From that day forth I received no tidings of my mother. Whether my own
letters reached her or not, I could not tell; and though I entreated
Madame Cleremont, who was now my confidante in everything, to aid me in
learning where my mother was, she declared that the task was beyond
her; and at last, as time went over, my anxieties became blunted and my
affections dulled. The life I was leading grew to have such a hold upon
me, and was so full of its own varied interests, that--with shame I say
it--I actually forgot the very existence of her to whom I owed any trace
of good or honest or truthful that was in me.
The house in which I was living was a finishing school for every sort
of dissipation, and all who frequented it were people who only lived for
pleasure. Play of the highest kind went on unceasingly, and large sums
were bandied about from hand to hand as carelessly as if all were men of
fortune and indifferent to heavy losses.
A splendid mode of living, sumptuous dinners, a great retinue, and
perfect liberty to the guests, drew around us that class who, knowing
well that they have no other occupation than self-indulgence, throw an
air of languid elegance over vice, which your vulgar sinner, who has
only intervals of wickedness, knows nothing of; and this, be it said
passingly, is, of all sections of society, the most seductive and
dangerous to the young: for there are no outrages to taste amongst these
people, they violate no decencies, they shock no principles. If they
smash the tables of the law, it is in kid-gloves, and with a delicious
odor of Ess bouquet about them. The Cleremonts lived at the Villa.
Cleremont managed the household, and gave the orders for everything.
Madame received the company, and did the honors; my father lounging
about like an unoccupied guest, and actually amused, as it seemed, by
his own unimportance. Hotham had gone to sea; but Eccles remained, in
name, as my tutor; but we rarely met, save at meal-times, and his manner
to me was almost slavish in subserviency, and with a habit of flattery
that, even young as I was, revolted me.
“Isn't that your charge, Eccles?” I once heard an old gentleman ask him;
and he replied, “Yes, my Lord; but Madame Cleremont has succeeded me. It
is _she_ is finishing him.”
And they both laughed heartily at the joke. There was, however, this
much of truth in the speech, that I lived almost entirely in her
society. We sang together; she called me Cherubino, and taught me all
the page's songs in Mozart or Rossini; and we rode out together, or
read or walked in company. Nor was her influence over me such as might
effeminate me. On the contrary, it was ever her aim to give me manly
tastes and ambitions. She laid great stress on my being a perfect
swordsman and a pistol-shot, over and over telling me that a conscious
skill in arms gives a man immense coolness in every question of
difference with other men; and she would add, “Don't fall into that John
Bull blunder of believing that duelling is gone out because they dislike
the practice in England. The world is happily larger than the British
Islands.”
Little sneers like this at England, sarcasms on English prudery, English
reserve, or English distrustfulness, were constantly dropping from her,
and I grew up to believe that while genuine sentiment and unselfish
devotion lived on one side of the Channel, a decorous hypocrisy had its
home on the other.
Now she would contrast the women 'of Balzac's novels with the colder
nonentities of English fiction; and now she would dwell on traits of
fascination in the sex which our writers either did not know of or were
afraid to touch on. “It is entirely the fault of your Englishwomen,” she
would say, “that the men invariably fall victims to foreign seductions.
Circe always sings with a bronchitis in the North;” and though I but
dimly saw what she pointed at then, I lived to perceive her meaning more
fully.
As for my father, I saw little of him, but in that little he was always
kind and good-natured with me. He would quiz me about my lessons, as
though I were the tutor, and Ecoles the pupil; and ask me how he got
on with his Aristophanes or his Homer? He talked to me freely about the
people who came to the house, and treated me almost as an equal.
All this time he behaved to Madame with a reserve that was perfectly
chilling, so that it was the rarest thing in the world for the three of
us to be together.
“I don't think you like papa,” said I once to her, in an effusion of
confidence. “I am sure you don't like him!”
“And why do you think so?” asked she, with the faintest imaginable flush
on her pale cheek.
While I was puzzling myself what to answer, she said,--
“Come now, Cherubino, what you really meant to say was, I don't think
papa likes _you!_”
Though I never could have made so rude a speech, its truth and force
struck me so palpably that I could not answer.
“Well,” cried she, with a little laugh, “he is very fond of Monsieur
Cleremont, and that ought always to be enough for Madame Cleremont. Do
you know, Cherubino, it's the rarest thing in life for a husband and
wife to be liked by the same people? There is in conjugal life some
beautiful little ingredient of discord that sets the two partners to the
compact at opposite poles, and gives them separate followings. I must
n't distract you with the theory, I only want you to see why liking my
husband is sufficient reason for not caring for me.”
Now, as I liked her exceedingly, and felt something very near to hatred
for Monsieur Cleremont, I accepted all she said as incontestable truth.
Still I grieved over the fact that papa was not of my own mind, and did
not see her and all her fascinations as I did.
There is something indescribably touching in the gentle sadness of
certain buoyant bright natures. Like the low notes in a treble voice,
there is that that seems to vibrate in our hearts at a most susceptible
moment, and with the force of an unforeseen contrast; and it was thus
that, in her graver times, she won over me an ascendancy, and inspired
an interest which, had I been other than a mere boy, had certainly been
love.
Perhaps I should not have been even conscious, as I was of this
sentiment, if it were not for the indignation I felt at Cleremont's
treatment of her. Over and over again my temper was pushed to its last
limit by his brutality and coarseness. His tone was a perpetual sneer,
and his wife seldom spoke before him without his directing towards her
a sarcasm or an impertinence. This was especially remarkable if she
uttered any sentiment at all elevated, when his banter would be ushered
in with a burst of derisive laughter.
Nothing could be more perfect than the way she bore these trials. There
was no assumed martyrdom, no covert appeal for sympathy, no air of
suffering asking for protection. No! whether it came as ridicule or
rebuke, she accepted it gently and good-humoredly; trying, when she
could, to turn it off with a laugh, or when too grave for that, bearing
it with quiet forbearance.
I often wondered why my father did not check these persecutions, for
they were such, and very cruel ones too; but he scarcely seemed to
notice them, or if he did, it would be by a smile, far more like
enjoyment of Cleremont's coarse wit than reprehending or reproving it.
“I wonder how that woman stands it?” I once overheard Hotham say to
Eccles; and the other replied,--
“I don't think she _does_ stand it. I mistake her much if she is as
forgiving as she looks.”
Why do I recall these things? Why do I dwell on incidents and passages
which had no actual bearing on my own destiny? Only because they serve
to show the terrible school in which I was brought up; the mingled
dissipation, splendor, indolence, and passion in which my boyhood was
passed. Surrounded by men of reckless habits, and women but a mere shade
better, life presented itself to me as one series of costly pleasures,
dashed only with such disappointments as loss at play inflicted, or some
project of intrigue baffled or averted.
“If that boy of Norcott's isn't a scamp, he must be a most unteachable
young rascal,” said an old colonel once to Eccles on the croquet ground.
“He has had great opportunities,” said Eccles, as he sent off his ball,
“and, so far as I see, neglected none of them.”
“You were his tutor, I think?” said the other, with a laugh.
“Yes, till Madame Cleremont took my place.”
“I 'll not say it was the worst thing could have happened him. I wish
it had been a woman had spoiled _me_. Eh, Eccles, possibly you may have
some such misgivings yourself?”
“I was never corrupted,” said the other, with a sententious gravity
whose hypocrisy was palpable.
I meditated many and many a time over these few words, and they
suggested to me the first attempt I ever made to know something about
myself and my own nature.
Those stories of Balzac's, those wonderful pictures of passionate life,
acquired an immense hold upon me, from the very character of my own
existence. That terrific game of temper against temper, mind against
mind, and heart against heart, of which I read in these novels, I was
daily witnessing in what went on around me, and I amused myself by
giving the names of the characters in these fictions to the various
persons of our society.
“It is a very naughty little world we live in at this house, Digby,”
said Madame to me one day; “but you'd be surprised to find what a very
vulgar thing is the life of people in general, and that if you want the
sensational, or even the pictorial in existence, you 'll have to pay for
it in some compromise of principle.”
“I know mamma wouldn't like to live here,” said I, half sullenly.
“Oh, mamma!” cried she, with a laugh, and then suddenly checking
herself: “No, Digby, you are quite right. Mamma would be shocked at our
doings; not that they are so very wicked in themselves as that, to one
of her quiet ways, they would seem so.”
“Mamma is very good. I never knew any one like her,” stammered I out.
“That's quite true, my dear boy. She is all that you say, but one may
be too good, just as he may be too generous or too confiding; and it is
well to remember that there are a number of excellent things one would
like to be if they could afford them; but the truth is, Digby, the most
costly of all things are virtues.”
“Oh, do not say that!” cried I, eagerly.
“Yes, dear, I must say it. Monsieur Cleremont and I have always been
very poor, and we never permitted ourselves these luxuries, any more
than we kept a great house and a fine equipage, and so we economize
in our morals, as in our means, doing what rich folk might call little
shabbinesses; but, on the whole, managing to live, and not unhappily
either.”
“And papa?”
“Papa has a fine estate, wants for nothing, and can give himself every
good quality he has a fancy for.”
“By this theory, then, it is only rich people are good?”
“Not exactly. I would rather state it thus,--the rich are as good as
they like to be; the poor are as good as they 're able.”
“What do you say, then, to Mr. Eccles: he 's not rich, And I 'm sure
he's good?”
“Poor Mr. Eccles!” said she, with a merry laughter, in which a something
scornful mingled, and she hurried away.