is my detestation. She'll soon find means to worry littil Valerie. Women
have a great spice of the mosquito in 'em, and enjoy nothing more than
stinging each other to death."
"Well, she must get Forester or D'Orwood--some man who can afford it--to
take compassion upon her. All of them finish so when they can; the rich
ones marry for a title, and the poor ones for a home," said the Count,
stirring up his pipe. "Here's my number; thank you for dropping me; and
good night, old fellow."
"Good night. Pleasant dreams of your author and actress, _aux longs yeux
bleus_."
Waldemar laughed as he took out his latch-key. "I'm afraid I couldn't
get up so much romance. You and I have done with all that, Tom. Confound
it, I never saw Godolphin, after all. Well, I must go and breakfast with
him to-morrow."
II.
FALKENSTEIN BREAKS LANCES WITH THE "LONGS YEUX BLEUS."
He did breakfast with Godolphin, not, however, before he had held a
small but disagreeable levee to one or two rather impatient callers whom
he couldn't satisfy, and a certain Amadeus Levi, who, having helped him
to the payment of those debts of honor incurred in Harry's rooms, held
him by Golden Fetters as hard to unclasp as the chains that bound
Prometheus. He shook himself free of them at last, drove to
Knightsbridge, and had a chat with Godolphin, over coffee and
chibouques, went to his two or three hours' diplomatic work in the Deeds
and Chronicles Office, and when he came out, instead of going to his
club as usual, thought he might as well call on the Cashrangers, and
turned his steps to Lowndes Square. Valerie L'Estrange was sitting at a
Davenport, done out of her Watteau costume into very becoming English
morning dress; he had only time to shake hands with her before Bella and
her mamma set upon him. Miss Cashranger had a great admiration for him,
and, though his want of money was a drawback, the royal gules of his
blazonments, joined to his manifold attractions, fairly dazzled her, and
she held him tight, talking over the palace concerts, till a dowager and
her daughter, and a couple of men from Hounslow, being ushered in, he
was at liberty, and sitting down by Valerie, gave her a book she had
said the night before she wished to read.
"'Goethe's Autobiography!' Oh, thank you--how kind you are!"
"Not at all," laughed Falkenstein. "To merit such things I ought to have
saved your life at least. What are you doing here; writing some more
proverbs, I hope, to give me a part in one?"
She shook her head. "Nothing half so agreeable. I am writing dinner
invitations, and answering Belle's letters."
"Why, can't she answer them herself?"
"My motto here is 'Ich Dien,'" she answered, with a flush on her cheeks.
Bella turned languidly round, and verified her words: "Val, Puppet's
scratching at the door; let him in, will you?"
Waldemar rose and opened the door for a little slate-colored greyhound,
and while Bella lisped out her regrets for his trouble, smiled a smile
that made Miss Cashranger color, and looked searchingly at Valerie to
see how she took it. She turned a grateful, radiant look on him, and
whispered, "Je m'affranchirai un jour."
"Et comment?"
She raised her mobile eyebrows: "Dieu sait! Comme actrice, comme
feuilletonniste--j'ai mes reves, monsieur--mais pas comme institutrice:
cela me tuerait bientot."
"Je le crois," said Falkenstein, briefly, as he took up the
autobiography, and began to talk on it.
"I don't like Goethe for one thing," said Valerie; "he loved a dozen
women one after the other. That I would pardon him; most men do so; but
I don't believe he really loved any one of them."
"Oh yes he did; quite enough, at least, to please himself. He wasn't so
silly as to go in for a never-ending, heart-burning, heart-breaking,
absorbing passion. We don't do those things."
"Go in for it!" repeated Valerie, contemptuously, "I suppose if he had
been of the nature to feel such, he couldn't have helped it."
"I can help going near the fire, can't I, if I don't wish to be burnt?"
"Yes; but a coal may fly out of the fire, and set you in flames, when
you are sitting far away from it."
"Then I ought to wear asbestos," said Waldemar, with a merry quizzical
smile. "You authors, and poets, and artists think 'the world well lost,
and all for love!' but we rational people, who know the world, find it
quite the contrary. Those are very pretty ideas for your proverbs, but
they don't suit real life. _We_, when we're boys, worship some parterre
divinity, till we see her some luckless day inebriate with
eau-de-Cologne, or more unpoetic porter, are cured and disenchanted,
wait ten years with Christines and Minna Herzliebs in the interim, and
wind up with a rich widow, who keeps us straight and heads our table.
_You_, fresh from the school-room, fasten on some lachrymose curate, or
flirting dragoon, as the object of your early romances, walk with him
under the limes, work him a smoking-cap, and write him tender little
notes, till mamma whispers her hope that Mr. A. or B. is serious, and
you, balancing, like a sensible girl, A. or B.'s tangible settlements
with the others' intangible love-speeches, forsake the limes, forswear
the notes, and announce yourself as 'sold.' That's the love of our day,
Miss L'Estrange, and very wise and----"
"Love!" cried Valerie, with supreme scorn. "You don't know the common A
B C of love. You might as well call gilt leather-work pure gold."
Falkenstein laughed heartily. "Well, there's a good deal more
leather-work than gold about in the world, isn't there?"
"A good deal more, granted; but there is some gold to be found, I should
hope."
"Not without alloy; it can't be worked, you know."
"It can't be worked for the base purposes of earth; but it may be found
still undefiled before men's touch has soiled it. So I believe in some
hearts, undefiled by the breath of conventionality and cant, may lie the
true love of the poets, 'lasting, and knowing not change.'"
"Ah! you're too ideal for me," cried Waldemar, smiling at her impetuous
earnestness. "You are all enthusiasm, imagination, effervescence----"
"I am not," she answered, impatiently. "I can be very practical when I
like; I made myself the loveliest wreath yesterday; quite as pretty as
Bella buys at Mitchell's for five times the sum mine cost me. That was
very realistic, wasn't it?"
"No. That exercised your fancy. You wouldn't do--what do you call
it?--plain work, with half the gusto; now, would you?"
Valerie made a _moue mutine_, expressive of entire repudiation of such
employment.
"I thought so," laughed Falkenstein. "You idealists are like the fire in
the grate yonder; you flame up very hot and bright for a moment, but
'the sparks fly upward and expire,' and if they're not fed with some
fresh fuel they soon die out into lifeless cinders."
"On the contrary," said Valerie, quickly, "we are like wood fires, and
burn red down to the last ash."
"Mr. Falkenstein, come and look at this little 'Ghirlandaio,'" said
Bella, turning round, with an angry light in her eyes; "it is such a
gem. Papa bought it the other day."
Waldemar rose reluctantly enough to inspect the "Ghirlandaio,"
manufactured in a back slum, and smoked into proper antiquity to pigeon,
under the attractive title of an "Old Master," the brewer and his
species, and found Miss Cashranger's ignorant dilettantism very tame
after Valerie's animated arguments and gesticulation. But he was too old
a hand at such game not to know how to take advantage of even an enemy's
back-handed stroke, and he turned the discussion on art to an inspection
of Valerie's portfolio, over whose croquis and pastels, and
water-colors, he lingered as long as he could, till the clock reminded
him that it was time to walk on into Eaton Square, where he was going to
dine at his father's. The governor excepted, Falkenstein had little
rapport with his family. His brother was as chilly disagreeable in
private life as he was popularly considered irreproachable in public,
and as pragmatical and uncharitable as your immaculate individuals
ordinarily are. His sisters were cold, conventional women, as utterly
incapable of appreciating him as of allowing the odor of his Latakia in
their drawing-room, and so it chanced that Waldemar, a favorite in every
other house he entered, received but a chill welcome at home. A prophet
has no honor in his own country, and the hearth where a man's own kin
are seated is too often the one to nurture the cockatrice's eggs of
ill-nature and injustice against him. Thank Heaven there are others
where the fire burns brighter, and the smiles are fonder for him. It
were hard for some of us if we were dependent on the mercies of our "own
family."
The old Count gave him this night but a distant welcome, for Maximilian
was there to "damn" his brother with "faint praise," and had been
pouring into his father's ear tales of "poor Waldemar's losses at play."
All that Falkenstein said, his sisters took up, contradicted, and jarred
upon, till he, fairly out of patience, lapsed into silence, only broken
by a sarcasm deftly flung at Maximillian to floor him completely in his
orthodoxy or ethics. He was glad to bid the governor good night; and
leaving them to hold a congress over his skepticism, radicalism, and
other dangerous opinions, he walked through the streets, and swore
slightly, with his pipe between his teeth, as he opened his own door.
"Since my father prefers Max to me, let him have him," thought Waldemar,
smoking, and undressing himself. "If people choose to dictate to me or
misjudge me, let them go; and if they have not penetration enough to
judge what I am, I shall not take the trouble to show them."
But, nevertheless, as he thus resolved, Falkenstein smoked hard and
fast, for he was fond of the old Count, and felt keenly his desertion;
for, steel himself as he might, egotist as he might call himself,
Waldemar was quick in his susceptibilities and tenacious in his
attachments.
Since Falkenstein had got intimate with Valerie L'Estrange in one ball
you are pretty sure that week after week did not lessen their
friendship. He was amused, and past memories of women he had wooed, and
won, and left, certain passages in his life where such had reproached
him, not always deservedly, never presented themselves to check him in
his new pursuit. It is pleasant to a naturalist to study a butterfly
pinned to the wall; the rememberance that the butterfly may die of the
sport does not occur to him, or, at least, never troubles him.
So Falkenstein called to Lowndes Square, and lent her books, and gave
her a little Skye of his, and met her occasionally by accident on
purpose in Kensington Gardens, where Valerie, according to Mrs.
Cashranger's request, sometimes took one of her cousins, a headstrong
young demon of six or seven, for an early walk, to which early walks
Valerie made no objection, preferring them to the drawing-rooms of No.
133, and liking them, you may guess, none the less after seeing somebody
she knew standing by the pond throwing in sticks for his retriever, and
Falkenstein had sat down with her under the bushes by the water, and
talked of all the things in heaven and earth; while Julius Adolphus ran
about and gobbled at the China geese, and wetted his silk stockings
unreproved. He made no love to her, not a bit; he talked of it
theoretically, but never practically. But he liked to talk to her, to
argue with her, to see her demonstrative pleasure in his society, to
watch her coming through the trees, and find the _longs yeux bleus_
gleam and darken at his approach. All this amused him, pleased him as
something original and out of the beaten track. She told him all she
thought and felt; she pleased him, and beguiled him from his darker
thoughts, and she began to reconcile him to human nature, which, with
Faria, he had learnt to class into "les tigres et les crocodiles a deux
pieds."
It was well he had this amusement, for it was his only one. He was going
to the bad, as we say; debts and entanglements imperceptibly gathered
round him, held him tight, and only in Valerie's lively society (lively,
for when with him she was as happy as a bird) could exercise his dark
spirit.
You remember the vow he made when the Silver Chimes rang in the New
Year? So did not he. We cannot be always Medes and Persians, madam, to
resist every temptation and keep unbroken every law, though you, sitting
in your cushioned chair, in unattacked tranquillity, can tell us easily
enough we should be. One night, when he was dining with Bevan, Tom
produced those two little ivory fiends, whose rattle is in the ear of
watchful deans and proctors as the singing of the rattlesnake, and whose
witchery is more wily and irresistible than the witchery of woman. No
beaux yeux, whether of the cassette or of one's first love, ever
subjugate a man so completely as the fascinations of play. Once yielded
to the charm, the Circe that clasps us will not let us go. Falkenstein,
though in much he had the strong will of his race, had no power to
resist the beguilements of his Omphale; he played again and again, and
five times out of seven lost.
"Well, Falkenstein," cried Godolphin, after five games of ecarte at a
pony a side, three of which Falkenstein had lost, "I heard Max lamenting
to old Straitlace in the lobby, the other night, that you were going to
the devil, only the irreproachable member phrased it in more delicate
periods."
"Quite true," said Falkenstein, with a short laugh, "if for devil you
substitute Queen's Bench."
"Well, we're en route together, old fellow," interrupted Tom Bevan;
"and, with all your sins, you're a fat lot better than that brother of
yours, who, I believe, don't know Latakia from Maryland. Jesse Egerton
told me the other day that his wife has an awful life of it; but who'd
credit it of a man who patronises Exeter Hall, and gave the shoeblacks
only yesterday such unlimited supply of weak tea, buns, and strong
texts?"
"Who indeed! Max is such a moral man," sneered Falkenstein; "though he
has done one or two things in his life that I wouldn't have stooped to
do. But you may sin as much as you like as long as you sin under the
rose. John Bull takes his vices as a ten pound voter takes a bribe; he
stretches his hand out eagerly enough, but he turns his eyes away and
looks innocent, and is the first to point at his neighbor and cry out
against moral corruption. Melville's quite right that there is an
eleventh commandment--'Thou shalt not be found out'--whose transgression
is the only one society visits with impunity."
"True enough," laughed Jimmy Fitzroy. "Thank Heaven, nobody can accuse
us of studying the law and the prophets overmuch. By the way, old
fellow, who's that stunning little girl you were walking with by the
Serpentine yesterday morning, when I was waiting for the Metcalfe, who
promised to meet me at twelve, and never came till half-past one--the
most unpunctual woman going. Any new game? She's a governess, ain't she?
She'd some sort of brat with her; but she's deuced good style, anyhow."
"That's little L'Estrange," laughed Godolphin: "the beloved Bella's
cousin. He's met her there every day for the last three months. I don't
know how much further the affair may have gone, or if----"
"My dear Harry, your imagination is running away with you," said
Falkenstein, impatiently. "I never made an appointment with her in my
life; she's not the same style as Mrs. Metcalfe."
Oh the jesuitism of the most candid men on occasion! He never made an
appointment with her, because it was utterly unnecessary, he knowing
perfectly that he should find her feeding the ducks with Julius Adolphus
any morning he chose to look for her.
"All friendship is it, then?" laughed Godolphin. "Stick to it, my boy,
if you can. Take care what you do, though, for to carry her off to Duke
Street would give Max such a handle as he would not let go in a hurry;
And to marry (though that of course, will never enter your wildest
dreams) with anybody of the Cashranger's race, were it the heiress
instead of the companion, would be such a come-down to the princely
house, as would infallibly strike you out of Count Ferdinand's will."
Waldemar threw back his head like a thorough-bred impatient of the
punishing. "The 'princely house,' as you call it, is not so
extraordinarily stainless; but leave Valerie alone, she and I have
nothing to do with other, and never shall have. I have enough on my
hands, in all conscience, without plunging into another love affair."
"I did hear," continued Godolphin, "that Forester proposed to her, but I
don't suppose it's true; he'd scarcely be such a fool."
Falkenstein looked up quickly, but did not speak.
"I think it is true," said Bevan; "and, moreover, I fancy she refused
him, for he used to cry her up to the skies, and now he's always
snapping and sneering at her, which is beastly ungenerous, but after the
manner of many fellows."
"One would think you were an old woman, Tom, believing all the tales you
hear," said Godolphin. "She'd better know you disclaim her, Falkenstein,
that she mayn't waste her chances waiting for you."
Waldemar cast a quick, annoyed, contemptuous glance upon him. "You are
wonderfully careful over her interests," he said, sharply, "but I never
heard that having her on your lips, Harry, ever did a woman much good.
Pass me that whisky, Conrad, will you?"
The next morning, however, though he "disclaimed" her, Waldemar, about
ten, took his stick, whistled his dog, and walked down to Kensington
Gardens. Under the beeches just budding their first leaves, he saw what
he expected to see--Valerie L'Estrange. She turned--even at that
distance he thought he saw the _longs yeux bleus_ flash and
sparkle--dropped the biscuits she was giving the ducks to the tender
mercies of Julius Adolphus, and came to meet him. Spit, the little Skye
he had given her, welcoming him noisily.
"Spit is as pleased to see you as I am," said Valerie, laughing. "We
have both been wondering whether you would come this morning. I am so
glad you have, for I have been reading your 'Pollnitz Memoirs,' and want
to talk to you about them. You know I can talk to no one as I can to
you."
"You do me much honor," said Falkenstein, rather formally. He was
wondering in his mind whether she _had_ refused Forester or not.
"What a cold, distant speech! It is very unkind of you to answer me so.
What is the matter with you, Count Waldemar?"
She always called him by the title he had dropped in English society;
she had a fervent reverence for his historic _antecedens_; and besides,
as she told him one day, "she liked to call him something no one else
did."
"Matter with me? Nothing at all, I assure you," he answered, still
distantly.
"You are not like yourself, at all events," persisted Valerie. "You
should be kind to me. I have so few who are."
The tone touched him; he smiled, but did not speak, as he sat down by
her poking up the turf with his stick.
"Count Waldemar," said Valerie, suddenly, brushing Spit's hair off his
bright little eyes, "do tell me; hasn't something vexed you?"
"Nothing new," answered Falkenstein, with a short laugh. "The same
entanglements and annoyances that have been netting their toils round me
for many years--that is all. I am young enough, as time counts, yet I
give you my word I have as little hope in my future, and I know as well
what my life will be as if I were fourscore."
"Hush, don't say so," said Valerie, with a gesture of pain. "You are so
worthy of happiness; your nature was made to be happy; and if you are
not, fate has misused you cruelly."
"Fate? there is no such thing. I have been a fool, and my folly is now
working itself out. I have made my own life, and I have nobody but
myself to thank for it."
"I don't know that. Circumstances, temptation, education, opportunity,
association, often take the place of the Parcae, and gild or cut the
threads of our destiny."
"No. I don't accept that doctrine," said Falkenstein, always much
sterner judge to himself than anybody would have been to him. "What I
have done has been with my eyes open. I have known the price I should
pay for my pleasures, but I never paused to count it. I never stopped
for any obstacle, and for what I desired, I would, like the men in the
old legends, have sold myself to the devil. Now, of course, I am
hampered with ten thousand embarrassments. You are young; you are a
woman; you cannot understand the reckless madness which will drink the
wine to-day, though one's life paid for it to-morrow. Screened from
opportunity, fenced in by education, position, and society, you cannot
know how impossible it is to a man, whose very energies and strength
become his tempters, to put a check upon himself in the vortex of
pleasure round him----"
"Yes," interrupted Valerie, "I can. Feeling for you, I can sympathise in
all things with you. Had I been a man, I should have done as you have
done, drunk the ambrosia without heeding its cost. Go on--I love to hear
you speak of yourself; and I know your real nature, Count Waldemar, into
whatever errors or hasty acts repented of in cooler moments the hot
spirit of your race may have led you."
Falkenstein was pleased, despite himself, half amused, half saddened. He
turned it off with a laugh. "By Heaven, I wish they had made a brewer of
me--I might now be as rich and free from care as your uncle."
"You a brewer!" cried Valerie. Her father, a poor gentleman, had left
her his aristocratic leanings. "What an absurd idea! All the old
Falkensteins would come out of their crypts, and chanceries, and
cloisters, to see the coronet surmounting the beer vats!"
He smiled at her vehemence. "The coronet! I had better have full pockets
than empty titles."
"For shame!" cried Valerie. "Yes, bark at him, Spit dear; he is telling
stories. You do not mean it; you know you are proud of your glorious
name. Who would not rather be a Falkenstein on a hundred a year, than a
Cashranger on a thousand?"
"I wouldn't," said Waldemar, wilfully. "If I had money, I could find
oblivion for my past, and hope for my future. If I had money, what loads
of friends would open their purses for me to borrow the money they'd
know I did not need. As it is, if I except poor Tom Bevan, who's as hard
up as I am, and who's a good-hearted, single-minded fellow, and likes
me, I believe I haven't a friend. Godolphin welcomes me as a companion,
a bon vivant, a good card player; but if he heard I was in the Queen's
Bench, or had shot myself, he'd say, 'Poor devil! I am not surprised,'
as he lighted his pipe and forgot me a second after. So they would all.
I don't blame them."
"But I do," cried Valerie, her cheeks burning; "they are wicked and
heartless, and I hate them all. Oh! Count Waldemar, I would not do so. I
would not desert you if all the world did!"
He smiled: he was accustomed to her passionate ebullitions. "Poor child,
I believe you would be truer than the rest," he muttered, half aloud, as
he rose hastily and took out his watch. "I must be in Downing Street by
eleven, and it only wants ten minutes. If you will walk with me to the
gates, I have something to tell you about your MS."
III.
"SCARLET AND WHITE" MAKES A HIT, AND FALKENSTEIN FEELS THE WEIGHT OF THE
GOLDEN FETTERS.
"Tom, will you come to the theatre with me to-night?" said Falkenstein
as they lounged by the rails one afternoon in May.
"The theatre! What for? Who's that girl with a scarlet tie, on that roan
there? I don't know her face. The ballet is the only thing worth
stirring a step for in town. Which theatre is it?"
"I am going to see the new piece Pomps and Vanities is bringing out, and
I want you as a sort of claqueur."
"Very well. I'll come," said Tom, who regarded Falkenstein, who had been
his school and formfellow, still rather as a Highlandman his chief;
"but, certainly, the first night of a play is the very last I should
select. But if you wish it---- There's that roan coming round again!
Good action, hasn't it?"
Obedient to his chiefs orders, Bevan brushed his whiskers, settled his
tie, or rather let his valet do it for him, and accompanied Waldemar to
one of the crack-up theatres, where Pomps and Vanities, as the manager
was irreverently styled by the habitues of his green-room, reigned in a
state of scenic magnificence, very different to the days when Garrick
played Macbeth in wig and gaiters.