by Ouida
Ernest smiled at the native indignation of the question. “Never think that I do not wish to be with you; but — I wanted oblivion, and one cannot shake off old habits. Did you miss me among all those other men that you have always round you?”
“How unkind that is!” whispered Nina, indignantly. “You know I always do.”
He held her closer to him in the waltz, and she felt his heart beat quicker, but she got no other answer.
That night Nina stood before her toilette-table, putting her flowers in water, and some hot tears fell on the azalias.
“I will have faith in him,” she cried, passionately; “though all the world be witness against him, I will believe in him. Whatever his life may have been, his heart is warm and true; they shall never make me doubt it.”
Her last thoughts were of him, and when she slept his face was in her dreams, while Ernest, with some of the wildest men of his set, smoked hard and drank deep in his chambers to drive away, if he could, the fiends of Regret and Passion and the memory of a young, radiant, impassioned face, which lured him to an unattainable future.
“Nina dearest,” said Selina Ruskinstone, affectionately, the morning after, “I hope you will not think me unkind — you know I have no wish but for your good — but don’t you think it would be better to be a little more — more reserved, a little less free, with Mr. Vaughan?”
“Explain yourself more clearly,” said Nina, tranquilly. “Do you wish me to send to Turkey for a veil and a guard of Bashi-Bazouks, or do you mean that Mr. Vaughan is so attractive that he is better avoided, like a mantrap or a Maëlstrom?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” retorted Augusta; “you know well enough what we mean, and certainly you do run after him a great deal too much.”
“You are so very demonstrative,” sighed Selina, “and it is so easily misconstrued. It is not feminine to court any man so unblushingly.”
Nina’s eyes flashed, and the blood colored her brow. “I am not afraid of being misconstrued by Mr. Vaughan,” she said, haughtily; “gentlemen are kinder and wiser judges in those things than our sex.”
“I wouldn’t advise you to trust to Ernest’s tender mercies,” sneered Augusta.
“My dear child, remember his principles,” sighed Selina; “his life — his reputation — —”
“Leave both him and me alone,” retorted Nina, passionately. “I will not stand calmly by to hear him slandered with your vague calumnies. You preach religion often enough; practice it now, and show more common kindness to your cousin: I do not say charity, for I am sick of the cant word, and he is above your pity. You think me utterly lost because I dance, and laugh, and enjoy my life, but, bad as my principles are, I should be shocked — yes, Selina, and I should think I merited little mercy myself, were I as harsh and bitter upon any one as you are upon him. How can you judge him? — how can you say what nobility, and truth, and affection — that will shame your own cold pharisaism — may lie in his heart unrevealed? — how can you dare to censure him?”
In the door of the salon, listening to the lecture his young champion was giving these two blue, opinionated, and strongly pious ladies, stood Ernest, his face even paler than usual, and his eyes with a strange mixture of joy and pain in them. Nina colored scarlet, but went forward to meet him with undisguised pleasure, utterly regardless of the sneering lips and averted eyes of the Miss Ruskinstones. He had come to go with them to St. Germain, and, with a dexterous manœuvre, took the very seat in the carriage opposite Nina that Eusebius had planned for himself. But the Warden was no match for the Lion in such affairs, and, being exiled to the barouche with Gordon and Augusta, took from under the seat a folio of the “Stones of Venice,” and read sulkily all the way.
“My dear fellow,” said Vaughan, when they reached St. Germain, “don’t you think you would prefer to sit in the carriage, and finish that delightful work, to coming to see some simple woods and terraces? If you would, pray don’t hesitate to say so; I am sure Miss Gordon will excuse your absence.”
The solicitous courtesy of Ernest’s manner was boiling oil to the fire raging in the Warden’s gentle breast, and Eusebius, besides, was not quick at retorts. “I am not guilty of any such bad taste,” he said, stiffly, “though I do discover a charm in severe studies, which I believe you never did.”
“No, never,” said Ernest, laughing; “my genius does not lie that way; and I’ve no vacant bishopric in my mind’s eye to make such studies profitable. Even you, you know, light of the Church as you are, want recreation sometimes. Confess now, the chansons à boire last night sounded pleasant after long months of Faithandgrace services!”
Eusebius looked much as I have seen a sleek tom-cat, who bears a respectable character generally, surprised in surreptitiously licking out of the cream-jug. He had the night before (when he was popularly supposed to be sitting under Adolphe Monod) tasted rather too many petits verres up at the Pré Catalan, utterly unconscious of his cousin’s proximity. The pure-minded soul thus cruelly caught looked prayers of piteous entreaty to Vaughan not to damage his milk-white reputation by further revelation of this unlucky detour into the Broad Road; and Ernest, who, always kind-hearted, never hit a man when he was down, contented himself with saying:
“Ah! well, we are none of us pure alabaster, though some of the sepulchres do contrive to whiten themselves up astonishingly. My father, poor man, once wished to put me in the Church. Do you think I should have graced it, Selina?”
“I can’t say I do,” sneered Selina.
“You think I should disgrace it? Very probably. I am not good at ‘canting.’” And giving Nina his arm, the Warden being much too confused to forestall him, he whispered: “when is that atrocious saint going to take himself over the water? Couldn’t we bribe his diocesan to call him before the Arches Court? Surely those long coats, so like the little wooden men in Noah’s Ark, and that straightened hair, so mathematically parted down the centre, look ‘perverted’ enough to warrant it.”
Nina shook her head. “Unhappily, he is here for six months for ill health! — the sick-leave of clergymen who wish for a holiday, and are too holy to leave their flock without an excuse to society.”
Vaughan laughed, then sighed. “Six months — and you have been here four already! Eusebius hates me cordially — all my English relatives do, I believe; we do not get on together. They are too cold and conventional for me. I have some of the warm Bohemian blood, though God knows I’ve seen enough to chill it to ice by this time; but it is not chilled — so much the worse for me,” muttered Ernest “Tell me,” he said, abruptly— “tell me why you took the trouble to defend me so generously this morning?”
She looked up at him with her frank, beaming regard. “Because they dare to misjudge you, and they know nothing, and are not worthy to know anything of your real self.”
He pressed his lips together as if in bodily pain. “And what do you know?”
“Have you not yourself said that you talk to me as you talk to no one else?” answered Nina, impetuously; “besides — I cannot tell why, but the first day I met you I seemed to find some friend that I had lost before. I was certain that you would never misconstrue anything I said, and I felt that I saw further into your heart and mind than any one else could do. Was it not very strange?” She stopped, and looked up at him. Ernest bent his eyes on the ground, and breathed fast.
“No, no,” he said at last; “yours is only an ideal of me. If you knew me as I really am, you would cease to feel the — the interest that you say — —”
He stopped abruptly; facile as he was at pretty compliments, and versed in tender scenes as he had been from his school-days, the longing to make this girl love him, and his struggle not to breathe love to her, deprived him of his customary strength and nonchalance.
“I do not fear to know you as you are,” said Nina, gently. “I do not think you yourself allow all the better things that there are in you. People have not judged you rightly, and you have been too proud to prove their
error to them. You have found pleasure in running counter to the prudish and illiberal bigots who presumed to judge you; and to a world you have found heartless and false you have not cared to lift the domino and mask you wore.”
Vaughan sighed from the bottom of his heart, and walked on in silence for a good five minutes. “Promise me, Nina,” he said at length with an effort, “that no matter what you hear against me, you will not condemn me unheard.”
“I promise,” she answered, raising her eyes to his, brighter still for the color in her checks. It was the first time he had called her Nina.
“Miss Gordon,” said Eusebius, hurriedly overtaking them, “pray come with me a moment: there is the most exquisite specimen of the Flamboyant style in an archway — —”
“Thank you for your good intentions,” said Nina, pettishly, “but really, as you might know by this time, I never can see any attractions in your prosaic and matter-of-fact-fact study.”
“It might be more profitable than — —”
“Than thinking of La Vallière and poor Bragelonne, and all the gay glories of the exiled Bourbons?” laughed Nina. “Very likely; but romance is more to my taste than granite. You would never have killed yourself, like Bragelonne, for the beaux yeux of Louise de la Beaume-sur-Blanc, would you?”
“I trust,” said Eusebius, stiffly, “that I should have had a deeper sense of the important responsibilities of the gift of life than to throw it away because a silly girl preferred another.”
“You are very impolitic,” said Ernest, with a satirical smile. “No lady could feel remorse at forsaking you, if you could get over it so easily.”
“He would get over it easily,” laughed Nina. “You would call her Delilah, and all the Scripture bad names, order Mr. Ruskin’s new work, turn your desires to a deanship, marry some bishop’s daughter with high ecclesiastical interest, and console yourself in the bosom of your Mother Church — eh, Mr. Ruskinstone?”
“You are cruelly unjust,” sighed Eusebius. “You little know — —”
“The charms of architecture? No; and I never shall,” answered his tormentor, humming the “Queen of the Roses,” and waltzing down the forest glade, where they were walking. “How severe you look!” she said as she waltzed back. “Is that wrong, too? Miriam danced before the ark and Jephtha’s daughter.”
The Warden appeared not to hear. Certainly his mode of courtship was singular.
“Ernest,” he said, turning to his cousin as the rest of the party came up, “I had no idea your sister was in Paris. I have not seen her since she was fourteen. I should not have known her in the least.”
“Margaret is in India with her husband,” answered Vaughan. “What are you dreaming of? Where have you seen her?”
“I saw her in your chambers,” answered the Warden, slowly. “I passed three times yesterday, and she was sitting in the centre window each time.”
“Pshaw! You dreamt it in your sleep last night. Margaret’s in Vellore, I assure you.”
“I saw her,” said the Warden, softly; “or, at least, I saw some lady, whom I naturally presumed to be your sister.”
Ernest, who had not colored for fifteen years, and would have defied man or woman to confuse him, flushed to his very temples.
“You are mistaken,” he said, decidedly. “There is no woman in my rooms.”
Eusebius raised his eyebrows, bent his head, smiled and sighed. More polite disbelief was never expressed. The Miss Ruskinstones would have blushed if they could; as they could not, they drew themselves bolt upright, and put their parasols between them and the reprobate. Nina, whose hand was still in Vaughan’s arm, turned white, and flashed a quick, upward look at him; then, with a glance at Eusebius, as fiery as the eternal wrath that that dear divine was accustomed to deal out so largely to other people, she led Ernest up to her father, who being providentially somewhat deaf, had not heard this by-play, and said, to her cousin’s horror, “Papa, dear, Mr. Vaughan wants you to dine with him at Tortoni’s to-night, to meet M. de Vendanges. You will be very happy, won’t you?”
Ernest pressed her little hand against his side, and thanked her with his eyes.
Gordon was propitiated for that day; he was not likely to quarrel with a man who could introduce him to “Son Altesse Monseigneur le Duc de Vendanges.”
V. MORE MISCHIEF — AND AN END.
In a little cabinet de peinture, in a house in the Place Vendôme, apart from all the other people, who having come to a déjeûner were now dispersed in the music rooms, boudoirs, and conservatories, sat Madame de Mélusine, talking to Gordon, flatteringly, beguilingly, bewitchingly, as that accomplished widow could. The banker found her charming, and really, under her blandishments, began to believe, poor old fellow, that she was in love with him!
“Ah! by-the-by, cher monsieur,” began madame, when she had soft-soaped him into a proper frame of mind, “I want to speak to you about that mignonne Nina. You cannot tell, you cannot imagine, what interest I take in her.”
“You do her much honor, madame,” replied her bourgeois gentilhomme, always stiff, however enraptured he might feel internally.
“The honor is mine,” smiled Pauline. “Yes, I do feel much interest in her; there is a sympathy in our natures, I am certain, and — and, Monsieur Gordon, I cannot see that darling girl on the brink of a precipice without stretching out a hand to snatch her from the abyss.”
“Precipice — abyss — Nina! Good Heavens! my dear madame, what do you mean?” cried Gordon — a fire, an elopement, and the small-pox, all presenting themselves to his mind.
“No, no,” repeated madame, with increasing vehemence, “I will not permit any private feelings, I will not allow my own weakness to prevent me from saving her. It would be a crime, a cruelty, to let your innocent child be deceived, and rendered miserable for all time, because I lack the moral courage to preserve her. Monsieur, I speak to you, as I am sure I may, as one friend to another, and I am perfectly certain that you will not misjudge me. Answer me one thing; no impertinent curiosity dictates the question. Do you wish your daughter married to Mr. Vaughan?”
“Married to Vaughan!” exclaimed the startled banker; “I’d sooner see her married to a crossing sweeper. She never thought of such a thing. Impossible! absurd! she’ll marry my friend Ruskinstone as soon as she comes of age. Marry Vaughan! a fellow without a penny — —”
Pauline laid her soft, jewelled hand on his arm:
“My dear friend, he thinks of it if you do not, and I am much mistaken if dear Nina is not already dazzled by his brilliant qualities. Your countryman is a charming companion, no one can gainsay that; but, alas! he is a roué, a gambler, an adventurer, who, while winning her young girl’s affections, has only in view the wealth which he hopes he will gain with her. It is painful to me to say this” (and tears stood in madame’s long, velvet eyes). “We were good friends before he wanted more than friendship, while poor De Mélusine was still living, and his true character was revealed to me. It would be false delicacy to allow your darling Nina to become his victim for want of a few words from me, though I know, if he were aware of my interference, the inference he would basely insinuate from it. But you,” whispered madame, brushing the tears from her eyes, and giving him an angelic smile, “I need not fear that you would ever misjudge me?”
“Never, I swear, most generous of women!” said the banker, kissing the snow-white hand, very clumsily, too. “I’ll tell the fellow my mind directly — an unprincipled, gambling — —”
“Non, non, je vous en prie, monsieur!” cried the widow, really frightened, for this would not have suited her plans at all. “You would put me in the power of that unscrupulous man. He would destroy my reputation at once in his revenge.”
“But what am I to do?” said the poor gulled banker. “Nina’s a will of her own, and if she take a fancy to this confounded — —”
“Leave that to me,” said la baronne, softly. “I have proofs which will stagger her most obstinate faith in her lover.
Meanwhile give him no suspicion, go to his supper on Tuesday, and — you are asked to Vauvenay, accept the invitation — and conclude the fiançailles with Monsieur le Ministre as soon as you can.”
“But — but, madame,” stammered this new Jourdain to his enchanting Dorimène, “Vauvenay is an exile. I shall not see you there?”
“Ah, silly man,” laughed the widow, “I shall be only two miles off. I am going to stay with the Salvador; they leave Paris in three weeks. Listen — your daughter is singing ‘The Swallows.’ Her voice is quite as good as Ristori’s.”
Three hours after, madame held another tête-à-tête in that boudoir. This time the favored mortal was Vaughan. They had had a pathetic interview, of which the pathos hardly moved Ernest as much as the widow desired.
“You love me no longer, Ernest,” she murmured, the tears falling down her cheeks — her rouge was the product of high art, and never washed off— “I see it, I feel it; your heart is given to that English girl. I have tried to jest about it; I have tried to affect indifference, but I cannot. The love you once won will be yours to the grave.”
Ernest listened, a satirical smile on his lips.
“I should feel more grateful,” he said, calmly, “if the gift had not been given to so many; it will be a great deal of trouble to you to love us all to our graves. And your new friend Gordon, do you intend cherishing his grey hairs, too, till the gout puts them under the sod?”
She fell back sobbing with exquisite abandon. No deserted Calypso’s pose was ever more effective.
“Ernest, Ernest! that I should live to be so insulted, and by you!”
“Nay, madame, end this vaudeville,” said he bitterly. “I know well enough that you hate me, or why have you troubled yourself to coin the untruths about me that you whispered to Miss Gordon?”
“Ah! have you no pity for the first mad vengeance dictated by jealousy and despair?” murmured Pauline. “Once there was attraction in this face for you, Ernest; have some compassion, some sympathy — —”