by Ouida
“Oh, of course — to be sure — yes,” said Bella, her lips twitching nervously, “mamma will be astonished to hear of these new laurels for the family. I congratulate you, Valérie; I never knew you dreamt of writing, much less of making so public a début.”
“Nor should I ever have been able to do so unless my way had been pioneered for me,” said Valérie, resting her eyes fondly on Waldemar.
He stayed ten minutes longer, chatting on indifferent subjects, then left, making poor little Val happy with a touch of his hand, and a smile as “kind” as of old.
“You horrid, deceitful little thing!” began Bella, bursting with fury, as the door closed on him, “never to mention what you were doing. I can’t bear such sly people I hate — —”
“My dear Bella, don’t disturb yourself,” said Valérie, quietly; “if you had testified any interest in my doings, you might have known them; as it was, I was glad to find warmer and kinder friends.”
“In Waldemar Falkenstein, I suppose,” sneered Bella, white with rage. “A nice friend you have, certainly; a man whom everybody knows may go to prison for debt any day.”
“Leave him alone,” said Valérie haughtily; “unless you speak well of him, in my presence, you shall not speak at all.”
“Oh, indeed,” laughed Bella, nervously; “how very much interested you are in him! more than he is in you, I’m afraid, dear. He’s famed for loving and leaving. Pray how long has this romantic affair been on the tapis?”
“He’s met her every day in the Gardens,” cried Julius Adolphus, just come in with that fatal apropos of “enfans terribles,” much oftener the result of méchanceté than of innocence; “he’s met her every day, Bella, while I fed the ducks.”
Bella rose, inflated with fury, and summoning all her dignity:
“I suppose, Valérie, you know the sort of reputation you will get through these morning assignations.”
Valérie bent over Spit with a smile.
“Of course, it is nothing to me,” continued Bella, spitefully; “but I shall consider it my duty to inform mamma.”
Valérie fairly laughed out.
“Do your duty, by all means.”
“And,” continued Bella, a third time, “I dare say she will find some means to put a stop to this absurd friendship with an unmarried and unprincipled man.”
Valérie was roused; she lifted her head like a little Pythoness, and her blue eyes flashed angry scorn.
“Tell your mamma what you please, but — listen to me, Bella — if you venture to harm him in any way with your pitiful venom, I, girl as I am, will never let you go till I have revenged myself and him.”
Bella, like most bullies, was a terrible coward. There was an earnestness in Valérie’s words, and a dangerous light in her eyes, that frightened her, and she left the room in silence, while Valérie leaned her forehead on Spit’s silky back, and cried bitterly, tears that for her life she wouldn’t have shed while her cousin was there.
The next time Falkenstein called at Lowndes Square, the footman told him, “Not at home,” and Waldemar swore, mentally, as he turned from the door, for though he could keep himself from seeking her, it was something new not to find her when he wished.
“She’s like all the rest,” he thought bitterly; “She’s used me, and now she’s gone to newer friends. I was a fool to suppose any woman would do otherwise. They’ll tell her I can’t marry; of course she’ll go over to D’Orwood, or some of those confounded fools that are dangling after her.”
So in his skeptical haste judged Falkenstein, on the strength of a single “Not at home,” due to Cashranger malice, and the fierce throbs the mere suspicion gave him showed him that he loved Valérie too much to be able to deceive himself any longer with the assurance that his feelings towards his protégée was simple “friendship.” He knew it, but he was loth to give way to it. He had long held as a doctrine that a man could forget if he chose. He had been wearied of so many, been disappointed in so much, he had had idols of the hour, in which, their first gloss off, he had found no beauty, he could not tell; it might not be the same with Valérie. Warm and passionate as a Southern, haughty and reserved as a Northern, he held many a bitter conflict in his solitary vigils at night over his pipe, after evenings spent in society which no longer amused him, or excitement with which he vainly sought to drown his cares. When he did meet Valérie out, which was rarely, as he refused most invitations now, his struggle against his ill-timed passion made his manner so cold and capricious, that Valérie, who could not divine the workings of his heart, began, despite her vehement faith in him, and conviction that he was not wholly indifferent to her, to dread that Bella might be right, and that as he had left others so would he leave her. He gave her no opportunity of questioning him as to his sudden change, for when he did call in Lowndes Square, Bella and her aunt always stationed themselves as a sort of detective police, and Falkenstein now never sought a tête-à-tête.
One evening she met him at a dinner-party. With undisguised delight she watched his entrance, and Waldemar, seeing her radiant face, thought in his haste, “She is happy enough, what does she care for me?” If he had looked at her after he had shaken hands carelessly with her, and turned away to talk to another woman, he would have discovered his mistake. But when do we ever discover half our errors before it is too late? She signed to him to come to her under pretext of looking at some croquis, and whispered hurriedly,
“Count Waldemar, what have I done — why do you never come to see me? You are so changed, so altered — —”
“I was not aware of it.”
“But I never see you in the Gardens now. You never talk to me, you never call on me.”
“I have other engagements.”
Valérie breathed hard between her set teeth.
“That are more agreeable to you, I suppose. You should not have accustomed me to what you intended to withdraw when it ceased to amuse you. I am not so capricious. Your kindness about my play — —”
“It was no kindness; I would have done the same for any one.”
She looked at him fixedly.
“General kindness is no kindness,” said Valérie, passionately. “If you would do for a mere acquaintance what you would do for your friend, what value attaches to your friendship?”
“I attach none to it,” said the Count, coldly.
Valérie’s little hands clenched hard. She did not speak, lest her self-possession should give way, and just then D’Orwood came to give her his arm in to dinner; and at dinner Valérie, demonstrative and candid as she was, was gay and animated, for she could wear a mask in the bal d’Opéra of life as well as he; and though she could not believe the coldness he testified was really meant, she felt bitterly the neglect of his manner before others, at sight of which Bella’s small eyes sparkled with malicious satisfaction.
IV. SOME GOLDEN FETTERS ARE SHAKEN OFF AND OTHERS ARE PUT ON.
“Mrs. Boville told me last night that Waldemar Falkenstein is so dreadfully in debt, that she thinks he’ll have to go into court — don’t they call it?” lisped Bella, the next morning; “be arrested, or bankrupt, or something dreadful. Should you think it is true?”
“I know it’s true,” said Idiot Tweed, who was there, having a little music before luncheon. “He’s confoundedly hard up, poor devil.”
“But I thought he was in such a good position — so well off?” said Bella, observing with secret delight that her cousin’s head was raised, and that the pen with which she was writing had stopped in its rapid gallop.
“Ah! so one thinks of a good many fellows,” answered the Guardsman; “or, at least, you ladies do, who don’t look at a man’s ins and outs, and the fifty hundred things there are to bother him. Lots of people — householders, and all that sort of thing — that one would fancy worth no end, go smash when nobody’s expecting it.”
“And Mr. Falkenstein really is embarrassed?”
The Guardsman laughed outright. “That is a mild term, Miss C
ashranger. I heard down at Windsor yesterday, from a man that knows his family very well, that if he don’t pay his debts this week, Amadeus Levi will arrest him. I dare say he will. Jews do when they can’t bleed you any longer, and think your family will come down handsomely. But they say the old Count won’t give Falkenstein a rap, so most likely he’ll cut the country.”
That afternoon, on his return from the Deeds and Chronicles Office, whose slow red-tapeism ill suited his impatient and vigorous intellect, Waldemar sat down deliberately to investigate his affairs. It was true that Amadeus Levi’s patience was waning fast; his debts of honor had put him deep in that worthy’s books, and Falkenstein, as he sat in his lodgings, with the August sun streaming full on the relentless figures that showed him, with cruel mathematical ruthlessness, that he was fast chained in the Golden Fetters of debt, leaned his head upon his arms with the bitter despair of a man whose own hand has blotted his past and ruined his future.
The turning of the handle of his door roused him from his reverie. He looked up quickly.
“A lady wants to speak to you, sir,” said the servant who waited on him.
“What name?”
“She’d rather not give it, sir.”
“Very well,” said Falkenstein, consigning all women to the devil; “show her up.”
Resigning himself to his fate, he rose, leaning his hand on the arm of the chair. He started involuntarily as the door opened again.
“Valérie!”
She looked up at him half hesitatingly. “Count Waldemar, don’t be angry with me — —”
“Angry! no, Heaven knows; but — —”
Her face and her voice were fast thawing his chill reserve, and he stopped abruptly.
“You wonder why I have come here,” Valérie went on singularly shyly for her, “but — but I heard that you — you have much to trouble you just now. Is it true?”
“True enough, Heaven knows.”
“Then — then,” said Valérie, with all her old impetuosity, “let me do something for you — let me help you in some way — you who have done everything for me, who have been the only person kind to me on earth. Do let me — do not refuse me. I would die to serve you.”
He breathed fast as he gazed on her expressive eyes. It was a hard struggle to him to preserve his self-control.
“No one can help me,” he answered, hurriedly. “I have made my own fate — leave me to it.”
“I will not!” cried Valérie, passionately. “Do not send me away — do not refuse me. What happiness would there be for me so great as serving you — you to whom I owe all the pleasure I have known! Take them. Count Waldemar — pray take them; they have often told me they are worth a good deal, and I will thank Heaven every hour for having enabled me to aid you ever so little.” She pressed into his hands a jewel-case.
Falkenstein could not answer her. He stood looking down at her, his lips white as death. She mistook his silence for displeasure, and laid her hands on his arm.
“Do not be offended — do not be annoyed with me. They are my own — an old heirloom of the L’Estranges that only came to me the other day. Take them, Count Waldemar. Do, for Heaven’s sake. I spoke passionately to you last night; I have been unhappy ever since. If you will not take them, I shall think you have not yet forgiven me?”
He seized her hands and drew her close to him: “Good Heavens! do you love me like this?”
She did not answer, but she looked up at him. That look shivered to atoms Falkenstein’s resolves, and cast his pride and prudence to the winds. He pressed her fiercely against his heart, he kissed her again and again, bitter tears rushing to his burning eyes.
“Valérie! Valérie!” he whispered, wildly, “my fate is at its darkest. Will you share it?”
She leaned her brow on his shoulder, trembling with hysterical joy.
“You do care for me, then?” she murmured, at last.
“Oh! thank Heaven.”
In the delirium of his happiness, in the vehemence of feelings touched to the core by sight of the intense love he had awakened, Falkenstein poured out on her all the passion of his impetuous and reserved nature, and in the paradise of the moment forgot every cloud that hung on his horizon.
“Valérie!” he whispered, at length, “I have now nothing to offer you. I can give you none of the riches, and power, and position that other men can — —”
She stopped him, putting her hands on his lips. “Hush! I shall have everything that life can give me in having your love.”
“My darling, Heaven bless you!” cried Falkenstein, passionately; “but think twice, Valérie — pause before you decide. I am a ruined man — embarrassments fetter me on every side. To-morrow, for aught I know, I may be arrested for debt. I would not lead you into what, in older years, you may regret.”
“Regret!” cried Valérie, clinging to him. “How can I ever regret that I have won the one heaven I crave. If you love me, life will always be beautiful in my eyes; and, Count Waldemar, I can work for you — I can help you, be it ever so little. I cannot make much money now, but you have said that I shall gain more year after year. Only let me be with you; let me know your sorrows and lighten them if I can, and I could ask no greater happiness — —”
Falkenstein bent over her, and covered with caresses the lips that to him seemed so eloquent; he had no words to thank her for a love that, to his warm and solitary heart, came like water in the wilderness. The sound of voices gay and laughing, on the stairs, startled him.
“That is Bevan and Godolphin; I forgot they were coming for me to go down to the Castle. Good Heavens! they mustn’t see you here, love, to jest about you over their mess-tables. Stay,” said Falkenstein, hastily, as the men entered the front room, “wait here a moment; they cannot see you in this window, and I will come to you again. Hallo! old fellows!” said he, passing through the folding-doors. “You’re wonderfully punctual, Tom. I always give you half an hour’s grace; but I suppose Harry’s such an awful martinet, that he kept you up to time for once.”
“All the credit’s due to my mare,” laughed Godolphin. “She did the distance from Knightsbridge in four minutes, and I don’t think Musjid himself could beat that. Are you ready, I say? because we’re to be at the Castle by six, and Fitz don’t like waiting for his turbot.”
“Give me a brace of seconds, and I shall be with you,” said Waldemar.
“Make haste, there’s a good fellow. By George!” said Harry, catching sight of the jewel-case, “for a fellow who’s so deucedly hard up, you’ve been pretty extravagant in getting those diamonds, Waldemar. Who are they for — Rosalie Rivers, or the Deloraine; or that last love of yours, that wonderful little L’Estrange?”
Falkenstein’s brow grew dark; he snatched the case from the table, with a suppressed oath, and went back to the inner room, slamming the folding-doors after him. Godolphin lounged to the window looking on the street, where he stood for five minutes, whistling A te, o cara. “The devil! what’s that fellow about?” he said, yawning. “How impatient Bonbon’s growing! Why don’t that fool Roberts drive her up and down? By Jove! come here, Tom. Who’s that girl Falkenstein’s now putting into a cab? That’s what he wanted his brace of seconds for! Confound that portico! I can’t see her face, and women dress so much alike now, there’s no telling one from another. What an infernal while he is bidding her good-by. I shall know another time what his two seconds mean. There, the cab’s off at last, thank Heaven! — Very pretty, Falkenstein,” he began, as the Count entered. “That’s your game, is it? I think you might have confided in your bosom friend. Who is the fair one? Come, make a clean breast of it.”
Falkenstein shook his head. “My dear Harry, spare your words. Don’t you know of old that you never get anything out of me unless I choose?”
“Oh yes, confound you, I know that pretty well. One question, though — was she pretty?”
“Do you suppose I entertain plain women?”
“No; never was such a man for the b
eaux yeux. It looked uncommonly like little L’Estrange; but I don’t suppose she could get out of the durance vile of Lowndes Square, to come and pay you a tête-à-tête call. Well, are you ready now? because Bonbon’s tired of waiting, and so are we. A man in love makes an abominable friend.”
“A man in love with himself makes a worse one,” said Waldemar; which hit Harry in a vulnerable spot, Godolphin being generally chaffed about the affection he bore his own person.
“That was the little L’Estrange, wasn’t it?” asked Godolphin, as they leaned out of the window after dinner, apart from the others.
“Yes,” said Waldemar, curtly; “but I beg you to keep silence on it to every one.”
“To be sure; I’ve kept plenty of your confidences. I had no idea you’d push it so far. Of course you won’t be fool enough to marry her?”
Falkenstein’s dark eyes flashed fire. “I shall not be fool enough to consult or confide in any man upon my private affairs.”
Godolphin shrugged his shoulders with commiseration, and left Waldemar alone in his window.
Falkenstein called in Lowndes Square the morning after and had an interview with old Cash in the library of gaudy books that were never opened, and told him concisely that he loved his niece, and — that ever I should live to record it! — that little snob, with not two ideas in his head, who couldn’t, if put to it, tell you who his own grandfather was, and who owed his tolerance in society to his banking account, refused an alliance with the refined intellect and the blue blood of one of the proud, courtly, historic Falkensteins! He’d been tutored by his wife, and said his lesson properly, refusing to sanction “any such connexion;” of course his niece must act for herself.
Waldemar bowed himself out with all his haughtiest high-breeding; he knew Valérie would act for herself, but the insult cut him to the quick. He threw himself into the train, and went down to Fairlie, his governor’s place in Devonshire, determining to sacrifice his pride, and ask his father to aid him in his effort for freedom. In the drawing-room he found his sister Virginia, a cold, proud woman of the world. She scarcely let him sit down and inquire for the governor, before she pounced on him.