by Ouida
She would not have been disposed to quarrel with the Princess Zouroff, as her own mother did, for not playing the fool at fancy fairs, but she would have thought it horrible, inexcusable, if, under the pressure of any wrong, the affront of infidelity, she had — in Lady Dolly’s figure of speech — left her husband’s house in her shift.
“Never lose your position,” would have been the text that Lady Stoat would have written in letters of gold, for all young wives to read, and it was the text on which all her sermons were preached.
Position was the only thing that, like old wine or oak furniture, improved with years. If you had a good position at twenty, at forty you might be a power in the land. What else would wear like that? Not love, certainly, which indeed at all times Lady Stoat was disposed to regard as a malady; a green sickness, inevitable, but, to onlookers, very irritating in its delirious nonsense.
It was neither mere rank nor mere riches that Lady Stoat considered a great position. It was the combination of both, with a power — inalienable except by your own act — to give the tone to those around you; to exclude all who did not accord with your own notions; to be unattainable, untroubled, unruffled; to be a great example to society; metaphorically to move through life with carpet always unrolled before your steps. When you had a position that gave you all this, if you had tact and talent enough to avail yourself of it, what could you by any possibility need more?
Yet her own daughter, and her friend’s daughter, had this and both were dissatisfied.
Her own daughter, to her anguish unspeakable, revolted openly and grew vulgar; even grew vulgar; went on the boxes of the four-in-hand-men’s coaches, shot and hunted, played in amateur performances before London audiences far from choice; had even been seen at the Crystal Palace; had “loud” costumes with wonderful waist-coats; and had always a crowd of young men wherever she went. Lady Stoat honestly would sooner have seen her in her grave.
The Princess Zouroff, who had the very perfection of manner even if she offended people, who knew of her husband’s infidelities and said nothing, went coldly and serenely through the world, taking no pleasure in it perhaps, but giving it no power to breathe a breath against her.
“Why was she not my child!” sighed Lady Stoat sadly.
If Lady Stoat could have seen into the soul of Vere, she would have found as little there with which she could have sympathised as she found in her own daughters tastes for the stage, the drag, and the loud waistcoats.
She could not imagine the price at which Veres composure was attained; the cost at which that perfect manner, which she admired, was kept unruffled by a sigh or frown. She could not tell that this young life was one of perpetual suffering, of exhausting effort to keep hold on the old faiths and the old principles of childhood amidst a world which has cast out faith as old-fashioned and foolish, and regards a principle as an affront and an ill-nature. Her own society found the young Princess Vera very cold, unsympathetic, strange; she was chill about fashionable good works, and her grand eyes had a look in them, stern in its sadness, which frightened away both courtiers and enemies. The verdict upon her was that she was unamiable.
The world did not understand her.
“The poor you always have with you,” had been an injunction that, in the days of her childhood, she had been taught to hold sacred.
“The poor you always have with you,” she said to a bevy of great ladies once. “Christ said so. You profess to follow Christ. How have you the poor with you? The back of their garret, the roof of their hovel, touches the wall of your palace, and the wall is thick. You have dissipations, spectacles, diversions that you call charities; you have a tombola for a famine; you have a dramatic performance for a flood, you have a concert for a fire, you have a fancy fair for a leprosy. Do you never think how horrible it is, that mockery of woe? Do you ever wonder at revolutions? Why do you not say honestly that you care nothing? You do care nothing. The poor might forgive the avowal of indifference; they will never forgive the insult of affected pity.”
Then the ladies who heard were scandalised, and went to their priests and were comforted, and would not have this young saint preach to them as Chrysostom preached to the ladies of Constantinople.
But Vere had been reared in tender thoughtfulness for the poor. Her grandmother, stern to all others, to the poor was tender.
“Put your second frock on for the Queen if you like,” she would say to the child; “but to the poor go in your best clothes or they will feel hurt.” Vere never forgot what was meant in that bidding. Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; but courtesy and delicacy are visitants with which they are seldom honoured.
It is very difficult for a woman who is young and very rich not to be deceived very often, and many an impostor, no doubt, played his tricks upon her. But she was clear-sighted and much in earnest, and found many whose needs were terrible, and whose lives were noble. The poor of Paris are suspicious, resentful, and apt to be sullen in their independence; but they are often also serious and intelligent, tender of heart, and gay of spirit. Some of them she grew to care for very much, and many of them forgave her for being an aristocrat and welcomed her for her loveliness and her sympathy. As for herself, she sometimes felt that the only reality life had for her was when she went up to those damp chill attics in the metal roofs, and spoke with those whose bread was bitterness and whose cup was sorrow. Her husband, with some contempt, told her she grew like Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia, but he did not forbid her doing as she pleased. If she were present to drive in the Bois, or ride there before sunset, and afterwards went to dinner, or ball, or reception, as the engagements of the night might require, he did not exact any more account of her time or ask how her mornings were spent.
“You leave Vera too much alone, terribly too much,” said his sister to him once.
He stared, then laughed.
“Alone? a woman of her rank is never alone. Not a whit more than queens are!”
“I mean you are not with her; you never ask what she does all the day.”
“I suppose her early hours are given to her tailor and her milliner, and the later ones to morning visits,” he answered with a yawn. “It does not matter what she does. She is a fool in many things, but she will not abuse liberty.”
For, though he had never believed in any woman, he did believe in his wife.
“She will not abuse it yet; no,” thought Madame Nelaguine. “No, not yet, whilst she is still under the influence of her childish faiths and her fear of God. But after? — after five, six, seven years of the world, of this world into which you have cast her without any armour of love to protect her — how will it be then? It will not be men’s fault if she misuse her liberty; and assuredly it will not be womens. We corrupt each other more than men corrupt us.”
Aloud the Princess Nelaguine merely said, “You allow her to be friends with Jeanne de Sonnaz?”
Zouroff laughed again and frowned.
“All women in the same set see one another day and night. Who is to help that?”
“But—”
“Be reasonable,” he said roughly. “How can I say to my wife, ‘Do not receive the Duchesse de Sonnaz.’ All Paris would be convulsed, and Jeanne herself a demoniac. Good heavens! Where do you get all these new scruples? Is it your contact with Vera?”
“Your contact with her does not teach them to you,” said his sister coldly. “Oh, our world is vile enough, that I know well, but somewhere or other I think it might keep a little conscience, for exceptional circumstances, and so might you.”
“Do not talk nonsense. I cannot tell Jeanne not to know my wife, or my wife not to know Jeanne. They must take their chance; there is nothing exceptional; every man does the same.”
“Yes; we are very indecent,” said Madame Nelaguine quietly. “We do not admit it, but we are.”
Her brother shrugged his shoulders to express at once acquiescence and indifference.
In one of the visits that her chariti
es led his wife to make she heard one day a thing that touched her deeply. Her horses knocked down a girl of fifteen who was crossing the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. The girl was not hurt, though frightened. She was taken into the Hôtel Zouroff, and Vere returned to the house to attend her. As it proved, the child, when the faintness of her terror had passed, declared herself only a little bruised, smiled and thanked her, and said she would go home; she wanted nothing. She was a freckled, ugly, bright-looking little thing and was carrying some of those artificial flowers with which so many girls of Paris gain their daily bread. Her name was Félicie Martin, and she was the only child of her father, and her mother was dead.
The following day the quiet little coupé that took Vere on her morning errands, found its way into a narrow but decent street in the Batignolles, and the Princess Zouroff inquired for the Sieur Martin.
Vere bade her men wait below, and went up the stairs to the third floor. The house was neat, and was let to respectable people of the higher class of workers. In her own world she was very proud, but it was not the pride that offends the working classes, because it is dignity and not arrogance, and is simple and natural, thinking nothing of rank though much of race, and far more still of character.
“May I come in?” she said in her clear voice, which had always so sad an accent in it, but for the poor was never cold. “Will you allow me to make myself quite sure that your daughter is none the worse for that accident, and tell you myself how very sorry I was? Russian coachmen are always so reckless!”
“But, madame, it is too much honour!” said a little, fair man who rose on her entrance, but did not move forward. “Forgive me, madame, you are as beautiful as you are good; so I have heard from my child, but alas! I cannot have the joy to see such sunlight in my room. Madame will pardon me — I am blind.”
“Blind?” — the word always strikes a chill to those who hear it; it is not a very rare calamity, but it is the one of all others which most touches bystanders, and is most quickly realised. He was a happy-looking little man, nevertheless, though his blue eyes were without light in them gazing into space unconsciously; the room was clean, and gay, and sweet-smelling, with some pretty vases and prints and other simple ornaments, and in the casement some geraniums and heliotrope.
“Yes, I am blind,” he said cheerfully. “Will Madame la Princesse kindly be seated? My child is at her workshop. She will be so glad and proud. She has talked of nothing but madame ever since yesterday. Madame’s beauty, madame’s goodness; — ah yes, the mercy of it! I am always afraid for my child in the streets, but she is not afraid for herself; she is little, but she is brave. It is too much kindness for Madame la Princesse to have come up all this height, but madame is good; one hears it in her voice. Yes, my child makes flowers for the great Maison Justine. Our angel did that for us. She is my only child, yes. Her dear mother died at her birth. I was fourth clarionet at the Opéra Comique at that time.”
“But can you play still?”
“Ah no, madame. My right arm is paralysed. It was one day in the forest at Vincennes. Félicie was ten years old. I thought to give her a Sunday in the wood. It was May. We were very happy, she and I running after one another, and pulling the hawthorn when no one looked. All in a moment a great storm came up and burst over us where we were in the midst of the great trees. The lightning struck my eyes and my right shoulder. Ah the poor, poor child!... But madame must excuse me; I am tiresome—”
“It interests me; go on.”
“I fell into great misery, madame. That is all. No hospital could help me. The sight was gone, and my power to use my right arm was gone too. I could not even play my clarionet in the streets as blind men do. I had saved a little, but not much. Musicians do not save, any more than painters. I had never earned very much either. I grew very very poor. I began to despair. I had to leave my lodging, my pretty little rooms where the child was born and where my wife had died; I went lower and lower, I grew more and more wretched; a blind, useless man with a little daughter. And I had no friends; no one; because, myself, I came from Alsace, and the brother I had there was dead, and our parents too had been dead long, long before; they had been farmers. Madame, I saw no hope at all. I had not a hope on earth, and Félicie was such a little thing she could do nothing. But I fatigue madame?”
“Indeed no. Pray go on, and tell me how it is that you are so tranquil now.”
“I am more than tranquil; I am happy, Princess. That is his doing. My old employers all forgot me. They had so much to think of; it was natural. I was nobody. There were hundreds and thousands could play as well as I had ever played. One day when I was standing in the cold, hungry, with my little girl hungry too, I heard them saying how the young singer Corrèze had been engaged at fifty thousand francs a night for the season. I went home and I made the child write a letter to the young man. I told him what had happened to me, and I said, ‘You are young and famous, and gold rains on you like dew in midsummer; will you remember that we are very wretched? If you said a word to my old directors — you — they would think of me.’ I sent the letter. I had often played in the orchestra when the young man was first turning the heads of all Paris. I knew he was gay and careless; I had not much hope.”
“Well?” Her voice had grown soft and eager; the man was blind, and could not see the flush upon her face.
“Well, a day or two went by, and I thought the letter was gone in the dust. Then he came to me, he himself, Corrèze. I knew his perfect voice as I heard it on the stairs. You can never forget it once you have heard. He had a secretary even then, but he had not left my letter to the secretary. He came like the angel Raphael whose name he bears.” Vere’s eyes filled; she thought of the white cliffs by the sea, of the sweetbriar hedge, and the song of the thrush.
“But I tire madame,” said the blind man. “He came like an angel. There is no more to be said. He made believe to get me a pension from the opera, but I have always thought that it is his own money, though he will not own to it; and as my child had a talent for flowermaking he had her taught the trade, and got her employed later on by the Maison Justine. He sent me that china, and he sends me those flowers, and he comes sometimes himself. He has sung here — here! — only just to make my darkness lighter. And I am not the only one, madame. There are many, many, many who if they ever say their prayers, should never forget Corrèze.”
Vere was silent, because her voice failed her.
“You have heard Corrèze, madame, of course, many times?” asked the blind man. “Ah, they say he has no religion and is careless as the butterflies are; to me he has been as the angels. I should have been in Bicêtre or in my grave but for him.”
The girl at that moment entered.
“Felicie,” said the Sieur Martin, “give the Princess a piece of heliotrope. Oh, she has forests of heliotrope in her conservatories, that I am sure, but she will accept it; it is the flower of Corrèze.”
Vere took it and put it amidst the old lace at her breast.
“You have Félicie Martin amongst your girls I think?” said Vere to the head of the Maison Justine a little later.
The principal of the fashionable house, a handsome and clever woman, assented.
“Then let her make some flowers for me,” added Vere. “Any flowers will do. Only will you permit me to pay her through you very well for them; much better for them than they are worth?”
“Madame la Princesse,” said the other with a smile, “the little Martin cannot make such flowers as you would wear. I employ her, but I never use her flowers, never. I have to deceive her; it would break her heart if she knew that I burn them all. The poor child is willing, but she is very clumsy. She cannot help it. Madame will understand it is a secret of my house; a very little harmless secret, like a little mouse. Corrèze, madame knows whom I mean, the great singer? — Corrèze came to me one day with his wonderful smile, and he said, ‘There is a blind man and he has a little girl who wants to make flowers. Will you have her taught, madame, and allow m
e to pay for her lessons?’ I allowed him. Six months afterwards I said, ‘M. Corrèze, it is all of no use. The child is clumsy. When once they have fingers like hers it is of no use.’ Then he laughed. ‘It ought to be difficult to make artificial flowers. I wish it were impossible. It is a blasphemy. But I want to make the girl believe she earns money. Will you employ her, burn the flowers, and draw the money from my account at Rothschild’s?’ And I did it to please him and I do it still; poor little clumsy ugly thing that she is, she fancies that she works for the Maison Justine! It is compromising to me. I said so to M. Corrèze. He laughed and said to me, ‘Ma chère, when it is a question of a blind man and a child we must even be compromised, which, no doubt, is very terrible.’ He is always so gay, M. Corrèze, and so good. If the child were Venus he would never take advantage of maintaining her, never, madame. Ah, he is an angel, that beautiful Corrèze. And he can laugh like a boy; it does one good to hear his laugh. It is so sweet. My poor Justine used to say to me, ‘Marie, hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.’ And it is true, very true; Madame la Princesse will forgive my garrulity.”
When she went down to her carriage the world did not seem so dark.