
“An uncomfortable girl,” thought Lady Stoat, a little discomfited, but she resumed blandly, “Your mamma has brought me some news that it is very pleasant to hear, and gives me sincere happiness, because, by it your happiness, and through yours hers, is secured. My own dear daughter is only two years older than you are, Vere, and she is married, as you know, and ah! so happy!”
“Happy with the
Duke of Birkenhead?” said Vere abruptly.
Lady Stoat was, for the moment, a little staggered.
“What a very unpleasant child,” she thought; “and who would think she knew anything about poor Birk!”
“Very happy,” she continued aloud, “and I am charmed to think, my dear, that you have the chance of being equally so. Your mamma tells me, love, that you are a little — a little — bewildered at so brilliant a proposal of marriage as Prince Zouroff s. That is a very natural feeling; of course you had never thought about any such thing.”
“I had not thought about it,” said Vere bluntly. “I have thought now; but I do not understand why he can want such a thing. He knows very well that I do not like him. If you will tell him for me that I do not I shall be glad; my mother will never tell him plainly enough.”
“My sweet Vere!” said Lady Stoat smilingly “Pray do not give me the mission of breaking my hosts heart; I would as soon break his china! Of course your mamma will not tell him anything of the kind. She is charmed, my dear girl, charmed! What better future could she hope for, for you? The Zouroffs are one of the greatest families in Europe, and I am quite sure your sentiments, your jewels, your everything, will be worthy of the exalted place you will fit.”
Veres face grew very cold.
“My mother has sent you?” she said, more rudely than her companion had ever been addressed in all her serene existence. “Then will you kindly go back to her, Lady Stoat, and tell her it is of no use; I will not marry Prince Zouroff.”
“That is not very prettily said, my dear. If I am come to talk to you it is certainly in your own interests only. I have seen young girls like you throw all their lives away for mere want of a little reflection.”
“I have reflected.”
“Reflected as much as sixteen can! — oh yes. But that is not quite what I mean. I want you to reflect, looking through the glasses of my experience and affection, and your mothers. You are very young, Vere.”
“Charlotte Corday was almost as young as I am, and Jeanne d’Arc.”
Lady Stoat stared, then laughed.
“I don’t know where they come, either of them, in our argument, but if they had been married at sixteen it would have been a very good thing for both of them! You are a little girl now, my child, though you are nearly six feet high! You are a demoiselle à marier. You can only wear pearls, and you are not even presented. You are no one; nothing. Society has hundreds like you. If you do not marry, people will fancy you are old whilst you are still twenty; people will say of you ‘She is getting passée; she was out years and years ago.’ Yes, they will say it even if you are handsomer than ever, and, what will be worse, you will begin to feel it.”
Vere was silent, and Lady Stoat thought that she had made some impression.
“You will begin to feel it; then you will be glad to marry anybody, and there is nothing more terrible than that. You will take a younger son of a baronet, or a secretary of legation that is going to Hong Kong or Chili — anything, anybody, to get out of yourself, and not to see your own face in the ball-room mirrors. Now, if you marry early, and marry brilliantly — and this marriage is most brilliant — no such terrors will await you; you can wear diamonds, and, oh Vere! till you wear diamonds you do not know what life is! — you can go where you like, as you like, your own mistress; you are posée; you have made yourself a power while your contemporaries are still débutantes in white frocks; you will have your children, and find all serious interests in them, if you like; you will have all that is best in life, in fact, and have it before you are twenty; you will be painted by Millais and clothed by Worth; you will be a politician if you like, or a fashionable beauty if you like, or only a great lady — perhaps the simplest and best thing of all; and you will be this, and have all this, merely because you married early and married well. My dear, such a marriage is to a girl like being sent on the battle-field to a boy in the army; it is the baptism of fire with every decoration as its rewards!”
“The Cross too?” said Vere.
Lady Stoat, who had spoken eloquently, and, in her own light, sincerely, was taken aback by the irony of the accent and the enigma of the smile. “A most strange child,” she thought; “no wonder she worries poor flighty little Pussy!”
“The Cross? Oh, yes,” she said. “What answers to the boys Iron Cross, I suppose, is to dance in the Quadrille d’Honneur at Court. Princesse Zouroff would always be in the Quadrille d’Honneur.”
“Princesse Zouroff may be so. I shall not. And it was of the Cross you wear, and profess to worship, that I thought.”
Lady Stoat felt a little embarrassed. She bowed her head, and touched the Iona cross in jewels that hung at her throat.
“Darling, those are serious and solemn words. A great marriage may be made subservient, like any other action of our lives, to Gods service.”
“But surely one ought to love to marry?”
“My dear child, that is an idea; love is an idea; it doesn’t last, you know; it is fancy; what is needful is solid esteem—”
Lady Stoat paused; even to her it was difficult to speak of solid esteem for Sergius Zouroff. She took up another and safer line of argument.
“You must learn to understand, my sweet Vere, that life is prose, not poetry; Heaven forbid that I should be one to urge you to any sort of worldliness; but still, truth is everything; truth compels me to point out to you that, in the age we live in, a great position means vast power and ability of doing good, and that is not a thing to be slighted by any wise woman who would make her life beautiful and useful. Prince Zouroff adores you; he can give you one of the first positions in Europe; your mother, who loves you tenderly, though she may seem negligent, desires such a marriage for you beyond all others. Opposition on your part is foolishness, my child, foolishness, blindness, and rebellion.”
The face of Vere as she listened lost its childish softness, and grew very cold.
“I understand; my mother does not want me, Mr. Vanderdecken does not want me; this Russian prince is the first who asks for me, — so I am to be sold because he is rich. I will not be sold!”
“What exaggerated language, my love. Pray do not exaggerate; no one uses inflated language now; even on the stage they don’t, it has gone out. Who speaks of your being sold, as if you were a slave? Quelle idée! A brilliant, a magnificent, alliance is open to you, that is all; every unmarried woman in society will envy you. I assure you if Prince Zouroff had solicited the hand of my own daughter, I would have given it to him with content and joy.”
“I have no doubt you would,” said the girl curtly.
Lady Stoat’s sweet temper rose a little under the words. “You are very beautiful, my dear, but your manners leave very much to be desired,” she said almost sharply. “If you were not poor little Dolly’s child I should not trouble myself to reason with you, but let you destroy yourself like an obstinate baby as you are. What can be your objection to Prince Sergius? Now be reasonable for once; tell me.”
“I am sure he is a bad man.”
“My love! What should you know about bad men, or good ones either?”
“I am sure he is bad — and cruel.”
“What nonsense! I am sure he has been charming to you, and you are very ungrateful. What can have given you such an impression of your devoted adorer?”
Vere shuddered a little with disgust.
“I hate him!” she said under her breath.
Lady Stoat for a moment was startled.
“Where could she get her melodrama from?” she wondered. “Dolly was never melodramatic; nor any of the Herbert people; it really makes one fancy poor Pussy must have had a petite faute with a tragic actor!”
Aloud she answered gently:
“You have a sad habit, my Vere, of using very strong words; it is not nice; and you do not mean one-tenth that you say in your haste. No Christian ever hates, and in a girl such a feeling would be horrible — if you meant it — but you do not mean it.”
; Vere shut her proud lips closer, but there was a meaning upon them that made her companion hesitate, and feel uncomfortable, and at a loss for words.
“How wonderful that Pussy should ever have had a daughter like this!” she thought, and then smiled in a sweet, mild way.
“Poor Serge! That he should have been the desired of all Europe, only to be rejected by a child of sixteen! Really it is like — who was it? — winning a hundred battles and then dying of a cherry-stone! There is nothing he couldn’t give you, nothing he wouldn’t give you, you thankless little creature!”
Vere, standing very slender and tall, with her face averted and her fair head in the glow of the sunset light, made no reply; but her attitude and her silence were all eloquent.
Lady Stoat thought to herself, “Dear, dear! what a charming Iphigenia she would look in a theatre; but there is no use for all that in real life. How to convince her?”
Even Lady Stoat was perplexed.
She began to talk vaguely and gorgeously of the great place of the Zouroff family in the world; of their enormous estates, of their Uraline mines, of their Imperial favour, of their right to sit covered at certain courts, of their magnificence in Paris, their munificence in Petersburg, their power, their fashion, and their pomp.
Vere waited, till the long discursive descriptions ended of themselves, exhausted by their own oratory. Then she said very simply and very coldly:
“Do you believe in God, Lady Stoat?”
“In God?” echoed Lady Stoat, shocked and amazed.
“Do you or not?”
“My dear! Goodness! Pray do not say such things to me. As if I were an infidel! — I!”
“Then how can you bid me take His name in vain, and marry Prince Zouroff?”
“I do not see the connection,” began Lady Stoat vaguely, and very wearily.
“I have read the marriage service,” said Vere, with a passing heat upon her pale cheeks for a moment.
Lady Stoat for once was silent.
She was very nearly going to reply that the marriage service was of old date and of an exaggerated style; that it was not in good taste, and in no degree to be interpreted literally; but such an avowal was impossible to a woman who revered the ritual of her Church, and was bound to accept it unquestioned. So she was silent and vanquished — so far.