The Postiche ball came off, and was a brilliant success. Madame Mila
announced the next morning when she got up that she had never enjoyed
anything better,—not even at the Tuileries.
“And the hostess?” said Lady Hilda.
“I didn’t even see her, thank goodness,” said Madame Mila, frankly. “I
went late, you know, and she’d been standing at the door four hours, and
had got tired, and had gone off duty into the crowd somewhere. Of course
it wasn’t my business to go and look for her.”
“Of course not; but you brought off your cotillon things?”
“Yes. There they are,” said Madame Mila, unconscious of any satire. “I
never saw such _luxe_,—no, not even in the dear old Emperor’s time: the
things everybody got must have cost hundreds of thousands of francs.
Certainly little Dickie managed it beautifully. He ordered the whole
affair, you know.”
“Little Dickie, or anybody else, could float Medea herself in society if
she would brew cotillon toys of a new sort in her caldron,” said the Lady
Hilda.
“Medea?” said Madame Mila, who knew about her because she had seen
Ristori so often. “Poor thing! it was that horrid Jason that deserved
to be put out of society, only men never do get put out of it for
anything they do; I don’t know how it is,—we cut no end of women,
but we never cut a man. Well, I assure you, my dear, the ball was
charming,—_charming_, though you do look so contemptuous. We had all our
own people, and saw nobody else, all night. I don’t think I need bow to
the woman, do you? I’m not supposed to have seen her, though I do know
her by sight, a little podgy sunburnt-looking fat creature, with liveries
for all the world like what the sheriffs have in England at assize-time.
No; I’m sure I needn’t bow to her. I told Dickie beforehand I shouldn’t.”
“No doubt Dickie was delighted to have you on any terms.”
“Of course; and I’ll send a card to-day,” said Madame Mila, with the
magnanimous air of one who does a very noble thing.
From that time thenceforward she would forget the Joshua R. Postiches
and everything concerning them as absolutely as if she had never heard
anything about them; the woman’s second ball, if she gave one, would be
nothing new, and no sort of fun whatever.
“You’re always at me about Maurice,” she said, pursuing her own ideas.
“Look at Olga with Carlo Maremma!—she did make him go last night, and
he was the only Italian there. You talk of Maurice: Olga is twice as
careless as I am——”
“Olga is my friend; don’t discuss her, please.”
“Oh, that’s very fine,—when you are always finding fault with me about
Maurice!”
“I should not let any third person blame you.”
“You are very strange, Hilda,” said Madame Mila, eying her with a
curious wonder, and ruffling herself up in her embroidered pink cashmere
dressing-gown, as if she were a little bird in the heart of a big rose.
“Why should you defend people behind their back? Nobody ever does. We all
say horrible things of one another; but we don’t mean half of them, so
what does it matter? I don’t blame Olga, not in the least; Schouvaloff is
a brute, and, besides, he knows it very well, and he doesn’t mind a bit;
indeed, of course he’s glad enough——”
“I do blame Olga; but I can’t see how _you_ can,” said her cousin, coldly.
Madame Mila ruffled herself more, looking more and more like a little
angry bird in the middle of a pink rose.
“I? Pray what _can_ anybody say of me? Spiridion is always with me half
the year at least. Spiridion is extremely fond of Maurice, so are all the
children. He’s at another hotel, right at the other end of the place;
really I can’t see why I must rush out of a town because a friend happens
to come into it also——”
“My dear Mila, pray don’t talk that nonsense to me,” said her cousin,
serenely. “I dare say ten years hence you will marry your little Lili to
M. des Gommeux; people do do that sort of thing, though they find fault
with the plots of the old Greek plays; I suppose it ‘saves society;’ at
least it saves appearances. Olga is imprudent, I know, and wrong; but at
least she has the courage of her opinions; she does not talk all that
paltry pusillanimous prurient absurdity about ‘friendship.’”
“Nobody can understand you, Hilda; and I don’t know what you mean about
Greek plays,” muttered Madame Mila. “Everybody lives in the same way:
you talk as if it were only _me_! Spiridion never says a word to me;
what business have you?”
“None in the least, dear; only you will bring up the subject. Qui
s’excuse s’accuse. That is all. You are not coming out this morning?
Au revoir, then; I am going to see a newly-found San Cipriano il Mago
outside the gates; they think it is by Il Moretto. The face and dress are
Venetian, they say; but you care nothing at all about that, do you?”
“Nothing,” said Madame Mila, with a yawn. “I suppose if it take your
fancy you’ll be buying the whole church with it in, if you can’t get
it any other way. I wish I’d your money: I wouldn’t waste it on old
pictures, that only make a room dark; and the kind of light _they_ want
is horribly unbecoming to people.”
“I promise you I shall not hang an altar-piece in a room,” said the Lady
Hilda. “I leave that for the heretics and the bourgeoisie. Good-by, my
dear.”
“Who’s going with you?” cried Madame Mila after her. Lady Hilda hesitated
a moment.
“Nina is, and the French artist who has discovered the Moretto, and—M.
della Rocca.”
Madame Mila laughed, and took up a little mirror to see if all the color
on her face were quite right. One horrible never-to-be-forgotten day, one
eyebrow had been higher than the other.
Lady Hilda, descending the hotel staircase, met the faithful Maurice
ascending. That slender and indefatigable leader of cotillons swept his
hat to the ground, twisted the waxed ends of his small moustache, and
murmured that he was about to inquire of the servants if Madame la
Comtesse were “tout à fait remise après ses fatigues incroyables.”
Lady Hilda, whom he feared very greatly, passed him with a chilly
salutation, and he went on up the stairs, and in two minutes’ time was
assuring Madame Mila that she was “fraîche comme la rosée du matin,”
which did credit to his ready chivalry of compliments, since he was
aware of all the mysteries of those bright cheeks and that small
pomegranate-like mouth, and had even, once or twice before great balls,
given an artistic touch or two to their completion, having graduated
with much skill and success in such accomplishments under the tuition of
Mademoiselle Rose Thé, and La Petite Boulotte.
The San Cipriano was to be found in a church some five miles out of the
city,—a lonely church set high on a fragrant hill-side, with sheep among
the olive-boughs, and the ox-plow under the vines that were all about it,
and high hedges of wild roses and thickets of arbutus rambling around its
old walled grave-yard.
The paths close round it were too steep for the horses, and the last
half-mile had to be climbed on foot.
It was one of those spring days which often fall in February; the ground
was blue with violets, and the grass golden with crocus and hepatica;
there were butterflies and bees on the air; the mavis and blackbird were
singing.
The San Cipriano hung over a side-altar in the dark, desolate, grand
old church, where no worshiper ever came except a tired peasant, or a
shepherd sheltering from a storm.
Della Rocca pulled aside the moth-eaten curtains from the adjacent
window, and let the sunshine in. Some little children were sitting on
the altar-steps, stringing daisies and berries; the light made a halo
about their heads; the deep Venetian colors of the forgotten picture
glanced like jewels through the film of the dust of ages. Its theme was a
martyrdom of the Magician and of St. Justina; beneath were the crowds of
Nicomedia and the guards of Diocletian, above were the heavens opened and
the hosts of waiting angels. It was a great theme greatly treated.
“It is one of the most beautiful legends that we have, to my thinking,”
said Della Rocca, when they had studied it minutely and in all lights.
“It has been very seldom selected by painters for treatment; one wonders
why; perhaps because there is too much human passion in it for a sacred
subject.”
“Yes,” said Lady Hilda, dreamily. “One can never divest oneself of the
idea that Santa Justina loved him with an earthly love.”
“Oh, Hilda! how pagan of you!” said the Marchesa del Trasimene, a little
aghast.
“Not at all. Why should we doubt it?” said Della Rocca, quickly. “Why
should we deny that a pure love would have power against the powers of
the world?”
Lady Hilda looked at him, and a great softness came into her face; then
she stooped to the little children playing with the berries on the
altar-steps, and put some money in their little brown hands.
“It is a very fine picture,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “I do not
think I have ever seen brown and gold and crimson so beautifully managed,
and fused in so deep a glow of color, save in Palma Vecchio’s Santa
Barbara—you remember—in Santa Maria Formosa in Venice?”
“The portrait of Violante Palma,—yes. But this subject has a deeper and
warmer interest. Santa Barbara with her tower and her cannon is too
strong to touch one very much. One cannot think that she ever suffered.”
“Yet Santa Barbara has a very wide popularity, if one may use the word to
a saint.”
“All symbols of strength have; the people are weak; they love what will
help them. It is very singular what deep root and vast fame one saint
has, and how obscure remains another; yet both equal in holiness of
life and courage of death. Perhaps the old painters have done it by the
frequency of their choice of certain themes.”
“Oh, no,” said Lady Hilda; “be sure the painters rather followed the
public preference than directed it. Poets lead; painters only mirror. I
like this San Cipriano very much. They did not say too much of it. It is
left to dust and damp. Could I buy it, do you think?”
“I dare say; I will inquire for you to-morrow. We sell anything now.
When the public debt is a little heavier, and the salt tax is protested
against, we shall sell the Transfiguration. Why not?—we have a copy at
St. Peter’s. Indeed, why keep the St. Cecilia doing nothing in a dark old
church in Bologna, when its sale with a few others might make a minister
or a senator well off for life?”
“Do not be so bitter, Paolo,” said the Marchesa Nina: “you might have
been a minister yourself.”
“And rebuilt Palestrina out of my commission on the tax on cabbages! Yes,
I have lost my opportunities.”
The Lady Hilda was gazing at the clouds of angels in the picture, who
bore aloft the martyred souls in their immortal union; and from them
she glanced at the little fair wondering faces of the peasant children.
She had never thought about children in any way, save as little figures
that composed well in Stothard’s drawings, in Sir Joshua’s pictures, in
Correggio’s frescoes. Now, for a second, the thought glanced through her
that women were happy who had those tender soft ties with the future of
the world. What future had she?—You cannot make a future out of diamonds,
china, and M. Worth.
“You really wish to buy the San Cipriano?” he asked her, as they passed
over the worn, damp pavement towards the sunlight of the open door.
“Yes. You seem to think it sacrilege.”
“No; I think the moral decadence of feeling which makes it possible for
my nation to sell such things is a sacrilege against our past, and a
violation of the rights of our posterity; but that is another matter, and
no fault of yours. What will you do with it when you have it?”
“I will put it in my oratory in Paris.”
The answer jarred on him; yet there was no other which he could have
expected.
“How naturally you think of buying all you see!” he said, a little
impatiently. “I suppose that power of acquisition—that wand of
possession—is very dear to you.”
“What do you mean? I do not know; it is a habit. Yes; I suppose one likes
it.”
“No doubt. Your riches are to you as his magic was to San Cipriano
yonder,—the willingest of slaves.”
“What!—an evil spirit, then?”
“Not necessarily. But——”
“But what?”
“A despot, though a slave; one who holds your soul; as the powers of
darkness held his, until a great and spiritual love set him free.”
They were passing out of the open door-way into the calm golden light
of the passing day. Through the fine tracery of the olive-boughs the
beautiful valley shone like a summer sea. Before them, above the southern
mountains, the sun was going down. Her eyes grew dim for a moment as she
looked. His hand had closed on hers; she let it lie within his clasp; it
was the first gesture of tenderness she had ever allowed to him. Then at
a sudden recollection she withdrew it, and she smiled with her old serene
indifference.
“You _will_ talk to me in unknown tongues! Santa Justina was a holy
woman; I am not. I am not sure that I ever did any unselfish thing in all
my life. How many violets there are!—gather me some.”
The others drew near; he left her and gathered the violets. They were
countless; the old church was left alone to perish; no foot of priest or
worshiper now ever trod upon their purple glories.
She leaned over the low wall of the grave-yard, and watched the setting
sun. She felt that her eyes were full of tears.
“If I had met him earlier——” she thought.
They walked down through the olive thickets, along the grassy slopes of
the hill, to the carriage, and drove home in the now waning light.
She was capricious, contemptuous, ironical, arrogant, in everything she
said, lying back with the furs covering her from the chill evening winds.
“Does going to a church always make you so caustic, cara mia?” said the
Marchesa Nina.
Della Rocca was very silent. The French artist kept up the ball of talk
with her and the lovely Marchesa, and played the gay game well. The sun
sank quite; the brief twilight came; then darkness; the horses took
them down through the walled lanes and the rose hedges into the narrow
streets, where here and there the lamps were twinkling, and the glow of
the wood fires shone through the grated casements.
The carriage paused first at the Hôtel Murat.
“I shall see you to-night at Princess Furstenberg’s, Hilda, of course?”
said the Marchesa.
“Oh, yes,” said the Lady Hilda, as she descended, drawing her sables
closer around her. “You will be there, I suppose?” she added, with a
little change of her voice, to Della Rocca, as he held his arm for her to
alight. He looked straight down into her eyes.
“I think not,” he said, simply. “Good-night, madame.”
He stood with his head uncovered, whilst she went up the steps of the
hotel; then, as the door closed on her, he walked away to his own old
house.
Lady Hilda went up to her own rooms; she had a knot of violets with her.
Before she put them in water she touched them with her lips,—as any girl
of sixteen or any peasant Gretchen might have done.
That night at the Princess Furstenberg’s—one of the pleasantest houses
of the winter city—men and women both said to one another that they had
never seen her looking more beautiful, or more magnificent in the blaze
of her jewels, but they found her colder and more difficult to converse
with than ever, and were more than ever hopelessly impressed with the
sense of their own absolute nullity in her eyes.
He was not there.
She stayed but a brief time,—long enough to chill every one there like
ice, which was the effect she always produced in society when it was so
unhappy as not to please her; then, having frozen it, she left it,—the
ladies who remained breathing freer when her delicate loveliness and
her mighty emeralds had ceased to outshine them. She sank back in her
carriage with a great sigh.
The homeward streets led past the palace of the Della Rocca. She let
the window down, and looked outward, as she passed it. She saw a single
casement alone lighted in the great black mass of frowning stone, with
its machicolated walls and iron stanchions. It was above the entrance;
she knew it was his favorite room,—where his books were, and his old
bronzes, and his favorite weapons.
Her eyes filled with tears again as she looked up at the solitary light.
She felt for the little cluster of violets that she had fastened under
the great emeralds in her bosom; his hand had gathered them.
“If any one had told me I would care!” she thought to herself.
The tears on her lashes stole slowly down, and dimmed the emeralds and
refreshed the violets.
She was the most heartless creature in the world,—the coldest and most
self-engrossed of women, her friends and acquaintances were saying, after
her departure, in the drawing-rooms of the Princess Furstenberg. Not like
her cousin; dear little Madame Mila was all good nature, all kindliness,
all heart.
At the Fiera for the orphan children the week before, had not dear
little Madame Mila slaved herself to death, bustling about in the most
bewitching costume, whirling like a Japanese windmill, wearing the
loveliest little muslin apron, with huge pockets, into which thousands
of francs were poured, turning the lottery-wheel indefatigably for three
days, and selling cigars she had lighted, and lilies of the valley she
had kissed, at the most fabulous prices, for the good of the poor?
And had not Lady Hilda contemptuously refused to have anything to do with
the Fiera at all?
The almoner of the charities, indeed, had received a fifty-thousand-franc
note anonymously. But, then, how could anybody divine that the Lady Hilda
had sent it because a chance word of Della Rocca’s had sunk into her
mind? Whereas everybody saw Madame Mila whirling and saying so prettily,
“Pour nos pauvres!—pour nos chers pauvres!”