English when repulsed to go on making any more. But he was
astonished--extremely so--for he'd been courted and sought since he was
in jackets, and couldn't make out a young girl like the Tressillian
treating him so lightly. He walked along beside her in profound silence,
but though neither of them spoke a word, he didn't leave her side till
she was safe on the terrace at Essellau. The Major was very grave that
night at dinner, and occasionally he looked at Violet with a strange,
inquiring glance, as the young lady, in the most brilliant of spirits,
fired away French repartees with Von Edenburgh and De Tintiniac, her
face absolutely _rayonnant_ in the gleam of the wax lights. I thought
the spirits were a little too high to be real. Late at night, as he and
I and Marc were smoking on the terrace, before turning in, Telfer
constrained himself to tell us of the scene in the summer-house. He'd
abused her to us. Common honor, he said, obliged him to tell us the
truth about her.
"I am sorry," said he, slowly, between the whiffs of his meerschaum. "If
there is one thing I hate, it is injustice. I was never guilty of
misjudging anybody before in my life, that I know of; and, I give you my
word, I experienced a new sensation--I absolutely felt humbled before
that girl's great, flashing, truthful eyes, to think that I'd been
listening to report and judging from prejudice like any silly, gossiping
woman."
"It seems to have made a great impression on you, Telfer," laughed Marc.
"Has your detestation of Violet changed to something as warm, but more
gentle? Shall we have to say the love wherewith he loves her is greater
than the hate wherewith he hated her?"
"Not exactly," answered the Major, calmly, with a supercilious twist of
his moustaches. "But I like pluck wherever I see it, and she's a true
Tressillian."
IV.
IN WHICH THE MAJOR PROVOKES A QUARREL IN BEHALF OF THE FAIR TRESSILLIAN.
"Well, Telfer," said I, two mornings after, "if you want to be at the
moor by the 12th, we must start soon; this is the 6th. It will be sharp
work to get there as it is."
"What, do you think of not going at all?" said Telfer, laying down the
_Revue des deux Mondes_ with a yawn. "We are very well here. Marc
bothers me tremendously to stay on another month, and the shooting's as
good as we shall get at Glenattock. What do you say, Vane?"
"Just as you like," I answered. "The pigs are as good as the grouse, for
anything I know. They put me in mind of getting my first spear at
Burampootra. I only thought you wanted to be off out of sight of the
Tressillian."
He laughed slightly. "Oh! the young lady's no particular eyesore to me
now I don't regard her in the light of a _belle-mere_. Well, shall we
stop here, then?"
"_Comme vous voulez._ I don't care."
"No philosopher ever moves when he's comfortable," said the Major,
laughing. "I'll write and tell Montague he can shoot over Glenattock if
he likes. I dare say he can find some men who'll keep him company and
fill the box. I say, old fellow, I've won Calceolaria, but I sha'n't
have her, because I consider the bet drawn. Our wager was laid on the
supposition that the Tressillian wished to marry the governor, but as
she never has had the desire, I've neither lost nor won."
"Well, we'll wait and see," said I. "Christmas isn't come yet. Here
comes Violet. She looks well, don't she? Confess now, prejudice apart,
that you admire her, _nolens volens_."
Telfer looked at her steadily as she came into the billiard-room in her
hat and habit, as she'd been riding with Lucy Carteret, Marc, and De
Tintiniac. "Yes," he said, slowly, under his breath, "she is very good
style, I admit."
Lucy Carteret challenged Telfer to a game; she has a tall, _svelte_
figure, and knows she looks well at billiards. He played lazily, and let
her win easily enough, paying as little attention to the _agaceries_ and
glances she lavished upon him as if he'd been an automaton. When they'd
played it out, he went up to the Tressillian, who was talking to Marc in
the window, and, to my supreme astonishment, asked her to have a game.
"Thank you, no," answered Violet, coldly; "it is too warm for
billiards."
This was certainly the first time the Major had ever been refused in any
of his overtures to her sex, and I believe it surprised him exceedingly.
He bent his head, and soon after he went for a walk in the rosery with
Lucy Carteret, whom he hates. We always hate those manoeuvring,
_maniere_ girls, who are everlastingly flinging bait after us, whether
or no we want to nibble; and just in proportion as they fixatrice, and
crinoline, and cosmetique to hook us, will leave us to die in the sun
when they've once trapped us into the basket.
That night, when Telfer sat down to ecarte, Violet was singing in
another room, out of which her voice came distinctly to us. I noticed he
didn't play quite as well as usual. I don't suppose he could be
listening, though, for he doesn't care for music, and still less for
the Tressillian.
"Mademoiselle," said De Tintiniac, going up to her afterwards, "you can
boast of greater conquests than Orpheus. He only charmed rocks, but you
have distracted the two most inveterate _joueurs_ in Europe."
Telfer looked annoyed. Violet laughed. "Pardon me if I doubt your
compliment. If you were so kind as to listen to me, I have not enough
vanity to think that your opponent would yield to what _he_ would think
such immeasurable weakness."
"You are not magnanimous, Miss Tressillian," said Telfer, in a low tone,
leaning down over the piano. "You are ceaselessly reminding me of a
hasty prejudice, unjustly formed, of which I have told you I am heartily
ashamed."
"A hasty prejudice!" repeated Violet. "I beg your pardon, Major Telfer;
I think ours is a very strong and lasting enmity, as mutual as it is
well founded. Don't contradict me; you know you could have shot me with
as little remorse as a partridge."
"But can you never forget," continued Telfer, impatiently, "that my
enmity, as you please to term it, was grafted on erroneous opinions and
false reports, and will you never credit that when I see myself in the
wrong, I am too just to others to continue in it?"
The Tressillian laughed--a mischievous, _provoquant_ laugh. "No, I
believe neither in sudden conversions nor sudden friendships. Pray do
not trouble yourself to be 'just' to me; you see I did not droop and die
under the shadow of your wrath."
"Oh no," said Telfer, with a sardonic twist of his moustaches, "one
would not accuse you of too much softness, Miss Tressillian."
She colored, and the pride of her family flashed out of her eyes. The
Tressillians are all deucedly proud, and would die sooner than yield an
inch. "If by softness you mean weakness, you are right," she said,
haughtily. "As I have told you, we never forgive injustice."
Telfer frowned. If there was one thing he hated more than another, it
was a woman who had anything hard about her. He smiled his chilliest
smile. "Those are harsh words from a lady's lips--not so becoming to
them as something gentler. You remind me, Miss Tressillian, of a young
panther I once had, beautiful to look at, but eminently dangerous to
approach, much less to caress. Everybody admired my panther, but no one
dared to choose it for a pet."
With this uncourteous allegory the Major turned away, leaving Violet to
make it out as best she might. It was good fun to watch the
Tressillian's face: I only, standing near, had caught what he said, for
he had spoken very low. First she looked haughty and annoyed, then a
little troubled and perplexed: she sat quiet a minute, playing
thoughtfully with her bracelets; then shook her head with a movement of
defiance, and began to sing a Venetian barcarole with more _elan_ and
spirit than ever.
"By Jove! Telfer," said I, as we sat in the smoking-room that night,
"your would-have-been mother-in-law has plenty of pluck. She'd have kept
you in good training, and made a better boy of you; it's quite a loss to
your morals that your father didn't marry her."
Telfer didn't look best pleased. He stretched himself full length on one
of the divans, and answered not.
"I shouldn't be surprised if, with all her beauty, she hangs on hand,"
said Walsham, "for she hasn't a rap, you know; her governor gamed it all
away, and she's certainly a bit of a flirt."
"I don't think so," said Telfer, shortly.
"Oh, by George! don't you? but I do," cried Fred. "Why, she takes a turn
at us all, from old De Tintiniac, with his padded figure and coulisses
compliments, to Marc, young and beautiful, as the novels say,--but we'll
spare his blushes--from Vane, there, with his long rent-roll, to poor
me, who she knows goes on tick for my weeds and gloves. She flirts with
us all, one after the other, except you, whom she don't dare to touch.
Tell me where you get your _noli me tangere_ armor, Telfer, and I'll
adopt it to-morrow, for the girls make such desperate love to me I know
some of them will propose before long."
Telfer smoked vigorously during Fred's peroration, and his brow
darkened. "I do not consider Miss Tressillian a flirt," he said, slowly.
"She's too careless in showing you her weak points to be trying to trap
you. What _I_ call a coquette is a woman who is all things to all men,
whose every languishing glance is a bait, and whose every thought is a
conquest."
"And pray how can you tell but what the Tressillian's naturalness and
carelessness may be only a superior bit of acting? The highest art, you
know, is to imitate nature so close that you can't tell which is which,"
laughed Walsham.
Telfer didn't seem to relish the suggestion, but went on smoking
fiercely.
"Not that I want to speak against the girl," Fred went on; "she's very
amusing, and well enough, I dare say, if she weren't so devilish proud."
"You seem rather inconsistent," said Telfer, impatiently. "First, you
accuse her of being too free, and then blame her for being too
reserved."
Walsham laughed.
"If I'm inconsistent, you're a perfect weathercock. A month ago you were
calling Violet every name you could think of, and now you snap us all
off short if we say a word against her."
Telfer looked haughty enough to extinguish Fred upon the spot; Fred
being a small, lively little chap, with not the slightest dignity about
him.
"I know little or nothing of Miss Tressillian, but as I was the first
to prejudice you all against her, it is only common honor to take her
part when I think her unjustly attacked."
Fred gave me a wink of intense significance, but remonstrated no
further, for Telfer had something of the dark look upon him that our men
knew so well when he led them down to the slaughter at Alma and
Balaklava.
"I tell you," continued the Major, after a little silence, "that I am
disgusted with myself for having listened to whispers and reports, and
believed in them just because they suited the bias of my prejudice. It
didn't matter to me whom my father married, as far as money went, for
beyond 10,000_l._ or so, it must all come in the entail; but I couldn't
endure the idea of his being chiselled by some Becky Sharp or Blanche
Armory, and I made up my mind that the Tressillian was of that genre.
I've changed my opinion now. I don't think she either is an actress or
an intrigante; and I should be a coward indeed if I hesitated to say so,
out of common justice to a young girl who has no one to defend her."
"Bravo, my boy!" said Walsham; "I thought the Tressillian's bright eyes
wouldn't let you hate her long. You're quite right, though 'pon my life
it is really horrid how women contrive to damage each other. If there's
an unlucky girl who has made the best match of the season--she might be
an angel from heaven--her bosom-friends would manage gently to spread
abroad the interesting facts that she's a 'dreadful flirt,' 'has a snub
nose,' is an awful temper, had a ballet-girl for her mamma, or something
detrimental. An attractive woman is the target for all her sex to shoot
their sneers at, and if the poor thing isn't so riddled with arrows that
she's no beauty left, it isn't her sisters' fault."
"I believe you," said Telfer. "My gauge of a woman's fascinations is the
amount of hatred all the others bear her. It often amuses me to hear the
tone that ladies take in talking of some girl whom we admire. She's a
charming creature--a darling--their particular friend but ... there's
always a 'but' to neutralize the praise, and with their honeyed hatred
they contrive to damn the luckless object irretrievably. If another
man's a good shot, or whip, or billiard-player, we're not spiteful to
him for it. We think him a good fellow, and like him the better; but the
dear _beau sexe_ cannot bear a rival, and never rest while one of their
acquaintance has diamonds a carat larger, dresses a trifle more costly,
has finer horses, or more conquests. The only style of friend I ever
heard women speak well of is some plain and timorous individual,
good-natured to foolery, and weak as water, who never comes in their
orbit, and whom we never look at; and then what a darling she is, and
how eloquently they will laud her to the skies, despising her miserably
all the while for not having been born pretty!"
"True enough," Marc began. "Why do the Carterets treat the Tressillian
so disagreeably?--only because, though without their fortune, she makes
ten times their coups; and get themselves up how they may, they know
none of us care to waltz with them if she's in the room. Let's drink her
health in Marcobrunnen--she's magnificent eyes."
"And first-rate style," said I.
"And a deuced pretty foot," cried Fred.
"_Et une taille superbe_," added de Tintiniac, just come in. "_En
verite, elle est chouette cette Violette Anglaise._"
So we chanted the Tressillian's praises. Telfer drank the toast in
silence--_I_ thought with a frown on his brow at the freedom with which
we discussed his fair foe.
Little Countess Virginie's wedding was to come off in another month, and
Marc begged us so hard to stay on till then, that, Telfer seeming very
willing, I consented, though it would be the first September I had ever
spent out of the English open since I was old enough to know partridges
from pheasants. The Tressillian being Virginie's pet friend, after young
ladies' custom of contracting eternal alliances (which ordinarily
terminate in a quarrel about the shade of a ponceau ribbon, or a mauve
flower, or a cornet's eyes, some three months after the signing and
sealing thereof), was of course to be one of the _filles d'honneur_. So,
as I said to Telfer, he'd have time for a few more battles before the
two enemies parted to meet again--nobody could tell when.
I began to think that the Major had really been wounded, and that his
opponent's bright eyes wouldn't let him come out of the fight wholly
scathless, as I saw him leaning against the wall at a ball in the
Redoute at Pipesandbeersbad, watching Violet with great earnestness as
she whirled round in a _deux temps_, bewitching as was her wont all the
frequenters of the Bad. Rich English dyspeptics, poverty-stricken
princes, Austrian diplomats, come to cure their hypochondria; French
_decores_, to try their new cabals and martingales; British snobs, to
indulge the luxury of grumbling,--all of them found some strange
attraction in the "Violette Anglaise."
Violet sank on a seat after her valse. Telfer quietly displaced a young
dragoon from Lucca, and sat down by her.
"I am going to stay on another month, Miss Tressillian; are you not
sorry to hear it?" he said, with a smile, but I thought a little anxiety
in his eyes.
The color flushed over her face, and she answered, with a laugh, not
quite a real one: "Of course I am very sorry. I would go away myself to
let you enjoy your last week in peace if I were not engaged to Virginie.
Cannot you get me leave of absence from her? I know you would throw your
whole heart into the petition."
Telfer curled his moustaches impatiently.
"Truth has come out of her well at last," he said, with a dash of
bitterness, "and has disguised herself in Miss Tressillian's tulle
illusion."
Violet colored brighter still.
"Well," she said, quickly, "was it not your decision that we should
never waste courtesy on one another? Was not your own desire _guerre a
outrance_?"
"No," answered Telfer, his brow darkening; "that I certainly must deny.
I did you injustice, and I offered you an apology. No man could do more
than acknowledge he was in the wrong. I offered you the palm-branch
once; you were pleased to refuse it. I am not a man, Miss Tressillian,
to run the chance of another repulse. My friendship is not so cheap that
I shall intrude it where it is undesired." He spoke with a laugh, but
his eyes had a grave anger in them that Violet didn't quite relish.
She looked a little bit frightened up at him. The proud, brilliant
Tressillian was as pale and quiet as a little child after a good
scolding. But she soon rallied, and flashed up haughtier than ever.
"Major Telfer, you make one great error--one very common to your sex.
You drop us one day, and take us up the next, and then think that we
must be grateful to you for the supreme honor you do us. You are cold to
us, absolutely rude, as long as it pleases your lordly will, and then,
at the first word of courtesy and kindness, you expect us to rise and
make you a _reverence_ in the utmost humiliation and thanksgiving. You
men"--and Violet began destroying her bouquet with immense
energy--"treat us exactly as a cat will treat a mouse. You yourself, for
instance, in a moment's hasty judgment, construed all my actions by the
light of your own unjust suspicions, and believing everything, no matter
how unfounded, spoke against me to all your acquaintance, and treated me
with, as you must admit, but scanty courtesy, for one whom I have heard
piques himself on his high breeding. And now, when you discover that
your suspicions had no foundation, and your hatred no grounds, you
wonder that I find it difficult to be as grateful as you seem to think I
should be for your having so kindly misjudged me."
As the young lady gave all this forth with much vehemence and spirit,
Telfer's lips set, and the blood forced itself through the bronze of his
cheeks. He bent towards her till his moustache touched her hair.
"You have no mercy, Violet Tressillian," he said, between his teeth.
"Take care that no one is as pitiless to you in return."
She started, and her bouquet fell to the ground. Telfer gave it her back
without looking at her, and turned round to an Austrian with his usual
impassive air.
"Do you know where De Tintiniac is, Staumgaurn? In the roulette room?
All right. I am going there now."
He did go there, and I've a notion that the croupier of Pipesandbeersbad
made something that night out of the Major's preoccupation.
Violet, meanwhile, was waltzing with Staumgaurn and a dozen others, but
looked rather white--not using any rouge but what nature had given
her--and by the end of the evening her bouquet had utterly come to
grief. Days went on till a fortnight of our last month had gone, and
Telfer, to my sorrow (not surprise, for I always thought the Tressillian
was a dangerous foe, and that, like Ringwood, he'd find himself unhorsed
by a woman), grew grave and stern, haunted with ten times more
recklessness than usual, and threw away his guineas at the Redoute in a
wild way, quite new with him, for though he liked play _pour s'amuser_,
he had too much control over his passions ever to let play get
ascendancy over him. I used to think he had the strongest passions and
the strongest will over them of any man I knew; but now a passion least
undesired and most hopeless of any that ever entered his soul, seemed to
have mastered him. Not that he showed it; with the Tressillian he was
simply distantly courteous; but I, who was on the _qui vive_ for his
first sign of being conquered, saw his eyebrows contract when somebody
was paying her desperate court, and his glance lighten and flash when
she passed near him. They had never been alone since the night of the
ball, and Violet was too proud to try for a reconciliation, even if
she'd cared for one.
One night we were at a ball at the Prince Humbugandschwerinn's. The
Tressillian had been waltzing with all her might, and had all the men in
the room, Humbugandschwerinn himself included, round her. Telfer leaned
against a console ten minutes, watching her, and then abruptly left the
ball-room, and did not return again. He came instead into the card-room,
and sat down to _ecarte_ with De Tintiniac, and lost two games at ten
Napoleons a side. Generally, he played very steadily, never giving his
attention to anything but the game; but now he was listening to what a
knot of men were saying, who were laughing, chatting, and sipping
coffee, while they talked about--the Tressillian.
"I mark the king and play," said Telfer, his eyes fixed fiercely on a
young fellow who was discussing Violet much as he'd have discussed his
new Danish dog or English hunter. He was Jack Snobley, Lord
Featherweight's son, who was doing the grand, a confounded young
parvenu, vulgar as his cotton-spinning ancestry could make him, who
could appreciate the Tressillian about as much as he could Dannecker's
Ariadne, which work of art he pronounced, in my hearing, "a pretty girl,
but the dawg very badly done--too much like a cat." "I take your three
to two," continued Telfer, his brow lowering as he heard the young fool
praising and criticising Violet with small ceremony. The Major had the
haughtiest patrician principles, and to hear a snob like this
sandy-haired honorable, speaking of the woman _he_ chose to champion as
he might have done of some ballerina or Chaumiere belle, was rather too
much for Telfer's self-control.
When the game was done, he rose, and walked quietly over to where
Snobley stood. He looked him down with that cold, haughty glance that
has cowed men bolder than Lord Featherweight's hopeful offspring, and
said a word or two to him in a low tone, which caused that gentleman to
flush up red and look fierce with all his might.
"What's the girl to you, that I mayn't speak as I choose of her?" he
retorted; the Sillery, of which he'd taken a good deal too much, working
up in his weak brain. "I've heard that she jilted you, and that was why
you've been setting them all against her, and saying she wanted to hook
your old governor."
The Sillery must have indeed obscured Jack's reason with a vengeance to
make him venture this very elegant and refined speech with the Major,
most fastidious in his ideas of good breeding, and most direful in his
wrath, of any man I ever knew. Telfer's cheek turned as white with
passion as the bronze would let it; his gray eyes grew almost black as
they stared at the young snob. He was so supremely astonished that this
ill-bred boy had actually dared thus to address him!
"Mr. Snobley," he said, with his chilled and most ironical smile, and
his quietest, most courteous voice, "you must learn good manners before
you venture to parley with gentlemen. Allow me to give you your first
lesson." And stooping, as if to a very little boy--young Snobley was a
good foot shorter than he--the Major struck him on the lips with his
left-hand French kid glove. It was a very gentle blow--it would scarcely
have reddened the Tressillian's delicate skin--but on the Hon. Jack it
had electric effect. He was beginning to swear, to look big, to talk of
satisfaction, insult, and all the rest of it; but Telfer laughed, bent
his head, told him he was quite ready to satisfy him to any extent he
required; and, turning away, sat down to _ecarte_ calm and impassive as
ever, and pleased greatly with himself for having silenced this silly
youth. The affair was much less exciting to him than it was to any other
man in the room. "It's too great an honor for him, the young brute, for
me to be called out by him, as if he were one of us. I hate snobs; Lord
Featherweight's grandfather was butler to mine, and he himself was a
cotton-spinner in Lancashire, and then this little contemptible puppy
dares to----"
Telfer finished his sentence with a puff of smoke from his meerschaum,
as he sat in his bedroom after the ball, into which sanctuary I had
followed him to talk a little before turning in.
"To discuss the Tressillian," said I. "But that surprises me less, old
fellow, than that you should champion her. What's it for? Has hate
turned to the other thing? Have you come to think that, though she'd
make a very bad mother-in-law, she'd make a charming wife? 'Pon my life,
if you have----"
"Hush! Don't jest!"
I knew by the tone of those three little monosyllables that the Major
was done for--caught, conquered, and fettered by his dangerous foe.