lips trembling with words that all her pride could not summon into
speech; then her eyes filled with warm, blinding tears, and softened to
new beauty;--scarce louder than the sigh of the wind among the
flower-bells came her words to Fulke Ravensworth's ear, as her royal
head bowed on his breast.
"Stay, stay! Or, if you fly, your exile shall be my exile, your danger
my danger!"
The kerchief is a treasured heirloom to her descendants now, and fair
women of her race, who inherit from her her azure eyes and her queenly
grace, will recall how the proudest Countess of their Line loved a
ruined gentleman so well that she was wedded to him at even, in her
private chapel, at the hour of his greatest peril, his lowest fortune,
and went with him across the seas till friendly intercession in high
places gained them royal permission to dwell again at Lilliesford
unmolested. And how it was ever noticeable to those who murmured at her
coldness and her pride, that Cecil Castlemaine, cold and negligent as of
yore to all the world beside, would seek her husband's smile, and love
to meet his eyes, and cherish her beauty for his sake, and be restless
in his absence, even for the short span of a day, with a softer and more
clinging tenderness than was found in many weaker, many humbler women.
They are gone now the men and women of that generation, and their voices
come only to us through the faint echo of their written words. In summer
nights the old beech-trees toss their leaves in the silvery light of the
stars, and the river flows on unchanged, with the ceaseless, mournful
burden of its mystic song, the same now as in the midsummer of a century
and a half ago. The cobweb handkerchief lies before me with its
broidered shield; the same now as long years since, when it was
treasured close in a soldier's breast, and held by him dearer than all
save his honor and his word. So, things pulseless and passionless
endure, and human life passes away as swiftly as a song dies off from
the air--as quickly succeeded, and as quickly forgot! Ronsard's refrain
is the refrain of our lives:
Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame!
Las! le temps, non; mais _nous_ nous, en allons!
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS;
OR,
OUR MALTESE PEERAGE.
All first things are voted the best: first kisses, first _toga virilis_,
first hair of the first whisker; first speeches are often so superior
that members subside after making them, fearful of eclipsing themselves;
first money won at play must always be best, as always the dearest
bought; and first wives are always so super-excellent, that, if a man
lose one, he is generally as fearful of hazarding a second as a trout of
biting twice.
But of all first things commend me to one's first uniform. No matter
that we get sick of harness, and get into mufti as soon as we can now;
there is no more exquisite pleasure than the first sight of one's self
in shako and sabretasche. How we survey ourselves in the glass, and ring
for hot water, that the handsome housemaid may see us in all our glory,
and lounge accidentally into our sisters' schoolroom, that the
governess, who is nice looking and rather flirty, may go down on the
spot before us and our scarlet and gold, chains and buttons! One's first
uniform! Oh! the exquisite sensation locked up for us in that first box
from Sagnarelli, or Bond Street!
I remember _my_ first uniform. I was eighteen--as raw a young cub as you
could want to see. I had not been licked into shape by a public school,
whose tongue may be rough, but cleans off grievances and nonsense better
than anything else. I had been in that hotbed of effeminacy, Church
principles and weak tea, a Private Tutor's, where mamma's darlings are
wrapped up, and stuffed with a little Terence and Horace to show grand
at home; and upon my life I do believe my sister Julia, aged thirteen,
was more wide awake and up to life than I was, when the governor, an old
rector, who always put me in mind of the Vicar of Wakefield, got me
gazetted to as crack a corps as any in the Line.
The ----th (familiarly known in the Service as the "Dare Devils," from
old Peninsular deeds) were just then at Malta, and with, among other
trifles, a chest protector from my father, and a recipe for
milk-arrowroot from my Aunt Matilda who lived in a constant state of
catarrh and of cure for the same, tumbled across the Bay of Biscay, and
found myself in Byron's confounded "little military hot-house," where
most military men, some time or other, have roasted themselves to death,
climbing its hilly streets, flirting with its Valetta belles, drinking
Bass in its hot verandas, yawning with ennui in its palace, cursing its
sirocco, and being done by its Jew sharpers.
From a private tutor's to a crack mess at Malta!--from a convent to a
casino could hardly be a greater change. Just at first I was as much
astray as a young pup taken into a stubble-field, and wondering what the
deuce he is to do there; but as it is a pup's nature to sniff at birds
and start them, so is it a boy's nature to snatch at the champagne of
life as soon as he catches sight of it, though you may have brought him
up on water from his cradle. I took to it, at least, like a retriever to
water-ducks, though I was green enough to be a first-rate butt for many
a day, and the practical jokes I had passed on me would have furnished
the _Times_ with food for crushers on "The Shocking State of the Army"
for a twelvemonth. My chief friend and ally, tormentor and initiator,
was a little fellow, Cosmo Grandison; in Ours he was "Little Grand" to
everybody, from the Colonel to the baggage-women. He was seventeen, and
had joined about a year. What a pretty boy he was, too! All the fair
ones in Valetta, from his Excellency's wife to our washerwomen, admired
that boy, and spoilt him and petted him, and I do not believe there was
a man of Ours who would have had heart to sit in court-martial on Little
Grand if he had broken every one of the Queen's regulations, and set
every General Order at defiance. I think I see him now--he was new to
Malta as I, having just landed with the Dare Devils, _en route_ from
India to Portsmouth--as he sat one day on the table in the mess-room as
cool as a cucumber, in spite of the broiling sun, smoking, and swinging
his legs, and settling his forage-cap on one side of his head, as
pretty-looking, plucky, impudent a young monkey as ever piqued himself
on being an old hand, and a knowing bird not to be caught by any chaff
however ingeniously prepared.
"Simon," began Little Grand (my "St. John," first barbarized by Mr. Pope
for the convenience of his dactyles and hexameters into Sinjin, being
further barbarized by this little imp into Simon)--"Simon, do you want
to see the finest woman in this confounded little pepper-box? You're no
judge of a woman, though, you muff--taste been warped, perhaps, by
constant contemplation of that virgin Aunt Minerva--Matilda, is it? all
the same."
"Hang your chaff," said I; "you'd make one out a fool."
"Precisely, my dear Simon; just what you are!" responded Little Grand,
pleasantly, "Bless your heart, I've been engaged to half a dozen women
since I joined. A man can hardly help it, you see; they've such a way of
drawing you on, you don't like to disappoint them, poor little dears,
and so you compromise yourself out of sheer benevolence. There's such a
run on a handsome man--it's a great bore. Sometimes I think I shall
shave my head, or do something to disfigure myself, as Spurina did. Poor
fellow, I feel for him! Well, Simon, you don't seem curious to know who
my beauty is?"
"One of those Mitchell girls of the Twenty-first? You waltzed with 'em
all night; but they're too tall for you, Grand."
"The Mitchell girls!" ejaculated he, with supreme scorn. "Great
maypoles! they go about with the Fusiliers like a pair of colors. On
every ball-room battlefield one's safe to see _them_ flaunting away, and
as everybody has a shot at 'em, their hearts must be pretty well riddled
into holes by this time. No, mine's rather higher game than that. My
mother's brother-in-law's aunt's sister's cousin's cousin once removed
was Viscount Twaddle, and I don't go anything lower than the Peerage."
"What, is it somebody you've met at his Excellency's?"
"Wrong again, beloved Simon. It's nobody I've met at old Stars and
Garters', though his lady-wife could no more do without me than without
her sal volatile and flirtations. No, _she_ don't go there; she's too
high for that sort of thing--sick of it. After all the European Courts,
Malta must be rather small and slow. I was introduced to her yesterday,
and," continued Little Grand, more solemnly than was his wont, "I do
assure you she's superb, divine; and I'm not very easy to please."
"What's her name?" I asked, rather impressed with this view of a lady
too high for old Stars and Garters, as we irreverently termed her
Majesty's representative in her island of Malta.
Little Grand took his pipe out of his lips to correct me with more
dignity.
"Her _title_, my dear Simon, is the Marchioness St. Julian."
"Is that an English peerage, Grand?"
"Hum! What! Oh yes, of course! What else should it be, you owl!"
Not being in a condition to decide this point, I was silent, and he went
on, growing more impressive at each phrase:
"She is splendid, really! And I'm a very _difficile_ fellow, you know;
but such hair, such eyes, one doesn't see every day in those sun-dried
Mitchells or those little pink Bovilliers. Well, yesterday, after that
confounded luncheon (how I hate all those complimentary affairs!--one
can't enjoy the truffles for talking to the ladies, nor enjoy the ladies
for discussing the truffles), I went for a ride with Conran out to Villa
Neponte. I left him there, and went down to see the overland steamers
come in. While I was waiting, I got into talk, somehow or other, with a
very agreeable, gentleman-like fellow, who asked me if I'd only just
come to Malta, and all that sort of thing--you know the introductory
style of action--till we got quite good friends, and he told me he was
living outside this wretched little hole at the Casa di Fiori, and
said--wasn't it civil of him?--said he should be very happy to see me if
I'd call any time. He gave me his card--Lord Adolphus Fitzhervey--and a
man with him called him 'Dolph.' As good luck had it, my weed went out
just while we were talking, and Fitzhervey was monstrously pleasant,
searched all over him for a fusee, couldn't find one, and asked me to go
up with him to the Casa di Fiori and get a light. Of course I did, and
he and I and Guatamara had some sherbet and a smoke together, and then
he introduced me to the Marchioness St. Julian, his sister--by Jove!
such a magnificent woman, Simon, _you_ never saw one like her, I'll
wager. She was uncommonly agreeable, too, and _such_ a smile, my boy!
She seemed to like me wonderfully--not rare that, though, you'll
say--and asked me to go and take coffee there to-night after mess, and
bring one of my chums with me; and as I like to show you life, young
one, and your taste wants improving after Aunt Minerva, you may come, if
you like. Hallo! there's Conran. I say, don't tell _him_. I don't want
any poaching on my manor."
Conran came in at that minute; he was then a Brevet-Major and Captain in
Ours, and one of the older men who spoilt Little Grand in one way, as
much as the women did in another. He was a fine, powerful fellow, with
eyes like an eagle's, and pluck like a lion's; he had a grave look, and
had been of late more silent and self-reticent than the other
roistering, debonnair, light-hearted "Dare Devils;" but though, perhaps,
tired of the wild escapades which reputation had once attributed to him,
was always the most lenient to the boy's monkey tricks, and always the
one to whom he went if his larks had cost him too dear, or if he was in
a scrape from which he saw no exit. Conran had recently come in for a
good deal of money, and there were few bright eyes in Malta that would
not have smiled kindly on him; but he did not care much for any of them.
There was some talk of a love-affair before he went to India, that was
the cause of his hard-heartedness, though I must say he did not look
much like a victim to the _grande passion_, in my ideas, which were
drawn from valentines and odes in the "Woman, thou fond and fair
deceiver" style; in love that turned its collars down and let its hair
go uncut and refused to eat, and recovered with a rapidity proportionate
to its ostentation; and I did not know that, if a man has lost his
treasure, he _may_ mourn it so deeply that he may refuse to run about
like Harpagon, crying for his _cassette_ to an audience that only laughs
at his miseries.
"Well, young ones," said Conran, as he came in and threw down his cap
and whip, "here you are, spending your hours in pipes and bad wine. What
a blessing it is to have a palate that isn't blase, and that will
swallow all wine just because it _is_ wine! That South African goes
down with better relish, Little Grand, than you'll find in Chateau
Margaux ten years hence. As soon as one begins to want touching up with
olives, one's real gusto is gone."
"Hang olives, sir! they're beastly," said Little Grand; "and I don't
care who pretends they're not. Olives are like sermons and wives,
everybody makes a wry face, and would rather be excused 'em, Major; but
it's the custom to call 'em good things, and so men bolt 'em in
complaisance, and while they hate the salt-water flavor, descant on the
delicious rose taste!"
"Quite true, Little Grand! but one takes olives to enhance the wine; and
so, perhaps, other men's sermons make one enjoy one's racier novel, and
other men's wives make one appreciate one's liberty still better. Don't
abuse olives; you'll want them figuratively and literally before you've
done either drinking or living!"
"Oh! confound it, Major," cried Little Grand, "I do hope and trust a
spent ball may have the kindness to double me up and finish me off
before then."
"You're not philosophic, my boy."
"Thank Heaven, no!" ejaculated Little Grand, piously. "I've an uncle, a
very great philosopher, beats all the sages hollow, from Bion to Buckle,
and writes in the Metaphysical Quarterly, but I'll be shot if he don't
spend so much time in trying to puzzle out what life is, that all his
has slipped away without his having _lived_ one bit. When I was staying
with him one Christmas, he began boring me with a frightful theory on
the non-existence of matter. I couldn't stand that, so I cut him short,
and set him down to the luncheon-table; and while he was full swing with
a Strasbourg pate and Comet hock, I stopped him and asked him if, with
them in his mouth, he believed in matter or not? He was shut up, of
course; bless your soul, those theorists always are, if you're down upon
'em with a little fact!"
"Such as a Strasbourg pate?--that _is_ an unanswerable argument with
most men, I believe," said Conran, who liked to hear the boy chatter.
"What are you going to do with yourself to-night, Grand?"
"I am going to--ar--hum--to a friend of mine," said Little Grand, less
glibly than usual.
"Very well; I only asked, because I would have taken you to Mrs.
Fortescue's with me; they're having some acting proverbs (horrible
exertion in this oven of a place, with the thermometer at a hundred and
twenty degrees); but if you've better sport it's no matter. Take care
what friends you make, though, Grand; you'll find some Maltese
acquaintances very costly."
"Thank you. I should say I can take care of myself," replied Little
Grand, with immeasurable scorn and dignity.
Conran laughed, struck him across the shoulders with his whip, stroked
his own moustaches, and went out again, whistling one of Verdi's airs.
"I don't want him bothering, you know," explained Little Grand; "she's
such a deuced magnificent woman!"
She was a magnificent woman, this Eudoxia Adelaida, Marchioness St.
Julian; and proud enough Little Grand and I felt when we had that soft,
jewelled hand held out to us, and that bewitching smile beamed upon us,
and that joyous presence dazzling in our eyes, as we sat in the
drawing-room of that Casa di Fiori. She was about thirty-five, I should
say (boys always worship those who might have been schoolfellows of
their mothers), tall and stately, and imposing, with the most beautiful
pink and white skin, with a fine set of teeth, raven hair, and eyes
tinted most exquisitely. Oh! she was magnificent, our Marchioness St.
Julian! Into what unutterable insignificance, what miserable, washed-out
shadows sank Stars and Garters' lady, and the Mitchell girls, and all
the belles of La Valetta, whom we hadn't thought so very bad-looking
before.
There was a young creature sitting a little out of the radiance of
light, reading; but we had no eyes for anybody except the Marchioness
St. Julian. We were in such high society, too; there was her brother,
Lord Adolphus, and his bosom Pylades, the Baron Guatamara; and there was
a big fellow, with hooked nose and very curly hair, who was introduced
to us as the Prince of Orangia Magnolia; and a little wiry fellow, with
bits of red and blue ribbon, and a star or two in his button-hole, who
was M. le Due de Saint-Jeu. We were quite dazzled with the coruscations
of so much aristocracy, especially when they talked across to each
other--so familiarly, too--of Johnnie (that we Lord Russell), and Pam,
and "old Buck" (my godfather Buckingham, Lord Adolphus explained to us),
and Montpensier and old Joinville; and chatted of when they dined at the
Tuileries, and stayed at Compiegne, and hunted at Belvoir, and spent
Christmas at Holcombe or Longleat. We were in such high society! How
contemptible appeared Mrs. Maberly's and the Fortescue soirees; how
infinitesimally small grew Charlie Ruthven, and Harry Villiers, and Grey
and Albany, and all the other young fellows who thought it such great
guns to be _au mieux_ with little Graziella, or invited to Sir George
Dashaway's. _We_ were a cut above those things now--rather!
That splendid Marchioness! There was a head for a coronet, if you like!
And how benign she was! Grand sat on the couch beside her, and I on an
ottoman on her left, and she leaned back in her magnificent toilette,
flirting her fan like a Castilian, and flashing upon us her superb eyes
from behind it; not speaking very much, but showing her white teeth in
scores of heavenly smiles, till Little Grand, the _blase_ man of
seventeen, and I the raw Moses of private tutelage, both felt that we
had never come across anything like this; never, in fact, seen a woman
worth a glance before.
She listened to us--or rather to him; I was too awestruck to advance
much beyond monosyllables--and laughed at him, and smiled encouragingly
on my _gaucherie_ (and when a boy is _gauche_, how ready he is to
worship such a helping hand!), and beamed upon us both with an
effulgence compared with which the radiance of Helen, Galatea, Oenone,
Messalina, Lais, and all the legendary beauties one reads about, must
have been what the railway night-lamps that _never_ burn are to the
prismatic luminaries of Cremorne. They were all uncommonly pleasant, all
except the girl who was reading, whom they introduced as the Signorina
da' Guari, a Tuscan, and daughter to Orangia Magnolia, with one of those
marvellously beautiful faces that one sees in the most splendid
painters' models of the Campagna, who never lifted her head scarcely,
though Guatamara and Saint-Jeu did their best to make her. But all the
others were wonderfully agreeable, and quite _fete'd_ Little Grand and
me, at which, they, being more than double our age, and seemingly at
home alike with Belgravia and Newmarket, the Faubourg and the Pytchley,
we felt to grow at least a foot each in the aroma of this Casa di Fiori.
"This is rather stupid, Doxie," began Lord Adolphus, addressing his
sister; "not much entertainment for our guests. What do you say to a
game of vingt-et-un, eh, Mr. Grandison?"
Little Grand fixed his blue eyes on the Marchioness, and said he should
be very happy, but, as for entertainment--_he_ wanted no other.
"No compliments, _petit ami_," laughed the Marchioness, with a dainty
blow of her fan. "Yes, Dolph, have vingt-et-un, or music, or anything
you like. Sing us something, Lucrezia."
The Italian girl thus addressed looked up with a passionate, haughty
flush, and answered, with wonderfully little courtesy I considered, "I
shall not sing to-night."
"Are you unwell, fairest friend?" asked the Duc de Saint-Jeu, bending
his little wiry figure over her.
She shrank away from him, and drew back, a hot color in her cheeks.
"Signore, I did not address _you_."
The Marchioness looked angry, if those divine eyes could look anything
so mortal. However, she shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, my dear Lucrezia, we can't make you sing, of course, if you
won't. I, for my part, always do any little thing I can to amuse
anybody; if I fail, I fail; I have done my best, and my friends will
appreciate the effort, if not the result. No, my dear Prince, do not
tease her," said the Marchioness to Orangia Magnolia, who was arguing, I
thought, somewhat imperatively for such a well-bred and courtly man,
with Lucrezia; "we will have vingt-et-un, and Lucrezia will give us the
delight of her voice some other evening, I dare say."
We had vingt-et-un; the Marchioness would not play, but she sat in her
rose velvet arm-chair, just behind Little Grand, putting in pretty
little speeches, and questions, and bagatelles, and calling attention to
the gambols of her darling greyhound Cupidon, and tapping Little Grand
with her fan, till, I believe, he neither knew how the game went, nor
what money he lost; and I, gazing at her, and cursing him for his facile
tongue, never noticed my naturels, couldn't have said what the maximum
was if you had paid me for it, and might, for anything I knew to the
contrary, have been seeing my life slip away with each card as Balzac's
hero with the Peau de Chagrin. Then we had sherbet, and wine, and cognac
for those who preferred it; and the Marchioness gave us permission to
smoke, and took a dainty hookah with an amber mouthpiece for her own use
(divine she did look, too, with that hookah between her ruby lips!); and
the smoke, and the cognac, and the smiles, unloosed our tongues, and we
spake like very great donkeys, I dare say, but I'm sure with not a tenth
part the wisdom that Balaam's ass developed in his brief and pithy
conversation.
However great the bosh we talked, though, we found very lenient
auditors. Fitzhervey and Guatamara laughed at all our witticisms; the
Prince of Orangia Magnolia joined in with a "Per Baccho!" and a "Bravo!"
and little Saint-Jeu wheezed, and gave a faint echo of "Mon Dieu!" and
"Tres bien, tres bien, vraiment!" and the Marchioness St. Julian laughed
too, and joined in our nonsense, and, what was much more, bent a willing
ear to our compliments, no matter how florid; and Saint-Jeu told us a
story or two, more amusing than _comme il faut_, at which the
Marchioness tried to look grave, and _did_ look shocked, but laughed for
all that behind her fan; and Lucrezia da' Guari sat in shadow, as still
and as silent as the Parian Euphrosyne on the console, though her
passionate eyes and expressive face looked the very antipodes of silence
and statuetteism, as she flashed half-shy, half-scornful, looks upon us.
If the first part of the evening had been delightful, this was something
like Paradise! It was such high society! and with just dash enough of
Mabille and coulisses laisseraller to give it piquancy. How different
was the pleasantry and freedom of these _real_ aristos, after the
humdrum dinners and horrid bores of dances that those snobs of Maberlys,
and Fortescues, and Mitchells, made believe to call Society!
What with the wine, and the smoke, and the smiles, I wasn't quite clear
as to whether I saw twenty horses' heads or one when I was fairly into
saddle, and riding back to the town, just as the first dawn was rising,
Aphrodite-like, from the far blue waves of the Mediterranean. Little
Grand was better seasoned, but even he was dizzy with the parting words
of the Marchioness, which had softly breathed the delicious passport,
"Come to-morrow."