compared to that drawing-room, with its warmth, and coziness, and
luxuries; with the waxlights shining on the silver of the English tea
equipage (pleasant to eye and taste, let one love campaigning ever so
well, after the roast beans of the Commissariat), and the fire-gleams
dancing on the soft brow and shining hair of the face beside me. I doubt
if Vivian either ever spent a happier Christmas-eve as he lay on the
sofa in the back drawing-room, with Cecil sitting on a low seat by him,
her hand in his, and the Canadian eyes telling him eloquently of love
and reconciliation. They had such volumes to say! As soon as she knew
that wild farewell of his preceded his departure to the Crimea, Cecil,
always impulsive, had written to him on the instant, telling him how she
loved him, detailing what she had heard in the green-room, confessing
that, in desperation, she had done everything she could to rouse his
jealousy, assuring him that that same evening she had refused Cos's
proposals, and beseeching him to forgive her and come back to her. That
letter Vivian had never had (six months from that time, by the way, it
turned up, after a journey to India and Melbourne, following a cousin of
his, colonel of a line regiment, she in her haste having omitted to put
his troop on the address), and Cecil, whose feeling was too deep to let
her mention the subject to Blanche or Helena, made up her mind that he
would never forgive her, and being an impressionable young lady, had, on
the anniversary of Christmas-eve, been comparing her fate with that of
Muriel in the ghost legend, and, on seeing the Colonel's unexpected
apparition, had fainted straight away in the over-excitement and sudden
joy of the moment.
Such was Cecil's story, and Vivian was content with it and gladly took
occasion to practise the Christmas duties of peace, and love, and
pardon. He had the best anodyne for his wounds now, and there was no
danger for him, since Cecil had taken the place of the Scutari nurses.
No "Crimean heroes," as they call us in the papers, were ever more feted
and petted than were the Colonel and I.
Christmas morning dawned, the sun shining bright on the snow-covered
trees, and the Christmas bells chiming merrily; and as we stood on the
terrace to see the whole village trooping up through the avenue to
receive the gifts left to them by some old Vivian long gone to his rest
with his forefathers under the churchyard cedars, Syd looked down with a
smile into Cecil's eyes as she hung on his arm, and whispered,
"I will double those alms, love, in memory of the priceless gift this
Christmas has given me. Ah! Thornton and I little knew, when we came
down for the hunting, how fast you and Blanche would capture us with
your--HOLLY WREATHS AND ROSE CHAINS."
SILVER CHIMES AND GOLDEN FETTERS.
SILVER CHIMES AND GOLDEN FETTERS.
I.
WALDEMAR FALKENSTEIN AND VALERIE L'ESTRANGE.
"A quarter to twelve! By Heaven if my luck don't change before the year
is out, I vow I'll never touch a card in the next!" exclaimed one of
several men playing lansquenet in Harry Godolphin's rooms at
Knightsbridge.
There were seven or eight of them, some with long rent-rolls, others
within an ace of the Queen's Bench; the poor devils losing in the long
run much oftener and more recklessly than the rich fellows; all of them
playing high, as that _beau joueur_ of the Guards, Godolphin, always
did.
Luck had been dead against the man who spoke ever since they had
deserted the mess-room for the _cartes_ in the privacy of Harry's rooms.
If Fortune is a woman, he ought to have found favor in her eyes. His age
was between thirty and thirty-five, his figure with grace and strength
combined, his features nobly and delicately cut, his head, like
Canning's, one of great intellectual beauty, and by the flash of his
large dark eyes, and the additional paleness of his cheek, it was easy
to see he was playing high once too often.
Five minutes passed--he lost still; ten minutes' luck was yet against
him. A little French clock began the Silver Chimes that rang out the Old
Year; the twelfth stroke sounded, the New Year was come, and Waldemar
Falkenstein rose and drank down some cognac--a ruined man.
"A happy New Year to you, and better luck, Falkenstein," cried
Godolphin, drinking his toast with a ringing laugh and a foaming bumper
of Chambertin. "What shall I wish you? The richest wife in the kingdom,
a cabal that will break all the banks, for Mistletoe to win the Oaks, or
for your eyes to be opened to your sinful state, as the parson phrases
it--which, eh?"
"Thank you, Harry," laughed Falkenstein. (Like the old Spartans, we can
laugh while the wolf gnaws our vitals.) "You remind me of what my
holy-minded brother wrote to me when I broke my shoulder-bone down at
Melton last season: 'My dear Waldemar, I am sorry to hear of your sad
accident; but all things are ordered for the best, and I trust that in
your present hours of solitude your thoughts may be mercifully turned to
higher and better things.' Queer style of sympathy, wasn't it? I
preferred yours, when you sent me 'Adelaide Meran,' and that splendid
hock I wasn't allowed to touch."
"I should say so; but catch the Pharisees giving anybody anything warmer
than texts and counsels, that cost them nothing," said Tom Bevan of the
Blues. "Apropos of Pharisees, have you heard that old Cash is going to
build a chapel-of-ease in Belgravia, to endow that young owl Gus with as
soon as he can pull himself through his 'greats?' It is thought that the
dear Bella will be painted as St. Catherine for the altar-piece."
"She'll strychnine herself if we're all so hard-hearted as to leave her
to St. Catharine's nightcap," laughed Falkenstein.
"Why don't _you_ take up with her, old fellow?" said a man in
Godolphin's troop. "Not the sangue puro, you'd say; rather sallied with
XXX. But what does that signify? you've quarterings enough for two."
"Much good the quarterings do me. No, thank you," said Falkenstein
bitterly. "I'm not going to sell myself, though my dear friends would
insinuate that I was sold already to a gentleman who never quits hold of
his bargains. I've fetters enough now too heavy by half to add
matrimonial handcuffs to them."
"Right, old boy," said Harry. "The Cashranger hops and vats, even done
in the brightest parvenu _or_, would scarcely look well blazoned on the
royal _gules_. Come, sit down. Where are you going?"
"He's going to Eulalie Brown's, I bet," said Bevan. "Nonsense, Waldemar;
throw her over, and stay and take your revenge--it's so early."
"No, thank you," said Falkenstein briefly. "By the way, I suppose you
all go to Cashranger's to-morrow?"
"Make a point of it, answered Godolphin. I feel I'm sinning against my
Order to visit him, but really his Lafitte's so good----I'm sorry you
_will_ leave us, Waldemar, but I know I might as well try to move the
Marble Arch as try to turn you."
"Indeed I never set up for a Roman, Harry. The deuce take this pipe, it
won't light. Good night to you all." And leaving them drinking hard,
laughing loud, and telling _grivois_ tales before they sat down to play
in all its delirious delight, he sprang into a hanson, and drove, not to
Eulalie Brown's _petit souper_, but to his own rooms in Duke Street, St.
James's.
Falkenstein's governor, some two-score years before, had got in
mauvaise odeur in Vienna for some youthful escapade at court; powerful
as his princely family was, had been obliged to fly the country; and,
coming over here, entered himself at the Bar, and, setting himself to
work with characteristic energy, had, wonderful to relate, made a
fortune at it. A fine, gallant, courtly _ancien noble_ was the Count,
haughty and passionate at times, after the manner of the house; fond of
his younger son Waldemar, who at school had tanned boys twice his size;
rode his pony in at the finish; smoked, swam, and otherwise conducted
himself, till all the rest of the boys worshipped him, though I believe
the masters generally attributed to him more _diablerie_ than divinity.
But of late, unluckily, his father had been much dominated over by
Waldemar's three sisters, ladies of a chill and High Church turn of
mind, and by his brother, who in early life had been a prize boy and a
sap, and received severe buffetings from his junior at football; and
now, being much the more conventional and unimpeachable of the two, took
his revenge by carrying many tales to the old Count of his wilder
son--tales to which Falkenstein gave strong foundation. For he was
restless and reckless, strikingly original, and, above the common herd,
too impatient to take any meddling with his affairs, and too proud to
explain where he was misjudged; and, though he held a crack government
place, good pay, and all but a sinecure, he often spent more than he
had, for economy was a dead-letter to him, and if any man asked him a
loan, he was too generous to say "No." Life in all its phases he had
seen from the time he left school, and you know, mon ami, we cannot see
life on a groat--at least, through the bouquet of the wines at Vefours,
and the brilliance of the gas-light in Casinos and Redoutes. The
fascinations of play were over him--the iron hand of debt pressed upon
him; altogether, as he sat through the first hours of the New Year,
smoking, and gazing on the flickering fire gleams, there was not much
light either in his past or future!
Keenly imaginative and susceptible, blase and skeptical though he was,
the weight of the Old Year and of many gone before it, weighed heavily
on his thoughts. Scenes and deeds of his life, that he would willingly
have blotted out, rose before him; vague regrets, unformed desires,
floated to him on the midnight chimes.
The Old Year was drifting away on the dark clouds floating on to the
sea, the New Year was dawning on the vast human life swarming in the
costly palaces and crowded dens around him. The past was past,
ineffaceable, and relentless; the future lay hid in the unborn days, and
Falkenstein, his pipe out, his fire cold and black, took a sedative, and
threw himself on his bed, to sleep heavily and restlessly through the
struggling morning light of the New Year.
James Cashranger, Esq., of 133, Lowndes Square, was a millionnaire, and
the million owed its being to the sale of his entire, which was of high
celebrity, being patronised by all the messes and clubs, shipped to all
the colonies, blessed by all the H. E. I. C.s, shouted by all the potmen
as "Beer-r-r-how," and consumed by all England generally. But
Cashranger's soul soared above the snobisms of malt and jack, and a la
Jourdain, of bourgeois celebrity, he would have let any Dorante of the
beau monde fleece him through thick and thin, and, _en effet_, gave
dinners and drums unnumbered to men and women, who, like Godolphin, went
there for the sake of his Lafitte, and quizzed him mercilessly behind
his back. The first day Harry dined there with nine other spirits worse
than himself--Cashranger having begged him to bring some of his
particular chums--he looked at the eleventh seat, and asked, with
consummate impudence, who it was for?
"Why, really, my dear Colonel, it is for--for myself," faltered the
luckless brewer.
"Oh?--ah?--I see," drawled Harry; "you mistook me; I said I'd dine
_here_--I didn't say I'd dine with _you_."
That, however, was four or five years before; now, Godolphin having
proclaimed his cook and cellar worth countenancing, and his wife, the
relict of a lieutenant in the navy, being an admirable adept in the
snob's art of "pushing," plenty of exclusive dandies and extensive fine
ladies crushed up the stairs on New Year's-night to one of Cashranger's
numerous "At homes." Among them, late enough, came Falkenstein. These
sort of crushes bored him beyond measure, but he wanted to see Godolphin
about some intelligence he had had of an intended illegitimate use of
the twitch to Mistletoe, that sweet little chestnut who stood favorite
for the Oaks. He soon paid his devoir to madame, who wasn't quite
accustomed even yet to all this grandeur after her early struggles on
half-pay, and to her eldest daughter, the Bella aforesaid, a showy,
flaunting girl with a peony color, and went on through the rooms seeking
Harry, stopping, however, for a word to every pretty woman he knew; for
though he began to find his game grow stale, he and the beau sexe have a
mutual attraction. Little those women guessed, as they smiled in his
handsome eyes, and laughed at his witty talk, and blushed at his soft
voice, how heartily sick he was of their frivolities, and how often
disappointment and sarcasm lurked in his mocking words. To be blase was
no affectation with Falkenstein; it was a very earnest reality, as with
most of us who have knocked about in the world, not only from the
variety of his manifold experiences, but from the trickery, and censure,
and cold water with which the world had treated him.
"You here, old fellow?" said Bevan of the Blues, meeting him in the
music-room, where some artistes were singing Traviata airs. "You don't
care for this row, do you? Come along with me, and I'll show you
something that will amuse you better."
"Show me Godolphin, and I'll thank you. I didn't come to stay--did you?"
"No. Horrid bore, ain't it? But since you are here, you may as well take
a look at the dearest little actress I ever saw since I was a boy, and
bewitched by Leontine Fay. Sit down." Bevan went on, as they entered a
room fitted up like a theatre, "There, it's that one with blue eyes, got
up like a Watteau's huntress; isn't she a brilliant little thing?"
"Very. She plays as well as Dejazet. Who is she?"
"Don't know. Can you tell us, Forester?"
"She's old Cash's niece," said Forester, not taking his eyes off the
stage. "Come as a sort of companion to the beloved Bella; dangerous
companion, I should say, for there's no comparing the two."
"What's her name?"
"Viola--Violet--no, Valerie L'Estrange. L'Estrange, of the 10th, ran
away with Cash's sister. God knows why. Horrid low connexion, and no
money. She went speedily to glory, and he drank himself to death two
years ago in Lahore. I remember him, a big fellow, fourteen stone,
pounded Bully Batson once at Moseley, and there wasn't such another hard
hitter among the fancy as Bully. When he departed this life, of course
his daughter was left to her own devices, with scarcely a rap to buy her
bonnets. Clever little animal she is, too; she wrote those proverbs
they're now playing; full of dash, and spice, ain't they? especially
when you think a girl wrote 'em."
"Introduce me as soon as they're over," said Falkenstein, leaning back
to study the young actress and author, who was an engaging study enough,
being full of grace and vivacity, with animated features, mobile
eyebrows, dark-blue eyes, and chestnut hair. "Anything original would be
as great a wonder as to buy Cavendish in Regent-Street that wasn't
bird's-eye."
"Valerie's original enough for anybody's money. Hark how she's firing
away at Egerton. Pretty little soft voice she has. I do like a pretty
voice for a woman," said Forester, clapping softly, with many a murmured
bravisima.
"You're quite enthusiastic," smiled Falkenstein. "Pity you haven't a
bouquet to throw at her."
"Don't you poke fun at me, you cynic," growled Forester. "I've seen you
throw bouquets at much plainer women."
"And the bouquets and the women were much alike in morning light--faded
and colorless on their artificial stalks as soon as the gas glare was
off them."
"Hold your tongue, Juvenal," laughed Forester, "or I vow I won't
introduce you. You'll begin satirising poor little Val as soon as you've
spoken to her."
"Oh, I can be merciful to the weak; don't I let _you_ alone, Forester?"
laughed Waldemar, as the curtain fell.
The proverbs were over, and having put herself in ball-room style, the
author came among the audience. He amused himself with watching how she
took her numerous compliments, and was astonished to detect neither
vanity nor shyness, and to hear her turn most of them aside with a
laugh. She was quite as attractive off as on the stage, especially with
the aroma of her sparkling proverbs hanging about her; and Falkenstein
got his introduction, and consigning Godolphin and Mistletoe to
futurity, waltzed with her, and found her dancing as full of grace and
lightness as an Andalusian's or Arlesienne's. Falkenstein cared little
enough for the saltatory art, but this waltz did not bore him, and when
it was over, regardless of some dozen names written on her tablets, he
gave her his arm, and they strolled out of the ball-room into a cooler
atmosphere. He found plenty of fun in her, as he had expected from her
proverbs, and sat down beside her in the conservatory to let himself be
amused for half an hour.
"Do you know many of the people here?" she asked him. "Is there anybody
worth pointing out? There ought to be, in four or five hundred dwellers
in the aristocratic west."
"I know most of them personally or by report, but they are all of the
same stamp, like the petals of that camellia, some larger and some
smaller, but all cut in the same pattern. Most of them apostles of
fashion, martyrs to debt, worshippers of the rising sun. All of them
created by art, from the young ladies who owe their roses and lilies to
Breidenbach, to the ci-devant jeunes hommes, who buy their figures in
Bond Street and their faces from Isidore. All of them actors--and pretty
good actors, too--from that pretty woman yonder, who knows her milliner
may imprison her any day for the lace she is now drawing round her with
a laugh, to that sleek old philanthropist playing whist through the
doors there, whose guinea points are paid by the swindle of half
England."
She laughed.
"Lend me your lorgnon. I should like to see around me as you do."
"Wait twenty years, you will have it; there are two glasses to
it--experience and observation."
"But your glasses are smoked, are they not?" said Valerie, with a quick
glance at him; "for you seem to me to see everything en noir."
He smiled.
"When I was a boy I had a Claude glass, but they break very soon; or
rather, as you say, grow dark and dim with the smoke of society. But you
ask me about these people. You know them, do you not, as they are your
uncle's guests?"
She shook her head.
"I have been here but a week or two. For the last two years I have been
vegetating among the fens, with a maiden aunt of poor papa's."
"And did you like the country?"
"Like it!" cried Valerie, "I was buried alive. Everything was so
dreadfully punctual and severe in that house, that I believe the very
cat had forgotten how to purr. Breakfast at eight, drive at two, dinner
at five, prayers at ten. Can't you fancy the dreary diurnal round, with
a pursy old rector or two, and three or four high-dried county
princesses as callers once a quarter? Luckily, I can amuse myself, but
oh, you cannot think how I sickened of the monotony, how I longed to
_live!_ At last, I grew so naughty, I was expelled."
"May I inquire your sins?" asked Falkenstein, really amused for once.
She laughed at the remembrance.
"I read 'Notre-Dame' against orders, and I rode the fat old mare round
the paddock without a saddle. I saw no harm in it; as a child, I read
and rode everything I came near, but the rough-riding was condemned as
unfeminine, and any French book, were it even the 'Genie du
Christianisme,' or the 'Petit Careme,' would be regarded by Aunt Agatha,
who doesn't know a word of the language, as a powder magazine of
immorality and infidelity."
"C'est la profonde ignorance qui inspire le ton dogmatique," laughed
Falkenstein. "But surely you have been accustomed to society."
"No, never; but I am made for it, I fancy," said Valerie, with an
unconscious compliment to herself. "When I was with the dear old Tenth,
I used to enjoy myself, but I was a child then. The officers were very
kind to me--gentlemen always are much more so than ladies"--("Pour
cause," thought Waldemar, as she went on)--"but ever since then I have
vegetated as I tell you, in much the same still life as the anemones in
my vase."
"Yet you could write those proverbs," said he, involuntarily.
She laughed, and colored.
"Oh, I have written ever since I could make A B C, and I have not
forgotten all I saw with the old Tenth. But come, tell me more of these
people; I like to hear your satire."
"I am glad you do," said Falkenstein, with a smile; "for only those who
have no foibles to hit have a relish for sarcasm. Do you think Messaline
and Lelie had much admiration for La Bruyere's periods, however well
turned or justly pointed? but those whom the caps did not fit probably
enjoyed them as you and I do. All satirists, from Martial downwards,
most likely gain an enemy for each truth they utter, for in this bal
masque of life it is not permitted to tear the masks off our
companions."
"Do you wear one?" asked Valerie, quickly. "I fancy, like Monte Cristo,
your pleasure is to 'usurper les vices que vous n'avez pas, et de cacher
les vertus que vous avez.'"
"Virtues? If you knew me better, you would know that I never pretend to
any. If you compare me to Monte Cristo, say rather that I 'preche
loyalement l'egoisme,'" laughed Falkenstein. "Upon my word, we are
talking very seriously for a ball-room. I ought to be admiring your
bouquet, Miss L'Estrange, or petitioning for another waltz."
"Don't trouble yourself. I like this best," said Valerie, playing with
the flowers round her. "And I ought to have my own way, for this is my
birthday."
"New Year's-day? Indeed! Then I am sure I wish you most sincerely the
realisation of all your ideals and desires, which, to the imaginative
author of the proverbs, will be as good as wishing her Aladdin's lamp,"
smiled Falkenstein.
She smiled too, and sighed.
"And about as improbable as Aladdin's lamp. Did you see the Old Year out
last night?"
"Yes," he answered, briefly; for the remembrance of what he had lost
watching it out was not agreeable to him.
"There was a musical party here," continued Valerie, "but I got away
from it, for I like to be alone when the past and the future meet--do
not you?"
"No; your past is pure, your future is bright. Mine are not so; I don't
want to be stopped to contemplate them."
"Nor are mine, indeed; but the death of an Old Year is sad and solemn to
me as the death of a friend, and I like to be alone in its last hour. I
wonder," she continued, suddenly, "what this year will bring. I wonder
where you and I shall be next New Year's-night?"
Falkenstein laughed, not merrily.
"_I_ shall be in Kensal Green or the Queen's Bench, very likely. Why do
you look astonished Miss L'Estrange; one is the destination of everybody
in these rooms, and the other probably of one-half of them."
"Don't speak so bitterly--don't give me sad thoughts on my birthday. Oh,
how tiresome!" cried Valerie, interrupting herself, "there comes Major
D'Orwood."
"To claim you?"
"Yes; I'd forgotten him entirely. I promised to waltz with him an hour
ago."
"What the devil brought you here to interrupt us?" thought Falkenstein,
as the Guardsman lisped a reproof at Valerie's cruelty, and gave her his
arm back to the ball-room. Waldemar stopped her, however, engaged her
for the next, and sauntered through the room on her other side. He
waltzed a good deal with her, paying her that sort of attention which
Falkenstein knew how to make the softest and subtlest homage a woman
could have. Amused himself, he amused her with his brilliant and pointed
wit, so well, that Valerie L'Estrange told him, when he bid her good
night, that she had never enjoyed any birthday so much.
"Well," said Bevan, as they drove away from 133, Lowndes Square, "did
you find that wonderful little L'Estrange as charming a companion as
actress? You ought to know, for you've been after her all night, like a
ferret after a rabbit."
"Yes," said Falkenstein, taking out a little pet briarwood pipe, "I was
very pleased with her: she's worth no more than the others, probably, au
fond, but she's very entertaining and frank: she'll tell you anything.
Poor child! she can't be over-comfortable in Cash's house. She's a lady
by instinct; that odious ostentation and snobbish toadying must disgust
her. Besides, Bella is not very likely to lead a girl a very nice life
who is partially dependent on her father, and infinitely better style
than herself."