feelings--"by Jupiter, Simon! did you ever see such a glorious,
enchanting, divine, delicious, adorable creature? Faugh! who could look
at those Mitchell girls after her? Such eyes! such a smile! such a
figure! Talk of a coronet! no imperial crown would be half good enough
for her! And how pleasant those fellows are! I like that little chaffy
chap, the Duke; what a slap-up story that was about the bal de l'Opera.
And Fitzhervey, too; there's something uncommonly thorough-bred about
him, ain't there? And Guatamara's an immensely jolly fellow. Ah, myboy!
that's something like society; all the ease and freedom of real rank; no
nonsense about them, as there is about snobs. I say, what wouldn't the
other fellows give to be in our luck? I think even Conran would warm up
about her. But, Simon, she's deucedly taken with me--she is, upon my
word; and she knows how to show it you, too! By George! one could die
for a woman like that--eh?"
"Die!" I echoed, while my horse stumbled along up the hilly road, and I
swayed forward, pretty nearly over his head, while poetry rushed to my
lips, and electric sparks danced before my eyes:
"To die for those we love! oh, there is power
In the true heart, and pride, and joy, for this
It is to live without the vanished light
That strength is needed!"
"But I'll be shot if it shall be vanished light," returned Little Grand;
"it don't look much like it yet. The light's only just lit, 'tisn't
likely it's going out again directly; but she is a stunner! and----"
"A stunner!" I shouted; "she's much more than that--she's an angel, and
I'll be much obliged to you to call her by her right name, sir. She's a
beautiful, noble, loving woman; the most perfect of all Nature's
masterworks. She is divine, sir, and you and I are not worthy merely to
kiss the hem of her garment."
"Ain't we, though? I don't care much about kissing her dress; it's silk,
and I don't know that I should derive much pleasure from pressing my
lips on its texture; but her cheek----"
"Her cheek is like the Catherine pear,
The side that's next the sun!"
I shouted, as my horse went down in a rut. "She's like Venus rising from
the sea-shell; she's like Aurora, when she came down on the first ray of
the dawn to Tithonus; she's like Briseis----"
"Bother classics! she's like herself, and beats 'em all hollow. She's
the finest creature ever seen on earth, and I should like to see the man
who'd dare to say she wasn't. And--I say, Simon--_how much did you lose
to-night_?"
From sublimest heights I tumbled straight to bathos. The cold water of
Grand's query quenched my poetry, extinguished my electric lights, and
sobered me like a douche bath.
"I don't know," I answered, with a sense of awe and horror stealing over
me; "but I had a pony in my waistcoat-pocket that the governor had just
sent me; Guatamara changed it for me, and--_I've only sixpence left_!"
"Old boy," said Little Grand to me, the next morning, after early
parade, "come in my room, and let's make up some despatches to the
governors. You see," he continued, five minutes after,--"you see, we're
both of us pretty well cleared out; I've only got half a pony, and you
haven't a couple of fivers left. Now you know they evidently play rather
high at the Casa di Fiori; do everything _en prince_, like nobs who've
Barclays at their back; and one mustn't hang fire; horrid shabby that
would look. Besides, fancy seeming mean before _her_! So I've been
thinking that, though governors are a screwy lot generally, if we put it
to 'em clearly the sort of set we've got into, and show 'em that we
can't help, now that we are at Rome, doing as the Romans do, I should
say they could hardly help bleeding a little--eh? Now, listen how I've
put it. My old boy has a weakness for titles; he married my mother on
the relationship to Viscount Twaddles (who doesn't know of her
existence; but who does to talk about as 'our cousin'), and he'd eat up
miles of dirt for a chance of coming to a strawberry-leaf; so I think
this will touch him up beautifully. Listen! ain't I sublimely
respectful? 'I'm sure, my dear father, you wilt be delighted to learn,
that by wonderful luck, or rather I ought to say Providence, I have
fallen on my feet in Malta, and got introduced to the very highest'
(wait! let me stick a dash under very)--'the _very_ highest society
here. They are quite tip-top. To show you what style, I need only
mention Lord A. Fitzhervey, the Baron Guatamara, and the Marchioness St.
Julian, as among my kindest friends. They have been yachting in the
Levant, and are now staying in Malta: they are all most kind to me; and
I know you will appreciate the intellectual advantages that such contact
must afford me; at the same time you will understand that I can hardly
enter such circles as a snob, and you will wish your son to comport
himself as a gentleman; but gentlemanizing comes uncommon dear, I can
tell you, with all the care in the world: and if you _could_ let me have
another couple of hundred, I should vote you'--a what, Simon?--'an
out-and-out brick' is the sensible style, but I suppose 'the best and
kindest of parents' is the filial dodge, eh? There! 'With fond love to
mamma and Florie, ever your affectionate son, COSMO GRANDISON.' Bravo!
that's prime; that'll bring the yellows down, I take it. Here, old
fellow, copy it to your governor; you couldn't have a more stunning
effusion--short, and to the purpose, as cabinet councils ought to be,
and ain't. Fire away, my juvenile."
I did fire away; only I, of a more impressionable and poetic nature than
Little Grand, gave a certain vent to my feelings in expatiating on the
beauty, grace, condescension, &c., &c., of the Marchioness to my mother;
I did _not_ mention the grivois stories, the brandy, and the hookah: I
was quite sure they were the sign of that delirious ease and disregard
of snobbish etiquette and convenances peculiar to the "Upper Ten," but I
thought the poor people at home, in vicarage seclusion, would be too out
of the world to fully appreciate such revelations of our _creme de la
creme_; besides, my governor had James's own detestation of the divine
weed, and considered that men who "made chimneys of their mouths" might
just as well have the mark of the Beast at once.
Little Grand and I were hard-up for cash, and _en attendant_ the
governors' replies and remittances, we had recourse to the tender
mercies and leather bags of napoleons, ducats, florins, and doubloons of
a certain Spanish Jew, one Balthazar Miraflores, a shrivelled-skinned,
weezing old cove, who was "most happy to lent anytink to his tear young
shentlesmen, but, by Got! he was as poor as Job, he was indeed!" Whether
Job ever lent money out on interest or not, I can't say; perhaps he did,
as in the finish he ended with having quadrupled his cattle and lands,
and all his goods--a knack usurers preserve in full force to this day;
but all I can say is, that if he was not poorer than Mr. Miraflores, he
was not much to be pitied, for he, miserly old shark, lived in his dark,
dirty hole, like a crocodile embedded in Nile mud, and crushed the bones
of all unwary adventurers who came within range of his great bristling
jaws.
Money, however, Little Grand and I got out of him in plenty, only for a
little bit of paper in exchange; and at that time we didn't know that
though the paper tax would be repealed at last, there would remain, as
long as youths are green and old birds cunning, a heavy and a bitter tax
on certain bits of paper to which one's hand is put, which Mr.
Gladstone, though he achieve the herculean task of making draymen take
kindly to vin ordinaire, and the popping of champagne corks a familiar
sound by cottage-hearths, will never be able to include in his budgets,
to come among the Taxes that are Repealed!
Well, we had our money from old Balthazar that morning, and we played
with it again that night up at the Casa di Fiori. Loo this time, by way
of change. Saint-Jeu said he always thought it well to change your game
as you change your loves: constancy, whether to cards or women, was most
fatiguing. We liked Saint-Jeu very much, we thought him such a funny
fellow. They said they did not care to play much--of course they didn't,
when Guatamara had had ecarte with the Grand-Duke of Chaffsandlarkstein
at half a million a side, and Lord Dolph had broken the bank at Homburg
"just for fun--no fun to old Blanc, who farms it, though, you know." But
the Marchioness, who was doubly gracious that night, told them they must
play, because it amused her _chers petits amis_. Besides, she said, in
her pretty, imperious way, she liked to see it--it amused her. After
that, of course, there was no more hesitation; down we sat, and young
Heavystone with us.
The evening before we had happened to mention him, said he was a fellow
of no end of tin, though as stupid an owl as ever spelt his own name
wrong when he passed a military examination, and the Marchioness,
recalling the name, said she remembered his father, and asked us to
bring him to see her; which we did, fearing no rival in "old Heavy."
So down we three sat, and had the evening before over again, with the
cards, and the smiles, and wiles of our divinity, and Saint-Jeu's
stories and Fitzhervey's cognac and cigars; with this difference, that
we found loo more exciting than vingt-et-un. They played it so fast,
too, it was like a breathless heat for the Goodwood Cup, and the
Marchioness watched it, leaning alternately over Grand's, and Heavy's,
and my chair, and saying, with such naive delight, "Oh, do take miss,
Cosmo; I would risk it if I were you, Mr. Heavystone; _pray_ don't let
my naughty brother win everything," that I'd have defied the stiffest of
the Stagyrites or the chilliest of Calvinists to have kept their head
cool with that syren voice in their ear.
And La Lucrezia sat, as she had sat the night before, by the open
window, still and silent, the Cape jasmines and Southern creepers
framing her in a soft moonlight picture, contrast enough to the
brilliantly lighted room, echoing with laughter at Saint-Jeu's stories,
perfumed with Cubas and narghiles, and shrining the magnificent,
full-blown, jewelled beauty of our Marchioness St. Julian, with which we
were as rapidly, as madly, as unreasoningly, and as sentimentally in
love as any boys of seventeen or eighteen ever could be. What greater
latitude, you will exclaim, recalling certain buried-away episodes of
_your_ hobbedehoyism, when you addressed Latin distichs to that
hazel-eyed Hebe who presided over oyster patties and water ices at the
pastrycook's in Eton; or ruined your governor's young plantations
cutting the name of Adeliza Mary, your cousin, at this day a portly
person in velvet and point, whom you can now call, with a thanksgiving
in the stead of the olden tremor, Mrs. Hector M'Cutchin? Yes, we were in
love in a couple of evenings, Little Grand vehemently and unpoetically,
I shyly and sentimentally, according to our temperament, and as the fair
Emily stirred feud between the two Noble Kinsmen, so the Marchioness St.
Julian began to sow seeds of jealousy and detestation between us, sworn
allies as we were. But "_le veritable amant ne connait point_
_d'amis_," and as soon as we began to grow jealous of each other, Little
Grand could have kicked me to the devil, and I could have kicked _him_
with the greatest pleasure in life.
But I was shy, Little Grand was blessed with all the audacity
imaginable; the consequence was, that when our horses came round, and
the Maltese who acted as cherub was going to close the gates of Paradise
upon us, he managed to slip into the Marchioness's boudoir to get a
tete-a-tete farewell, while I strode up and down the veranda, not
heeding Saint-Jeu, who was telling me a tale, to which, in any other
saner moments, I should have listened greedily, but longing to execute
on Little Grand some fierce and terrible vengeance, to which the
vendetta should be baby's play. Saint-Jeu left me to put his arm over
Heavy's shoulder, and tell him if ever he came to Paris he should be
transported to receive him at the Hotel de Millefleurs, and present him
at the Tuileries; and I stood swearing to myself, and breaking off
sprays of the veranda creepers, when I heard somebody say, very softly
and low,--
"Signore, come here a moment."
It was that sweetly pretty mute whom we had barely noticed, absorbed as
we were in the worship of our maturer idol, leaning out of the window,
her cheeks flushed, her lips parted, her eyes sad and anxious. Of course
I went to her, surprised at her waking up so suddenly to any interest in
me. She put her hand on my coat-sleeve, and drew me down towards her.
"Listen to me a moment. I hardly know how to warn you, and yet I must. I
cannot sit quietly by and see you and your young friends being deceived
as so many have been before you. Do not come here again---do not----"
"Figlia mia! are you not afraid of the night-air?" said the Prince of
Orangia Magnolia, just behind us.
His words were kind, but there was a nasty glitter in his eyes.
Lucrezia answered him in passionate Italian--of which I had no
knowledge--with such fire in her eyes, such haughty gesticulation, and
such a torrent of words, that I really began to think, pretty soft
little dear as she looked, that she must positively be a trifle out of
her mind, her silence before, and her queer speech to me, seemed such
odd behavior for a young lady in such high society. She was turning to
me again when Little Grand came out into the veranda, looking flushed,
proud, and self-complaisant, as such a winner and slayer of women would
do. My hand clenched on the jasmine, I thirsted to spring on him as he
stood there with his provoking, self-contented smile, and his confounded
coxcombical air, and his cursed fair curls--_my_ hair was dust-colored
and as rebellious as porcupine-quills--and wash out in his blood or
mine----A touch of a soft hand thrilled through my every nerve and
fibre: the Marchioness was there, and signed me to her. Lucrezia, Little
Grand, and all the rest of the universe vanished from my mind at the
lightning of that angel smile and the rustle of that moire-antique
dress. She beckoned me to her into the empty drawing-room.
"Augustus" (I never thought my name could sound so sweet before), "tell
me, what was my niece Lucrezia saying to you just now?"
Now I had a sad habit of telling the truth; it was an out-of-the-world
custom taught me, among other old-fashioned things, at home, though I
soon found how inconvenient a _betise_ modern society considers it; and
I blurted the truth out here, not distinctly or gracefully, though, as
Little Grand would have done, for I was in that state of exaltation
ordinarily expressed as not knowing whether one is standing in one's
Wellingtons or not.
The Marchioness sighed.
"Ah, did she say that? Poor dear girl! She dislikes me so much, it is
quite an hallucination, and yet, O Augustus, I have been to her like an
elder sister, like a mother. Imagine how it grieves me," and the
Marchioness shed some tears--pearls of price, thought I, worthy to drop
from angel eyes--"it is a bitter sorrow to me, but, poor darling! she is
not responsible."
She touched her veiny temple significantly as she spoke, and I
understood, and felt tremendously shocked at it, that the young, fair
Italian girl was a fierce and cruel maniac, who had the heart (oh! most
extraordinary madness did it seem to me; if _I_ had lost my senses I
could never have harmed _her_!) to hate, absolutely hate, the noblest,
tenderest, most beautiful of women!
"I never alluded to it to any one," continued the Marchioness.
"Guatamara and Saint-Jeu, though such intimate friends, are ignorant of
it. I would rather have any one think ever so badly of me, than reveal
to them the cruel misfortune of my sweet Lucrezia----"
How noble she looked as she spoke!
"But you, Augustus, you," and she smiled upon me till I grew as dizzy as
after my first taste of milk-punch, "I have not the courage to let _you_
go off with any bad impression of me. I have known you a very little
while, it is true--but a few hours, indeed--yet there are affinities of
heart and soul which overstep the bounds of time, and, laughing at the
chill ties of ordinary custom, make strangers dearer than old
friends----"
The room revolved round me, the lights danced up and down, my heart beat
like Thor's hammer, and my pulse went as fast as a favorite saving the
distance. _She_ speaking so to me! My senses whirled round and round
like fifty thousand witches on a Walpurgis Night, and down I went on my
knees before my magnificent idol, raving away I couldn't tell you what
now--the essence of everything I'd ever read, from Ovid to Alexander
Smith. It must have been something frightful to hear, though Heaven
knows I meant it earnestly enough. Suddenly I was pulled up with a
jerk, as one throws an unbroken colt back on his haunches in the middle
of his first start. _I thought I heard a laugh._
She started up too. "Hush! another time! We may be overheard." And
drawing her dress from my hands, which grasped it as agonisingly as a
cockney grasps his saddle-bow, holding on for dear life over the Burton
or Tedworth country, she stooped kindly over me, and floated away before
_I_ was recovered from the exquisite delirium of my ecstatic trance.
She loved me! This superb creature loved me! There was not a doubt of
it; and how I got back to the barracks that night in my heavenly state
of mind I could never have told. All I know is, that Grand and I never
spoke a word, by tacit consent, all the way back; that I felt a fiendish
delight when I saw his proud triumphant air, and thought how little he
guessed, poor fellow!----And that Dream of One Fair Woman was as
superior in rapture to the "Dream of Fair Women" as Tokay to the "Fine
Fruity Port" that results from damsons and a decoction of sloes!
The next day there was a grand affair in Malta to receive some foreign
Prince, whose name I do not remember now, who called on us _en route_ to
England. Of course all the troops turned out, and there was an
inspection of us, and a grand luncheon and dinner, and ball, and all
that sort of thing, which a month before I should have considered prime
fun, but which now, as it kept me out of my paradise, I thought the most
miserable bore that could possibly have chanced.
"I say," said Heavy to me as I was getting into harness--"I say, don't
you wonder Fitzhervey and the Marchioness ain't coming to the palace
to-day? One would have thought Old Stars and Garters would have been
sure to ask them."
"Ask them? I should say so," I returned, with immeasurable disdain. "Of
course he asked them; but she told me she shouldn't come, last night.
She is so tired of such things. She came yachting with Fitzhervey solely
to try and have a little quiet. She says people never give her a
moment's rest when she is in Paris or London. She was sorry to
disappoint Stars and Garters, but I don't think she likes his wife much:
she don't consider her good ton."
On which information Heavy lapsed into a state of profoundest awe and
wonderment, it having been one of his articles of faith, for the month
that we had been in Malta, that the palace people were exalted demigods,
whom it was only permissible to worship from a distance, and a very
respectful distance too. Heavy had lost some twenty odd pounds the night
before--of course we lost, young hands as we were, unaccustomed to the
society of that entertaining gentleman, Pam--and had grumbled not a
little at the loss of his gold bobs. But now I could see that such a
contemptibly pecuniary matter was clean gone from his memory, and that
he would have thought the world well lost for the honor of playing cards
with people who could afford to disappoint Old Stars and Garters.
The inspection was over at last; and if any other than Conran had been
my senior officer, I should have come off badly, in all probability, for
the abominable manner in which I went through my evolutions. The day
came to an end somehow or other, though I began to think it never would,
the luncheon was ended, the bigwigs were taking their sieste, or
otherwise occupied, and I, trusting to my absence not being noticed,
tore off as hard as man can who has Cupid for his Pegasus. With a
bouquet as large as a drum-head, clasped round with a bracelet, about
which I had many doubts as to the propriety of offering to the possessor
of such jewelry as the Marchioness must have, yet on which I thought I
might venture after the scene of last night, I was soon on the veranda
of the Casa di Fiori, and my natural shyness being stimulated into a
distant resemblance of Little Grand's enviable brass, seeing the windows
of the drawing-room open, I pushed aside the green venetians and entered
noiselessly. The room did not look a quarter so inviting as the night
before, though it was left in precisely a similar state. I do not know
how it was, but those cards lying about on the floor, those sconces with
the wax run down and dripping over them, those emptied caraffes that had
diffused an odor not yet dissipated, those tables and velvet couches all
_a tort et a travers_, did not look so very inviting after all, and even
to my unsophisticated senses, scarcely seemed fit for a Peeress.
There was nobody in the room, and I walked through it towards the
boudoir; from the open door I saw Fitzhervey, Guatamara, and my
Marchioness--but oh! what horror unutterable! doing--_que pensez-vous?_
Drinking bottled porter!--and drinking bottled porter in a _peignoir_
not of the cleanliest, and with raven tresses not of the neatest!
Only fancy! she, that divine, _spirituelle_ creature, who had talked but
a few hours before of the affinity of souls, to have come down, like any
ordinary woman, to Guinness's stout, and a checked dressing-gown and
unbrushed locks! To find your prophet without his silver veil, or your
Leila dead drowned in a sack, or your Guinevere flown over with Sir
Lancelot to Boulogne, or your long-esteemed Griselda gone off with your
cockaded Jeames, is nothing to the torture, the unutterable anguish, of
seeing your angel, your divinity, your bright particular star, your
hallowed Arabian rose, come down to--Bottled Porter! Do not talk to me
of Dore, sir, or Mr. Martin's pictures; their horrors dwindle into
insignificance compared with the horror of finding an intimate liaison
between one's first love and Bottled Porter!
In my first dim, unutterable anguish, I should have turned and fled; but
my syren's voice had not lost all its power, despite the stout and dirty
dressing-gown, for she was a very handsome woman, and could stand such
things as well as anybody. She came towards me, with her softest smile,
glancing at the bracelet on the bouquet, apologizing slightly for her
neglige:--"I am so indolent. I only dress for those I care to
please--and I never hoped to see _you_ to-day." In short, magnetizing me
over again, and smoothing down my outraged sensibilities, till I ended
by becoming almost blind (_quite_ I could not manage) to the checked
_robe de chambre_ and the unbrushed bandeaux, by offering her my
braceleted bouquet, which was very graciously accepted, and even by
sharing the atrocious London porter, "that horrid stuff," she called it,
"how I hate it! but it is the only thing Sir Benjamin Brodie allows me,
I am so very delicate, you know, my sensibilities so frightfully acute!"
I had not twenty minutes to stay, having to be back at the barracks, or
risk a reprimand, which, happily, the checked _peignoir_ had cooled me
sufficiently to enable me to recollect. So I took my farewell--one not
unlike Medora's and Conrad's, Fitzhervey and Guatamara having kindly
withdrawn as soon as the bottled porter was finished--and I went out of
the house in a very blissful state, despite Guinness and the unwelcome
demi-toilette, which did not accord with Eugene Sue's and the Parlor
Library's description of the general getting-up and stunning appearance
of heroines and peeresses, "reclining, in robes of cloud-like tissue and
folds of the richest lace, on a cabriole couch of amber velvet, while
the air was filled with the voluptuous perfume of the flower-children of
the South, and music from unseen choristers lulled the senses with its
divinest harmony," &c., &c., &c.