_who_, but she's the prettiest thing in London," said Fulke Nugent,
which was the warmest praise that any living man about town remembered
to have heard fall from his lips, which limited themselves religiously
to one legitimate laudation, which is a superlative nowadays, though Mr.
Lindley Murray, if alive, wouldn't, perhaps, receive or recognize it as
such: "Not bad-looking."
"It isn't _who_ a woman is, it's _what_ she is, that's the question, I
take it," said Goodwood, as he left the Guards' box to visit the
Marabout.
"By George!" laughed Nugent to Carruthers, "Goodey must be serious, eh,
Phil? He don't care a button for little Bibi; he don't care even for
Zerlina. When the ballet begins, I verily believe he's thinking less of
the women before him than of the woman who has left the house; and if a
fellow can give more ominous signs of being 'serious,' as the women
phrase it, I don't know 'em, do you?"
"I don't know much about that sort of thing at all!" muttered
Carruthers, as he went out to follow Goodwood to the Marabout box.
That is an old, old story, that of the fair Emily stirring feud between
Palamon and Arcite. It has been acted out many a time since Beaumont and
Fletcher lived and wrote their twin-thoughts and won their twin laurels;
but the bars that shut the kinsmen in their prison-walls, the ivy-leaves
that filled in the rents of their prison-stones, were not more entirely
and blissfully innocent of the feud going on within, and the battle
foaming near them, than the calm, complacent soul of Lady Marabout was
of the rivalry going on close beside her for the sake of little
Montolieu.
She certainly thought Philip made himself specially brilliant and
agreeable that night; but then that was nothing new, he was famous for
talking well, and liked his mother enough not seldom to shower out for
her some of his very best things; certainly she thought Goodwood did not
shine by the contrast, and looked, to use an undignified word, rather
cross than otherwise; but then nobody _did_ shine beside Philip, and she
knew a reason that made Goodwood pardonably cross at the undesired
presence of his oldest and dearest chum. Even _she_ almost wished Philip
away. If the presence of her idolized son could have been unwelcome to
her at any time, it was so that night.
"It isn't like Philip to monopolize her so, he who has so much tact
usually, and cares nothing for girls himself," thought Lady Marabout;
"he must do it for mischief, and yet _that_ isn't like him at all; it's
very tiresome, at any rate."
And with that skilful diplomacy in such matters, on which, if it was
sometimes overthrown, Lady Marabout not unjustly plumed herself, she
dexterously entangled Carruthers in conversation, and during the crash
of one of the choruses whispered, as he bent forward to pick up her fan,
which she had let drop,
"Leave Flora a little to Goodwood; he has a right--he spoke decisively
to her to-day."
Carruthers bowed his head, and stooped lower for the fan.
He left her accordingly to Goodwood till the curtain fell after the last
act of the "Barbiere;" and Lady Marabout congratulated herself on her
own adroitness. "There is nothing like a little tact," she thought;
"what would society be without the guiding genius of tact, I wonder? One
dreadful Donnybrook Fair!"
But, someway or other, despite all her tact, or because her son
inherited that valuable quality in a triple measure to herself, someway,
it was Goodwood who led her to her carriage, and Carruthers who led the
little Montolieu.
"Terribly _bete_ of Philip; how very unlike him!" mused Lady Marabout,
as she gathered her burnous round her.
Carruthers talked and laughed as he led Flora Montolieu through the
passages, more gayly, perhaps, than usual.
"My mother has told me some news to-night, Miss Montolieu," he said,
carelessly. "Am I premature in proffering you my congratulations? But
even if I be so, you will not refuse the privilege to an old friend--to
a very sincere friend--and will allow me to be the first to wish you
happiness?"
Lady Marabout's carriage stopped the way. Flora Montolieu colored,
looked full at him, and went to it, without having time to answer his
congratulations, in which the keenest-sighted hearer would have failed
to detect anything beyond every-day friendship and genuine indifference.
The most truthful men will make the most consummate actors when spurred
up to it.
"My dear child, you look ill to-night; I am glad you have no
engagements," said Lady Marabout, as she sat down before the
dressing-room fire, toasting her little satin-shod foot--she has a
weakness for fire even in the hottest weather--while Flora Montolieu lay
back in a low chair, crushing the roses mercilessly. "You _do_ feel
well? I should not have thought so, your face looks so flushed, and your
eyes so preternaturally dark. Perhaps it is the late hours; you were not
used to them in France, of course, and it must be such a change to this
life from your unvarying conventual routine at St. Denis. My love, what
was it Lord Goodwood said to you to-day?"
"Do not speak to me of him, Lady Marabout, I hate his name!"
Lady Marabout started with an astonishment that nearly upset the cup of
coffee she was sipping.
"Hate his name? My dearest Flora, why, in Heaven's name?"
Flora did not answer; she pulled the roses off her hair as though they
had been infected with Brinvilliers' poison.
"What has he done?"
"_He_ has done nothing!"
"Who has done anything, then?"
"Oh, no one--no one has done anything, but--I am sick of Lord Goodwood's
name--tired of it!"
Lady Marabout sat almost speechless with surprise.
"Tired of it, my dear Flora?"
Little Montolieu laughed:
"Well, tired of it, perhaps from hearing him praised so often, as the
Athenian trader grew sick of Aristides, and the Jacobin of Washington's
name. Is it unpardonably heterodox to say so?"
Lady Marabout stirred her coffee in perplexity:
"My dear child, pray don't speak in that way; that's like Philip's tone
when he is enigmatical and sarcastic, and worries me. I really cannot in
the least understand you about Lord Goodwood, it is quite
incomprehensible to me. I thought I overheard him to-day at Lady
George's concert speak very definitely to you indeed, and when he was
interrupted by the Duchess before you could give him his reply, I
thought I heard him say he should call to-morrow morning to know your
ultimate decision. Was I right?"
"Quite right."
"He really proposed marriage to you to-day?"
"Yes."
"And yet you say you are sick of his name?"
"Does it follow, imperatively, Lady Marabout, that because the Sultan
throws his handkerchief, it must be picked up with humility and
thanksgiving?" asked Flora Montolieu, furling and unfurling her fan with
an impatient rapidity that threatened entire destruction of its ivory
and feathers, with their Watteau-like group elaborately painted on
them--as pretty a toy of the kind as could be got for money, which had
been given her by Carruthers one day in payment of some little bagatelle
of a bet.
"Sultan!--Humility!" repeated Lady Marabout, scarcely crediting her
senses. "My dear Flora, do you know what you are saying? You must be
jesting! There is not a woman in England who would be insensible to the
honor of Goodwood's proposals. You are jesting, Flora!"
"I am not, indeed!"
"You mean to say, you could positively think of _rejecting_ him!" cried
Lady Marabout, rising from her chair in the intensity of her amazement,
convinced that she was the victim of some horrible hallucination.
"Why should it surprise you if I did?"
"_Why?_" repeated Lady Marabout, indignantly. "Do you ask me _why_? You
must be a child, indeed, or a consummate actress, to put such a
question; excuse me, my dear, if I speak a little strongly: you
perfectly bewilder me, and I confess I cannot see your motives or your
meaning in the least. You have made a conquest such as the proudest
women in the peerage have vainly tried to make; you have one of the
highest titles in the country offered to you; you have won a man whom
everybody declared would never be won; you have done this, pardon me,
without either birth or fortune on your own side, and then you speak of
rejecting Goodwood--Goodwood, of all the men in England! You cannot be
serious, Flora, or, if you are, you must be mad!"
Lady Marabout spoke more hotly than Lady Marabout had ever spoken in all
her life. Goodwood absolutely won--Goodwood absolutely "come to the
point"--the crowning humiliation of the Hauttons positively within her
grasp--her Marathon and Lemnos actually gained! and all to be lost and
flung away by the unaccountable caprice of a wayward child! It was
sufficient to exasperate a saint, and a saint Lady Marabout never
pretended to be.
Flora Montolieu toyed recklessly with her fan.
"You told Sir Philip this evening, I think, of----"
"I hinted it to him, my dear--yes. Philip has known all along how much I
desired it, and as Goodwood is one of his oldest and most favorite
friends, I knew it would give him sincere pleasure both for my sake and
Goodwood's, and yours too, for I think Philip likes you as much as he
ever does any young girl--better, indeed; and I could not imagine--I
could not dream for an instant--that there was any doubt of your
acceptation, as, indeed, there _cannot_ be. You have been jesting to
worry me, Flora!"
Little Montolieu rose, threw her fan aside, as if its ivory stems had
been hot iron, and leaned against the mantelpiece.
"You advise me to accept Lord Goodwood, then, Lady Marabout?"
"My love, if you need my advice, certainly!--such an alliance will never
be proffered to you again; the brilliant position it will place you in I
surely have no need to point out!" returned Lady Marabout. "The little
hypocrite!" she mused, angrily, "as if her own mind were not fully made
up--as if any girl in Europe would hesitate over accepting the Doncaster
coronet--as if a nameless Montolieu could doubt for a moment her own
delight at being created Marchioness of Goodwood! Such a triumph as
_that_--why I wouldn't credit _any_ woman who pretended she wasn't
dazzled by it!"
"I thought you did not approve of marriages of convenience?"
Lady Marabout played a tattoo--slightly perplexed tattoo--with her spoon
in her Sevres saucer.
"No more I do, my dear--that is, under some circumstances; it is
impossible to lay down a fixed rule for everything! Marriages of
convenience--well, perhaps not; but as _I_ understand these words, they
mean a mere business affair, arranged as they are in France, without the
slightest regard to the inclinations of either; merely regarding whether
the incidents of fortune, birth, and station are equal and suitable.
Marriages _de convenance_ are when a parvenu barters his gold for good
blood, or where an _ancienne princesse_ mends her fortune with a
_nouveau riche_, profound indifference, meanwhile, on each side. I do
not call this so; decidedly not! Goodwood must be very deeply attached
to you to have forgotten his detestation of marriage, and laid such a
title as his at your feet. Have you any idea of the weight of the Dukes
of Doncaster in the country? Have you any notion of what their
rent-roll is? Have you any conception of their enormous influence, their
very high place, the magnificence of their seats? Helmsley almost equals
Windsor! All these are yours if you will; and you affect to
hesitate----"
"To let Lord Goodwood buy me!"
"Buy you? Your phraseology is as strange as my son's!"
"To accept him only for the coronet and the rent-roll, his position and
his Helmsley, seems not a very grateful and flattering return for his
preference?"
"I do not see that at all," said Lady Marabout, irritably. Is there
anything more annoying than to have unwelcome truths thrust in our
teeth? "It is not as though he were odious to you--a hideous man, a
coarse man, a cruel man, whose very presence repelled you. Goodwood is a
man quite attractive enough to merit some regard, independent of his
position; you have an affectionate nature, you would soon grow attached
to him----"
Flora Montolieu shook her head.
"And, in fact," she went on, warming with her subject, and speaking all
the more determinedly because she was speaking a little against her
conscience, and wholly for her inclinations, "my dear Flora, if you need
persuasion--which you must pardon me if I doubt your doing in your
heart, for I cannot credit any woman as being insensible to the suit of
a future Duke of Doncaster, or invulnerable to the honor it does her--if
you need persuasion, I should think I need only refer to the happiness
it will afford your poor dear mother, amidst her many trials, to hear of
so brilliant a triumph for you. You are proud--Goodwood will place you
in a position where pride may be indulged with impunity, nay, with
advantage. You are ambitious--what can flatter your ambition more than
such an offer. You are clever--as Goodwood's wife you may lead society
like Madame de Rambouillet or immerse yourself in political intrigue
like the Duchess of Devonshire. It is an offer which places within your
reach everything most dazzling and attractive, and it is one, my dear
Flora, which you must forgive me if I say a young girl of obscure rank,
as rank goes, and no fortune whatever, should pause before she lightly
rejects. You cannot afford to be fastidious as if you were an heiress or
a lady-in-your-own-right."
That was as ill-natured a thing as the best-natured lady in Christendom
ever said on the spur of self-interest, and it stung Flora Montolieu
more than her hostess dreamed.
The color flushed into her face and her eyes flashed.
"You have said sufficient, Lady Marabout, I accept the Marquis
to-morrow!"
And taking up her fan and her opera-cloak, leaving the discarded roses
unheeded on the floor, she bade her chaperone good-night, and floated
out of the dressing-room, while Lady Marabout sat stirring the cream in
a second cup of coffee, a good deal puzzled, a little awed by the odd
turn affairs had taken, with a slight feeling of guilt for her own share
in the transaction, an uncomfortable dread lest the day should ever come
when Flora should reproach her for having persuaded her into the
marriage, a comfortable conviction that nothing but good _could_ come of
such a brilliant and enviable alliance, and, above all other conflicting
feelings, one delicious, dominant, glorified security of triumph over
the Hauttons, _mere et filles_.
But when morning dawned, Lady Marabout's horizon seemed cleared of all
clouds, and only radiant with unshadowed sunshine. Goodwood was coming,
and coming to be accepted.
She seemed already to read the newspaper paragraphs announcing his
capture and Flora's conquest, already to hear the Hauttons' enforced
congratulations, already to see the nuptial party gathered round the
altar rail of St. George's. Lady Marabout had never felt in a sunnier,
more light-hearted mood, never more completely at peace with herself and
all the world as she sat in her boudoir at her writing-table, penning a
letter which began:
"MY DEAREST LILLA,--What happiness it gives me to congratulate
you on the brilliant future opening to your sweet Flora----"
And which would have continued, no doubt, with similar eloquence if it
had not been interrupted by Soames opening the door and announcing "Sir
Philip Carruthers," who walked in, touched his mother's brow with his
moustaches, and went to stand on the hearth with his arm on the
mantelpiece.
"My dear Philip, you never congratulated me last night; pray do so now!"
cried Lady Marabout, delightedly, wiping her pen on the pennon, which a
small ormolu knight obligingly carried for that useful purpose. Ladies
always wipe their pens as religiously as they bolt their bedroom doors,
believe in cosmetics, and go to church on a Sunday.
"Was your news of last night true, then?" asked Carruthers, bending
forwards to roll Bijou on its back with his foot.
"That Goodwood had spoken definitively to her? Perfectly. He proposed to
her yesterday at the Frangipane concert--not _at_ the concert, of
course, but afterwards, when they were alone for a moment in the
conservatories. The Duchess interrupted them--did it on purpose--and he
had only time to whisper hurriedly he should come this morning to hear
his fate. I dare say he felt tolerably secure of it. Last night I
naturally spoke to Flora about it. Oddly enough, she seemed positively
to think at first of rejecting him--_rejecting_ him!--only fancy the
madness! Between ourselves, I don't think she cares anything about him,
but with such an alliance as that, of course I felt it my bounden duty
to counsel her as strongly as I could to accept the unequalled position
it proffered her. Indeed, it could have been only a girl's waywardness,
a child's caprice to pretend to hesitate, for she _is_ very ambitious
and very clever, and I would never believe that any woman--and she less
than any--would be proof against such dazzling prospects. It would be
absurd, you know, Philip. Whether it was hypocrisy or a real reluctance,
because she doesn't feel for him the idealic love she dreams of, I don't
know, but I put it before her in a way that plainly showed her all the
brilliance of the proffered position, and before she bade me good night,
I had vanquished all her scruples, if she had any, and I am able to
say----"
"Good God, what have you done?"
"Done?" re-echoed Lady Marabout, vaguely terrified. "Certainly I
persuaded her to accept him. She _has_ accepted him probably; he is here
now! I should have been a strange person indeed to let any young girl in
my charge rashly refuse such an offer."
"You induced her to accept him! God forgive you!"
Lady Marabout turned pale as death, and gazed at him with undefinable
terror.
"Philip! You do not mean----"
"Great Heavens! have you never seen, mother----?"
He leaned his arms on the marble, with his forehead bowed upon them, and
Lady Marabout gazed at him still, as a bird at a basilisk.
"Philip, Philip! what have I done? How could I tell?" she murmured,
distractedly, tears welling into her eyes. "If I had only known! But how
could I dream that child had any fascination for you? How could I
fancy----"
"Hush! No, you are in no way to blame. You could not know it. _I_ barely
knew it till last night," he answered, gently.
"Philip loves her, and _I_ have made her marry Goodwood!" thought Lady
Marabout, agonized, remorseful, conscience-struck, heart-broken in a
thousand ways at once. The climax of her woes was reached, life had no
greater bitterness for her left; her son loved, and loved the last woman
in England she would have had him love; that woman was given to another,
and _she_ had been the instrument of wrecking the life to save or serve
which she would have laid down her own in glad and instant sacrifice!
Lady Marabout bowed her head under a grief, before which the worries so
great before, the schemes but so lately so precious, the small triumphs
just now so all-absorbing, shrank away into their due insignificance.
Philip suffering, and suffering through her! Self glided far away from
Lady Marabout's memory then, and she hated herself, more fiercely than
the gentle-hearted soul had ever hated any foe, for her own criminal
share in bringing down this unforeseen terrific blow on her beloved
one's head.
"Philip, my dearest, what _can_ I do?" she cried, distractedly; "if I
had thought--if I had guessed----"
"Do nothing. A woman who could give herself to a man whom she did not
love should be no wife of mine, let me suffer what I might."
"But _I_ persuaded her, Philip! Mine is the blame!"
His lips quivered painfully:
"Had she cared for me as--I may have fancied, she had not been so easy
to persuade! She has much force of character, where she wills. He is
here now, you say; I cannot risk meeting him just yet. Leave me for a
little while; leave me--I am best alone."
Gentle though he always was to her, his mother knew him too well ever to
dispute his will, and the most bitter tears Lady Marabout had ever
known, ready as she was to weep for other people's woes, and rarely as
she had to weep for any of her own, choked her utterance and blinded
her eyes as she obeyed and closed the door on his solitude. Philip--her
idolized Philip--that ever her house should have sheltered this creature
to bring a curse upon him! that ever she should have brought this
tropical flower to poison the air for the only one dear to her!
"I am justly punished," thought Lady Marabout, humbly and
penitentially--"justly. I thought wickedly of Anne Hautton. I did not do
as I would be done by. I longed to enjoy their mortification. I advised
Flora against my own conscience and against hers. I am justly chastised!
But that _he_ should suffer through me, that my fault has fallen on his
head, that my Philip, my noble Philip, should love and not be loved, and
that _I_ have brought it on him----Good Heaven! what is that?"
"That" was a man whom her eyes, being misty with tears, Lady Marabout
had brushed against, as she ascended the staircase, ere she perceived
him, and who, passing on with a muttered apology, was down in the hall
and out of the door Mason held open before she had recovered the shock
of the rencontre, much before she had a possibility of recognizing him
through the mist aforesaid.
A fear, a hope, a joy, a dread, one so woven with another there was no
disentangling them, sprang up like a ray of light in Lady Marabout's
heart--a possibility dawned in her: to be rejected as an impossibility?
Lady Marabout crossed the ante-room, her heart throbbing tumultuously,
spurred on to noble atonement and reckless self-sacrifice, if fate
allowed them.
She opened the drawing-room door; Flora Montolieu was alone.
"Flora, you have seen Goodwood?"
She turned, her own face as pale and her own eyes as dim as Lady
Marabout's.
"Yes."
"You have refused him?"
Flora Montolieu misconstrued her chaperone's eagerness, and answered
haughtily enough:
"I have told him that indifference would be too poor a return for his
affections to insult him with it, and that I would not do him the injury
of repaying his trust by falsehood and deception. I meant what I said to
you last night; I said it on the spur of pain, indignation, no matter
what; but I could not keep my word when the trial came."
Lady Marabout bent down and kissed her, with a fervent gratitude that
not a little bewildered the recipient.
"My dear child! thank God! little as I thought to say so. Flora, tell
me, you love some one else?"
"Lady Marabout, you have no right----"
"Yea, I have a right--the strongest right! Is not that other my son?"
Flora Montolieu looked up, then dropped her head and burst into
tears--tears that Lady Marabout soothed then, tears that Carruthers
soothed, yet more effectually still, five minutes afterwards.
* * * * *
"That _I_ should have sued that little Montolieu, and sued to her for
Philip!" mused Lady Marabout. "It is very odd. Perhaps I get used to
being crossed and disappointed and trampled on in every way and by
everybody; but certainly, though it is most contrary to my wishes,
though a child like that is the last person I should ever have chosen or
dreamt of as Philip's wife, though it is a great pain to me, and Anne
Hautton of course will be delighted to rake up everything she can about
the Montolieus, and it _is_ heart-breaking when one thinks how a
Carruthers _might_ marry, how the Carruthers always _have_ married,
rarely any but ladies in their own right for countless generations,
still it _is_ very odd, but I certainly feel happier than ever I did in
my life, annoyed as I am and grieved as I am. It _is_ heart-breaking
(that horrid John Montolieu! I wonder what relation one stands in
legally to the father of one's son's wife; I will ask Sir Fitzroy
Kelley; not that the Montolieus are likely to come to England)--it is
very sad when one thinks whom Philip might have married; and yet she
certainly is infinitely charming, and she really appreciates and
understands him. If it were not for what Anne Hautton will always say, I
could really be pleased! To think what an anxious hope, what a dreaded
ideal, Philip's wife has always been to me; and now, just as I had got
reconciled to his determined bachelor preferences, and had grown to
argue with him that it was best he shouldn't marry, he goes and falls in
love with this child! Everything is at cross-purposes in life, I think!
There is only one thing I am resolved upon--I will NEVER chaperone
anybody again."