by Ouida
Vere shuddered as with cold.
“I cannot. Make some excuse.”
“What is the use of putting off?” said her mother fretfully. “You will be ill; you are ill. If you should be ill to-night, what will everyone say? what will he think? what shall I do?”
Vere went into her chamber and locked her door. She locked out even her maid; flung her hat aside, and threw herself forward on the bed, face downward, and there lay.
Lady Dolly went into her chamber, and glanced at her own face with horror. Though made up, as well as usual for the day, she looked yellow, worn, old.
“I must go down!” she thought — how selfish youth was, and how hard a thing was motherhood! She had herself dressed beautifully and took some ether.
She had sunk her drowned conscience fathoms deep, and begun once more to pity herself for the obstinacy and oddness of the child to whom she had given birth. Why could not the girl be like any others?
The ether began to move in her veins and swim in her head; her eyes grew brighter. She went out of her room and along the corridor to the staircase, fastening an autumn rose or two in her breast, taken from the bouquet of her dressing-table. As she glanced down the staircase into the hall where the servants in the canary-coloured liveries of the house were going to and fro, she thought of all the rank and riches of which Félicité was only one trifling portion and symbol, and thought to herself that — after all — any mother would have done as she had done; and no maiden surely could need a higher reward for the gift of her innocence to the minotaur of a loveless marriage.
“If I had been married like that!” she thought; and felt that she had been cruelly wronged by destiny; if she had been married like that, how easy it would have been to become a good woman! What could Vere complain of? — the marriage was perfect in a worldly sense, and in any other sense — did it matter what it was?
So the ether whispered to her.
She began to taste the sweets of her victory and to forget the bitter, as the ether brought its consoling haze over all painful memories, and lent its stimulating brightness to all personal vanities.
After all it was very delightful to go down those stairs, knowing that when she met all those dear female friends whom she detested, and who detested her, no one could pity her and everyone must envy her. She had betrothed her daughter to one of the richest and best born men in all Europe. Was it not the crown of maternity, as maternity is understood in society?
So down she went, and crossed the great vestibule, looking young, fair, bewitching with the roses in her bosom, and an admirably chosen expression on her face, half glad and half plaintive, and with a flush under her paint that made her look prettier than ever; her eyes sparkled, her smile was all sunshine and sweetness, she pressed the hands of her most intimate friends with an eloquent tenderness, she was exquisitely arrayed with cascades of old Mechlin falling from her throat to her feet.
“A mother only lives to be young again in her child!” she said softly — and knew that she looked herself no more than twenty years old as she said it.
Sergius Zouroff, profuse in delicate compliment to her aloud, said to himself:
“Brava, naughty Dolly! Bis-his! Will she ever be like you, I wonder? Perhaps. The world makes you all alike after a little while.”
He was ready to pay a high price for innocence, because it was a new toy that pleased him. But he never thought that it would last, any more than the bloom lasts on the peach. He had no illusions. Since it would be agreeable to brush it off himself, he was ready to purchase it.
There was a sense of excitement and of disappointment in the whole house party; and Princesse Nelaguine ran from one to another, with her little bright Tartar eyes all aglow, murmuring, “Charmée, charmée, charmée!” to impatient ears.
“Such a beast as he is!” said the men who smoked his cigars and rode his horses.
“And she who looked all ice and innocence!” said the women, already in arms against her.
Vere did not come down to taste the first-fruits of her triumph.
At the great midday breakfast, where most people assembled, she was absent. Zouroff himself laid another bouquet of orchids by her plate, but she was not there to receive the delicate homage.
“Mademoiselle Vera has not risen?” he asked now, with an angry contraction of his low brows, as no one came where the orchids were lying.
“Vera had a headache,” said Lady Dolly serenely aloud. “Or said so,” she murmured to his ear alone. “Don’t be annoyed. She was shy. She is a little farouche, you know, my poor darling.”
Zouroff nodded, and took his caviare.
“What did I predict, love!” murmured Lady Stoat, of Stichley, taking her friend aside after breakfast. “But how quickly you succeeded!
Last evening only you were in despair! Was the resistance only a feint? Or what persuasions did you bring to bear?”
“I threatened to send her to Buhner Chase!” said Lady Dolly with a little gay laugh. Lady Stoat laughed also.
“I wonder what you did do,” she reflected, however, as she laughed. “Oh, naughty little Pussy — foolish, foolish little Pussy! — to have any secrets from we!”
The day wore away and Vere Herbert remained unseen in Félicité.
The guests grew surprised, and the host angered.
Princesse Nelaguine herself had ascended to the girl’s room, and had been denied.
People began to murmur that it was odd.
“Go and fetch her,” said Zouroff in a fierce whisper. “It is time that I at least should see her — unless you have told me a lie.”
“Unless she be really ill, I suppose you mean, you cruel creature!” said her mother reproachingly; but she obeyed him and went.
“Girls are so fond of tragedy!” reflected Lady Stoat, recalling episodes in the betrothal of her own daughter, and passages that had preceded it.
It was now five o’clock. The day had been chilly, as it is at times along the channel shores, even in summer. Several persons were in the blue-room, so called because of its turquoise silk walls and its quantities of Delf, Nankin, Savona, and other blue china ranged there. It was the room for afternoon tea. Several of the ladies were there in tea-gowns of the quaintest and prettiest, that allowed them to lie about in the most gracefully tired attitudes. The strong summer sun found its way only dimly there, and the sweet smells of the flowers and of the sea were overborne by the scent of the pastilles burning in the bodies of blue china monsters.
Zouroff, who at times was very negligent of his guests, was pacing up and down the long dim chamber impatiently, and every now and then he glanced at the door. He did not look once at the pretty groups, like eighteenth century pictures tinged with the languor of odalisques, that were sipping tea out of tiny cups in an alcove lined with celadon and crackling. The tinkle of the tea-cups and the ripple of the talk ceased as the door at the farther end opened, and Vere entered, led by her mother.
She was white, and cold, and still; she did not raise her eyelids. Zouroff approached with eager steps, and bowed before her with the dignity that he could very well assume when he chose.
“Mademoiselle,” he said softly, “is it true that you consent to make the most unworthy of men the most happy?”
He saw a slight shudder pass over her as if some cold wind had smitten her.
She did not lift her eyes.
“Since you wish, monsieur—” she answered very low, and then paused.
“The adoration of a life shall repay you,” he murmured in the conventional phrase, and kissed her hand.
In his own thoughts he said: “Your mother had made you do this, and you hate me. Never mind.”
Then he drew her hand on his arm, and led her to the Princess Nelaguine.
“My sister, embrace your sister. I shall have two angels henceforth, instead of one, to watch and pray for my erring soul!”
Princess Nelaguine did not smile. She kissed the cold cheek of the girl with a glisten of tears
in her eyes.
“What a sacrifice! what martyrdom!” she thought. “Ah, the poor child! — but perhaps he will ranger — let us hope.”
All the while Vera might have been made of marble, she was so calm and so irresponsive, and she never once lifted her eyes.
“Will you not look at me once?” he entreated. She raised her lids and gave him one fleeting hunted glance. Cruel though he was and hardened, Sergius Zouroff felt that look go to his soul.
“Bah! how she loathes me!” he said in his teeth. But the compassion in him died out almost as it was born, and the base appetites in him were only whetted and made keener by this knowledge.
Lady Stoat glided towards them and lifted her lips to Vera’s cheek. “My sweet child! so charmed, so delighted,” she whispered. “Did I not say how it would be when your first shyness had time to fold its tents, as the poem says, and steal away?”
“You are always a prophetess of good — and my mothers friend,” said Vere. They were almost the first words she had spoken, and they chilled even the worldly breast of her mother’s friend.
There was an accent in them which told of a childhood perished in a night; of an innocence and a faith stabbed, and stricken, and buried for ever more.
“You are only sixteen, and you will never be young any more!” thought Princess Nelaguine, hearing the cold and bitter accent of those pregnant words.
But the ladies that made the eighteenth century picture had broken up and issued from the alcove, and were offering congratulations and compliments in honeyed phrases; and no one heeded or had time for serious thought.
Only Lady Dolly, in a passionate murmur, cried, unheeded by any, to her daughters ear:
“For heaven’s sake smile, blush, seem happy! What will they say of you to look at you like this? — they will say that I coerce you!”
“I do my best,” answered Vere coldly.
“My lovely mother-in-law,” muttered Prince Zouroff, bending to Lady Dolly, as he brought her a cup of tea, “certainly you did not lie to me this morning when you told me that your Vera would marry me; but did you not lie — just a little lie, a little white one — when you said she would love me?”
“Love comes in time,” murmured Lady Dolly hurriedly.
Serge Zouroff laughed grimly.
“Does it? I fear that experience tells one rather that with time — it goes.”
“Yours may; hers will come — the womans always comes last.”
“Ma chère! your new theories are astounding. Nevertheless, as your son-in-law, I will give my adhesion to them. Henceforth all the sex of your Vera — and yourself — is purity and perfection in my sight!”
Lady Dolly smiled sweetly in his face.
“It is never too late to be converted to the truth,” she said playfully, whilst she thought, “Oh you beast! If I could strangle you!”
Meanwhile, Princess Nelaguine was saying with kindness in her tone and gaze:
“My sweet child, you look chilly and pale. Were you wise to leave your room out of goodness to us?”
“I am cold,” murmured Vere faintly. “I should be glad if I might go away — for a little.”
“Impossible,” said the Princess; and added. “Dear, reflect; it will look so strange to people. My brother—”
“I will stay then,” said Vere wearily, and she sat down and received the homage of one and the felicitations of another, still with her eyes always cast downward, still with her young face passionless, and chill as a mask of marble.
“An hours martyrdom more or less — did it matter?” she said to herself. All her life would be a martyrdom, a long mute martyrdom, now.
A few hours later her maid dressed her for the ball. She had no need of her mother’s pearls, for those which had been ordered from Paris jewellers were there; the largest and purest pearls that ever Indian diver plunged for into the deep sea. When they were clasped about her they seemed to her in no way different, save in their beauty, to the chains locked on slave-girls bought for the harem. But that was because she had been taught such strange ideas.
She was quite passive.
She resisted nothing; having given way in the one great thing, why should she dispute or rebel for trifles? A sense of unreality had come upon her, as it comes on people in the first approach of fever.
She walked, sat, spoke, heard, all as in a dream. It seemed to her as if she were already dead: only the pain was alive in her, the horrible sickening pain that would never be stilled, but only grow sharper and deeper with each succeeding hour.
She sat through the banquet, and felt all eyes upon her, and was indifferent. Let them stare as they would, as they would stare at the sold slave-girl.
She has too much self-possession for such a child, said the women there, and they thought that Sergius Zouroff would not find in her the young saint that he fancied he had won.
Her beauty was only greater for her extreme pallor and the darkness beneath her eyes. But it was no longer the beauty of an innocent unconscious child; it was that of a woman.
Now and then she glanced at her mother, at that pretty coquettish little figure, semi-nude, as fashion allowed, and with diamonds sparkling everywhere on her snow-white skin; with a perpetual laugh on cherubic lips, and gaiety and grace in each movement. And whenever she glanced there, a sombre scornful fire came into her own gaze, an unutterable contempt and disgust watched wearily from the fair windows of her soul.
She was thinking to herself as she looked: Honour thy father and thy mother. That was the old law! Were there such women then as she was now? Or was that law too a dead letter, as the Marriage Sacrament was?
“She is exquisitely lovely,” said the great personage in whose honour the banquet and the ball were being given. “In a year or two there will be nothing so beautiful as she will be in all Europe. But — is she well — is she happy? Forgive the question.”
“Oh, sir, she is but made nervous by the honour of your praise,” said her mother, who was the person addressed. “Your Royal Highness is too kind to think of her health, it is perfect; indeed I may say, without exaggeration, that neither morally nor physically has my sweet child given me one hour’s anxiety since her birth.”
The Prince bowed, and said some pleasant gracious words; but his conviction remained unchanged by Lady Dolly’s assurance of her daughter’s peace and joy.
Vere was led out by Prince Zouroff to join the Quadrille d’Honneur.
“This is the Iron Cross!” she thought, and a faint bitter smile parted her lips.
She never once lifted her eyes to meet his.
“Cannot you tell me you are happy, mon enfant,” he murmured once. She did not look at him, and her lips scarcely moved as she answered him.
“I obey my mother, monsieur. Do not ask more.”
Zouroff was silent. The dusky red of his face grew paler; he felt a momentary instinct to tear his pearls off her, and bid her to be free; then the personal loveliness of her awoke too fiercely that mere appetite which is all that most men and many women know of love; and his hands clenched close on hers in the slow figure of the dance.
A stronger admiration than he had ever felt for her rose in him, too. He knew the bitterness and the revolt that were in her, yet he saw her serene, cold, mistress of herself. It was not the childlike simplicity that he had once fancied that he loved her for, but it was a courage he respected, a quality he understood. “One might send her to Siberia and she would change to ice; she would not bend,” he thought, and the thought whetted his passion to new fierceness and tenacity.
The ball was gorgeous; the surprises were brilliant and novel; the gardens were illumined to the edge of the sea till the fishers out in the starry night thought the shore was all on fire. The great persons in whose honour it was, were gratified and amused — the grace and grandeur of the scene were like old days of Versailles or of Venice.
The child moved amidst it, with the great pearls lying on her throat and encircling her arms, and her eyes had
a blind unconscious look in them like those of eyes that have recently lost their sight, and are not yet used to the eternal darkness.
But she spoke simply and well, if seldom; she moved with correct grace in the square dance; she made her perfect courtesy with the eighteenth century stateliness in it; all men looked, and wondered, and praised her, and women said with a sigh of envy, “Only sixteen!”
Only sixteen; and she might have said as the young emperor said, when he took his crown, “O my youth, O my youth! farewell!”
Once her mother had the imprudence to speak to her; she whispered in her ear:
“Are you not rewarded, love? Are you not content?”
Vere looked at her.
“I have paid your debt. Be satisfied.”
A great terror passed like a cold wind, over the little selfish, cruel, foolish woman, and she trembled.
The next morning a message came to her from her old Northumbrian home.
“My house must always be open for my dead son’s child, and my protection, such as it is, will always be hers.”
It was signed Sarah Mull and Cantire.
Vere read it, sitting before her glass in the light of the full day, whilst her woman undid the long ropes of pearls that were twisted about her fair hair. Two slow tears ran down her cheeks and fell on the rough paper of the telegram.
“She loves me!” she thought, “and what a foolish, fickle, sinning creature I shall for ever seem to her!”
Then, lest with a moment’s longer thought her firmness should fail her, she wrote back in answer: “You are so good, and I am grateful. But I see that it is best that I should marry as my mother wished. Pray for me.”
The message winged its way fleeter than a bird, over the grey sea to where the northern ocean beat the black Northumbrian rocks; and an old womans heart was broken with the last pang of a sad old age.
A day or two later the house-party of Félicité broke up, and the chateau by the Norman sea was left to its usual solitude. Lady Stoat went to stay with her daughter, the Lady Birkenhead, who was at Biarritz, and would go thence to half-a-dozen great French and English houses. Prince Zouroff and his sister went to Tsarsko Selo, as it was necessary for him to see his emperor, and Lady Dolly took her daughter straight to Paris.