Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 839
“Oh, my dear!” cried his wife, shocked, “when she is the niece of the great Chancellor and her mother was a Princess Dourtza.”
“You don’t know anything about her,” repeats Usk, with that unpleasant obstinacy characteristic of men when they talk to their wives. “You met her in Vienna and took one of your crazes for her, and she may have sent a score of lovers to Siberia, or deserve to go there herself, for anything you can tell. One can never be sure of anything about foreigners.”
“How absurd you are, and how insular!” cries Dorothy Usk, again. “‘Foreigners!’ As if there were any foreigners in these days, when Europe is like one family!”
“A family which, like most families, squabbles and scratches pretty often, then,” says Usk, — which seems to his wife a reply too vulgar to be worthy of contradiction. He is conscious that Xenia Sabaroff is a very great lady, and that her quarterings, backed by descent and alliance, are wholly irreproachable, — indeed, written in that libro d’oro, the “Almanach de Gotha,” for all who choose to read.
Her descent and her diamonds are alike immaculate, but her character? — he is too old-fashioned a Briton not to think it very probable that there is something louche there.
Usk is a Russophobist, as becomes a true Tory. He has a rooted impression that all Russians are spies when they are not swindlers; much as in the early years of the century his grandsire had been positive that all Frenchmen were assassins when they were not dancing-masters. The White Czar has replaced the Petit Caporal, and the fur cap the cocked hat, in the eyes of Englishmen of Usk’s type, as an object of dread and detestation. He would never be in the least surprised if it turned out that the real object of Madame Sabaroff’s visit to Surrenden were to have possible opportunities to examine the facilities of Weymouth as a landing-place for Cossacks out of Muscovite corvettes.
“Russians are tremendous swells at palaver,” he says, with much contempt, “gammon you no end if you like to believe ’em: they’ve always some political dodge or other behind it all.”
“I don’t say she isn’t an agreeable woman,” he continues, now: his admiration of Madame Sabaroff is much mitigated by his sense that she has a rather derisive opinion of himself. “I don’t say she isn’t an agreeable woman, but she gives me the idea of artificiality, — insincerity, — mystery.”
“Just because she’s a Russian!” cries his wife, with disdain.
“My dear George,” observes Brandolin, “there are preconceived ideas about all nationalities. As a rule, they are completely false. The received Continental idea is that an Englishman is a bluff, blunt, unpleasant, opinionated person, very cross, very clean too it is true, but on the strength of his tub and his constitution despising all the rest of mankind. Now, how completely absurd such an opinion is! You yourself are an example of the suaviter in modo, fortiter in re, of which the true-blue Briton always gives so admirable an example.”
Usk laughs, but sulkily; he has the impression that his beloved friend is making fun of him, but he is not quite sure. He himself believes that he is an ideal Englishman; Brandolin is only half or a quarter of one, he does not shoot, wears furs in winter, only drinks very light Rhenish wine, never goes to any church, and never cuts his hair very short. Added to this, he has no fixed political opinion, except a general impression that England and the world in general are going down-hill as fast as they can, “tobogganing” as they say in Canada, at the rate of fifty miles a minute, to land in the slough of Socialism and be picked out of it by some military despot, — democracy invariably ending in absolutism.
“What ridiculous rubbish!” says his wife. “You might as well say that the demoiselles-mannequins at Worth’s or Rodrigue’s are conspiring for the Orleanists when they try on my clothes.”
“They are conspiring for the ruin of your family,” says Usk, with a groan. “Whose purse can stand those Paris prices?”
“What an irrelevant remark!” cries Lady Usk. “You are always dragging money-questions into everything.”
“Those faiseurs, as you call ’em,” continues Usk, unheeding, “are at the root of half the misery of society. Women get into debt up to their eyes for their toilets, and they don’t care what abomination they do if they get enough out of it to go on plunging. Hundred-guinea gowns soon make up a pretty total when you change ’em three times a day.”
“And if women are guys aren’t the men furious?” asks his wife. “Even if they try to economize, aren’t they always taunted with being dowdies? You none of you know anything about the cost of things, and you expect everybody to be bien mise on a halfpenny a day. When Boom saw me at Ascot this year he stared at me, and whispered to me, ‘Oh, I say, mother! you’ve got the same bonnet on you had at the Oaks. I do hope the other fellows won’t notice it.’ That is how he will speak to his wife some day; and yet I dare say, like you, he will expect her to get her bonnets from Virot at ten francs apiece!”
Lady Usk is angry and roused.
“Look at my poor little sister,” she goes on. “What a life that brute Mersey leads her about money! All those dreadfully plain girls to dress, and nothing to do it on, and yet if they are not all well got up wherever they go to, he swears he is ashamed to be seen with them. You can’t dress well, you can’t do anything well, without spending money; and if you haven’t money you must get into debt. That is as clear as that two and two are four. When ever do men remember their own extravagances? You smoke ten cigars a day; your cigars cost a shilling or eighteenpence each, — that is ten or fifteen shillings a day; five pounds a week, not counting your cigarettes! Good heavens! five pounds a week for sheer silly personal indulgence that your doctors tell you will canker your tongue and dry up your gastric juice! At all events, our toilets don’t hurt our digestion; and what would the world look like if women weren’t well dressed in it? Your cigars benefit nobody, and only make your teeth yellow.”
“Well, in a year they cost about what one ball-gown does that’s worn twice.”
“I always wear mine three times, even in London,” says Dorothy Usk, with conscious virtue. “But I don’t see any sin in spending money. I think it ought to be spent. But you are always dragging money-questions into everything, and Boom says that the Latin person whom you and Lord Brandolin are always quoting declares most sensibly that money should always be regarded as a means, never as an end; and if it is to be a means to anything, must not it be spent before it can become so?”
“That’s neither here nor there,” replies her lord; “and if Boom only reads his classics upside down like that he’d better leave ’em alone.”
“You are never content. Most men would be delighted if a boy read at all.”
“I don’t know why, I’m sure,” replies Usk, drearily. “Reading’s going out, you know; nobody’ll read at all fifty years hence: poking about in guinea-pigs’ stomachs, and giving long names to insects out of the coal-hole, is what they call education nowadays.”
“Frederic Harrison has said very aptly,” remarks Brandolin, who is present at this conjugal colloquy, and seeks to make a diversion on it, “that the boast of science is to send the Indian mails across seas and deserts in nine days, but that science cannot put in those mail-bags a single letter equal to Voltaire’s or Sévigné’s, and he doubts very much that there is one.”
“It’s an ill bird that fouls its own nest,” says Usk, grimly: “still, I’m very glad if those scientific prigs fall out among themselves.”
“I think some people write charming letters still,” says Dorothy Usk. “Of course when one is in a hurry — and one is almost always in a hurry — —”
“Hurry is fatal, Lady Usk,” says Brandolin. “It destroys style, grace, and harmony. It is the curse of our times. The most lovely thing in life is leisure; and we call it progress to have killed it.”
“Read this letter,” says his hostess, giving him one which she holds in her hand. “There is nothing private in it, and nothing wonderful, but there is a grace in the expressions; whilst the English, for a foreigner, is absolutely marvellous.”
“I thought there were no foreigners?” says Usk. “I thought steam had effaced nationalities?”
His wife does not deign to reply.
Brandolin has taken the letter with hesitation. “Do you really think I may read it?”
“When I tell you to do so,” says Dolly Usk, impatiently. “Besides, there is nothing in it, only it is pretty.”
Brandolin reads; it is on very thick paper, almost imperceptibly scented, with a princess’s crown embossed on it and a gold X.
“It is very kind of you, dear Lady Usk, to have remembered a solitaire like myself in the midst of your charming children and your many joys.” (“My many annoyances, she means,” interpolates Lady Usk.) “I will be with you, as you so amiably wish, next Tuesday or Wednesday. I am for the moment in Paris, having been this month at Aix, not that I have any aches or pains myself, but a friend of mine, Marie Woronszoff, has many, and tries to cure them by warm sunshine and the cold douches which her physicians prescribe. There are many pleasant people here; every one is supposed to be very ill and suffering agony, but every one laughs, flirts, plays, sits under the little tents under the trees, dances at the Casino, and eats a fair dinner as usual, so that if Pallida Mors be indeed among us she looks just like every one else. I came to Aix from my own place on the White Sea, and the gay groups, the bright alleys, the green embowered chalets, and the goatherds with their flocks which come tinkling their bells down the hill-sides in all directions, all seemed to me like an operetta of Offenbach’s, spiritualized and washed with the pure daylight and the mountain-air, but still Offenbach. How are your children? Do they still care for me? That is very sweet of them. A day at their years is as long as a season at mine. Assure them of my unforgetting gratitude. I shall be pleased to be in England again, and, though I do not know Surrenden, my recollections of Orme tell me d’avance that I shall in any house of yours find the kindest of friends, the most sympathetic of companions. Say many things to your lord for me. I think he is only so discontented because the gods have been too good to him and given him too completely everything he can desire.” (“That’s all she knows about it!” says Usk, sotto voce.) “Au revoir, dear Lady Usk. Receive the assurance of my highest consideration, and believe in my sincere regard. Bien à vous. — Xenia P. Sabaroff.”
“A very pretty letter,” says Brandolin. “Many thanks.” And he restores it to its owner.
“Bunkum!” says Usk.
“Not a bit in the world,” says his wife, with contempt and indignation. “She does not ‘pose,’ if you do!”
“My dear George,” says Brandolin, “you are one of those thorough-going Britons who always think that everybody who doesn’t deal in disagreeable remarks must be lying. Believe me, there are people who really see ‘the side that’s next the sun,’ — even in a crab-apple.”
“And deuced irritating, too, they are,” says Usk, with emphasis. “‘What a beastly bad day,’ one says to ’em when it’s pouring cats and dogs, and they answer, ‘Oh, yes, but rain was so wanted we must be thankful.’ That’s the kind of answer that would make a saint swear.”
“You are not a saint, and you swear on small provocation,” replies Brandolin. “To look at rain in that light argues true philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophy is too often strained to bursting in our climate, by having to contemplate rain destroying the crops. If we only had rain when we wanted it, I think the most unreasonable among us would view it with equanimity.”
Rain is at that moment running down the painted panes of the Surrenden casements, and driving across the lawns and terraces of the Surrenden gardens. It makes Usk very cross: all the ensilage in the world will not console him for ripening corn beaten down in all directions, and young families of pheasants dying of cramp and pip in their ferny homes.
“Dig a big pit and cram your soaked grass into it: very well, I don’t say no,” he growls. “But what about your mildewed wheat? And where should we be if we had to undergo a blockade? I’m not against making more pasture, grazing’s all very well; but if there’s a war big enough to sweep the seas of the grain-ships that come to us from the Colonies and the United States, where shall we be if we’ve nothing to eat but our own beef and mutton? Beef and mutton are solid food, but I believe we should all go mad on them if we’d no bread to eat too.”
“I’m all for pasture,” replies Brandolin; “and as the British Isles can never, under any cultivation whatever, feed all their population, we may as well dedicate ourselves to what is picturesque. I am fascinated by Laveleye’s portrait of England when she shall have turned grazier exclusively: it is lovely: ‘L’Angleterre redeviendra ce qu’elle était sous les Tudors, un grand parc vert, parsemé d’ormes et de chênes, où b[oe]ufs et moutons se promeneront dans des prairies sans limites.’”
“‘Prairies sans limites?’ when the land’s to be all sliced up in little bits between peasant proprietors!” says Usk.
“I don’t think Laveleye believes in peasant proprietors, though he is a professor of social economy.”
“Social economy!” says Usk, with a groan. “Oh, I know that fool of a word! In plain English, it means ruin all round, and fortune for a few d —— d manufacturers.”
“The d —— d manufacturer is the principal outcome of two thousand centuries of Christianity, civilization, and culture. The result is not perfectly satisfactory or encouraging, one must admit,” says Brandolin, as he reaches down a volume of eighteenth-century memoirs, and adds, with entire irrelevancy to manufacturers or memoirs, “Is she really as handsome as your children tell me?”
“Who?” asks Usk. “Oh, the Russian woman: yes, very good-looking. Yes, she was here at Easter, and she turned their heads.”
“Has she any lovers older than Babe?”
“She has left ’em in Russia if she has.”
“A convenient distance to leave anything at: Italy and Russia are the only countries remaining to us in which Messalina can still do her little murders comfortably without any fuss being made.”
“She isn’t Messalina, at least I think not. But one never knows.”
“No, one never knows till one tries,” says Brandolin. And he wishes vaguely that the Russian woman were already here. He is fond of Surrenden, and fond of all its people, but he is a little, a very little, bored. He sees that all Lady Usk’s doves are paired, and he does not wish to disturb their harmony, possibly because none of the feminine doves attract him. But he cannot flirt forever with the children, because the children are not very often visible, and without flirting civilized life is dull, even for a man who is more easily consoled by ancient authors off the library-shelves than most people can be.
This conversation occurs in the forenoon in Lady Usk’s boudoir. In the late afternoon in the library over their teacups the ladies talk of Xenia Sabaroff. It is perceptible to Brandolin that they would prefer that she should not arrive.
“Is she really so very good-looking?” he asks of Mrs. Wentworth Curzon.
“Oh, yes,” replies that lady, with an accent of depreciation in her tones. “Yes, she is very handsome; but too pale, and her eyes too large. You know those Russian women are mere paquets de nerfs, shut up in their rooms all day and smoking so incessantly: they have all that is worst in the Oriental and Parisienne mixed together.”
“How very sad!” says Brandolin. “I don’t think I have known one, except Princess Kraskawa: she went sleighing in all weathers, wore the frankest of gingerbread wigs, and was always surrounded by about fifty grandchildren.”
Princess Kraskawa had been for many years ambassadress in London.
“Of course there are exceptions,” says Nina Curzon; “but generally, you know, they are very depraved, such inordinate gamblers, and so fond of morphine, and always maladives.”
“Ah,” says Brandolin, pensively, “but the physical and moral perfection of Englishwomen always makes them take too high a standard: poor humanity toils hopelessly, and utterly exhausted, many miles behind them.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” says Mrs. Curzon; “we are no better than our neighbors, perhaps, but we are not afraid of the air, we don’t heat our houses to a thousand degrees above boiling-point, we don’t gamble, — at least not much, — and we don’t talk every language under the sun except our own, and yet not one of them grammatically.”
“Decidedly,” reflects Brandolin, “Lawrence must have looked too often at Madame Sabaroff.”
“Sabaroff is dead, isn’t he?” he asked, aloud. “You know I have been out of society for a year: the whole map of Europe gets altered in one’s absence.”
“Sabaroff was shot in a duel four years ago,” replies Mrs. Curzon,— “a duel about her.”
“What a fortunate woman! To get rid of a husband, and to get rid of him in such interesting circumstances! C’est le comble de bonheur!”
“That depends. With her it resulted in her exile from court.”
“Oh, to be sure; when Russians are naughty they are sent to live on their estates, as riotous children are dismissed to the nursery. Was she compromised, then?”
“Very much compromised; and both men were killed, for the adversary of Sabaroff had been wounded mortally, when, with an immense effort, he fired, and shot the prince through the lungs.”
“A pretty little melodrama. Who was the opponent?”
“Count Lustoff, a colonel of the Guard. I wonder you did not hear of it: it made a stir at the time.”
“I may have heard: when one doesn’t know the people concerned, no massacre, even of the Innocents, makes any impression on one. And the result was that the lady had to leave the imperial court?”
“Yes: they do draw a line there.”
Brandolin laughs; it tickles his fancy to hear Mrs. Wentworth Curzon condemning by implication the laxity of the court of St. James.
“They can’t send us to our estates,” he replies, “the lands are so small and the railways are so close. Else it would have a very good effect if all our naughty people could be shut up inside their own gates, with nobody to speak to but the steward and the rector. Can you imagine anything that would more effectively contribute to correct manners and morals? But how very desolate London would look!”
“You don’t know anything about her,” repeats Usk, with that unpleasant obstinacy characteristic of men when they talk to their wives. “You met her in Vienna and took one of your crazes for her, and she may have sent a score of lovers to Siberia, or deserve to go there herself, for anything you can tell. One can never be sure of anything about foreigners.”
“How absurd you are, and how insular!” cries Dorothy Usk, again. “‘Foreigners!’ As if there were any foreigners in these days, when Europe is like one family!”
“A family which, like most families, squabbles and scratches pretty often, then,” says Usk, — which seems to his wife a reply too vulgar to be worthy of contradiction. He is conscious that Xenia Sabaroff is a very great lady, and that her quarterings, backed by descent and alliance, are wholly irreproachable, — indeed, written in that libro d’oro, the “Almanach de Gotha,” for all who choose to read.
Her descent and her diamonds are alike immaculate, but her character? — he is too old-fashioned a Briton not to think it very probable that there is something louche there.
Usk is a Russophobist, as becomes a true Tory. He has a rooted impression that all Russians are spies when they are not swindlers; much as in the early years of the century his grandsire had been positive that all Frenchmen were assassins when they were not dancing-masters. The White Czar has replaced the Petit Caporal, and the fur cap the cocked hat, in the eyes of Englishmen of Usk’s type, as an object of dread and detestation. He would never be in the least surprised if it turned out that the real object of Madame Sabaroff’s visit to Surrenden were to have possible opportunities to examine the facilities of Weymouth as a landing-place for Cossacks out of Muscovite corvettes.
“Russians are tremendous swells at palaver,” he says, with much contempt, “gammon you no end if you like to believe ’em: they’ve always some political dodge or other behind it all.”
“I don’t say she isn’t an agreeable woman,” he continues, now: his admiration of Madame Sabaroff is much mitigated by his sense that she has a rather derisive opinion of himself. “I don’t say she isn’t an agreeable woman, but she gives me the idea of artificiality, — insincerity, — mystery.”
“Just because she’s a Russian!” cries his wife, with disdain.
“My dear George,” observes Brandolin, “there are preconceived ideas about all nationalities. As a rule, they are completely false. The received Continental idea is that an Englishman is a bluff, blunt, unpleasant, opinionated person, very cross, very clean too it is true, but on the strength of his tub and his constitution despising all the rest of mankind. Now, how completely absurd such an opinion is! You yourself are an example of the suaviter in modo, fortiter in re, of which the true-blue Briton always gives so admirable an example.”
Usk laughs, but sulkily; he has the impression that his beloved friend is making fun of him, but he is not quite sure. He himself believes that he is an ideal Englishman; Brandolin is only half or a quarter of one, he does not shoot, wears furs in winter, only drinks very light Rhenish wine, never goes to any church, and never cuts his hair very short. Added to this, he has no fixed political opinion, except a general impression that England and the world in general are going down-hill as fast as they can, “tobogganing” as they say in Canada, at the rate of fifty miles a minute, to land in the slough of Socialism and be picked out of it by some military despot, — democracy invariably ending in absolutism.
“What ridiculous rubbish!” says his wife. “You might as well say that the demoiselles-mannequins at Worth’s or Rodrigue’s are conspiring for the Orleanists when they try on my clothes.”
“They are conspiring for the ruin of your family,” says Usk, with a groan. “Whose purse can stand those Paris prices?”
“What an irrelevant remark!” cries Lady Usk. “You are always dragging money-questions into everything.”
“Those faiseurs, as you call ’em,” continues Usk, unheeding, “are at the root of half the misery of society. Women get into debt up to their eyes for their toilets, and they don’t care what abomination they do if they get enough out of it to go on plunging. Hundred-guinea gowns soon make up a pretty total when you change ’em three times a day.”
“And if women are guys aren’t the men furious?” asks his wife. “Even if they try to economize, aren’t they always taunted with being dowdies? You none of you know anything about the cost of things, and you expect everybody to be bien mise on a halfpenny a day. When Boom saw me at Ascot this year he stared at me, and whispered to me, ‘Oh, I say, mother! you’ve got the same bonnet on you had at the Oaks. I do hope the other fellows won’t notice it.’ That is how he will speak to his wife some day; and yet I dare say, like you, he will expect her to get her bonnets from Virot at ten francs apiece!”
Lady Usk is angry and roused.
“Look at my poor little sister,” she goes on. “What a life that brute Mersey leads her about money! All those dreadfully plain girls to dress, and nothing to do it on, and yet if they are not all well got up wherever they go to, he swears he is ashamed to be seen with them. You can’t dress well, you can’t do anything well, without spending money; and if you haven’t money you must get into debt. That is as clear as that two and two are four. When ever do men remember their own extravagances? You smoke ten cigars a day; your cigars cost a shilling or eighteenpence each, — that is ten or fifteen shillings a day; five pounds a week, not counting your cigarettes! Good heavens! five pounds a week for sheer silly personal indulgence that your doctors tell you will canker your tongue and dry up your gastric juice! At all events, our toilets don’t hurt our digestion; and what would the world look like if women weren’t well dressed in it? Your cigars benefit nobody, and only make your teeth yellow.”
“Well, in a year they cost about what one ball-gown does that’s worn twice.”
“I always wear mine three times, even in London,” says Dorothy Usk, with conscious virtue. “But I don’t see any sin in spending money. I think it ought to be spent. But you are always dragging money-questions into everything, and Boom says that the Latin person whom you and Lord Brandolin are always quoting declares most sensibly that money should always be regarded as a means, never as an end; and if it is to be a means to anything, must not it be spent before it can become so?”
“That’s neither here nor there,” replies her lord; “and if Boom only reads his classics upside down like that he’d better leave ’em alone.”
“You are never content. Most men would be delighted if a boy read at all.”
“I don’t know why, I’m sure,” replies Usk, drearily. “Reading’s going out, you know; nobody’ll read at all fifty years hence: poking about in guinea-pigs’ stomachs, and giving long names to insects out of the coal-hole, is what they call education nowadays.”
“Frederic Harrison has said very aptly,” remarks Brandolin, who is present at this conjugal colloquy, and seeks to make a diversion on it, “that the boast of science is to send the Indian mails across seas and deserts in nine days, but that science cannot put in those mail-bags a single letter equal to Voltaire’s or Sévigné’s, and he doubts very much that there is one.”
“It’s an ill bird that fouls its own nest,” says Usk, grimly: “still, I’m very glad if those scientific prigs fall out among themselves.”
“I think some people write charming letters still,” says Dorothy Usk. “Of course when one is in a hurry — and one is almost always in a hurry — —”
“Hurry is fatal, Lady Usk,” says Brandolin. “It destroys style, grace, and harmony. It is the curse of our times. The most lovely thing in life is leisure; and we call it progress to have killed it.”
“Read this letter,” says his hostess, giving him one which she holds in her hand. “There is nothing private in it, and nothing wonderful, but there is a grace in the expressions; whilst the English, for a foreigner, is absolutely marvellous.”
“I thought there were no foreigners?” says Usk. “I thought steam had effaced nationalities?”
His wife does not deign to reply.
Brandolin has taken the letter with hesitation. “Do you really think I may read it?”
“When I tell you to do so,” says Dolly Usk, impatiently. “Besides, there is nothing in it, only it is pretty.”
Brandolin reads; it is on very thick paper, almost imperceptibly scented, with a princess’s crown embossed on it and a gold X.
“It is very kind of you, dear Lady Usk, to have remembered a solitaire like myself in the midst of your charming children and your many joys.” (“My many annoyances, she means,” interpolates Lady Usk.) “I will be with you, as you so amiably wish, next Tuesday or Wednesday. I am for the moment in Paris, having been this month at Aix, not that I have any aches or pains myself, but a friend of mine, Marie Woronszoff, has many, and tries to cure them by warm sunshine and the cold douches which her physicians prescribe. There are many pleasant people here; every one is supposed to be very ill and suffering agony, but every one laughs, flirts, plays, sits under the little tents under the trees, dances at the Casino, and eats a fair dinner as usual, so that if Pallida Mors be indeed among us she looks just like every one else. I came to Aix from my own place on the White Sea, and the gay groups, the bright alleys, the green embowered chalets, and the goatherds with their flocks which come tinkling their bells down the hill-sides in all directions, all seemed to me like an operetta of Offenbach’s, spiritualized and washed with the pure daylight and the mountain-air, but still Offenbach. How are your children? Do they still care for me? That is very sweet of them. A day at their years is as long as a season at mine. Assure them of my unforgetting gratitude. I shall be pleased to be in England again, and, though I do not know Surrenden, my recollections of Orme tell me d’avance that I shall in any house of yours find the kindest of friends, the most sympathetic of companions. Say many things to your lord for me. I think he is only so discontented because the gods have been too good to him and given him too completely everything he can desire.” (“That’s all she knows about it!” says Usk, sotto voce.) “Au revoir, dear Lady Usk. Receive the assurance of my highest consideration, and believe in my sincere regard. Bien à vous. — Xenia P. Sabaroff.”
“A very pretty letter,” says Brandolin. “Many thanks.” And he restores it to its owner.
“Bunkum!” says Usk.
“Not a bit in the world,” says his wife, with contempt and indignation. “She does not ‘pose,’ if you do!”
“My dear George,” says Brandolin, “you are one of those thorough-going Britons who always think that everybody who doesn’t deal in disagreeable remarks must be lying. Believe me, there are people who really see ‘the side that’s next the sun,’ — even in a crab-apple.”
“And deuced irritating, too, they are,” says Usk, with emphasis. “‘What a beastly bad day,’ one says to ’em when it’s pouring cats and dogs, and they answer, ‘Oh, yes, but rain was so wanted we must be thankful.’ That’s the kind of answer that would make a saint swear.”
“You are not a saint, and you swear on small provocation,” replies Brandolin. “To look at rain in that light argues true philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophy is too often strained to bursting in our climate, by having to contemplate rain destroying the crops. If we only had rain when we wanted it, I think the most unreasonable among us would view it with equanimity.”
Rain is at that moment running down the painted panes of the Surrenden casements, and driving across the lawns and terraces of the Surrenden gardens. It makes Usk very cross: all the ensilage in the world will not console him for ripening corn beaten down in all directions, and young families of pheasants dying of cramp and pip in their ferny homes.
“Dig a big pit and cram your soaked grass into it: very well, I don’t say no,” he growls. “But what about your mildewed wheat? And where should we be if we had to undergo a blockade? I’m not against making more pasture, grazing’s all very well; but if there’s a war big enough to sweep the seas of the grain-ships that come to us from the Colonies and the United States, where shall we be if we’ve nothing to eat but our own beef and mutton? Beef and mutton are solid food, but I believe we should all go mad on them if we’d no bread to eat too.”
“I’m all for pasture,” replies Brandolin; “and as the British Isles can never, under any cultivation whatever, feed all their population, we may as well dedicate ourselves to what is picturesque. I am fascinated by Laveleye’s portrait of England when she shall have turned grazier exclusively: it is lovely: ‘L’Angleterre redeviendra ce qu’elle était sous les Tudors, un grand parc vert, parsemé d’ormes et de chênes, où b[oe]ufs et moutons se promeneront dans des prairies sans limites.’”
“‘Prairies sans limites?’ when the land’s to be all sliced up in little bits between peasant proprietors!” says Usk.
“I don’t think Laveleye believes in peasant proprietors, though he is a professor of social economy.”
“Social economy!” says Usk, with a groan. “Oh, I know that fool of a word! In plain English, it means ruin all round, and fortune for a few d —— d manufacturers.”
“The d —— d manufacturer is the principal outcome of two thousand centuries of Christianity, civilization, and culture. The result is not perfectly satisfactory or encouraging, one must admit,” says Brandolin, as he reaches down a volume of eighteenth-century memoirs, and adds, with entire irrelevancy to manufacturers or memoirs, “Is she really as handsome as your children tell me?”
“Who?” asks Usk. “Oh, the Russian woman: yes, very good-looking. Yes, she was here at Easter, and she turned their heads.”
“Has she any lovers older than Babe?”
“She has left ’em in Russia if she has.”
“A convenient distance to leave anything at: Italy and Russia are the only countries remaining to us in which Messalina can still do her little murders comfortably without any fuss being made.”
“She isn’t Messalina, at least I think not. But one never knows.”
“No, one never knows till one tries,” says Brandolin. And he wishes vaguely that the Russian woman were already here. He is fond of Surrenden, and fond of all its people, but he is a little, a very little, bored. He sees that all Lady Usk’s doves are paired, and he does not wish to disturb their harmony, possibly because none of the feminine doves attract him. But he cannot flirt forever with the children, because the children are not very often visible, and without flirting civilized life is dull, even for a man who is more easily consoled by ancient authors off the library-shelves than most people can be.
This conversation occurs in the forenoon in Lady Usk’s boudoir. In the late afternoon in the library over their teacups the ladies talk of Xenia Sabaroff. It is perceptible to Brandolin that they would prefer that she should not arrive.
“Is she really so very good-looking?” he asks of Mrs. Wentworth Curzon.
“Oh, yes,” replies that lady, with an accent of depreciation in her tones. “Yes, she is very handsome; but too pale, and her eyes too large. You know those Russian women are mere paquets de nerfs, shut up in their rooms all day and smoking so incessantly: they have all that is worst in the Oriental and Parisienne mixed together.”
“How very sad!” says Brandolin. “I don’t think I have known one, except Princess Kraskawa: she went sleighing in all weathers, wore the frankest of gingerbread wigs, and was always surrounded by about fifty grandchildren.”
Princess Kraskawa had been for many years ambassadress in London.
“Of course there are exceptions,” says Nina Curzon; “but generally, you know, they are very depraved, such inordinate gamblers, and so fond of morphine, and always maladives.”
“Ah,” says Brandolin, pensively, “but the physical and moral perfection of Englishwomen always makes them take too high a standard: poor humanity toils hopelessly, and utterly exhausted, many miles behind them.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” says Mrs. Curzon; “we are no better than our neighbors, perhaps, but we are not afraid of the air, we don’t heat our houses to a thousand degrees above boiling-point, we don’t gamble, — at least not much, — and we don’t talk every language under the sun except our own, and yet not one of them grammatically.”
“Decidedly,” reflects Brandolin, “Lawrence must have looked too often at Madame Sabaroff.”
“Sabaroff is dead, isn’t he?” he asked, aloud. “You know I have been out of society for a year: the whole map of Europe gets altered in one’s absence.”
“Sabaroff was shot in a duel four years ago,” replies Mrs. Curzon,— “a duel about her.”
“What a fortunate woman! To get rid of a husband, and to get rid of him in such interesting circumstances! C’est le comble de bonheur!”
“That depends. With her it resulted in her exile from court.”
“Oh, to be sure; when Russians are naughty they are sent to live on their estates, as riotous children are dismissed to the nursery. Was she compromised, then?”
“Very much compromised; and both men were killed, for the adversary of Sabaroff had been wounded mortally, when, with an immense effort, he fired, and shot the prince through the lungs.”
“A pretty little melodrama. Who was the opponent?”
“Count Lustoff, a colonel of the Guard. I wonder you did not hear of it: it made a stir at the time.”
“I may have heard: when one doesn’t know the people concerned, no massacre, even of the Innocents, makes any impression on one. And the result was that the lady had to leave the imperial court?”
“Yes: they do draw a line there.”
Brandolin laughs; it tickles his fancy to hear Mrs. Wentworth Curzon condemning by implication the laxity of the court of St. James.
“They can’t send us to our estates,” he replies, “the lands are so small and the railways are so close. Else it would have a very good effect if all our naughty people could be shut up inside their own gates, with nobody to speak to but the steward and the rector. Can you imagine anything that would more effectively contribute to correct manners and morals? But how very desolate London would look!”
