by Ouida
“Whose advertisement do you imagine that is?” said Fairlie, showing the Daily to Geraldine, as he sat with her and her sisters under some lilac and larch trees in one of the meadows of Fern Chase, which had had the civility, Geraldine said, to yield a second crop of hay expressly for her to have the pleasure of making it. She leaned down towards him as he lay on the grass, and read the advertisement, looking uncommonly pretty in her dainty muslin dress, with its fluttering mauve ribbons, and a wreath she had just twisted up, of bluebells and pinks and white heaths which Fairlie had gathered as he lay, put on her bright hair. We called her a little flirt, but I think she was an unintentional one; at least, her agaceries were, all as unconscious as they were — her worst enemies (i. e. plain young ladies) had to allow — unaffected.
“How exquisitely sentimental! Is it yours?” she asked, with demure mischief.
“Mine!” echoed Fairlie, with supreme scorn.
“It’s some one’s here, because the address is at Mrs. Greene’s. Come, tell me at once, monsieur.”
“The only fool in the Artillery,” said Fairlie, curtly: “Belle Courtenay.”
“Captain Courtenay!” echoed Geraldine, with a little flush on her cheeks, caused, perhaps, by the quick glance the Colonel shot at her as he spoke.
“Captain Courtenay!” said Katherine Vane. “Why, what can he want with a wife? I thought he had l’embarras de choix offered him in that line; at least, so he makes out himself.”
“I dare say,” said Fairlie, dryly, “it’s for a bet he’s made, to see how many women he can hoax, I believe.”
“How can you tell it is a hoax?” said Geraldine, throwing cowslips at her greyhound. “It may be some medium of intercourse with some one he really cares for, and who may understand his meaning.”
“Perhaps you are in his confidence, Geraldine, or perhaps you are thinking of answering it yourself?”
“Perhaps,” said the young lady, waywardly, making the cowslips into a ball, “there might be worse investments. Your bête noire is strikingly handsome; he is the perfection of style; he is going to be Equerry to the Prince; his mother is just married again to Lord Chevenix; he did not name half his attractions in that line in the Daily.”
With which Geraldine rushed across the meadow after the greyhound and the cowslip ball, and Fairlie lay quiet plucking up the heaths by the roots. He lay there still, when the cowslip ball struck him a soft fragrant blow against his lips, and knocked the Cuba from between his teeth.
“Why don’t you speak?” asked Geraldine, plaintively. “You are not half so pleasant to play with as you were before you went to India and I was seven or eight, and you had La Grace, and battledoor and shuttlecock, and cricket, and all sorts of games with me in the old garden at Charlton.”
He might have told her she was much less dangerous then than now; he was not disposed to flatter her, however. So he answered her quietly,
“I preferred you as you were then.”
“Indeed!” said Geraldine, with a hot color in her cheeks “I do not think there are many who would indorse your complimentary opinion.”
“Possibly,” said Fairlie, coldly.
She took up her cowslips, and hit him hard with them several times.
“Don’t speak in that tone. If you dislike me, you can say so in warmer words, surely.”
Fairlie smiled malgré lui.
“What a child you are, Geraldine! but a child that is a very mischievous coquette, and has learned a hundred tricks and agaceries of which my little friend of seven or eight knew nothing. I grant you were not a quarter so charming, but you were, I am afraid — more true.”
Geraldine was ready to cry, but she was in a passion, nevertheless; such a hot and short-lived passion as all women of any spirit can go into on occasion, when they are unjustly suspected.
“If you choose to think so of me you may,” she said, with immeasurable hauteur, sweeping away from him, her mauve ribbons fluttering disdainfully. “I, for one, shall not try to undeceive you.”
The next night we all went up to a ball at the Vanes’, to drink Rhenish, eat ices, quiz the women, flirt with the pretty ones in corners, lounge against doorways, criticise the feet in the waltzing as they passed us, and do, in fact, anything but what we went to do — dance, — according to our custom in such scenes.
The Swan and her Cygnets looked very stunning; they “made up well,” as ladies say when they cannot deny that another is good-looking, but qualify your admiration by an assurance that she is shockingly plain in the morning, and owes all to her milliner and maids. Geraldine, who, by the greatest stretch of scepticism, could not be supposed “made up,” was bewitching, with her sunshiny enjoyment of everything, and her untiring waltzing, going for all the world like a spinning-top, only a top tires, and she did not. Belle, who made a principle of never dancing except under extreme coercion by a very pretty hostess, could not resist her, and Tom Gower, and Little Nell, and all the rest, not to mention half Norfolk, crowded round her; all except Fairlie, who leaned against the doorway, seeming to talk to her father or the members, or anybody near, but watching the young lady for all that, who flirted not a little, having in her mind the scene in the paddock of yesterday, and wishing, perhaps, to show him that if he did not admire her more than when she was eight, other men had better taste.
She managed to come near him towards the end of the evening, sending Belle to get her an ice.
“Well,” she said, with a comical pitié d’elle-même, “do you dislike me so much that you don’t mean to dance with me at all? Not a single waltz all night?”
“What time have you had to give me?” said Fairlie, coldly. “You have been surrounded all the evening.”
“Of course I have. I am not so disagreeable to other gentlemen as I am to you. But I could have made time for you if you had only asked for it. At your own ball last week you engaged me beforehand for six waltzes.”
Fairlie relented towards her. Despite her flirting, he thought she did not care for Belle after all.
“Well,” he said, smiling, “will you give me one after supper?”
“You told me you shouldn’t dance, Colonel Fairlie,” said Katherine Vane, smiling.
“One can’t tell what one mayn’t do under temptation,” said Fairlie, smiling too. “A man may change his mind, you know.”
“Oh yes,” cried Geraldine; “a man may change his mind, and we are expected to be eminently grateful to him for his condescension; but if we change our minds, how severely we are condemned for vacillation: ‘So weak!’ ‘Just like women!’ ‘Never like the same thing two minutes, poor things!’”
“You don’t like the same thing two minutes, Geraldine,” laughed Fairlie; “so I dare say you speak feelingly.”
“I changeable! I am constancy itself!”
“Are you? You know what the Italians say of ‘ocche azzure’?”
“But I don’t believe it, monsieur!” cried Geraldine:
“Blue eyes beat black fifty to seven, For black’s of hell, but blue’s of heaven!”
“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle,” laughed Fairlie:
“Done, by the odds, it is not true! One devil’s black, but scores are blue!”
He whirled her off into the circle in the midst of our laughter at their ready wit. Soon after he bid her good night, but he found time to whisper as he did so.
“You are more like my little Geraldine to-night!”
The look he got made him determine to make her his little Geraldine before much more time had passed. At least he drove us back to Norwich in what seemed very contented silence, for he smoked tranquilly, and let the horses go their own pace — two certain indications that a man has pleasant thoughts to accompany him.
I do not think he listened to Belle’s, and Gower’s, and my conversation, not even when Belle took his weed out of his mouth and announced the important fact: “Hardinge! my ten guineas, if you please. I’ve had a letter!”
“What! an answer? By Jove
!”
“Of course, an answer. I tell you all the pretty women in the city will know my initials, and send after me. I only hope they will be pretty, and then one may have a good deal of fun. I was in at Greene’s this morning having mock-turtle, and talking to Patty (she’s not bad-looking, that little girl, only she drops her ‘h’s’ so. I’m like that fellow — what’s his name? — in the ‘Peau de Chagrin:’ I don’t admire my loves in cotton prints), when she gave me the letter. I left it on my dressing-table, but you can see it to-morrow. It’s a horrid red daubed-looking seal, and no crest; but that she mightn’t use for fear of being found out, and the writing is disguised, but that it would be. She says she has the three requisites; but where’s the woman that don’t think herself Sappho and Galatea combined? And she was nineteen last March. Poor little devil! she little thinks how she’ll be done. I’m to meet her on the Yarmouth road at two, and to look out for a lady standing by the first milestone. Shall we go, Tom? It may lead to something amusing, you know, though certainly it won’t lead to marriage.”
“Oh! we’ll go, old fellow,” said I. “Deuce take you, Belle! what a lucky fellow you are with the women.”
“Luckier than I want to be,” yawned Belle. “It’s a horrid bore to be so set upon. One may have too much of a good thing, you know.”
At two the day after, having refreshed ourselves with a light luncheon at Mrs. Greene’s of lobster-salad and pale ale, Belle, Gower, and I buttoned our gloves and rode leisurely up the road.
“How my heart palpitates!” said Belle, stroking his moustaches with a bored air. “How can I tell, you know, but what I may be going to see the arbiter of my destiny? Men have been tricked into all sorts of tomfoolery by their compassionate feelings. And then — if she should squint or have a turn-up nose! Good Heavens, what a fearful idea! I’ve often wondered when I’ve seen men with ugly wives how they could have been cheated into taking ’em; they couldn’t have done it in their senses, you know, nor yet with their eyes open. You may depend they took ’em to church in a state of coma from chloroform. ‘Pon my word, I feel quite nervous. You don’t think the girl will have a parson and a register hid behind the milestone, do you?”
“If she should, it won’t be legal without a license, thanks to the fools who turn Hymen into a tax-gatherer, and won’t let a fellow make love without he asks leave of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” said Gower. “Hallo, Belle, here’s the milestone, but where’s the lady?”
“Virgin modesty makes her unpunctual,” said Belle, putting up his eye-glass.
“Hang modesty!” swore Tom. “It’s past two, and we left a good quarter of that salad uneaten. Confound her!”
“There are no signs of her,” said I. “Did she tell you her dress, Belle?”
“Not a syllable about it; only mentioned a milestone, and one might have found a market-woman sitting on that.”
“Hallo! here’s something feminine. Oh, good gracious! this can’t be it, it’s got a brown stuff dress on, and a poke straw bonnet and a green veil. No, no, Belle. If you married her, that would be a case of chloroform.”
But the horrible brown stuff came sidling along the road with that peculiar step belonging to ladies of a certain age, characterized by Patty Greene as “tipputting,” sweeping up the dust with its horrible folds, making straight en route for Belle, who was standing a little in advance of us. Nineteen! Good Heavens! she must have been fifty if she was a day, and under her green veil was a chestnut front — yes, decidedly a front — and a face yellow as a Canadian’s, and wrinkled as Madame Pipelet’s, made infinitely worse by that sweet maiden simper and assumed juvenility common to vieilles filles. Up she came towards poor Belle, who involuntarily retreated step by step till he had backed against the milestone, and could get no farther, while she smiled up in his handsome face, and he stared down in her withered one, with the most comical expression of surprise, dismay, and horror that had ever appeared on our “beauty’s” impassive features.
“Are you — the — the — L. C.?” demanded the maiden of ten lustres, casting her eyes to the ground with virgin modesty.
“L. C. ar —— My dear madam, I don’t quite understand you,” faltered Belle, taken aback for once in his life.
“Was it not you,” faltered the fair one, shaking out a pocket-handkerchief that sent a horrible odor of musk to the olfactory nerves of poor Belle, most fastidious connoisseur in perfume, “who advertised for a kindred heart and sympathetic soul?”
“Really, my good lady,” began Belle, still too aghast by the chestnut front to recover his self-possession.
“Because,” simpered his inamorata, too agitated by her own feelings to hear his horrible appellative, keeping him at bay there with the fatal milestone behind him and the awful brown stuff in front of him— “because I, too, have desired to meet with some elective affinity, some spirit-tie that might give me all those more subtle sympathies which can never be found in the din and bustle of the heartless world; I, too, have pined for the objects of your search — love and domestic happiness. Oh, blessed words, surely we might — might we not? — —”
She paused, overcome with maidenly confusion, and buried her face in the musk-scented handkerchief. Tom and I, where we stood perdus, burst into uncontrollable shouts of laughter. Poor Belle gave one blank look of utter terror at the tout ensemble of brown stuff, straw poke, and chestnut front. He forgot courtesy, manners, and everything else; his lips were parted, with his small white teeth glancing under his silky moustaches, his sleepy eyes were open wide, and as the maiden lady dropped her handkerchief, and gave him what she meant to be the softest and most tender glance, he turned straight round, sprang on his bay, and rushed down the Yarmouth road as if the whole of the dignitaries of the church and law were tearing after him to force him nolens volens into carrying out the horrible promise in his cursed line in the Daily. What was Tom’s and my amazement to see the maiden lady seat herself astride on the milestone, and join her cachinnatory shouts to ours, fling her green veil into a hawthorn tree, jerk her bonnet into our faces, kick off her brown stuff into the middle of the road, tear off her chestnut front and yellow mask, and perform a frantic war-dance on the roadside turf. No less a person than that mischievous monkey and inimitable mimic Little Nell!
“You young demon!” shouted Gower, shrieking with laughter till he cried. “A pretty fellow you are to go tricking your senior officer like this. You little imp, how can you tell but what I shall court-martial you to-morrow?”
“No, no, you won’t!” cried Little Nell, pursuing his frantic dance. “Wasn’t it prime? wasn’t it glorious? wasn’t it worth the Kohinoor to see? You won’t go and peach, when I’ve just given you a better farce than all old Buckstone’s? By Jove! Belle’s face at my chestnut front! This’ll be one of his prime conquests, eh? I say, old fellows, when Charles Mathews goes to glory, don’t you think I might take his place, and beat him hollow, too?”
When we got back to barracks, we found Belle prostrate on his sofa, heated, injured, crestfallen, solacing himself with Seltzer-and-water, and swearing away anything but mildly at that “wretched old woman.” He bound us over to secrecy, which, with Little Nell’s confidence in our minds, we naturally promised. Poor Belle! to have been made a fool of before two was humiliation more than sufficient for our all-conquering blondin. For one who had so often refused to stir across a ball-room to look at a Court beauty, to have ridden out three miles to see an old maid of fifty with a chestnut front! The insult sank deep into his soul, and threw him into an abject melancholy, which hung over him all through mess, and was not dissipated till a letter came to him from Mrs. Greene’s, when we were playing loo in Fairlie’s room. That night Fairlie was in gay spirits. He had called at Fern Chase that morning, and though he had not been able to see Geraldine alone, he had passed a pleasant couple of hours there, playing pool with her and her sisters, and had been as good friends as ever with his old playmate.
“Well, Belle,” said he, feeling good-nat
ured even with him that night, “did you get any good out of your advertisement? Did your lady turn out a very pretty one?”
“No: deuced ugly, like the generality,” yawned poor Belle, giving me a kick to remind me of my promise. Little Nell was happily about the city somewhere with Pretty Face, or the boy would scarcely have kept his countenance.
“What amusement you can find in hoaxing silly women,” said Fairlie, “is incomprehensible to me. However, men’s tastes differ, happily. Here comes another epistle for you, Belle; perhaps there’s better luck for you there.”
“Oh! I shall have no end of letters. I sha’n’t answer any more. I think it’s such a deuced trouble. Diamonds trumps, eh?” said Belle, laying the note down till he should have leisure to attend to it. Poor old fellow! I dare say he was afraid of another onslaught from maiden ladies.
“Come, Belle,” said Glenville; “come, Belle, open your letter; we’re all impatience. If you won’t go, I will in your place.”
“Do, my dear fellow. Take care you’re not pounced down upon by a respectable papa for intentions, or called to account by a fierce brother with a stubby beard,” said Belle, lazily taking up the letter. As he did so, the melancholy indolence on his face changed to eagerness.
“The deuce! the Vane crest!”
“A note of invitation, probably?” suggested Gower.
“Would they send an invitation to Patty Greene’s? I tell you it’s addressed to L. C.,” said Belle, disdainfully, opening the letter, leaving its giant deer couchant intact. “I thought it very likely; I expected it, indeed — poor little dear! I oughtn’t to have let it out. Ain’t you jealous, old fellows? Little darling! Perhaps I may be tricked into matrimony after all. I’d rather a presentiment that advertisement would come to something. There, you may all look at it, if you like.”
It was a dainty sheet of scented cream-laid, stamped with the deer couchant, such as had brought us many an invitation down from Fern Chase, and on it was written, in delicate caligraphy: