by Ouida
‘Blanchette!’ cried Yseulte, again, in desperation, not knowing how to stem the tide of the child’s words. She, like Blanchette herself, was ignorant of all the horrible import of those words which the little thing used, half in malicious precocious knowledge, and half in absolute childish ignorance; but they terrified her and appalled her both in themselves and for their speaker, and for all which, even to her innocence, they suggested of unspeakable inconceivable shamefulness.
‘Blanchette!’ echoed the child, mimicking the horror and expostulation of her cry. ‘Oh, how glad I am I have Schemmitz and Brawn to teach me instead of going to a convent to be made a goose of like you. Schemmitz and Brawn are old owls, but I keep my eyes and my ears open at Trouville, at Biarritz, in Paris, here, anywhere, everywhere. Now, in your nunnery you see no more, you hear no more, than if you were a statue in a chapel. That is why you are so stupid. Tiens! Why did papa call Count Othmar your friend? Is he your friend? You are as still as a mouse about everything.’
Her quick glance saw the colour mount into her cousin’s face, and the cruel child laughed triumphantly. ‘Oh, how you blush, oh-oh! Nobody blushes now-a-days. One must be old-fashioned like you to be so silly. I shall never blush. Tiens, Yseulte, tell me all about it and I will not tell Toinon.’
‘There is nothing to tell,’ said Yseulte, almost losing her patience.
‘Papa never says anything without meaning something by it,’ said Blanchette, sagaciously. ‘And if there be nothing, why should you blush? I know all about Count Othmar; he is rich — oh, so rich! Nobody was ever so rich outside the Juiverie; I heard them say so this autumn at Aix. But all he cares about is Princess Napraxine. Have you ever seen Princess Napraxine? She drives in the Bois with three horses in the Russian way; the one in the middle is a little in front of the others, and they have only little bits of silver for harness, and they fly — ouf! I mean to marry a Russian.’
‘Is she so very beautiful?’ said Yseulte, in a low tone, ashamed of questioning the child, and yet impelled by an irresistible desire to hear more of this wondrous sovereign.
‘Pas tant que ça!’ said Blanchette, critically. ‘But she is much more than only handsome. She makes every one that goes near her mad about her. She is pale, and has great eyes; but there is no one like her, they say. What do you think they call her? They call her Flocon de Neige. She cares for nobody, you know; that is what they mean. She is not at all what I admire; what I admire is the Duchesse d’Ambrée. Elle sait se faire une tête!’ — continued Blanchette, growing breathless, and powerless to express her immense admiration.
Madame d’Ambrée was a blonde, with a profusion of real gold curls, cheeks admirably tinted, and a tiny Cupid’s bow of a mouth; a great huntress, a great swimmer, a great smoker; she had very extravagant toilettes, and very loud manners, and was a really great lady, with the language of a cantinière: she was the object of the child’s idolatry.
‘I will be just like that,’ Blanchette said to herself whenever she saw Madame d’Ambrée walking on the planks at Trouville, going into the casino at Aix, or driving her piebald ponies round the Bois. Blanchette admired her own mother immensely, but she admired the Duchesse d’Ambrée still more.
‘Maman baisse un peu,’ she often said to her sister, with a little scornful smile. She knew that her mother was twenty-eight; to Blanchette that age seemed to be quite hopeless decrepitude.
‘Yseulte,’ she said, suddenly now, ‘if you do not give me your silver prayer-book, I shall tell mamma about you and papa. Dis donc, sois sage. Give me the silver Hours.’
The silver prayer-book had belonged to a Marquise de Creusac, in the time of Louis Treize. It was adorned with illuminated letters, and the coronet and initials were set in opals on one side of the silver cover. Yseulte had been given the book by her grandmother on her death-bed; she used it always, and it was the object of Blanchette’s desires.
‘You know that I cannot give it you,’ said Yseulte, gently. ‘It was my grandmother’s last gift; it is an heirloom.’
Blanchette looked up from under her yellow hair.
‘You had better give it me. Sois sage!’
She had the same expression — half menace, half malice — that her father had had.
‘I cannot,’ repeated her cousin, ‘I have told you so, dear, a hundred times. I should not have a moment’s peace if I parted with that book.’
Blanchette said nothing more, but she made a wheel of herself on the school-room floor, as she had seen the boys do on the pavement in Paris. ‘Comme on est bête! Comme on est bête!’ she kept thinking in her shrewd little mind, as she stood on her wise little skull with all the dexterity of any street-boy.
Blanchette at ten years old had already resolved the problem of life with great simplicity; its solution seemed to her to consist in getting whatever you wanted by being detestable whenever you did not get it.
On the night of the ball, when the first carriages rolled up to the perron of Millo, Yseulte, who had gone to bed at ten o’clock, but had not slept, rose and went to her window, which looked on the front of the house. The illuminations of the building and of the grounds were so brilliant that the light was almost as strong as day. The awnings hid from her sight the steps at which the arriving guests descended, but she could see the carriages as they came up toward them, and she could hear the Suisse bawl out the names of those who arrived one after another; amongst them some of the greatest names of Europe. At twelve she heard the name of Othmar; but she had not seen him, for the blinds of his brougham were down.
An hour and a half later, almost the last of the apparently endless succession of champing horses and lamp-lit coupés, she saw one carriage of which the window next her was lowered as it drove up; she could see within it a very lovely woman, with a little tiara of diamonds on her head, and a great bouquet, made entirely of gardenias, in her hand, and a cloak of gold tissue, lined with ermine, drawn up as high as her mouth. The lady’s profile, delicate as if it were cut in ivory, with something satirical and mutinous in its expression, was all that Yseulte could see of her; but she felt that in that moment she had looked on the Princess Napraxine. In effect, as the carriage rolled beneath the awning, the sonorous Muscovite name was shouted by the waiting lackeys.
The girl withdrew from the casement and shut the shutters; she did not want to see any more.
She lay down again, but she did not sleep. The sound of dance music, played by the band of the ball-room, echoed through all the villa, which was a light modern structure, and had little solidity in it. She did not care for the dancing; she hardly knew what it was like; but she thought of the lovely woman with the pretty contemptuous profile, and the diamonds and the gardenias in her hair. She could not sleep for thinking of her; she was there below in the light, amidst the music and the flowers, and Othmar was there too. The visitants which Alain de Vannes had wished should go to her, envy and regret, entered her innocent soul, and made sad ravages there, as when a rat runs amidst a white rose and pulls its blossoms down.
Sleep kept aloof from her; she was ashamed of her own thoughts, but the dawn found her with hot wide-open eyes. The music was still sounding, like a tireless, immortal thing that shouted and laughed for its pleasure. It was only the first notes of the cotillon; but to Yseulte it sounded like the song of triumph of the world — that world which she would never know.
All her nuns and priests could not perhaps have read her a sounder homily than the house mutely spoke when she went timidly downstairs and through its many rooms at sunrise.
The flowers covering the balustrades and walls of the staircase were dying; the sleepy servants were turning out the gas, putting out the wax candles; other servants were drinking champagne and smoking cigars as they hurried to clear away the supper tables; in the ball-room there was a litter of dropped flowers, torn lace, discarded cotillon toys, atoms of fringe and of ribbon which looked scarcely better than rags; the torches were still flaming amongst the scorched clusters of azaleas and
roses; in the vestibule two gentlemen who had stayed to drink some black coffee were putting on their furs and yawning miserably; Alain de Vannes, as he sauntered upstairs, was muttering, ‘C’est crevant! — un bal chez soi: — on ne me reprendra jamais!’ and a maid of his wife’s was recounting her griefs to a tall powdered lackey, with sobs of rage; ‘Madame m’a donnée des gifles, mais des gifles! — enfin — elle tomba de sommeil et puis le petit Prangins n’a pas été gentil pour elle, du tout, du tout, ce soir!’
CHAPTER XIII.
Nadine Napraxine meanwhile rolled home in the pale light of the winter morning, which had dawned over a quiet sea and a peaceful country. She was neither fatigued nor exhilarated by a ball which had been one of those long triumphs to which she was so well used. She looked as calm, as cool, as delicate of hue, as any Lenten lily that opens between the snow and the moss on an April morning. She was one of those women who can go through incredible fatigue, whether of pleasure or of travel, without any personal traces of it.
Whilst her companion, Lady Brancepeth, nodded and slumbered, she looked out at the landscape over which the sun was slowly dawning, driving before its rays the white mists which stretched over sea and mountain. There were people moving in it: women came down the steep stone ladders of their fields bearing heavy loads of oranges or of vegetables; mule carts plodded along the cactus-lined paths; fishermen were pushing boats into deep water; church bells were ringing. She, with her delicate and acute perception of what was beautiful, found pleasure in watching the simple hardy figures which were seen for a moment and then disappeared beneath the mist, in hearing the bells answer one another ringing across the white clouds that were touching the earth.
‘What does it feel like,’ she wondered, ‘to sleep sound all night on a bit of sacking, and get up in the dusk, and go into the wet fields and labour? What do these people think about? What do sheep think about, or oxen? It must be much the same thing. Wilkes, what do field-labourers think about? — you have got ever so many at home, you ought to know.’
Lady Brancepeth felt cross at being aroused and cross at having been asleep:
‘Think about?’ she murmured; ‘oh, I don’t know; beer, I believe with us, beer and bacon; here I should say francs, nothing but francs, probably. What put them in your head? And there are no labourers here in our sense of the word, you know; it is most of it la petite culture, you know. I never believe it is good for the soil, certainly not in the long run; it can’t be; they get everything out, they put nothing in. Of course they think only of the market of the day; they don’t think of the future, those people. That will be always the upshot of peasant proprietors, they will always ruin the soil.’
Nadine Napraxine laughed:
‘What a fine thing it is to be an Englishwoman; you think of political economy and of ‘the soil’ the very moment that you wake out of a doze! I suppose the earth will certainly last our time; what does the rest matter?’
‘You are so — so — so egotistic and autocratic, Nadine.’
The Princess laughed:
‘Oh, I don’t know; I don’t think so. I like a despotism, I was born under it; it saves so much trouble, and one big despot is very much easier to deal with than a score of little ones, especially when you stand well at his Court. It is always better to be judged by a judge instead of a jury, but simpletons will not see that.’
‘But how can one judge, however just, rightfully judge a nation of millions unless he have the eyes and ears of Vishnou? I think you really are a despot by nature, but you are so very disputatious that you are always ready to repudiate your most cherished opinions for sheer sake of argument. You should have been a sophist.’
‘Every question is polygonal. Look at that gleam of light on that sail and all the rest of the vessel lost in fog — how charming! — it is like a picture of Aïvanoffsky’s. That is what I like in life; nothing said out, nothing broadly and rudely done, everything à demi mot, everything suggestion, not assertion; that is the only way to exhaust nothing, not to be wearied.’
‘You like impressions, not pictures; that is the new school. Everyone is not satisfied with it. That there are people to whom these vague wavy lines, those dim washes of colour, tell little — —’
‘Oh, the people to whom one must explain! Let them all go where the sheep of Panurge went.’
‘I wish you would condescend for once to explain something,’ said Lady Brancepeth, and paused: Princess Nadine heard with a look of infinite ennui.
‘You mean to revenge yourself for having been awakened out of that dose. I never explain — enfin! —— tell me what you want.’
Under this slight encouragement Lady Brancepeth gained courage to plunge straightway into a question which she had long meditated.
‘Will you tell me, my dear Nadine, what you mean to do with my brother?’
Madame Napraxine turned a little round in her ermine and gold brocade, and looked solemnly in her companion’s face.
‘My dear Evelyn, you amaze me! Do with him? I? With your brother? — with Lord Geraldine? What should I do with him? Do you want me to make a good marriage for him? But you are there to preside over that; and, besides, he will make one himself — some day.’
‘Speak seriously for a moment,’ said Lady Brancepeth with impatience. ‘You are very clever, and are fond of demi-mots; I am a blunt, stupid woman, and so I like plain ones. It is two years since Geraldine has had any other thought than yourself. When will you be merciful and unmagnetise him?’
‘Does that depend on me?’ said the Princess Nadine, with a little laugh. ‘Do you want me to make a few passes in the air with my hand? I can do it if you wish, but I doubt the result.’
Lady Brancepeth made an impatient movement.
‘Poor Ralph is only one amongst many, I know, my dear; but for that very reason surely you might spare him? You do not care the least little atom about him — —’
‘The least little! I am a Russian, but I do know that is not good English. I speak better English than you do.’
‘You do everything admirably well. You are the most intelligent as you are the most interesting woman that I know; but you are also the most heartless,’ answered Lady Brancepeth with some heat. ‘I am not a prude; I can understand temptation and the weakness that cedes to it; I can understand love and the force that it may exercise, and I can forgive even its follies; but your kind of coquetry I cannot forgive. It is the exercise of a merciless power which is as chill as a vivisector’s attitude before his victim. You have no sympathy or compassion; you have only a sort of cynical amusement in what you do; you make yourself the centre of a man’s life with no more effort than you use that fan; the man is nothing to you, nothing on earth; but you destroy all his peace, all his future — —’
‘Dear Wilkes, do not be so tragic!’ murmured Princess Napraxine, with a little yawn. ‘I dislike tragedy; I never by any chance go to Perrin’s when they play one. If men are fond of me — as you say — —’
‘As I say!’ ejaculated Lady Brancepeth.
‘As you say; it is merely because — as you wisely if ungrammatically observed — it is because I do not care the “least little atom” about any one of them. I should have exceedingly liked to care for Platon; it would have been something new; it would have agreed with my programme of life; it would have suited me in every way; but n’aime pas qui veut; who could care for Platon? Does anybody ever care for a good-natured, very big, and entirely uninteresting person who drinks brandy and grows bald?’
‘You beg my question,’ retorted Lady Brancepeth; ‘you know very well that I am not talking of your husband.’
‘Then you ought to be if you be not! You are a very immoral woman to recommend me to care for anybody else,’ said the Princess with her soft, quiet little laugh, that was as pretty as the coo of a wood dove but by no means so harmless.
‘You would exasperate a saint,’ cried her companion.
‘I never met one,’ said Nadine. ‘The nearest approac
h to one that I know is Melville, and I can put him out of temper.’
‘I have no doubt you can,’ said Lady Brancepeth; ‘I think you would anyone; you do such immeasurable harm, and are all the while as demure as a rabbit, and as innocent-looking. My dear Princess, you are the cruellest woman that lives! Flocon de Neige they call you. They might much more appropriately call you Goutte de Morphine. You enervate, and you kill, and all the while, what do you care? You care no more than the morphia does.’
‘Did the ball bore you too so dreadfully that you are so very unkind? A rabbit and morphia! Your similes are mixed, my dear. I am never a flirt; a flirt is a very vulgar thing. No man lives, I can assure you, who could say he ever had a word of encouragement from me. That is not at all my way.’
‘No!’ said Lady Brancepeth, bitterly, ‘your way is merely to look at men and destroy them, and then laugh a little when they are spoken of: I never reproached you with ordinary coquetry; I reproach you with something much more subtle, arrogant, cold, and cruel. There is a gum of the East advertised which does not kill flies, only attracts them, so that they cling to it by millions, and hang there stupidly in a throng till they die. That gum is very like your power over your lovers; it is just as passive, just as deadly.’