Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  She was the last of her name; her father, broken-hearted at the news from Dumblain and Preston, had died the very day after his lodgment in the Tower. There was no heir male of his line, and the title had passed to his daughter; there had been thoughts of confiscation and attainder, but others, unknown to her, solicited what she scorned to ask for herself, and the greed of the hungry “Hanoverian pack” spared the lands and the revenues of Lilliesford. In haughty pride, in lonely mourning, the fairest beauty of the Court and Town withdrew again to the solitude of her western counties, and tarried there, dwelling amidst her women and her almost regal household, in the sacred solitude of grief, wherein none might intrude. Proud Cecil Castlemaine was yet prouder than of yore; alone, sorrowing for her ruined Cause and exiled King, she would hold converse with none of those who had had a hand in drawing down the disastrous fate she mourned, and only her staghound could have seen the weariness upon her face when she bent down to him, or Gabrielle the falcon felt her hand tremble when it stroked her folded wings. She stood on the terrace, looking over her spreading lands, not the water-lilies on the river below whiter than her lips, pressed painfully together. Perhaps she repented of certain words, spoken to one whom now she would never again behold — perhaps she thought of that delicate toy that was to have been brought back in victory and hope, that now might lie stained and stiffened with blood next a lifeless heart, for never a word in the twelve months gone by had there come to Lilliesford as tidings of Fulke Ravensworth.

  Her pride was dear to her, dearer than aught else; she had spoken as was her right to speak, she had done what became a Castlemaine; it would have been weakness to have acted otherwise; what was he — a landless soldier — that he should have dared as he had dared? Yet the sables she wore were not solely for the dead Earl, not solely for the lost Stuarts the hot mist that would blind the eyes of Cecil Castlemaine, as hours swelled to days, and days to months, and she — the flattered beauty of the Court and Town — stayed in self-chosen solitude in her halls of Lilliesford, still unwedded and unwon.

  The noon-hours chimed from the bell-tower, and the sunny beauty of the morning but weighed with heavier sadness on her heart; the song of the birds, the busy hum of the gnats, the joyous ring of the silver bell round her pet fawn’s neck, as it darted from her side under the drooping boughs — none touched an answering chord of gladness in her. She stood looking over her stretching woodlands in deep thought, so deep that she heard no step over the lawn beneath, nor saw the frightened rush of the deer, as a boy, crouching among the tangled ferns, sprang up from his hiding-place under the beechen branches, and stood on the terrace before her, craving her pardon in childish, yet fearless tones. She turned, bending on him that glance which had made the over-bold glance of princes fall abashed. The boy was but a little tatterdemalion to have ventured thus abruptly into the presence of the Countess of Castlemaine; still it was with some touch of a page’s grace that he bowed before her.

  “Lady, I crave your pardon, but my master bade me watch for you, though I watched till midnight.”

  “Your master?”

  A flush, warm as that on the leaves of the musk-roses, rose to her face for an instant, then faded as suddenly. The boy did not notice her words, but went on in an eager whisper, glancing anxiously round, as a hare would glance fearing the hunters.

  “And told me when I saw you not to speak his name, but only to give you this as his gage, that though all else is lost he has not forgot his honor nor your will.”

  Cecil Castlemaine spoke no word, but she stretched out her hand and took it — her own costly toy of cambric and lace, with her broidered shield and coronet.

  “Your master! Then — he lives?”

  “Lady, he bade me say no more. You have his message; I must tell no further.”

  She laid her hand upon his shoulder, a light, snow-white hand, yet one that held him now in a clasp of steel.

  “Child! answer me at your peril! Tell me of him whom you call your master. Tell me all — quick — quick!”

  “You are his friend?”

  “His friend? My Heaven! Speak on!”

  “He bade me tell no more on peril of his heaviest anger; but if you are his friend, I sure may speak what you should know without me. It is a poor friend, lady, who has need to ask whether another be dead or living!”

  The scarlet blood flamed in the Countess’s blanched face, she signed him on with impetuous command; she was unused to disobedience, and the child’s words cut her to the quick.

  “Sir Fulke sails for the French coast to-morrow night,” the boy went on, in tremulous haste. “He was left for dead — our men ran one way, and Argyll’s men the other — on the field of Sheriff-Muir; and sure if he had not been strong indeed, he would have died that awful night, untended, on the bleak moor, with the winds roaring round him, and his life ebbing away. He was not one of those who fled; you know that of him if you know aught. We got him away before dawn, Donald and I, and hid him in a shieling; he was in the fever then, and knew nothing that was done to him, only he kept that bit of lace in his hand for weeks and weeks, and would not let us stir it from his grasp. What magic there was in it we wondered often, but ’twas a magic, mayhap, that got him well at last; it was an even chance but that he’d died, God bless him! though we did what best we could. We’ve been wandering in the Highlands all the year, hiding here and tarrying there. Sir Fulke sets no count upon his life. Sure I think he thanks us little for getting him through the fever of the wounds, but he could not have borne to be pinioned, you know, lady, like a thief, and hung up by the brutes of Whigs, as a butcher hangs sheep in the shambles! The worst of the danger’s over — they’ve had their fill of the slaughter; but we sail to-morrow night for the French coast — England’s no place for my master.”

  Cecil Castlemaine let go her hold upon the boy, and her hand closed convulsively upon the dainty handkerchief — her gage sent so faithfully back to her!

  The child looked upon her face; perchance, in his master’s delirium, he had caught some knowledge of the story that hung to that broidered toy.

  “If you are his friend, madame, doubtless you have some last word to send him?”

  Cecil Castlemaine, whom nothing moved, whom nothing softened, bowed her head at the simple question, her heart wrestling sorely, her lips set together in unswerving pride, a mist before her haughty eyes, the broidered shield upon her handkerchief — the shield of her stately and unyielding race — pressed close against her breast.

  “You have no word for him, lady?”

  Her lips parted; she signed him away. Was this child to see her yielding to such weakness? Had she, Countess of Castlemaine, no better pride, no better strength, no better power of resolve, than this?

  The boy lingered.

  “I will tell Sir Fulke then, lady, that the ruined have no friends?”

  Whiter and prouder still grew the delicate beauty of her face; she raised her stately head, haughtily as she had used to glance over a glittering Court, where each voice murmured praise of her loveliness and reproach of her coldness; and placed the fragile toy of lace back in the boy’s hands.

  “Go, seek your master, and give him this in gage that their calamity makes friends more dear to us than their success. Go, he will know its meaning!”

  In place of the noon chimes the curfew was ringing from the bell-tower, the swallows were gone to roost amidst the ivy, and the herons slept with their heads under their silvery wings among the rushes by the riverside, the ferns and wild hyacinths were damp with evening dew, and the summer starlight glistened amidst the quivering woodland leaves. There was the silence of coming night over the vast forest glades, and no sound broke the stillness, save the song of the grasshopper stirring the tangled grasses, or the sweet low sigh of the west wind fanning the bells of the flowers. Cecil Castlemaine stood once more on the rose-terrace, shrouded in the dense twilight shade flung from above by the beech-boughs, waiting, listening, catching every rustle of the leaves, every
tremor of the heads of the roses, yet hearing nothing in the stillness around but the quick, uncertain throbs of her heart beating like the wing of a caged bird under its costly lace. Pride was forgotten at length, and she only remembered — fear and love.

  In the silence and the solitude came a step that she knew, came a presence that she felt. She bowed her head upon her hands; it was new to her this weakness, this terror, this anguish of joy; she sought to calm herself, to steel herself, to summon back her pride, her strength; she scorned herself for it all!

  His hand touched her, his voice fell on her ear once more, eager, breathless, broken.

  “Cecil! Cecil! is this true? Is my ruin thrice blessed, or am I mad, and dream of heaven?”

  She lifted her head and looked at him with her old proud glance, her lips trembling with words that all her pride could not summon into speech; then her eyes filled with warm, blinding tears, and softened to new beauty; — scarce louder than the sigh of the wind among the flower-bells came her words to Fulke Ravensworth’s ear, as her royal head bowed on his breast.

  “Stay, stay! Or, if you fly, your exile shall be my exile, your danger my danger!”

  The kerchief is a treasured heirloom to her descendants now, and fair women of her race, who inherit from her her azure eyes and her queenly grace, will recall how the proudest Countess of their Line loved a ruined gentleman so well that she was wedded to him at even, in her private chapel, at the hour of his greatest peril, his lowest fortune, and went with him across the seas till friendly intercession in high places gained them royal permission to dwell again at Lilliesford unmolested. And how it was ever noticeable to those who murmured at her coldness and her pride, that Cecil Castlemaine, cold and negligent as of yore to all the world beside, would seek her husband’s smile, and love to meet his eyes, and cherish her beauty for his sake, and be restless in his absence, even for the short span of a day, with a softer and more clinging tenderness than was found in many weaker, many humbler women.

  They are gone now the men and women of that generation, and their voices come only to us through the faint echo of their written words. In summer nights the old beech-trees toss their leaves in the silvery light of the stars, and the river flows on unchanged, with the ceaseless, mournful burden of its mystic song, the same now as in the midsummer of a century and a half ago. The cobweb handkerchief lies before me with its broidered shield; the same now as long years since, when it was treasured close in a soldier’s breast, and held by him dearer than all save his honor and his word. So, things pulseless and passionless endure, and human life passes away as swiftly as a song dies off from the air — as quickly succeeded, and as quickly forgot! Ronsard’s refrain is the refrain of our lives:

  Le temps s’en va, le temps s’en va, ma dame!

  Las! le temps, non; mais nous nous, en allons!

  LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS;

  OR,

  OUR MALTESE PEERAGE.

  All first things are voted the best: first kisses, first toga virilis, first hair of the first whisker; first speeches are often so superior that members subside after making them, fearful of eclipsing themselves; first money won at play must always be best, as always the dearest bought; and first wives are always so super-excellent, that, if a man lose one, he is generally as fearful of hazarding a second as a trout of biting twice.

  But of all first things commend me to one’s first uniform. No matter that we get sick of harness, and get into mufti as soon as we can now; there is no more exquisite pleasure than the first sight of one’s self in shako and sabretasche. How we survey ourselves in the glass, and ring for hot water, that the handsome housemaid may see us in all our glory, and lounge accidentally into our sisters’ schoolroom, that the governess, who is nice looking and rather flirty, may go down on the spot before us and our scarlet and gold, chains and buttons! One’s first uniform! Oh! the exquisite sensation locked up for us in that first box from Sagnarelli, or Bond Street!

  I remember my first uniform. I was eighteen — as raw a young cub as you could want to see. I had not been licked into shape by a public school, whose tongue may be rough, but cleans off grievances and nonsense better than anything else. I had been in that hotbed of effeminacy, Church principles and weak tea, a Private Tutor’s, where mamma’s darlings are wrapped up, and stuffed with a little Terence and Horace to show grand at home; and upon my life I do believe my sister Julia, aged thirteen, was more wide awake and up to life than I was, when the governor, an old rector, who always put me in mind of the Vicar of Wakefield, got me gazetted to as crack a corps as any in the Line.

  The —— th (familiarly known in the Service as the “Dare Devils,” from old Peninsular deeds) were just then at Malta, and with, among other trifles, a chest protector from my father, and a recipe for milk-arrowroot from my Aunt Matilda who lived in a constant state of catarrh and of cure for the same, tumbled across the Bay of Biscay, and found myself in Byron’s confounded “little military hot-house,” where most military men, some time or other, have roasted themselves to death, climbing its hilly streets, flirting with its Valetta belles, drinking Bass in its hot verandas, yawning with ennui in its palace, cursing its sirocco, and being done by its Jew sharpers.

  From a private tutor’s to a crack mess at Malta! — from a convent to a casino could hardly be a greater change. Just at first I was as much astray as a young pup taken into a stubble-field, and wondering what the deuce he is to do there; but as it is a pup’s nature to sniff at birds and start them, so is it a boy’s nature to snatch at the champagne of life as soon as he catches sight of it, though you may have brought him up on water from his cradle. I took to it, at least, like a retriever to water-ducks, though I was green enough to be a first-rate butt for many a day, and the practical jokes I had passed on me would have furnished the Times with food for crushers on “The Shocking State of the Army” for a twelvemonth. My chief friend and ally, tormentor and initiator, was a little fellow, Cosmo Grandison; in Ours he was “Little Grand” to everybody, from the Colonel to the baggage-women. He was seventeen, and had joined about a year. What a pretty boy he was, too! All the fair ones in Valetta, from his Excellency’s wife to our washerwomen, admired that boy, and spoilt him and petted him, and I do not believe there was a man of Ours who would have had heart to sit in court-martial on Little Grand if he had broken every one of the Queen’s regulations, and set every General Order at defiance. I think I see him now — he was new to Malta as I, having just landed with the Dare Devils, en route from India to Portsmouth — as he sat one day on the table in the mess-room as cool as a cucumber, in spite of the broiling sun, smoking, and swinging his legs, and settling his forage-cap on one side of his head, as pretty-looking, plucky, impudent a young monkey as ever piqued himself on being an old hand, and a knowing bird not to be caught by any chaff however ingeniously prepared.

  “Simon,” began Little Grand (my “St. John,” first barbarized by Mr. Pope for the convenience of his dactyles and hexameters into Sinjin, being further barbarized by this little imp into Simon)— “Simon, do you want to see the finest woman in this confounded little pepper-box? You’re no judge of a woman, though, you muff — taste been warped, perhaps, by constant contemplation of that virgin Aunt Minerva — Matilda, is it? all the same.”

  “Hang your chaff,” said I; “you’d make one out a fool.”

  “Precisely, my dear Simon; just what you are!” responded Little Grand, pleasantly, “Bless your heart, I’ve been engaged to half a dozen women since I joined. A man can hardly help it, you see; they’ve such a way of drawing you on, you don’t like to disappoint them, poor little dears, and so you compromise yourself out of sheer benevolence. There’s such a run on a handsome man — it’s a great bore. Sometimes I think I shall shave my head, or do something to disfigure myself, as Spurina did. Poor fellow, I feel for him! Well, Simon, you don’t seem curious to know who my beauty is?”

  “One of those Mitchell girls of the Twenty-first? You waltzed with ’
em all night; but they’re too tall for you, Grand.”

  “The Mitchell girls!” ejaculated he, with supreme scorn. “Great maypoles! they go about with the Fusiliers like a pair of colors. On every ball-room battlefield one’s safe to see them flaunting away, and as everybody has a shot at ’em, their hearts must be pretty well riddled into holes by this time. No, mine’s rather higher game than that. My mother’s brother-in-law’s aunt’s sister’s cousin’s cousin once removed was Viscount Twaddle, and I don’t go anything lower than the Peerage.”

  “What, is it somebody you’ve met at his Excellency’s?”

  “Wrong again, beloved Simon. It’s nobody I’ve met at old Stars and Garters’, though his lady-wife could no more do without me than without her sal volatile and flirtations. No, she don’t go there; she’s too high for that sort of thing — sick of it. After all the European Courts, Malta must be rather small and slow. I was introduced to her yesterday, and,” continued Little Grand, more solemnly than was his wont, “I do assure you she’s superb, divine; and I’m not very easy to please.”

  “What’s her name?” I asked, rather impressed with this view of a lady too high for old Stars and Garters, as we irreverently termed her Majesty’s representative in her island of Malta.

  Little Grand took his pipe out of his lips to correct me with more dignity.

  “Her title, my dear Simon, is the Marchioness St. Julian.”

  “Is that an English peerage, Grand?”