takes a very strong passion to overcome _those_. I have heard men
ascribe the waning of their affections after the honeymoon to the
constant sight of their wives--whom before they had only seen making
papa's coffee with an angelic air and a toilette _tiree a quatre
epingles_--everlastingly coming down too late for breakfast in a
dressing-gown; and, upon my soul, if ever I marry, which Heaven in
pitiful mercy forfend! and my wife make her appearance in one of those
confounded _peignoirs_, I will give that much-run-after and
deeply-to-be-pitied public character, the Divorce Judge, some more work
to do--I will, upon my honor.
However, the _peignoir_ had not iced me enough that time to prevent my
tumbling out of the house in as delicious an ecstasy as if I had been
eating some of Monte Cristo's "hatchis." As I went out, not looking
before me, I came bang against the chest of somebody else, who, not
admiring the rencontre, hit my cap over my eyes, and exclaimed, in not
the most courtly manner you will acknowledge, "You cursed owl, take
that, then! What are you doing here, I should like to know?"
"Confound your impudence!" I retorted, as soon as my ocular powers were
restored, and I saw the blue eyes, fair curls, and smart figure of my
ancient Iolaues, now my bitterest foe--"confound your impertinence! what
are _you_ doing here? you mean."
"Take care, and don't ask questions about what doesn't concern you,"
returned Little Grand, with a laugh--a most irritating laugh. There are
times when such cachinnations sting one's ears more than a volley of
oaths. "Go home and mind your own business, my chicken. You are a green
bird, and nobody minds you, but still you'll find it as well not to come
poaching on other men's manors."
"Other men's manors! Mine, if you please," I shouted, so mad with him I
could have floored him where he stood.
"Phew!" laughed Little Grand, screwing up his lips into a contemptuous
whistle, "you've been drinking too much Bass, my daisy; 'tis n't good
for young heads--can't stand it. Go home, innocent."
The insult, the disdainful tone, froze my blood. My heart swelled with a
sense of outraged dignity and injured manhood. With a conviction of my
immeasurable superiority of position, as the beloved of that divine
creature, I emancipated myself from the certain sort of slavery I was
generally in to Little Grand, and spoke as I conceived it to be the
habit of gentlemen whose honor had been wounded to speak.
"Mr. Grandison, you will pay for this insult. I shall expect
satisfaction."
Little Grand laughed again--absolutely grinned, the audacious young
imp--and he twelve months younger than I, too!
"Certainly, sir. If you wish to be made a target of, I shall be
delighted to oblige you. I can't keep ladies waiting. It is always Place
aux dames! with me; so, for the present, good morning!"
And off went the young coxcomb into the Casa di Fiori, and I, only
consoled by the reflection of the different reception he would receive
to what mine had been (_he_ had a braceleted bouquet, too, the young
pretentious puppy!), started off again, assuaging my lacerated feelings
with the delicious word of Satisfaction. I felt myself immeasurably
raised above the heads of every other man in Malta--a perfect hero of
romance; in fact, fit to figure in my beloved Alexandre's most
highly-wrought yellow-papered _roman_, with a duel on my hands, and the
love of a magnificent creature like my Eudoxia Adelaida. She had become
Eudoxia Adelaida to me now, and I had forgiven, if not forgotten, the
dirty dressing-gown: the bottled porter lay, of course, at Brodie's
door. If he would condemn spiritual forms of life and light to the
common realistic aliments of horrible barmaids and draymen, she could
not help it, nor I either. If angels come down to earth, and are
separated from their natural nourishment of manna and nectar, they must
take what they can get, even though it be so coarse and sublunary a
thing as Guinness's XXX, must they not, sir? Yes, I felt very _exalte_
with my affair of honor and my affair of the heart, Little Grand for my
foe, and my Marchioness, for a love. I never stopped to remember that I
might be smashing with frightful recklessness the Sixth and the Seventh
Commandments. If Little Grand got shot, he must thank himself; he should
not have insulted me; and if there was a Marquis St. Julian, why--I
pitied him, poor fellow! that was all.
Full of these sublime sensations--grown at least three feet in my
varnished boots--I lounged into the ball-room, feeling supreme pity for
ensigns who were chattering round the door, admiring those poor, pale
garrison girls. _They_ had not a duel and a Marchioness; _they_ did not
know what beauty meant--what life was!
I did not dance--I was above that sort of thing now--there was not a
woman worth the trouble in the room; and about the second waltz I saw my
would-be rival talking to Ruthven, a fellow in Ours. Little Grand did
not look glum or dispirited, as he ought to have done after the
interview he must have had; but probably that was the boy's brass. He
would never look beaten if you had hit him till he was black and blue.
Presently Ruthven came up to me. He was not over-used to his business,
for he began the opening chapter in rather school-boy fashion.
"Hallo, Gus! so you and Little Grand have been falling out. Why don't
you settle it with a little mill? A vast deal better than pistols. Duels
always seem to me no fun. Two men stand up like fools, and----"
"Mr. Ruthven," said I, very haughtily, "if your principal desires to
apologize----"
"Apologize! Bless your soul, no! But----"
"Then," said I, cutting him uncommonly short indeed, "you can have no
necessity to address yourself to me, and I beg to refer you to my friend
and second, Mr. Heavystone."
Wherewith I bowed, turned on my heel, and left him.
I did not sleep that night, though I tried hard, because I thought it
the correct thing for heroes to sleep sweetly till the clock strikes the
hour of their duel, execution, &c., or whatever it may hap. Egmont
slept, Argyle slept, Philippe Egalite, scores of them, but I could not.
Not that I funked it, thank Heaven--I never had a touch of that--but
because I was in such a delicious state of excitement, self-admiration,
and heroism, which had not cooled when I found myself walking down to
the appointed place by the beach with poor old Heavy, who was intensely
impressed by being charged with about five quires of the best
cream-laid, to be given to the Marchioness in case I fell. Little Grand
and Ruthven came on the ground at almost the same moment, Little Grand
eminently jaunty and most _confoundedly_ handsome. We took off our caps
with distant ceremony; the Castilian hidalgos were never more stately;
but, then, what Knights of the Round Table ever splintered spears for
such a woman?
The paces were measured, the pistols taken out of their case. We were
just placed, and Ruthven, with a handkerchief in his hand, had just
enumerated, in awful accents, "One! two!"--the "three!" yet hovered on
his lips, when we heard a laugh--the third laugh that had chilled my
blood in twenty-four hours. Somebody's hand was laid on Little Grand's
shoulder, and Conran's voice interrupted the whole thing.
"Hallo, young ones! what farce is this?"
"Farce, sir!" retorted Little Grand, hotly--"farce! It is no farce. It
is an affair of honor, and----"
"Don't make me laugh, my dear boy," smiled Conran; "it is so much too
warm for such an exertion. Pray, why are you and your once sworn friend
making popinjays of each other?"
"Mr. Grandison has grossly insulted me," I began, "and I demand
satisfaction. I will not stir from the ground without it, and----"
"You _sha'n't_," shouted Little Grand. "Do you dare to pretend I want to
funk, you little contemptible----"
Though it was too warm, Conran went off into a fit of laughter.
I dare say our sublimity had a comic touch in it of which we never
dreamt. "My dear boys, pray don't, it is too fatiguing. Come, Grand,
what is it all about?"
"I deny your right to question me, Major," retorted Little Grand, in a
fury. "What have you to do with it? I mean to punish that young owl
yonder--who didn't know how to drink anything but milk-and-water, didn't
know how to say bo! to a goose, till I taught him--for very abominable
impertinence, and I'll----"
"My impertinence! I like that!" I shouted. "It is your unwarrantable,
overbearing self-conceit, that makes you the laughing-stock of all the
mess, which----"
"Silence!" said Conran's still stern voice, which subdued us into
involuntary respect. "No more of this nonsense! Put up those pistols,
Ruthven. You are two hot-headed, silly boys, who don't know for what you
are quarrelling. Live a few years longer, and you won't be so eager to
get into hot water, and put cartridges into your best friends. No, I
shall not hear any more about it. If you do not instantly give me your
words of honor not to attempt to repeat this folly, as your senior
officer I shall put you under arrest for six weeks."
O Alexandra Dumas!--O Monte Cristo!--O heroes of yellow paper and pluck
invincible! I ask pardon of your shades; I must record the fact,
lowering and melancholy as it is, that before our senior officer our
heroism melted like Vanille ice in the sun, our glories tumbled to the
ground like twelfth-cake ornaments under children's fingers, and before
the threat of arrest the lions lay down like lambs.
Conran sent us back, humbled, sulky, and crestfallen, and resumed his
solitary patrol upon the beach, where, before the sun was fairly up, he
was having a shot at curlews. But if he was a little stern, he was no
less kind-hearted; and in the afternoon of that day, while he lay, after
his siesta, smoking on his little bed, I unburdened myself to him. He
did not laugh at me, though I saw a quizzical smile under his black
moustaches.
"What is your divinity's name?" he asked, when I had finished.
"Eudoxia Adelaida, Marchioness St. Julian."
"The Marchioness St. Julian! Oh!"
"Do you know her?" I inquired, somewhat perplexed by his tone.
He smiled straight out this time.
"I don't know _her_, but there are a good many Peeresses in Malta and
Gibraltar, and along the line of the Pacific, as my brother Ned, in the
_Belisarius_, will tell you. I could count two score such of my
acquaintance off at this minute."
I wondered what he meant. I dare say he knew all the Peerage; but that
had nothing to do with me, and I thought it strange that all the
Duchesses, and Countesses, and Baronesses should quit their
country-seats and town-houses to locate themselves along the line of the
Pacific.
"She's a fine woman, St. John?" he went on.
"Fine!" I reiterated, bursting into a panegyric, with which I won't bore
you as I bored him.
"Well, you're going there to-night, you say; take me with you, and we'll
see what I think of your Marchioness."
I looked at his fine figure and features, recalled certain tales of his
conquests, remembered that he knew French, Italian, German, and Spanish,
but, not being very able to refuse, acquiesced with a reluctance I could
not entirely conceal. Conran, however, did not perceive it, and after
mess took his cap, and went with me to the Casa di Fiori.
The rooms were all right again, my Marchioness was _en grande tenue_,
amber silk, black lace, diamonds, and all that sort of style. Fitzhervey
and the other men were in evening dress, drinking coffee; there was not
a trace of bottled porter anywhere, and it was all very brilliant and
presentable. The Marchioness St. Julian rose with the warmest effusion,
her dazzling white teeth showing in the sunniest of smiles, and both
hands outstretched.
"Augustus, _bien aime_, you are rather----"
"Late," I suppose she was going to say, but she stopped dead short, her
teeth remained parted in a stereotyped smile, a blankness of dismay came
over her luminous eyes. She caught sight of Conran, and I imagined I
heard a very low-breathed "Curse the fellow!" from courteous Lord Dolph.
Conran came forward, however, as if he did not notice it; there was only
that queer smile lurking under his moustaches. I introduced him to them,
and the Marchioness smiled again, and Fitzhervey almost resumed his
wonted extreme urbanity. But they were somehow or other wonderfully ill
at ease--wonderfully, for people in such high society; and I was ill at
ease too, from being only able to attribute Eudoxia Adelaida's evident
consternation at the sight of Conran to his having been some time or
other an old love of hers. "Ah!" thought I, grinding my teeth, "that
comes of loving a woman older than one's self."
The Major, however, seemed the only one who enjoyed himself. The
Marchioness was beaming on him graciously, though her ruffled feathers
were not quite smoothed down, and he was sitting by her with an intense
amusement in his eyes, alternately talking to her about Stars and
Garters, whom, by her answers, she did not seem to know so very
intimately after all, and chatting with Fitzhervey about hunting, who,
for a man that had hunted over every country, according to his own
account, seemed to confuse Tom Edge with Tom Smith, the Burton with the
Tedworth, a bullfinch with an ox-rail, in queer style, under Conran's
cross-questioning. We had been in the room about ten minutes, when a
voice, rich, low, sweet, rang out from some inner room, singing the
glorious "Inflammatus." How strange it sounded in the Casa di Fiori!
Conran started, the dark blood rose over the clear bronze of his cheek.
He turned sharply on to the Marchioness. "Good Heaven! whose voice is
that?"
"My niece's," she answered, staring at him, and touching a hand-bell. "I
will ask her to come and sing to us nearer. She has really a lovely
voice."
Conran grew pale again, and sat watching the door with the most
extraordinary anxiety. Some minutes went by; then Lucrezia entered, with
the same haughty reserve which her soft young face always wore when with
her aunt. It changed, though, when her glance fell on Conran, into the
wildest rapture I ever saw on any countenance. He fixed his eyes on her
with the look Little Grand says he's seen him wear in battle--a
contemptuous smile quivering on his face.
"Sing us something, Lucrezia dear," began the Marchioness. "You
shouldn't be like the nightingales, and give your music only to night
and solitude."
Lucrezia seemed not to hear her. She had never taken her eyes off
Conran, and she went, as dreamily as that dear little _Amina_ in the
"Sonnambula," to her seat under the jasmines in the window. For a few
minutes Conran, who didn't seem to care two straws what the society in
general thought of him, took his leave, to the relief, apparently, of
Fitzhervey and Guatamara.
As he went across the veranda--that memorable veranda!--I sitting in
dudgeon near the other window, while Fitzhervey was proposing ecarte to
Heavy, whom we had found there on our entrance, and the Marchioness had
vanished into her boudoir for a moment, I saw the Roman girl spring out
after him, and catch hold of his arm:
"Victor! Victor! for pity's sake!--I never thought we should meet like
this!"
"Nor did I."
"Hush! hush! you will kill me. In mercy, say some kinder words!"
"I can say nothing that it would be courteous to you to say."
I couldn't have been as inflexible, whatever her sins might have been,
with her hands clasped on me, and her face raised so close to mine.
Lucrezia's voice changed to a piteous wail:
"You love me no longer, then?"
"Love!" said Conran, fiercely--"love! How dare you speak to me of love?
I held you to be fond, innocent, true as Heaven; as such, you were
dearer to me than life--as dear as honor. I loved you with as deep a
passion as ever a man knew--Heaven help me! I love you now! How am I
rewarded? By finding you the companion of blackguards, the associate of
swindlers, one of the arch-intrigantes who lead on youths to ruin with
base smiles and devilish arts. Then you dare talk to me of love!"
With those passionate words he threw her off him. She fell at his feet
with a low moan. He either did not hear, or did not heed it; and I,
bewildered by what I heard, mechanically went and lifted her from the
ground. Lucrezia had not fainted, but she looked so wild, that I
believed the Marchioness, and set her down as mad; but then Conran must
be mad as well, which seemed too incredible a thing for me to
swallow--our cool Major mad!
"Where does he live?" asked Lucrezia of me, in a breathless whisper.
"He? Who?"
"Victor--your officer--Signor Conran."
"Why, he lives in Valetta, of course."
"Can I find him there?"
"I dare say, if you want him."
"Want him! Oh, Santa Maria! is not his absence death? Can I find him?"
"Oh, yes, I dare say. Anybody will show you Conran's rooms."
"Thank you."
With that, this mysterious young lady left me, and I turned in through
the window again. Heavy and the men were playing at lansquenet, that
most perilous, rapid, and bewitching of all the resistless Card Circes.
There was no Marchioness, and having done it once with impunity, I
thought I might do it again, and lifted the amber curtain that divided
the boudoir from the drawing-room. What did I behold? Oh! torture
unexampled! Oh! fiendish agony! There was Little Grand--self-conceited,
insulting, impertinent, abominable, unendurable Little Grand--on the
amber satin couch, with the Marchioness leaning her head on his
shoulder, and looking up in his thrice-confounded face with her most
adorable smile, _my_ smile, that had beamed, and, as I thought, beamed
only upon me!
If Mephistopheles had been by to tempt me, I would have sold my soul to
have wreaked vengeance on them both. Neither saw me, thank Heaven! and I
had self-possession enough not to give them the cruel triumph of
witnessing my anguish. I withdrew in silence, dropped the curtain, and
rushed to bury my wrongs and sorrows in the friendly bosom of the gentle
night. It was my first love, and I had made a fool of myself. The two
are synonymous.
How I reached the barracks I never knew. All the night long I sat
watching the stars out, raving to them of Eudoxia Adelaida, and cursing
in plentiful anathemas my late Orestes. How should I bear his impudent
grin every mortal night of my life across the mess-table? I tore up into
shreds about a ream of paper, inscribed with tender sonnets to my
faithless idol. I trampled into fifty thousand shreds a rosette off her
dress, for which, fool-like, I had begged the day before. I smashed the
looking-glass, which could only show me the image of a pitiful donkey. I
called on Heaven to redress my wrongs. Oh! curse it! never was a fellow
at once so utterly done for and so utterly done brown!
And in the vicarage, as I learnt afterwards, when my letter was received
at home, there was great glorification and pleasure. My mother and the
girls were enraptured at the high society darling Gussy was moving in;
"but then, you know, mamma, dear Gussy's manners are so gentle, so
gentleman-like, they are sure to please wherever he goes!" Wherewith my
mother cried, and dried her eyes, and cried again, over that abominable
letter copied from Little Grand's, and smelling of vilest tobacco.
Then entered a rectoress of a neighboring parish, to whom my mother and
the girls related with innocent exultation of my grand friends at Malta;
how Lord A. Fitzhervey was my sworn ally, and the Marchioness St. Julian
had quite taken me under her wing. And the rectoress, having a son of
her own, who was not doing anything so grand at Cambridge, but
principally sotting beer at a Cherryhinton public, smiled and was
wrathful, and said to her lord at dinner:
"My dear, did you ever hear of a Marchioness St. Julian?"
"No, my love, I believe not--never."
"Is there one in the peerage?"
"Can't say, my dear. Look in Burke."
So the rectoress got Burke and closed it, after deliberate inspection,
with malignant satisfaction.
"I thought not. How ridiculous those St. Johns are about that ugly boy
Augustus. As if Tom were not worth a hundred of him!"
I was too occupied with my own miseries then to think about Conran and
Lucrezia, though some time after I heard all about it. It seems, that, a
year before, Conran was on leave in Rome, and at Rome, loitering about
the Campagna one day, he made a chance acquaintance with an Italian
girl, by getting some flowers for her she had tried to reach and could
not. She was young, enthusiastic, intensely interesting, and had only an
old Roman nurse, deaf as a post and purblind, with her. The girl was
Lucrezia da Guari, and Lucrezia was lovely as one of her own myrtle or
orange flowers. Somehow or other Conran went there the next day, and the
next, and the next, and so on for a good many days, and always found
Lucrezia. Now, Conran had at bottom a touch of unstirred romance, and,
moreover, his own idea of what sort of woman he could love. Something in
this untrained yet winning Campagna flower answered to both. He was old
to trust his own discernment, and, after a month or two's walks and
talks, Conran, one of the proudest men going, offered himself and his
name to a Roman girl of whom he knew nothing, except that she seemed to
care for him as he had had a fancy to be cared for all his life. It was
a deucedly romantic thing--however, he did it! Lucrezia had told him her
father was a military officer, but somehow or other this father never
came to light, and when he called at their house--or rather
rooms--Conran always found him out, which he thought queer, but, on the
whole, rather providential, and he set the accident down to a
foreigner's roaming habits.
The day Conran had really gone the length of offering to make an unknown
Italian his wife, he went, for the first time in the evening, to Da
Guari's house. The servant showed him in unannounced to a
brightly-lighted chamber, reeking with wine and smoke, where a dozen men
were playing trente et quarante at an amateur bank, and two or three
others were gathered round what he had believed his own fair and pure
Campagna flower. He understood it all; he turned away with a curse upon
him. He wanted love and innocence; adventuresses he could have by the
score, and he was sick to death of them. From that hour he never saw her
again till he met her at the Casa di Fiori.
The next day I went to Conran while he was breakfasting, and unburdened
my mind to him. He looked ill and haggard, but he listened to me very
kindly, though he spoke of the people at the Casa di Fiori in a hard,
brief, curious manner.
"Plenty have been taken in like you, Gus," he said "I was, years ago, in
my youth, when I joined the Army. There are scores of such women, as I
told you, down the line of the Pacific, and about here; anywhere, in
fact, where the army and navy give them fresh pigeons to be gulled. They
take titles that sound grand in boys' ears, and fascinate them till
they've won all their money, and then--send them to the dogs. Your
Marchioness St. Julian's real name is Sarah Briggs."
I gave an involuntary shriek. Sarah Briggs finished me. It was the
death-stroke, that could never be got over.
"She was a ballet-girl in London," continued Conran; "then, when she was
sixteen, married that Fitzhervey, _alias_ Briggs, _alias_ Smith, _alias_
what you please, and set up in her present more lucrative employment
with her three or four confederates. Saint-Jeu was expelled from Paris
for keeping a hell in the Chaussee d'Antin, Fitzhervey was a leg at
Newmarket, Orangia Magnolia a lawyer's clerk, who was had up for
forgery, Guatamara is--by another name--a scoundrel of Rome. There is
the history of your Maltese Peerage, Gussy. Well, you'll be wider awake
next time. Wait, there is somebody at my door. Stay here a moment, I'll
come back to you."
Accordingly, I stayed in his bedroom, where I had found him writing, and
he went into his sitting-room, of which, from the diminutiveness of his
domicile, I commanded a full view, sit where I would. What was my
astonishment to see Lucrezia! I went to his bedroom door; it was locked
from the outside, so I perforce remained where I was, to, _nolens
volens_, witness the finish of last night's interview.
Stern to the last extent and deadly pale, Conran stood, too surprised to
speak, and most probably at a loss for words.
Lucrezia came up to him nevertheless with the abandonment of youth and
southern blood.
"Victor! Victor! let me speak to you. You shall listen; you shall not
judge me unheard."