Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 31
“No, I do not, Sir Folko; but you should not give them to me as you gave them to other women, any more than you should class me with other women. You have told me you did not.”
“My dear Alma, I cannot puzzle out all your wonderful distinctions and definitions,” interrupted De Vigne, hastily. “Have you enjoyed the evening as much as you anticipated?”
“Oh, it is delightful!” cried the little lady, with that rapid alternation from sorrow to mirth due to her extreme susceptibility to external impressions.
De Vigne raised his eyebrows, and interrupted her again, somewhat unwarrantably:
“You are a finished coquette, Alma.”
Her blue eyes opened wide under their black lashes.
“Sir Folko! I?”
“Yes, you. I am not finding fault with you for it. All women are who can be. I only wonder where, in your seclusion, you have learned all those pretty wiles ‘and ways that women, versed in society from their childhood, fail to acquire. Who has taught you all those dangerous tricks, from whom have you imitated your skill in captivating Curly and Castleton and Severn, and all those other men, however different their styles or tastes? You are an accomplished flirt, petite, and I congratulate you on your proficiency.”
He spoke with most unnecessary bitterness, much more than he was conscious of, and certainly much more than he ought to have used, for the Little Tressillian was just as much of a coquette — if you like to call it so — and no more of one than De Vigne in reality liked; for he measured women by their power of fascination. But now the devil of jealousy had entered into him.
Her eyes flashed, her lips quivered a little; Alma was not a woman to sit down tranquilly under injustice; her nature was too passionate not to be indignant under accusation, though it was at the same time much too tender not to forgive it as rapidly where she loved the offender.
“For shame, Sir Folko! ‘Coquette!’ I have heard you use that word to women you despise. Coquette, I have heard you say, means one to whom all men are equal I thank you greatly for your kind opinion of me!”
“Hush, hush! Heaven knows that was far from my thoughts! Forgive me, I know you have no artifice or affectation, and I should never attribute them to you. Let nothing I say vex you. If you knew all, you would not wonder that I am sceptical and suspicious, and sometimes perhaps unjust.”
He spoke kindly, gently, almost fondly. He was angry with himself for having spoiled her unclouded pleasure. She looked up in his face with a saddened, reproachful tenderness, which had never been in her eyes before, different to their impetuous vexation, different still to their frank, affectionate confidence:
“Yes; but trust me at least, if you doubt all the world!”
“I do!”
He spoke in a low whisper, her heart throbbing against his, her breath upon his cheek, his hand closing tight upon hers in the caress of the waltz; and with the voluptuous swell of the music, the tender and passionate light of the eyes that were lifted to his, for the first time there awoke, and trembled in them both, the dawn of that passion which the one had never before known, which to the other had been so fierce and fatal a curse.
At that moment the music ceased: De Vigne gave her his arm in silence, and soon after seated himself by her on one of the couches, while other men came round her, taking ices and talking the usual ball-room chitchat. It was strange how much that single evening did for Alma; she was admired, courted, followed; she learnt her own power, she received the myrtle crown due to her own attractions, to the grace and talent of Nature she seemed to acquire the grace and talent of Society, and to the charming and winning ways of her girlhood she added the witchery, wit, and fascination of a woman of the world. In that one night she grew tenfold more attractive than before; she was like a bird, who never sings so well till he has tried his wings.
Not even Lady Ela, or Madame la Duchesse, had more men anxious for the pleasure of taking them to their carriages than the young débutante. Curly’s soft words pleaded for the distinction; Tom Severn would fain have had it; Castleton tried hard to give her his arm; but De Vigne kept them all off, and took her down with that tranquil appropriativeness which he thought his intimacy with her would warrant. He would not have been best pleased if he had heard the laugh and the remarks that followed them, from the men that were on the staircase watching the women leave! The gaslight shone on her eyes, as she leaned forwards in the carriage, and put out both her hands to him.
“Sir Folko! if I could but thank you as I feel!”
“If I could but prove to you you have nothing to thank me for!”
“At least, I have all the happiness that is in my life!”
“Happiness? Hush!” said De Vigne, passionately. “How can you tell but that some day you may hate me, loathe me, and wish to God that we had never met?”
“I? O Heaven! no. If I were to die by your hand, I would pray with my latest breath that God might bless you.”
“You would? Poor child! Alma, good night!” ‘i “Good night.”
Those two good nights were very soft and low — spoken with a more tender intonation than any words that had ever passed between them. His hands closed tightly upon hers; the love of woman, his favourite toy in early youth, the stake on which he risked so much in early manhood, was beguiling him again. His head was bent so that his lips almost touched her brow; perhaps they might have touched, and lingered there — but, “Way for the Duchesse de Vieillecour’s carriage!” was shouted; the coachman started off his horses, and De Vigne stood beneath the awning, with the bright gas glare around and the dark street beyond him, while his heart stirred and his pulses quickened as, since his marriage-day, he had vowed they never should again for any woman’s sake.
He walked home alone, without waiting for his night-cab, or, indeed, remembering it, smoking as he paced the streets, forsaken in the early morning save by some wretched women reeling out of a gin-palace, or some groups quitting a casino with riotous mirthless laughter. He walked home, restless, impatient, ill at ease, with two faces before him haunting him as relentlessly as in the phantasmagoria of fever — the faces of the Trefusis and of Alma — the one with her sensual, the other with her spiritual loveliness; the one who had destroyed his youth, the other who had given it back to him, side by side in their startling and forcible contrast, as in the Eastern fable the good angel sits on the right shoulder and the bad angel on the left, neither leaving us, each pursuing us throughout the day and night
CHAPTER II.
The Cost of Honour.
THE ball at Lady Molyneux’s was on the 25th of June. On the day after, just a fortnight before the 10th, which was fixed as his marriage-day, Sabretasche gave a fête at his Dilcoosha. That exquisite place, which had always reminded me of Vathek and of Fonthill, it had been a whim of his to embellish in every possible way before his engagement; and now he seemed to take a delight in making Violet’s home as luxurious as his wealth and his art could combine to render it I went over it with him one day, and I told him that if ever I wanted to do up old Longholme as lavishly, I hoped he would come and act as superintendent of the works. Certainly, if Violet had married the highest peer in the realm, she could not have had a more lovely shrine than the Dilcoosha. Regalia’s grim and grand old castle in Merionethshire would have looked very dull and dark after Sabretasche’s villa. The grounds were artificially made as wild and luxuriant as any woodland in the heart of the provinces, while yet all the resources of horticulture were lavished on them. The conservatories excelled Chatsworth’s; with here and there, among their glories of blossom and colouring, a marble group or a single statuette, such as the rifling of Parisian, and Florentine, and Roman studios could give him. The suite of drawing-rooms opened out pf them, a soft, demi-lumière streaming through rose-hued glass on a thousand gems of art that were gathered in them. Violet’s morning room (I hate the word “boudoir;” stockbrokers’ Hackney or Peckham villas boast their “boudoirs,” and tradesmen’s wives sit puffing under finery in “boudoirs,” while their lords take invoices in white aprons, or advertise their “Nonpareil trousers,” their genuine Glenlivat, or ne plus ultra côats!) was hung in pale green and gold, with a choice library collected in quaint mediæval book-stands, the deep bay-window opening on to the river view the grounds afforded, the walls painted in illustration of Lallah Rookh, and the greatest gems the house contained in sculpture or in art shrined here in her honour. Her bedroom and her dressing-room were unrivalled; the bed was of carved ivory, the curtains of rose silk and white lace, caught up by a chain of flowers, moulded and chased in silver; all the hangings of the rooms were rose and silver, while silver lamps swung from the ceiling, giving out perfume as they burned. It was a home fit for an imperial bride.
On the 26th Sabretasche gave a fête at the Dilcoosha, a day to be spent, according to Violet’s programme, so that, as she said, “she might catch a glimpse of the Summer, and forget the Season for an hour or two;” and as the Colonel’s Dilcoosha was known to afford, if anything could, the requisites for enjoying a long day, no one, even the most ennuyé, was bored at the prospect, especially as his invitations were invariably very exclusive, and I know people who would rush into that quarter where is written —
Lasciate ogni speranza, o voi ch’entrate.
if the admissions were exclusive; and would decline Paradise if its golden gates were opened to the multitude!
The luncheon was gay and brilliant; repartee flowed with the still Aï, and mots sparkled with the Johannisberg. Sabretasche showed nowhere to better advantage than as a host; his Chesterfield courtesy, his graceful urbanity, his careful attention to everybody, and every trifle, above all, his art in starting conversation and drawing people out, always made parties at his house more charming than at any other.
During the luncheon De Vigne sat next to Leila Puffdoff, who, as I have before hinted, was willing to make more love to him than Granville cared to make to her. De Vigne was much set upon by fine ladies, and she flirted with him desperately daring the luncheon, and made him row her on the river afterwards, part of the grounds of the Dilcoosha sloping downwards to the Thames, and drooping their willow and larch boughs into the water. De Vigne took the sculls, as in duty bound, and rowed her a good way down, under the arching branches; but though Lady Puffdoff put out all her charms, she could not lure him into anything as warm or tender as she would have liked; she was piqued — possibly what he wished to make her — bid him scull her back to the Dilcoosha, and, as soon as she was landed, went off to listen to Gardoni, with Crowndiamonds, Castleton’s eldest brother. De Vigne was profoundly thankful to be released; he had a fancy to leave all these people and scenes, which were so stale, and go where his heart inclined him, go and see Alma Tressillian.
He knew the way by the river to St Crucis; took the oars of the little boat which the Countess had just vacated, and pulled himself up Thames to a point where he knew a path led to the farm-house, as he had once or twice walked down to the bank with Alma by it, and rowed her a mile or so on the water, amused with her amusement in seeing those steamers, barges, and cockle-shell boats in which Cockneys love to disport themselves on that unodoriferous stream.
He moored the boat to the bank, thinking of the careless days when he had pulled up the river with the Eton Eight, enjoying the glories of success at the Brocas and Little Surley; and walked onwards to St Crucis, with that swinging cavalry step which had beaten many good pedestrians and stalwart mountain guides in both hemispheres. He strode along, too, to uneasy thoughts; he was conscious of a keener desire to see the Little Tressillian than he would confess to himself, and, at the same time, he had a remorseful conviction that it might be better to stay away, a suggestion to which he was equally reluctant to listen. A quarter of an hour brought him in sight of St Crucis; but with that sight he saw, too — Curly, who had apparently forsaken the Dilcoosha for the same purpose as himself. Curly had just pushed open the gate and entered, as if he liked his destination; and De Vigne paused a moment behind him, under the road-side trees, wavering in his mind whether he should follow him or not. Where he stood he could see the garden, in all its untrained profuse summer beauty; the great chesnuts, with their snowy blossoms, that the wind was scattering over the turf beneath; and under the trees he saw Alma, and beside her, bending eagerly forward, Vane Castleton! He, too, then, had left Sabretasche’s fête to find his way after Alma. “Curse the fellow!” swore De Vigne, in his teeth, “how dare he come after her?” If he had followed his instinct, he would have taken Castleton up by his coat-collar and kicked him out of the garden like a dog; though probably, for that matter, Castleton had as much right there as himself.
Curly had pushed open the gate and entered, and Alma, catching sight of him as he went across the garden, sprang up, left Castleton rather unceremoniously, and came to meet him with a glad greeting, and something of that gay, bright smile which De Vigne liked to consider his own and his unshared property. Curly answered it with an air more tender than mere compliment, and sat down beside her, giving Castleton such a glance as a man only gives to a rival who has forestalled him.
De Vigne took in the whole scene at a glance, and construed it, as his scepticism and his knowledge of women suggested to him. The darker passions of his character rose up; the venom of jealousy entered into him again.
“She is a thorough-paced coquette, like all the rest,” he thought “I will not add another to the fools who pander to her vanity.”
He swung round and retraced his steps, leaving Alma sitting under her chesnut with Castleton and Curly. It cut him to the soul that those men should be near her, teaching her the power, and, with the power, the artifices of her sex, gaining — who could say they would not one or other of them? — their way into her heart! He was mad with himself for the jealousy he felt; and fiercely and futilely he tried to persuade himself, tried till at last he succeeded, that it was but his regret at the inevitable fate which would await Boughton Tressillian’s adopted child if she listened to the love of Castleton, or even of Curly; for Curly, though frankhearted and honourable as a man could be, was young, wild, and held women lightly.
All the fire which lay asleep under the armour of ice which he had put on to guard himself from a sex that had wronged him, was stirred and kindled into flame. He might as yet seek to give them, and to conceal them to himself under, other names, but at work within were his old foes — jealousy and passion. The gay glitter of society, as he joined a group under the fragrant limes of the Dilcoosha, where Violet, Madame de la Vieillecour, and others, were competing in skill as Toxopholites for the prizes Sabretasche had rifled from Howell and James’s stores, seemed strangely at variance with the tempest working up in his heart; and while he laughed and jested with the women there, he could not forget for one instant the Little Tressillian, as he left her smiling on those men! It was a far greater relief to him than he would own to himself, when not long afterwards he saw Castleton discussing the merits and demerits of her bow with Ela Ashbumington; and in half an hour’s time, or a trifle more, heard Curly chatting frothy badinage with Mrs. Tite Delafield; though, following the dictate of his nature, there was no bodily injury he could not have found it in his heart to wreak upon them both, even on his own Frestonhills pet, for having won those gay bright smiles under the chesnuts at St Crucis.
He would scarcely have been less wrathful if he had heard Crowndiamonds saying to his brother, “Where the deuce have you been to, Vane? Helena sent me to look for you, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“I was after something far prettier than the old woman,” was Castleton’s graceful reply.
“Helena” was nobody less than my Lady Molyneux, with whom this noble scion of the House of Tiara had been lié in a closer friendship than Jockey Jack would have relished had he not been taught to take such friendships as matters of course.
“I have been to see that little girl Tressillian — called to look at her pictures, of course; studios are deuced nice excuse, by Jove!”
And Lord Vane curled his whiskers and laughed at some joke not wholly explained.
“What, that little thing who was at Helena’s last night,” asked Crowndiamonds, “that you and the other fellows made such a fuss about? Heaven knows why! she’s too petite for me. Besides, somebody said she was De Vigne’s property!”
“What if she were? If he don’t take care of his game, other men may poach it, mayn’t they?”
Meanwhile that summer day passed away in colours to Violet as glorious as those that tinged its evening sky when the sun went down behind the limes. Bright as the western light were her present and her future; secure she dreamed from the grey twilight or the starless night, which overshadow the brightest human life, not less surely than they overtake the fairest summer day. Of twilight taint, much less of midnight shadow, Violet knew no fear. I have never seen on earth — not even imagined in song nor idealised in art — any face so expressive of brilliant youth as hers. When it was in repose there was the light of a smile on her lips; and the joyousness of the spirit within seemed to linger far down in the sunny depths of her eyes, as on the violet waves of the Mediterranean we have seen the gleam and the glow of the rays from a sunrise hidden from our view. There was something in her face that touched the most cynical amongst us, and subdued the most supercilious or systematic of all those women of the world into a vague regret for the spring time of their days, when they, too, were in their golden hours, and they, too, believed in Love and Life.
Never had Violet given freer rein to the joyous spirits of her nature than on that day; never had he more completely surrendered himself to the new happiness he had won! He loved her with a strangely tender love. He loved her, as we love very rarely, for
As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers,
And place them on their breast, but place to die;
Thus the frail beings we should fondly cherish
