by Ouida
“Ah!” said he, with a sympathetic shiver, “think what a pair of hunters we might have had for the money!” With which dismal and remorseful remembrance the old bird, who had been trapped like a young pigeon, swore mightily, and withdrew into humbled and disgusted silence.
Next morning we heard, to our comfort — what lots of people there always are to tell us how to lock our stable-door when our solitary mare has been stolen — that, with a gentle hint from the police, the Marchioness St. Julian, with her confrères, had taken wing to the Ionian Isles, where, at Corfu or Cephalonia, they will re-erect the Casa di Fiori, and glide gently on again from vingt-et-un to loo, and from loo to lansquenet, under eyes as young and blinded as our own. They went without Lucrezia. Conran took her into his own hands. Any other man in the regiment would have been pretty well ridiculed at taking a bride out of the Casa di Fiori; but the statements made by the high-born Abbess of her Roman convert were so clear, and so to the girl’s honor, and he had such a way of holding his own, of keeping off liberties from himself and anything belonging to him, and was, moreover, known to be of such fastidious honor, that his young wife was received as if she had been a Princess in her own right. With her respected parent Conran had a brief interview previous to his flight from Malta, in which, with a few gentle hints, he showed that worthy it would be wiser to leave his daughter unmolested for the future, and I doubt if Mr. Orangia Magnolia, alias Pepe Guari, would know his own child in the joyous, graceful, daintily-dressed mistress of Conran’s handsome Parisian establishment.
Little Grand and I suffered cruelly. We were the butts of the mess for many a long month afterwards, when every idiot’s tongue asked us on every side after the health of the Marchioness St. Julian? when we were going to teach them lansquenet? how often we heard from the aristocratic members of the Maltese Peerage? with like delightful pleasantries, which the questioners deemed high wit. We paid for it, too, to that arch old screw Balthazar; but I doubt very much if the money were not well lost, and the experience well gained. It cured me of my rawness and Little Grand of his self-conceit, the only thing that had before spoilt that good-hearted, quick-tempered, and clever-brained little fellow. Oh, Pater and Materfamilias, disturb not yourselves so unnecessarily about the crop of wild oats which your young ones are sowing broadcast. Those wild oats often spring from a good field of high spirit, hot courage, and thoughtless generosity, that are the sign and basis of nobler virtues to come, and from them very often rise two goodly plants — Experience and Discernment.
LADY MARABOUT’S TROUBLES:
OR,
THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE.
IN THREE SEASONS.
SEASON THE FIRST. — THE ELIGIBLE.
One of the kindest-natured persons that I ever knew on this earth, where kind people are as rare as black eagles or red deer, is Helena, Countess of Marabout, née De Bonc[oe]ur. She has foibles, she has weaknesses — who amongst us has not? — she will wear her dresses décolletées, though she’s sixty, if Burke tells us truth; she will rouge and practise a thousand other little toilette tricks, but they are surely innocent, since they deceive nobody; and if you wait for a woman who is no artifices, I am afraid you shall have to forswear the sex in toto, my friends, and come growling back to your Diogenes’ tub in the Albany, with your lantern still lit every day of your lives.
Lady Marabout is a very charming person. As for her weaknesses, she is all the nicer for them, to my taste. I like people with weaknesses myself; those without them do look so dreadfully scornfully and unsympathizingly upon one from the altitude of their superiority, de toute la hauteur de sa bêtise, as a witty Frenchman says. Humanity was born with weaknesses. If I were a beggar, I might hope for a coin from a man with some; a man without any, I know, would shut up his porte-monnaie, with an intensified click, to make me feel trebly envious, and consign me to D 15 and his truncheon, on the score of vagrancy.
Lady Marabout is a very charming person, despite her little foibles, and she gives very pleasant little dinners, both at her house in Lowndes Square and in her jointure villa at Twickenham, where the bad odors of Thames are drowned in the fragrance of the geraniums, piled in great heaps of red, white, and variegated blossom in the flowerbeds on the lawn. She has been married twice, but has only one son, by her first union — Carruthers, of the Guards — a very good fellow, whom his mother thinks perfection, though if she did know certain scenes in her adored Philip’s life, the good lady might hesitate before she endowed her son with all the cardinal virtues as she does at the present moment. She has no daughters, therefore you will wonder to hear that the prime misery, burden, discomfort, and worry of her life is chaperonage. But so it is.
Lady Marabout is the essence of good nature; she can’t say No: that unpleasant negative monosyllable was never heard to issue from her full, smiling, kind-looking lips: she is in a high position, she has an extensive circle, thanks to her own family and those of the baronet and peer she successively espoused; and some sister, or cousin, or friend, is incessantly hunting her up to bring out their girls, and sell them well off out of hand; young ladies being goods extremely likely to hang on hand nowadays.
“Of all troubles, the troubles of a chaperone are the greatest,” said Lady Marabout to me at the wedding déjeûner of one of her protegées. “In the first place, one looks on at others’ campaigns instead of conducting them one’s self; secondly, it brings back one’s own bright days to see the young things’ smiles and blushes, like that girl’s just now (I do hope she’ll be happy!); and thirdly, one has all the responsibility, and gets all the blame if anything goes wrong. I’ll never chaperone anybody again now I have got rid of Leila.”
So does Lady Marabout say twenty times; yet has she invariably some young lady under her wing, whose relatives are defunct, or invalided, or in India, or out of society somehow; and we all of us call her house The Yard, and her (among ourselves) not Lady Marabout but Lady Tattersall. The worries she has in her chaperone’s office would fill a folio, specially as her heart inclines to the encouragement of romance, but her reason to the banishment thereof; and while her tenderness suffers if she thwarts her protégées’ leanings, her conscience gives her neuralgic twinges if she abets them to unwise matches while under her dragonnage.
“What’s the matter, mother?” asked Carruthers, one morning. He’s very fond of his mother, and will never let any one laugh at her in his hearing.
“Matter? Everything!” replied Lady Marabout, concisely and comprehensively, as she sat on the sofa in her boudoir, with her white ringed hands and her bien conservé look, and her kindly pleasant eyes and her rich dress; one could see what a pretty woman she has been, and that Carruthers may thank her for his good looks. “To begin with, Félicie has been so stupid as to marry; married the greengrocer (whom she will ruin in a week!), and has left me to the mercies of a stupid woman who puts pink with cerise, mauve with magenta, and sky-blue with azureline, and has no recommendation except that she is as ugly as the Medusa, and so will not tempt you to — —”
“Make love to her, as I did to Marie,” laughed Carruthers. “Marie was a pretty little dear; it was very severe in you to send her away.”
Lady Marabout tried hard to look severe and condemnatory, but failed signally, nature had formed the smooth brow and the kindly eyes in far too soft a mould.
“Don’t jest about it, Philip; you know it was a great pain, annoyance, and scandal to me. Well! Félicie is gone, and Oakes was seen pawning some of my Mechlin the other day, so I have been obliged to discharge her; and they both of them suited me so well! Then Bijou is ill, poor little pet — —”
“With repletion of chicken panada?”
“No; Bijou isn’t such a gourmet. You judge him by yourself, I suppose; men always do! Then Lady Hautton told me last night that you were the wildest man on town, and at forty — —”
“You think I ought to ranger? So I will, my dear mother, some day; but at present I am — so very comfortable; it would be a pity to
alter! What pains one’s friends are always at to tell unpalatable things; if they would but be only half so eager to tell us the pleasant ones! I shall expect you to cut Lady Hautton if she speak badly of me, I can’t afford to lose your worship, mother!”
“My worship? How conceited you are, Philip! As for Lady Hautton, I believe she does dislike you, because you did not engage yourself to Adelina, and were selected aide-de-camp to her Majesty, instead of Hautton; still, I am afraid she spoke too nearly the truth.”
“Perhaps Marie has entered her service and told tales.”
But Lady Marabout wouldn’t laugh, she always looks very grave about Marie.
“My worst trouble,” she began hastily, “is that your aunt Honiton is too ill to come to town; no chance of her being well enough to come at all this season; and of course the charge of Valencia has devolved on me. You know how I hate chaperoning, and I did so hope I should be free this year; besides, Valencia is a great responsibility, very great; a girl of so much beauty always is; there will be sure to be so many men about her at once, and your aunt will expect me to marry her so very well. It is excessively annoying.”
“My poor dear mother!” cried Carruthers. “I grant you are an object of pity. You are everlastingly having young fillies sent you to break in, and they want such a tight hand on the ribbons.”
“And a tight hand, as you call it, I never had, and never shall have,” sighed Lady Marabout. “Valencia will be no trouble to me on that score, however; she has been admirably educated, knows all that is due to her position, and will never give me a moment’s anxiety by any imprudence or inadvertence. But she is excessively handsome, and a beauty is a great responsibility when she first comes out.”
“Val was always a handsome child, if I remember. I dare say she is a beauty now. When is she coming up? because I’ll tell the men to mark the house and keep clear of it,” laughed Carruthers. “You’re a dreadfully dangerous person, mother; you have always the best-looking girl in town with you. Fulke Nugent says if he should ever want such a thing as a wife when he comes into the title, he shall take a look at the Marabout Yearlings Sale.”
“Abominably rude of you and your friends to talk me over in your turf slang! I wish you would come and bid at the sale, Philip; I should like to see you married — well married, of course.”
“My beloved mother!” cried Carruthers. “Leave me in peace, if you please, and catch the others if you can. There’s Goodey, now; every chaperone and débutante in London has set traps for him for the last I don’t know how many years; wouldn’t he do for Valencia?”
“Goodwood? Of course he would; he would do for any one; the Dukedom’s the oldest in the peerage. Goodwood is highly eligible. Thank you for reminding me, Philip. Since Valencia is coming, I must do my best for her.” Which phrase meant with Lady Marabout that she must be very lynx-eyed as to settlements, and a perfect dragon to all detrimental connections, must frown with Medusa severity on all horrors of younger sons, and advocate with all the weight of personal experience the advantage and agrémens of a good position, in all of which practicalities she generally broke down, with humiliation unspeakable, immediately her heart was enlisted and her sympathies appealed to on the enemy’s side. She sighed, played with her bracelets thoughtfully, and then, heroically resigning herself to her impending fate, brightened up a little, and asked her son to go and choose a new pair of carriage-horses for her.
To look at Lady Marabout as she sat in her amber satin couch that morning, pleasant, smiling, well-dressed, well-looking, with the grace of good birth and the sunniness of good nature plainly written on her smooth brow and her kindly eyes, and wealth — delicious little god! — stamping itself all about her, from the diamond rings on her soft white fingers to the broidered shoe on the feet, of whose smallness she was still proud, one might have ignorantly imagined her to be the most happy, enviable, well-conditioned, easy-going dowager in the United Kingdom. But appearances are deceptive, and if we believe what she constantly asserted, Lady Marabout was very nearly worn into her grave by a thousand troubles; her almshouses, whose roofs would eternally blow off with each high wind; her dogs, whom she would overfeed; her ladies’ maids, who were only hired to steal, tease, or scandalize her; the begging letter-writers, who distilled tears from her eyes and sovereigns from her purse, let Carruthers disclose their hypocrisies as he might; the bolder begging-letters, written by hon. secs., and headed by names with long handles, belonging to Pillars of the State and Lights of the Church, which compelled her to make a miserable choice between a straitened income or a remorseful conscience — tormented, in fine, with worries small and large, from her ferns, on which she spent a large fortune, and who drooped maliciously in their glass cases, with an ill-natured obstinacy characteristic of desperately-courted individuals, whether of the floral or the human world, to those marriageable young ladies whom she took under her wing to usher into the great world, and who were certain to run counter to her wishes and overthrow her plans, to marry ill, or not marry at all, or do something or other to throw discredit on her chaperoning abilities. She was, she assured us, pétrie with worries, small and large, specially as she was so eminently sunny, affable, and radiant a looking person, that all the world took their troubles to her, selected her as their confidante, and made her the repository of their annoyances; but her climax of misery was to be compelled to chaperone, and as a petition for some débutante to be intrusted to her care was invariably made each season, and “No” was a monosyllable into which her lips utterly refused to form themselves, each season did her life become a burden to her. There was never any rest for the soul of Helena, Countess of Marabout, till her house in Lowndes Square was shut up, and her charges off her hand, and she could return in peace to her jointure-villa at Twickenham, or to Carruthers’ old Hall of Deepdene, and among her flowers, her birds, and her hobbies, throw off for a while the weary burden of her worries as a chaperone.
“Valencia will give me little trouble, I hope. So admirably brought-up a girl, and so handsome as she is, will be sure to marry soon, and marry well,” thought Lady Marabout, self-congratulatorily, as she dressed for dinner the day of her niece’s arrival in town, running over mentally the qualifications and attractions of Valencia Valletort, while Félicie’s successor, Mademoiselle Despréaux, whose crime was then to put pink with cerise, mauve with magenta, and sky-blue with azureline, gave the finishing touches to her toilette— “Valencia will give me no trouble; she has all the De Boncoeur beauty, with the Valletort dignity. Who would do for her? Let me see; eligible men are not abundant, and those that are eligible are shy of being marked as Philip would say — perhaps from being hunted so much, poor things! There is Fulke Nugent, heir to a barony, and his father is ninety — very rich, too — he would do; and Philip’s friend, Caradoc, poor, I know, but their Earldom’s the oldest peerage patent. There is Eyre Lee, too; I don’t much like the man, supercilious and empty-headed; still he’s an unobjectionable alliance. And there is Goodwood. Every one has tried for Goodwood, and failed. I should like Valencia to win him; he is decidedly the most eligible man in town. I will invite him to dinner. If he is not attracted by Valencia’s beauty, nothing can attract him —— Despréaux! comme vous êtes bête! Otez ces panaches, de grace!”
“Valencia will give me no trouble; she will marry at once,” thought Lady Marabout again, looking across the dinner-table at her niece.
If any young patrician might be likely to marry at once, it was the Hon. Valencia Valletort; she was, to the most critical, a beauty: her figure was perfect, her features were perfect, and if you complained that her large glorious eyes were a trifle too changeless in expression, that her cheek, exquisitely independent of Maréchale powder, Blanc de Perle, and liquid rouge, though it was, rarely varied with her thoughts and feelings, why, you were very exacting, my good fellow, and should remember that nothing is quite perfect on the face of the earth — not even a racer or a woman — and that whether you bid at the Marabout yearling s
ales or the Rawcliffe, if you wish to be pleased you’d better leave a hypercritical spirit behind you, and not expect to get all points to your liking. The best filly will have something faulty in temper or breeding, symmetry or pace, for your friend Jack Martingale to have the fun of pointing out to you when your money is paid and the filly in your stall; and your wife will have the same, only Martingale will point her flaws out behind your back, and only hint them to you with an all-expressive “Not allowed to smoke in the dining-room now!” “A little bit of a flirt, madame — n’est-ce pas, Charlie?” “Reins kept rather tight, eh, old fellow?” or something equally ambiguous, significant, and unpleasant.
“I must consider, Philip, I have brought out the beauty of the season,” said Lady Marabout to Carruthers, eying her niece as she danced at her first ball at the Dowager-Duchess of Amandine’s, and beginning to brighten up a little under the weight of her responsibilities.
“I think you have, mother. Val’s indisputably handsome. You must tell her to make play with Goodwood or Nugent.”
Lady Marabout unfurled her fan, and indignantly interrupted him:
“My dear Philip! do you suppose I would teach Valencia, or any girl under my charge, to lay herself out for any man, whoever or whatever it might be? I trust your cousin would not stoop to use such man[oe]uvres, did I even stoop to counsel them. Depend upon it, Philip, it is precisely those women who try to ‘make play,’ as you call it, with your sex that fail most to charm them. It is abominable the way in which you men talk, as if we all hunted you down, and would drive you to St. George’s nolens volens!”
“So you would, mother,” laughed Carruthers. “We ‘eligible men’ have a harder life of it than rabbits in a warren, with a dozen beagles after them. From the minute we’re of age we’re beset with traps for the unwary, and the spring-guns are so dexterously covered, with an inviting, innocent-looking turf of courtesies and hospitalities that it’s next to a mural impossibility to escape them, let one retire into one’s self, keep to monosyllables through all the courses of all the dinners and all the turns of all the valses, and avoid everything ‘compromising,’ as one may. I’ve suffered, and can tell you. I suffer still, though I believe and hope they are beginning to look on me as an incurable, given over to the clubs, the coulisses, and the cover-side. There’s a fellow that’s known still more of the peines fortes et dures than I. Goodwood’s coming to ask for an introduction to Val, I would bet.”