Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  Cecil asked Horace for a cigar, and struck a fusee, and puffed away into the frosty air like the wildest young Cantab at Trinity. It didn’t make her sick, for she and Blanche had had two Queens out of Vivian’s case, and smoked them to the last ash for fun only the day before; and she drove us at a mad gallop into Deerhurst Park, past the dark trees and the gleaming water and the trooping deer, and pulled up before the hall door just as the moon came out on Christmas-eve.

  We were all rather fast at Deerhurst, so Blanche got no scolding from her mamma (who, like a sensible woman, never put into their heads that things done in the glad innocency of the heart were “wrong”); and Cecil, as soon as she had sprung down, snatched her hand from Cos, and went up to her own room.

  The Colonel’s lips were pressed close together, and his forehead had the dark frown that Guy wears in his portrait.

  It had been done with another, so it was all wrong; but oh! Syd, my friend, if the “dry” that was drunk, and the drag that was tooled, and the weed that was smoked, had been yours, wouldn’t it have been the most charming caprice of the most charming woman!

  That night, at dinner, a letter by the afternoon’s post came to the Colonel. It was “On her Majesty’s Service,” and his mother asked him anxiously what it was.

  “Only to tell me to join soon,” said he, carelessly, giving me a sign to keep the contents of a similar letter I had just received to myself; which I should have done anyhow, as I had reason to hope that the disclosure of them would have quenched the light in some bright eyes beside me.

  “Ordered off at last, thank God!” said Syd, handing his father the letter as soon as the ladies were gone. “There’s a train starts at 12.40, isn’t there, for town? You and I, Ned, had better go to-night. You don’t look so charmed, old fellow, as you did when you went out to Scinde. I say, don’t tell my sisters; there is no need to make a row in the house. Governor, you’ll prepare my mother; I must bid her good-by.”

  I did not view the Crimea with the unmingled, devil-me-care delight with which I had gone out under “fighting Napier” nine years before, for Blanche’s sunshiny face had made life fairer to me; and to obey Syd, and go without a farewell of her, was really too great a sacrifice to friendship. But he and I went to the drawing-rooms, chatted, and took coffee as if nothing had chanced, till he could no longer stand seeing Cecil, still excited, singing chansons to Cos, who was leaning enraptured over the instrument, and he went off to his own room. The other girls and men were busy playing the Race game; Blanche and I were sitting in the back drawing-room beside the fire, and the words that decided my destiny were so few, that I cite them as a useful lesson to those novelists who are in the habit of making their heroes, while waiting breathless to hear their fate, recite off at a cool canter four pages of the neatest-turned sentences without a single break-down or a single pull-up, to see how the lady takes it.

  “Blanche, I must bid you good-by to-night.” Blanche turned to me in bewildered anxiety. “I must join my troop: perhaps I may be sent to the Crimea. I could go happily if I thought you would regret me?”

  Brutally selfish that was to be sure, but she did not take it so. She looked as if she was going to faint, and for fear she should, trusting to the engrossing nature of the Race game in the further apartment, I drew nearer to her. “Will you promise to give yourself to nobody else while I am away, my darling?” Blanche’s eyes did promise me through their tears, and this brief scene, occupying the space of two minutes, twisted our fates into one on that eventful Christmas-eve.

  While I was parting with my poor little Blanche in the library, Vivian was bidding his mother farewell in her dressing-room. His mother had the one soft place in his heart, steeled and made skeptical to all others by that fatal first love of which he had spoken to Cecil. Possibly some of her son’s bitter grief was shown to her on that sad Christmas-eve; at all events, when he left her dressing-room, he had the tired, haggard look left by any conflict of passion. As he came down the stairs to come to the dog-cart that was to take us to the station, the door of Blanche’s boudoir stood open, and in it he saw Cecil. The fierce tide of his love surged up, subduing all his pride, and he paused to take his last sight of the face that would haunt him in the long night watches and the rapid rush of many a charge. She looked up and saw him; that look overpowered all his calmness and resolve. He turned, and bent towards her, every feature quivering with the passion she had once longed to rouse. His hot breath scorched her cheek, and he caught her fiercely against his heart in an iron embrace, pressing his burning lips on hers. “God forgive you! I have loved you too well. Women have ever been fatal to my race!”

  He almost threw her from him in the violence of feelings roused after a long sleep. In another moment he was driving the dog-cart at a mad gallop past the old church in which we had spent such pleasant hours. Its clock tolled out twelve strokes as we passed it, and on the quiet village, and the weird-like trees, and the tall turrets of Deerhurst, the Christmas morning dawned.

  Vivian continued so utterly enfeebled and prostrate that there was but one chance for him — return homewards. I was going to England with despatches, and Syd, at his mother’s entreaty, let himself be carried down to a transport, and shipped for England. He was utterly listless and strengthless, although the voyage did him a little good. He did not care where he went, so he stayed in town with me while I presented myself at the Horse Guards and war Office, and then we travelled down together to Deerhurst.

  Oddly enough it was Christmas-eve again when we drove up the old avenue. The snow was falling heavily, and lay deep on the road and thick on the hedges and trees. The meadows and woods were white against the dark, hushed sky, and the old church, and its churchyard cedars, were loaded too with the clouds’ Christmas gift. To me, at least, the English scene was very pleasant, after the heat, and dirt, and minor worries of Gallipoli and Constantinople. The wide stretching country, with its pollards, and holly hedges, and homesteads, the cattle safe housed, the yule fire burning cheerily on the hearths, the cottages and farms nestling down among their orchards and pasture-lands, all was so heartily and thoroughly English. They seemed to bring back days when I was a boy skating and sliding on the mere at home, or riding out with the harriers light-hearted and devil-me-care as a boy might be, coming back to hear the poor governor’s cheery voice tell me I was one of the old stock, and to toss down a bumper of Rhenish with a time-honored Christmas toast. The crackle of the crisp snow, the snort of the horses as they plunged on into the darkening night, and the red fire-light flickering on the lattice windows of the cottages we passed, were so many welcomes home, and I double-thonged the off-wheeler with a vengeance as I thought of soft lips that would soon touch mine, and a soft voice that would soon whisper my best “Io triumphe!”

  The lodge-gates flew open. We passed the old oaks and beeches, the deer trooping away over the snow as we startled them out of their rest. We were not expected that night, and my man rang such a peal at the bell as might have been heard all over the quiet park. Another minute, and Blanche and I were together again, and alone in the library where we had parted just twelve months before. Of course, for the time being, we neither knew nor cared what was going on in the other rooms of the house. The Colonel had gone to rest himself on the sofa in the dining-room. Half an hour had elapsed, perhaps, when a wild cry rang through the house, startling even us, absorbed though we were in our tête-à-tête. Blanche’s first thought was of her brother. She ran out through the hall, and up the staircase, and I followed her. At the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall, breathing fast, and his face ashy white, stood Syd, and at his feet, in a dead faint, lay Cecil St. Aubyn. I caught hold of Blanche’s arm and held her back as she was about to spring forward. I thought their meeting had much best be uninterrupted; for, if Cecil’s had been mere flirtation I fancied the Colonel’s return could scarcely have moved her like this.

  Vivian stood looking down on her, all the passion in him breaking bounds. He could not sta
nd calmly by the woman he loved. He did not wait to know whether she was his or another’s — whether she was worthy or unworthy of him — but he lifted her up and pressed her unconscious form against his heart, covering her lips with wild caresses. Waking from her trance, she opened her eyes with a terrified stare, and gazed up in his face; then tears came to her relief, and she sank down at his feet again with a pitiful cry, “Forgive me — forgive me!” Weak as Syd was, he found strength to raise her in his arms, and whisper, as he bent over her, “If you love me, I have nothing to forgive.”

  The snow fell softly without over the woods and fields and the winds roared through the old oaks and whistled among the frozen ferns, but Christmas-eve passed brightly enough to us at home within the strong walls of Deerhurst.

  I am sure that all Moore’s pictures of Paradise seemed to me tame compared to that drawing-room, with its warmth, and coziness, and luxuries; with the waxlights shining on the silver of the English tea equipage (pleasant to eye and taste, let one love campaigning ever so well, after the roast beans of the Commissariat), and the fire-gleams dancing on the soft brow and shining hair of the face beside me. I doubt if Vivian either ever spent a happier Christmas-eve as he lay on the sofa in the back drawing-room, with Cecil sitting on a low seat by him, her hand in his, and the Canadian eyes telling him eloquently of love and reconciliation. They had such volumes to say! As soon as she knew that wild farewell of his preceded his departure to the Crimea, Cecil, always impulsive, had written to him on the instant, telling him how she loved him, detailing what she had heard in the green-room, confessing that, in desperation, she had done everything she could to rouse his jealousy, assuring him that that same evening she had refused Cos’s proposals, and beseeching him to forgive her and come back to her. That letter Vivian had never had (six months from that time, by the way, it turned up, after a journey to India and Melbourne, following a cousin of his, colonel of a line regiment, she in her haste having omitted to put his troop on the address), and Cecil, whose feeling was too deep to let her mention the subject to Blanche or Helena, made up her mind that he would never forgive her, and being an impressionable young lady, had, on the anniversary of Christmas-eve, been comparing her fate with that of Muriel in the ghost legend, and, on seeing the Colonel’s unexpected apparition, had fainted straight away in the over-excitement and sudden joy of the moment.

  Such was Cecil’s story, and Vivian was content with it and gladly took occasion to practise the Christmas duties of peace, and love, and pardon. He had the best anodyne for his wounds now, and there was no danger for him, since Cecil had taken the place of the Scutari nurses. No “Crimean heroes,” as they call us in the papers, were ever more fêted and petted than were the Colonel and I.

  Christmas morning dawned, the sun shining bright on the snow-covered trees, and the Christmas bells chiming merrily; and as we stood on the terrace to see the whole village trooping up through the avenue to receive the gifts left to them by some old Vivian long gone to his rest with his forefathers under the churchyard cedars, Syd looked down with a smile into Cecil’s eyes as she hung on his arm, and whispered,

  “I will double those alms, love, in memory of the priceless gift this Christmas has given me. Ah! Thornton and I little knew, when we came down for the hunting, how fast you and Blanche would capture us with your — Holly Wreaths and Rose Chains.”

  SILVER CHIMES AND GOLDEN FETTERS.

  I. WALDEMAR FALKENSTEIN AND VALÉRIE L’ESTRANGE.

  “A quarter to twelve! By Heaven if my luck don’t change before the year is out, I vow I’ll never touch a card in the next!” exclaimed one of several men playing lansquenet in Harry Godolphin’s rooms at Knightsbridge.

  There were seven or eight of them, some with long rent-rolls, others within an ace of the Queen’s Bench; the poor devils losing in the long run much oftener and more recklessly than the rich fellows; all of them playing high, as that beau joueur of the Guards, Godolphin, always did.

  Luck had been dead against the man who spoke ever since they had deserted the mess-room for the cartes in the privacy of Harry’s rooms. If Fortune is a woman, he ought to have found favor in her eyes. His age was between thirty and thirty-five, his figure with grace and strength combined, his features nobly and delicately cut, his head, like Canning’s, one of great intellectual beauty, and by the flash of his large dark eyes, and the additional paleness of his cheek, it was easy to see he was playing high once too often.

  Five minutes passed — he lost still; ten minutes’ luck was yet against him. A little French clock began the Silver Chimes that rang out the Old Year; the twelfth stroke sounded, the New Year was come, and Waldemar Falkenstein rose and drank down some cognac — a ruined man.

  “A happy New Year to you, and better luck, Falkenstein,” cried Godolphin, drinking his toast with a ringing laugh and a foaming bumper of Chambertin. “What shall I wish you? The richest wife in the kingdom, a cabal that will break all the banks, for Mistletoe to win the Oaks, or for your eyes to be opened to your sinful state, as the parson phrases it — which, eh?”

  “Thank you, Harry,” laughed Falkenstein. (Like the old Spartans, we can laugh while the wolf gnaws our vitals.) “You remind me of what my holy-minded brother wrote to me when I broke my shoulder-bone down at Melton last season: ‘My dear Waldemar, I am sorry to hear of your sad accident; but all things are ordered for the best, and I trust that in your present hours of solitude your thoughts may be mercifully turned to higher and better things.’ Queer style of sympathy, wasn’t it? I preferred yours, when you sent me ‘Adélaïde Méran,’ and that splendid hock I wasn’t allowed to touch.”

  “I should say so; but catch the Pharisees giving anybody anything warmer than texts and counsels, that cost them nothing,” said Tom Bevan of the Blues. “Apropos of Pharisees, have you heard that old Cash is going to build a chapel-of-ease in Belgravia, to endow that young owl Gus with as soon as he can pull himself through his ‘greats?’ It is thought that the dear Bella will be painted as St. Catherine for the altar-piece.”

  “She’ll strychnine herself if we’re all so hard-hearted as to leave her to St. Catharine’s nightcap,” laughed Falkenstein.

  “Why don’t you take up with her, old fellow?” said a man in Godolphin’s troop. “Not the sangue puro, you’d say; rather sallied with XXX. But what does that signify? you’ve quarterings enough for two.”

  “Much good the quarterings do me. No, thank you,” said Falkenstein bitterly. “I’m not going to sell myself, though my dear friends would insinuate that I was sold already to a gentleman who never quits hold of his bargains. I’ve fetters enough now too heavy by half to add matrimonial handcuffs to them.”

  “Right, old boy,” said Harry. “The Cashranger hops and vats, even done in the brightest parvenu or, would scarcely look well blazoned on the royal gules. Come, sit down. Where are you going?”

  “He’s going to Eulalie Brown’s, I bet,” said Bevan. “Nonsense, Waldemar; throw her over, and stay and take your revenge — it’s so early.”

  “No, thank you,” said Falkenstein briefly. “By the way, I suppose you all go to Cashranger’s to-morrow?”

  “Make a point of it, answered Godolphin. I feel I’m sinning against my Order to visit him, but really his Lafitte’s so good —— I’m sorry you will leave us, Waldemar, but I know I might as well try to move the Marble Arch as try to turn you.”

  “Indeed I never set up for a Roman, Harry. The deuce take this pipe, it won’t light. Good night to you all.” And leaving them drinking hard, laughing loud, and telling grivois tales before they sat down to play in all its delirious delight, he sprang into a hanson, and drove, not to Eulalie Brown’s petit souper, but to his own rooms in Duke Street, St. James’s.

  Falkenstein’s governor, some two-score years before, had got in mauvaise odeur in Vienna for some youthful escapade at court; powerful as his princely family was, had been obliged to fly the country; and, coming over here, entered himself at the Bar, and, setting
himself to work with characteristic energy, had, wonderful to relate, made a fortune at it. A fine, gallant, courtly ancien noble was the Count, haughty and passionate at times, after the manner of the house; fond of his younger son Waldemar, who at school had tanned boys twice his size; rode his pony in at the finish; smoked, swam, and otherwise conducted himself, till all the rest of the boys worshipped him, though I believe the masters generally attributed to him more diablerie than divinity. But of late, unluckily, his father had been much dominated over by Waldemar’s three sisters, ladies of a chill and High Church turn of mind, and by his brother, who in early life had been a prize boy and a sap, and received severe buffetings from his junior at football; and now, being much the more conventional and unimpeachable of the two, took his revenge by carrying many tales to the old Count of his wilder son — tales to which Falkenstein gave strong foundation. For he was restless and reckless, strikingly original, and, above the common herd, too impatient to take any meddling with his affairs, and too proud to explain where he was misjudged; and, though he held a crack government place, good pay, and all but a sinecure, he often spent more than he had, for economy was a dead-letter to him, and if any man asked him a loan, he was too generous to say “No.” Life in all its phases he had seen from the time he left school, and you know, mon ami, we cannot see life on a groat — at least, through the bouquet of the wines at Véfours, and the brilliance of the gas-light in Casinos and Redoutes. The fascinations of play were over him — the iron hand of debt pressed upon him; altogether, as he sat through the first hours of the New Year, smoking, and gazing on the flickering fire gleams, there was not much light either in his past or future!

  Keenly imaginative and susceptible, blasé and skeptical though he was, the weight of the Old Year and of many gone before it, weighed heavily on his thoughts. Scenes and deeds of his life, that he would willingly have blotted out, rose before him; vague regrets, unformed desires, floated to him on the midnight chimes.