by Ouida
“Decline her,” suggested Carruthers. “I wouldn’t have a horse put in my tilbury that I’d never seen, and risk driving a spavined, wall-eyed, underbred brute through the Park; and I suppose the ignominy of the début would be to you much what the ignominy of such a turn-out would be to me.”
“Decline her? I can’t, my dear Philip! I agreed to have her a month ago. I have never seen you to tell you till now, you know; you’ve been so sworn to Newmarket all through the Spring Meetings. Decline her? she comes to-night!”
“Comes to-night?” laughed Carruthers. “All is lost, then. We shall see the Countess of Marabout moving through London society with a West Indian, who has a skin like Othello; has as much idea of manners as a housemaid that suddenly turns out an heiress, and is invited by people to whom she yesterday carried up their hot water; reflects indelible disgrace on her chaperone by gaucheries unparalleled; throws glass or silver missiles at Soames’s head when he doesn’t wait upon her at luncheon to her liking, as she has been accustomed to do at the negroes — —”
“Philip, pray don’t!” cried Lady Marabout, piteously.
“Or, we shall welcome under the Marabout wing a young lady fresh from convent walls and pensionnaire flirtations, who astonishes a dinner-party by only taking the first course, on the score of jours maigres and conscientious scruples; who is visited by révérends pères from Farm Street, and fills your drawing-room with High Church curates, whom she tries to draw over from their ‘mother’s’ to their ‘sister’s’ open arms; who goes every day to early morning mass instead of taking an early morning canter, and who, when invited to sing at a soirée musicale, begins ‘Sancta Maria adorata!’”
“Philip, don’t!” cried Lady Marabout. “Bark at him, Bijou, the heartless man! It is as likely as not little Montolieu may realize one of your horrible sketches. Ah, Philip, you don’t know what the worries of a chaperone are!”
“Thank Heaven, no!” laughed Carruthers.
“It is easy to make a joke of it, and very tempting, I dare say — one’s woes always are amusing to other people, they don’t feel the smart themselves, and only laugh at the grimace it forces from one — but I can tell you, Philip, it is anything but a pleasant prospect to have to go about in society with a girl one may be ashamed of! — I don’t know anything more trying; I would as soon wear paste diamonds as introduce a girl that is not perfectly good style.”
“But why not have thought of all this in time?”
Lady Marabout sank back in her chair, and curled Bijou’s ears, with a sigh.
“My dear Philip, if everybody always thought of things in time, would there be any follies committed at all? It’s precisely because repentance comes too late, that repentance is such a horrible wasp, with such a merciless sting. Besides, could I refuse poor Lilla Montolieu, unhappy as she is with that bear of a man?”
“I never felt more anxious in my life,” thought Lady Marabout, as she sat before the fire in her drawing-room — it was a chilly April day — stirring the cream into her pre-prandial cup of tea, resting one of her small satin-slippered feet on Bijou’s back, while the firelight sparkled on the Dresden figures, the statuettes, the fifty thousand costly trifles, in which the Marabout rooms equalled any in Belgravia. “I never felt more anxious — not on any of Philip’s dreadful yachting expeditions, nor even when he went on that perilous exploring tour into Arabia Deserta, I do think. If she should be unpresentable — and then poor dear Lilla’s was not much of a match, and the girl will not have a sou, she tells me frankly; I can hardly hope to do anything for her. There is one thing, she will not be a responsibility like Valencia or Cecil, and what would have been a bad match for them will be a good one for her. She must accept the first offer made her, if she have any at all, which will be very doubtful; few Benedicts bow to Beatrices nowadays, unless Beatrice is a good ‘investment,’ as they call it. She will soon be here. That is the carriage now stopped, I do think. How anxious I feel! Really it can’t be worse for a Turkish bridegroom never to see his wife’s face till after the ceremony than it is for one not to have seen a girl till one has to introduce her. If she shouldn’t be good style!”
And Lady Marabout’s heart palpitated, possibly prophetically, as she set down her little Sèvres cup and rose out of her arm-chair, with Bijou shaking his silver collar and bells, to welcome the new inmate of Lowndes Square, with her sunny smile and her kindly voice, and her soft beaming eyes, which, as I have often stated, would have made Lady Marabout look amiable at an Abruzzi bandit who had demanded her purse, or an executioner who had led her out to capital punishment, and now made her radiate, warm and bright, on a guest whose advent she dreaded. Hypocrisy, you say. Not a bit of it! Hypocrisy may be eminently courteous, but take my word for it, it’s never cordial! There are natures who throw such golden rays around them naturally, as there are others who think brusquerie and acidity cardinal virtues, and deal them out as points of conscience; are there not sunbeams that shine kindly alike on fragrant violet tufts and barren brambles, velvet lawns and muddy trottoirs? are there not hail-clouds that send jagged points of ice on all the world pêle-mêle, as mercilessly on the broken rose as on the granite boulder?
“She is good style, thank Heaven!” thought Lady Marabout, as she went forward, with her white soft hands, their jewels flashing in the light, outstretched in welcome. “My dear child, how much you are like your mother! You must let me be fond of you for her sake, first, and then — for your own!”
The conventional thought did not make the cordial utterance insincere. The two ran in couples — we often drive such pairs, every one of us — and if they entail insincerity, Veritas, vale!
“Madre mia, I called to inquire if you have survived the anxiety of last night, and to know what jeune sauvage or feir religieuse you may have had sent you for the galvanizing of Belgravia?” said Carruthers, paying his accustomed visit in his mother’s boudoir, and throwing macaroons at Bijou’s nose.
“My dear Philip, I hardly know; she puzzles me. She’s what, if she were a man, I should classify as a detrimental.”
“Is she awkward?”
“Not in the least. Perfect manners, wherever she learned them.”
“Brusque?”
“Soft as a gazelle. Very like her mother.”
“Brown?”
“Fair as that statuette, with a beautiful bloom; lovely gold hair, too, and hazel eyes.”
“What are the shortcomings, then?”
“There are none; and it’s that that puzzles me. She’s been six years in that convent, and yet, I do assure you, her style is perfect. She’s hardly eighteen, but she’s the air of the best society. She is — a — well, almost nobody, as people rank now, you know, for poor dear Lilla’s marriage was not what she should have made, but the girl might be a royal duke’s daughter for manner.”
“A premature artificial femme du monde? Bah! nothing more odious,” said Carruthers, poising a macaroon on Pandore’s nose. “Make ready! — present! — fire! There’s a good dog!”
“No, nothing of that sort: very natural, frank, vivacious. Nothing artificial about her; very charming indeed! But she might be a young Countess, the queen of a monde rather than a young girl just out of a French convent; and, you know, my dear Philip, that sort of wit and nonchalance may be admirable for Cecil Cheveley, assured of her position, but they’re dangerous to a girl like this Flora Montolieu: they will make people remark her and ask who she is, and try to pull her to pieces, if they don’t find her somebody they dare not hit. I would much rather she were of the general pattern, pleasing, but nothing remarkable, well-bred, but nothing to envy, thoroughly educated, but monosyllabic in society; such a girl as that passes among all the rest, suits mediocre men (and the majority of men are mediocre, you know, my dear Philip), and pleases women because she is a nice girl, and no rival; but this little Montolieu — —”
And Lady Marabout sighed with a prescience of coming troubles, while Carruthers laughed and rose.
“Will worry your life out! I must go, for I have to sit in court-martial at two (for a mere trifle, a deuced bore to us, but le service oblige!), so I shall escape introduction to your little Montolieu to-day. Why will you fill your house with girls, my dear mother? — it is fifty times more agreeable when you are reigning alone. Henceforth, I can’t come in to lunch with you without going through the formula of a mild flirtation — women think you so ill-natured if you don’t flirt a little with them, that amiable men like myself haven’t strength of mind to refuse. You should keep your house an open sanctuary for me, when you know I’ve no other in London except when I retreat into White’s and the U. S.!”
“She puzzles me!” pondered Lady Marabout, as Despréaux disrobed her that night. “I always am to be puzzled, I think! I never can have one of those quiet, mediocre, well-mannered, remarkable-for-nothing girls, who have no idiosyncrasies and give nobody any trouble; one marries them safely to some second-rate man; nobody admires them, and nobody dislikes them; they’re to society what neutral tint is among body-colors, or rather what grays are among dresses, inoffensive, unimpeachable, always look ladylike, but never look brilliant; colorless dresses are very useful, and so are characterless girls; and I dare say the draper would tell us the grays in the long run are the easiest to sell, as the girls are to marry; they please the commonplace taste of the generality, and do for every-day wear! Flora Montolieu puzzles me; she is very charming, very striking, very lovable, but she puzzles me! I have a presentiment that that child will give me a world of anxiety, an infinitude of trouble!”
And Lady Marabout laid her head on her pillow, not the happier that Flora Montolieu was lying asleep in the room next her, dreaming of the wild-vine shadows and the night-blooming flowers of her native tropics, under the rose-curtains of her new home in Lowndes Square, already a burden on the soul and a responsibility on the mind of that home’s most genial and generous mistress.
“If she were a man, I should certainly call her a detrimental,” said Lady Marabout, after a more deliberate study of her charge. “You know, my dear Philip, the sort of man one call detrimental; attractive enough to do a great deal of damage, and ineligible enough to make the damage very unacceptable: handsome and winning, but a younger son, or a something nobody wants; a delightful flirtation, but a terrible alliance; you know what I mean! Well, that is just what this little Montolieu is in our sex; I am quite sure it is what she will be considered; and if it be bad for a man, it is very much worse for a woman! Everybody will admire her, and nobody will marry her; I have a presentiment of it!”
With which prophetical mélange of the glorious and the inglorious for her charge’s coming career, Lady Marabout sighed, and gave a little shiver, such as
Sous des maux ignorés nous fait gémir d’avance,
as Delphine Gay well phrased it. And she floated out of her boudoir to the dining-room for luncheon, at which unformal and pleasant meal Carruthers chanced to stay, criticise a new dry sherry, and take a look at this unsalable young filly of the Marabout Yearling Sales.
“I don’t know about her being detrimental, mother, nor about her being little; she in more than middle height,” laughed he; “but I vow she is the prettiest thing you’ve had in your list for some time. You’ve had much greater beauties, you say? Well, perhaps so; but I bet you any money she will make a sensation.”
“I’m sure she will,” reiterated Lady Marabout, despairingly. “I have no doubt she will have a brilliant season; there is something very piquante, taking, and uncommon about her; but who will marry her at the end of it?”
Carruthers shouted with laughter.
“Heaven forbid that I should attempt to prophesy! I would undertake as readily to say who’ll be the owner of the winner of the Oaks ten years hence! I can tell you who won’t — —”
“Yourself; because you’ll never marry anybody at all,” cried Lady Marabout. “Well! I must say I should not wish you to renounce your misogamistic notions here. The Montolieus are not at all what you should look for; and a child like Flora would be excessively ill suited to you. If I could see you married, as I should desire, to some woman of weight and dignity, five or six-and-twenty, fit for you in every way — —”
“De grace, de grace! My dear mother, the mere sketch will kill me, if you insist on finishing it! Be reasonable! Can anything be more comfortable, more tranquil, than I am now? I swing through life in a rocking-chair; if I’m a trifle bored now and then, it’s my heaviest trial. I float as pleasantly on the waves of London life, in my way, as the lotus-eaters of poetry on the Ganges in theirs; and you’d have the barbarity to introduce into my complacent existence the sting of matrimony, the phosphorus of Hymen’s torch, the symbolical serpent of a wedding-ring? — for shame!”
Lady Marabout laughed despite herself, and the solemnity, in her eyes, of the subject.
“I should like to see you happily married, for all that, though I quite despair of it now; but perhaps you are right.”
“Of course I am right! Adam was tranquil and unworried till fate sent him a wife, and he was typical of the destinies of his descendants. Those who are wise, take warning; those who are not, neglect it and repent. Lady Hautton et Cie are very fond of twisting scriptural obscurities into ‘types.’ There’s a type plain as day, and salutary to mankind, if detrimental to women!”
“Philip, you are abominable! don’t be so wicked!” cried Lady Marabout, enjoying it all the more because she was a little shocked at it, as your best women will on occasion; human nature is human nature everywhere, and the female heart gives pleasurable little pulses at the sight of forbidden fruits now, as in the days of Eve.
“Who’s that Miss Montolieu with your mother this year, Phil?” dozens of men asked Carruthers, that season, across the mess-table, in the smoking-room of the Guards, in the Ride or the Ring, in the doorways of ball-rooms, or anywhere where such-like questions are asked and new pretty women discussed.
“What is it in her that takes so astonishingly?” wondered Lady Marabout, who is, like most women, orthodox on all points, loving things by rule, worrying if they go out of the customary routine, and was, therefore, quite incapable of reconciling herself to so revolutionary a fact as a young lady being admired who was not a beauty, and sought while she was detrimental in every way. It was “out of the general rule,” and your orthodox people hate anything “out of the general run,” as they hate their prosperous friends: the force of hatred can no further go! Flora Montolieu’s crime in Belgravia was much akin to the Bonapartes’ crimes to the Bourbons. Thrones must be filled legitimately, if not worthily, in the eyes of the orthodox people, and this Petit Caporal of Lady Marabout’s had no business to reign where the Hereditary Princesses and all the other noble lines failed to sway the sceptre. Lady Marabout, belonging to the noble lines herself, agreed in her heart with them, and felt a little bit guilty to have introduced this democratic and unwelcome element in society.
Flora Montolieu “took,” as people say of bubble companies, meaning that they will pleasantly ruin a million or two: or of new fashions, meaning that they will become general with the many and, sequitur, unwearable with the few. She had the brilliance and grace of one of her own tropical flowers, with something piquante and attractive about her that one had to leave nameless, but that was all the more charming for that very fact perhaps; full of life and animation, but soft as a gazelle, as her chaperone averred; not characterless, as Lady Marabout fondly desired (on the same principle, I suppose, as a timid whip likes a horse as spiritless as a riding-school hack), but gifted with plenty of very marked character, so much, indeed, that it rather puzzled her camériste.
“Girls shouldn’t have marked character; they should be clay that one can mould, not a self-chiselled statuette, that will only go into its own niche, and won’t go into any other. This little Montolieu would make just such a woman as Vittoria Colonna or Madame de Sablé, but one doesn’t want those qualities in a girl, who is but a single little ear in the whea
t-sheaf of society, and whom one wants to marry off, but can’t expect to marry well. Her poor mother, of course, will look to me to do something advantageous for her, and I verily believe she is that sort of girl that will let me do nothing,” thought Lady Marabout, already beginning to worry, as she talked to Lady George Frangipane at a breakfast in Palace Gardens, and watched Flora Montolieu, with Carruthers on her left and Goodwood on her right, amusing them both, to all semblance, and holding her own to the Lady Hautton’s despite, who held their own so excessively chillily and loftily that no ordinary mortals cared to approach them, but, beholding them, thought involuntarily of the stately icebergs off the Spitzbergen coast, only that the icebergs could melt or explode when their time came, and the time was never known when the Hautton surface could be moved to anger or melt to any sunshine whatever. At least, whether their maids or their mother ever beheld the first of the phenomena, far be it from me to say, but the world never saw either.
“Well, Miss Montolieu, how do you like our life here?” Carruthers was asking. “Which is preferable — Belgravia or St. Denis?”
“Oh, Belgravia, decidedly,” laughed Lady Marabout’s charge. “I think your life charming. All change, excitement, gayety, who would not like it?”
“Nobody — that is not fresh to it?”
“Fresh to it? Ah! are you one of the class who find no beauty in anything unless it is new? If so, do not charge the blame on to the thing, as your tone implies; take it rather to yourself and your own fickleness.”
“Perhaps I do,” smiled Carruthers. “But whether one’s self or ‘the thing’ is to blame, the result’s much the same — satiety! Wait till you have had two or three seasons, and then tell me if you find this mill-wheel routine, these circus gyrations, so delightful! We are the performing stud, who go round and round in the hippodrome, day after day for show, till we are sick of the whole programme, knowing our white stars are but a daub of paint, and our gay spangles only tinfoil. You are a little pony just joined to the troupe, and just pleased with the glitter of the arena. Wait till you’ve had a few years of it before you say whether going through the same hoops and passing over the same sawdust is so very amusing.”