PAMELA CHANGES HER MIND.
Lucifer himself, after his fall, could not have felt worse than César
Castellani when he followed Mildred Greswold to Nice, as he did within
a week after she left Pallanza.
He went to Nice partly because he was an idle man, and had no desire
to go back to English east winds just when the glory of the southern
springtide was beginning. He was tolerably well furnished with money,
and Nice was as good to him as any other place, while the neighbourhood
of Monte Carlo was always an attraction. He followed in Mildred’s
footsteps, therefore; but he had no idea of forcing himself upon her
presence for some time to come. He knew that his chances were ruined in
that quarter for the time being, if not for ever.
This was his first signal overthrow. Easy conquests had so demoralised
him that he had grown to consider all conquests easy. He had unlimited
faith in the charm of his own personality—his magnetic power, as he
called it: and, behold! his magnetic power had failed utterly with this
lovely, lonely woman, who should have turned to him in her desolation
as the flowers turn to the sun.
For once in his life he had overrated himself and his influence; and in
so doing he had lost the chance of a very respectable alliance.
“Fifteen hundred a year would be at least bread and cheese,” he
reflected, “and to marry an English heiress of a good old family would
solidify my position in society. The girl is pretty enough, and I could
twist her round my finger. She would bore me frightfully; but every man
must suffer something. There is always a discord somewhere amidst the
harmony of life; and if one’s teeth are not too often set on edge by
that false note, one should be content.”
He remembered how contemptuously he had rejected the idea of such a
marriage in his talk with Miss Fausset, and how she had been set upon
it.
“I should stand ever so much better with her if I married well, and
solidified myself into British respectability. I might naturalise
myself, and go into Parliament perhaps, if that would please the good
soul at Brighton. What will she leave me when she dies, I wonder?
She is muter than the Sphinx upon that point. And will she ever die?
Brighton is famous for pauper females of ninety and upwards. A woman
like Miss Fausset, who lives in cotton-wool, and who has long done with
the cares and passions of life, might go well into a second century.
I don’t see any brilliancy in the prospect _there_; but so long as I
please her and do well in the world she will no doubt be generous.”
He told himself that it was essential he should make some concession to
Miss Fausset’s prejudices now that he had failed with Mildred. So long
as he had hoped to win that nobler prize he had been careless how he
jeopardised the favour of his elderly patroness. But now he felt that
her favour was all in all to him, and that the time for trifling was
past.
She had been very generous to him during the years that had gone by
since she first came to his aid almost unasked, and helped him to pay
his college debts. She had come to the rescue many times since that
juvenile entanglement, and her patience had been great. Yet she had not
failed to remonstrate with him at every fresh instance of folly and
self-indulgent extravagance. She had talked to him with an unflinching
directness; she had refused further help; but somehow she had always
given way, and the cheque had been written.
Again and again she had warned him that there were limits even to her
forbearance.
“If I saw you working earnestly and industriously, I should not mind,
even if you were a failure,” said his benefactress severely.
“I have worked, and I have produced a book which was _not_ a failure,”
replied César, with his silkiest air.
“One book in a decade of so-called literary life! Did the success of
that book result in the payment of one single debt?”
“Dearest lady, would you have a man waste his own earnings—the
first-fruits of his pen—the grains of fairy gold that filtered through
the mystic web of his fancy—would you have him fritter away that sacred
product upon importunate hosiers or vindictive bootmakers? _That_
money was altogether precious to me. I kept it in my waistcoat pocket
as long as ever I could. The very touch of the coin thrilled me. I
believe cabmen and crossing-sweepers had most of it in the long-run,”
he concluded, with a remorseful sigh.
Miss Fausset had borne with his idleness and his vanity, as indulgent
mothers bear with their sons; but he felt that she was beginning
to tire of him. There were reasons why she should always continue
forbearing; but he wanted to insure himself something better than
reluctant subsidies.
These considerations being taken into account, Mr. Castellani was fain
to own to himself that he had been a fool in rejecting the substance
for the shadow, however alluring the lovely shade might be.
“But I loved her,” he sighed; “I loved her as I had never loved until I
saw her fair Madonna face amidst the century-old peace of her home. She
filled my life with a new element. She purified and exalted my whole
being. And she is thrice as rich as that prattling girl!”
He ground his teeth at the remembrance of his failure. There had
been no room for doubt. Those soft violet eyes had been transformed
by indignation, and had flashed upon him with angry fire. That fair
Madonna face had whitened to marble with suppressed passion. Not by one
glance, not by one tremor in the contemptuous voice, had the woman he
loved acknowledged his influence.
He put up at the Cosmopolitan, got in half-a-dozen French novels of
the most advanced school from Galignani’s Library, and kept himself
very close for a week or two; but he contrived to find out what the
ladies at the Westminster were doing through Albrecht the courier,
who believed him to be Miss Ransome’s suitor, and was inclined to be
communicative, after being copiously treated to bocks, or _petits
verres_, as the case might be.
From Albrecht, Castellani heard how Miss Ransome spent most of her
time at the Palais Montano, or gadding about with her ladyship and
Mrs. Murray; how, in Albrecht’s private opinion, the balls and other
dissipations of Nice were turning that young lady’s head; how Mrs.
Greswold went for lonely drives day after day, and would not allow
Albrecht to show her the beauties of the neighbourhood, which it
would have been alike his duty and pleasure to have done. He had
ascertained that her favourite, and, indeed, habitual, drive was to
St. Jean, where she was in the habit of leaving the fly at the little
inn while she strolled about the village in a purposeless manner. All
this appeared to Albrecht as eccentric and absurd, and beneath a lady
of Mrs. Greswold’s position. She would have employed her time to more
advantage in going on distant excursions in a carriage and pair, and
in lunching at remote hotels, where Albrecht would have been sure of a
_bonne main_ from a gratified landlord, as well as his commission from
the livery-stable.
Castellani heard with displeasure of Pamela’s dancings and junketings,
and he told himself that it was time to throw himself across her
pathway. He had not been prepared to find that she could enjoy life
without him. Her admiration of him had been so transparent, her
sentimental fancy so naïvely revealed, that he had believed himself the
sultan of her heart, having only to throw the handkerchief whenever it
might suit him to claim his prey. Much as he prided himself upon his
knowledge of human nature, as exemplified in the softer sex, he had
never estimated the fickleness of a shallow sentimental character like
Pamela’s. No man with a due regard to the value and dignity of his sex
could conceive the ruthless rapidity with which a young lady of this
temperament will transfer her affections and her large assortment of
day-dreams and romantic fancies from one man to another. No man could
conceive her capacity for admiring in Number Two all those qualities
which were lacking in Number One. No man could imagine the exquisite
adaptability of girlhood to surrounding circumstances.
Had Castellani taken Miss Ransome when she was in the humour, he would
have found her the most amiable and yielding of wives; a model English
wife, ready to adapt herself in all things to the will and the pleasure
of her husband; unselfish, devoted, unassailable in her belief in
her husband as the first and best of men. But he had not seized his
opportunity. He had allowed nearly a month to go by since his defeat
at Pallanza, and he had allowed Pamela to discover that life might be
endurable, nay, even pleasant, without him.
And now, hearing that the young lady was gadding about, and divining
that such gadding was the high-road to forgetfulness, Mr. Castellani
made up his mind to resume his sway over Miss Ransome’s fancy without
loss of time. He called upon a dashing American matron whom he had
visited in London and Paris, and who was now the occupant of a villa
on the Promenade des Anglais, and in her drawing-room he fell in with
several of his London acquaintances. He found, however, that his
American friend, Mrs. Montagu W. Brown, had not yet succeeded in being
invited to the Palais Montano, and only knew Lady Lochinvar and Miss
Ransome by sight.
“Her ladyship is too stand-offish for my taste,” said Mrs. Montagu
Brown, “but the girl seems friendly enough—no style—not as we Americans
understand style. I am told she ranks as an heiress on this side, but
at the last ball at the Cercle she wore a frock that I should call dear
at forty dollars. That young Stuart is after her, evidently. I hope you
are going to the dance next Tuesday, Mr. Castellani? I want some one
nice to talk to now my waltzing days are over.”
Castellani protested that Mrs. Montagu Brown was in the very heyday of
a dancer’s age, and would be guilty of gross cruelty to terpsichorean
society in abandoning that delightful art.
“You make me tired,” said Mrs. Montagu Brown, with perfect good-humour.
“There are plenty of women who don’t know when they’re old, but I
calculate every woman knows when she weighs a hundred and sixty pounds.
When my waist came to twenty-six inches I knew it was time to leave off
waltzing; and I was pretty good at it, too, in my day, I can tell you.”
“With that carriage you must have been divine,” replied César; “and I
believe the cestus of the Venus de Milo must measure over twenty-six
inches.”
“The Venus de Milo has no more figure than the peasant-women one sees
on the promenade, women who seem as if they set their faces against
the very idea of a waist. Be sure you get a card for Tuesday. I hate a
dude; but I love to have some smart men about me wherever I go.”
“I shall be there,” said Castellani, bending over his hostess and
imparting a confidential pressure to her fat white hand by way of
leave-taking, before he slipped silently from the room.
He had studied the art of departure as if it were a science: never
lingered, never hummed and hawed; never said he must go and didn’t;
never apologised for going so soon while everybody was pining to get
rid of him.
The next day there was a battle of flowers; not the great floral fête
before the sugar-plum carnival, but an altogether secondary affair,
pleasant enough in the balmy weather of advancing spring.
Every one of any importance was on the promenade, and among the best
carriages appeared Lady Lochinvar’s barouche, decorated with white
camellias and carmine carnations. She had carefully eschewed that
favourite mixture of camellias and Parma violets which has always a
half-mourning or funereal air. Malcolm Stuart and Miss Ransome sat side
by side on the front seat with a great basket of carnations on their
knees, with which they pelted their acquaintance, while Lady Lochinvar,
in brown velvet and ostrich plumage, reposed at her ease in the back
of the spacious carriage, and enjoyed the fun without any active
participation.
It was Pamela’s first experience in flower-fights, and to her the scene
seemed enchanting. The afternoon was peerless. She wore a white gown,
as if it had been midsummer, and white gowns were the rule in most of
the carriages. The sea was at its bluest, the pink walls and green
shutters, white walls and red roofs, the orange-trees, cactus and palm,
made up a picture of a city in fairyland, taken as a background to a
triple procession of carriages all smothered in Parma violets, Dijon
roses, camellias, and narcissus, with here and there some picturesque
coach festooned with oranges and lemons amidst tropical foliage.
The carriages moved at a foot-pace; the pavements were crowded with
smart people, who joined in the contest. Pamela’s lap was full of
bouquets, which fell from her in showers as she stood up every now and
then to fling a handful of carnations into a passing carriage.
Presently, while she was standing thus, flushed and sparkling, she saw
a familiar figure on the footpath by the sea, and paled suddenly at the
sight.
It was César Castellani, sauntering slowly along, in a short coat of
light-coloured cloth, and a felt hat of exactly the same delicate
shade. He came to the carriage-door. There was a block at the moment,
and he had time to talk to the occupants.
“How do you do, Lady Lochinvar? You have not forgotten me, I hope—César
Castellani—though it is such ages since we met?”
He only lifted his hat to Lady Lochinvar, waiting for her recognition,
but he held out his hand to Pamela.
“How do you like Nice, Miss Ransome? As well as Pallanza, I hope?”
“Ever so much better than Pallanza.”
There was a time when that coat and hat, the _soupçon_ of dark blue
velvet waistcoat just showing underneath the pale buff collar, the
loose China silk handkerchief carelessly fastened with a priceless
intaglio, the gardenia and pearl-gray gloves, would have ensnared
Pamela’s fancy: but that time was past. She thought that César’s
costume looked effeminate and underbred beside the stern simplicity of
Mr. Stuart’s heather-mixture _complet_. The scales had fallen from her
eyes; and she recognised the bad taste and the vanity involved in that
studied carelessness, that artistic combination of colour.
She remembered what Mildred had said of Mr. Castellani, and she was
deliberately cold. Lady Lochinvar was gracious, knowing nothing to the
Italian’s discredit.
“I remember you perfectly,” she said. “You have changed very little
in all these years. Be sure you come and see me. I am at home at five
almost every afternoon.”
The carriage moved on, and Pamela sat in an idle reverie for the next
ten minutes, although the basket of carnations was only half empty.
She was thinking how strange it was that her heart beat no faster.
Could it be that she was cured—and so soon? It was even worse than
a cure; it was a positive revulsion of feeling. She was vexed with
herself for ever having exalted that over-dressed foreigner into
a hero. She felt she had been un-English, unwomanly even, in her
exaggerated admiration of an exotic. And then she glanced at Malcolm
Stuart, and averted her eyes with a conscious blush on seeing him
earnestly observant of her.
He was plain, certainly. His features had been moulded roughly, but
they were not bad features. The lines were rather good, in fact, and
it was a fine manly countenance. He was fair and slightly freckled, as
became a Scotchman; his eyes were clear and blue, but could be compared
to neither sapphires nor violets, and his eyelashes were lighter than
any cultivated young lady could approve. The general tone of his
hair and complexion was ginger; and ginger, taken in connection with
masculine beauty, is not all one would wish. But then ginger is not
uncommon in the service, and it is a hue which harmonises agreeably
with Highland bonnets and tartan. No doubt Mr. Stuart had looked
really nice in his uniform. He had certainly appeared to advantage in
a Highland costume at the fancy ball the other night. Some people had
pronounced him the finest-looking man in the room.
And, again, good looks are of little importance in a man. A plainish
man, possessed of all the manly accomplishments, a dead shot and a
crack rider, can always appear to advantage in English society. Pamela
was beginning to think more kindly of sporting men, and even of Sir
Henry Mountford.
“I’m sure Mr. Stuart would get on with him,” she thought, dimly
foreseeing a day when Sir Henry and her new acquaintance would be
brought together somehow.
César Castellani took immediate advantage of Lady Lochinvar’s
invitation. He presented himself at the Palais Montano on the following
afternoon, and he found Pamela established there as if she belonged to
the house. It was she who poured out the tea, and dispensed those airy
little hot cakes, which were a kind of idealised galette, served in
the daintiest of doyleys, embroidered with Lady Lochinvar’s cipher and
coronet.
Mr. and Mrs. Murray were there, and Malcolm Stuart, the chief charm of
whose society seemed to consist in his exhibition of an accomplished
Dandie Dinmont which usurped the conversation, and which Castellani
would have liked to inocculate then and there with the most virulent
form of rabies. Pamela squatted on a little stool at the creature’s
feet, and assisted in showing him off. She had acquired a power over
him which indicated an acquaintance of some standing.
“What fools girls are!” thought Castellani.
His conquests among women of maturer years had been built upon rock as
compared with the shifting quicksand of a girl’s fancy. He began to
think the genus girl utterly contemptible.
“He has but one fault,” said Pamela, when the terrier had gone through
various clumsy evolutions in which the bandiness of his legs and the
length of his body had been shown off to the uttermost. “He cannot
endure Box, and Box detests him. They never meet without trying to
murder each other, and I’m very much afraid,” bending down to kiss the
broad hairy head, “that Dandie is the stronger.”
“Of course he is. Box is splendid for muscle, but weight must tell in
the long-run,” replied Mr. Stuart.
“My grandmother had a Dandie whose father belonged to Sir Walter
Scott,” began Mrs. Murray: “he was simply a per-r-r-fect dog, and my
mamma—”
Castellani fled from this inanity. He went to the other end of the
room, where Lady Lochinvar was listening listlessly to Mr. Murray, laid
himself out to amuse her ladyship for the next ten minutes, and then
departed without so much as a look at Pamela.
“The spell is broken,” he said to himself, as he drove away. “The girl
is next door to an idiot. No doubt she will marry that sandy Scotchman.
Lady Lochinvar means it, and a silly-pated miss like that can be led
with a thread of floss silk. _Moi je m’en fiche._”
* * * * *
About a week after Mr. Castellani’s reappearance Mildred Greswold
received a letter from Brighton, which made a sudden change in her
plans.
It was from Mr. Maltravers the Incumbent of St. Edmund’s:
“St. Edmund’s Vicarage.
“Dear Mrs. Greswold,—After our thoroughly confidential conversations
last autumn I feel justified in addressing you upon a subject which
I know is very near to your heart, namely, the health and welfare,
spiritual as well as bodily, of your dear aunt and my most valued
parishioner, Miss Fausset. The condition of that dear lady has given
me considerable uneasiness during the last few months. She has refused
to take her hand from the plough; she labours as faithfully as ever
in the Lord’s vineyard; but I see with deepest regret that she is no
longer the woman she was, even a year ago. The decay has been sudden,
and it has been rapid. Her strength begins to fail her, though she
will hardly admit as much, even to her medical attendant, and her
spirits are less equable than of old. She has intervals of extreme
depression, against which the efforts of friendship, the power of
spiritual consolation, are unavailing.
“I feel it my duty to inform you, as one who has a right to be
interested in the disposal of Miss Fausset’s wealth, that my
benefactress has consummated the generosity of past years by a
magnificent gift. She has endowed her beloved Church of St. Edmund
with an income which, taken in conjunction with the pew-rents, an
institution which I hope hereafter to abolish, raises the priest
of the temple from penury to comfort, and affords him the means of
helping the poor of his parish with his alms as well as with his
prayers and ministrations. This munificent gift closes the long
account of beneficence betwixt your dear aunt and me. I have nothing
further to expect from her for my church or for myself. It is fully
understood between us that this gift is final. You will understand,
therefore, that I am disinterested in my anxiety for this precious
life.
“You, dear Mrs. Greswold, are your aunt’s only near relative, and
it is but right you should be the companion and comforter of her
declining days. That the shadow of the grave is upon her I can but
fear, although medical science sees but slight cause for alarm. A
year ago she was a vigorous woman, spare of habit certainly, but with
a hardness of bearing and manner which promised a long life. To-day
she is a broken woman, nervous, fitful, and, I fear, unhappy, though I
can conceive no cause for sadness in the closing years of such a noble
life as hers has been, unselfish, devoted to good works and exalted
thoughts. If you can find it compatible with your other ties to come
to Brighton, I would strongly recommend you to come without loss of
time, and I believe that the change which you will yourself perceive
in my valued friend will fully justify the course I take in thus
addressing you.—I am ever, dear Mrs. Greswold, your friend and servant,
“SAMUEL MALTRAVERS.”
Mildred gave immediate orders to courier and maid, her trunks were
to be packed that afternoon, a _coupé_ was to be taken in the Rapide
for the following day, and the travellers were to go straight through
to Paris. But when she announced this fact to Pamela the damsel’s
countenance expressed utmost despondency.
“Upon my word, aunt, you have a genius for taking one away from a place
just when one is beginning to be happy!” she exclaimed in irrepressible
vexation.
She apologised directly after upon hearing of Miss Fausset’s illness.
“I am a horrid ill-tempered creature,” she said; “but I really am
beginning to adore Nice. It is a place that grows upon one.”
“What if I were to leave you with Lady Lochinvar? She told me the other
day that she would like very much to have you to stay with her. You
might stay till she leaves Nice, which will be in about three weeks’
time, and you could travel with her to Paris. You could go from Paris
to Brighton very comfortably, with Peterson to take care of you.
Perhaps you would not mind leaving Nice when Lady Lochinvar goes?”
Pamela sparkled and blushed at the suggestion.
“I should like it very much, if Lady Lochinvar is in earnest in asking
to have me.”
“I am sure she is in earnest. There is only one stipulation I must
make, Pamela. You must promise me not to renew your intimacy with Mr.
Castellani.”
“With all my heart, aunt. My eyes have been opened. He is thoroughly
bad style.”