Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories Part 34

"What a charming creature!" echoed Dunbar.

The person referred to was the only woman at the table d'hote besides my sisters--a sister-tourist, probably; a handsome--nay more, a beautiful woman, about eight-and-twenty, distinguished-looking, brilliant, with a figure voluptuously perfect as was ever the Princess Borghese's. To say a woman looks a lady, means nothing in our day. "That young lady will wait on you, sir," says the shopman, referring to the shopwoman who will show you your gloves. "Hand the 'errings to that lady, Joe," you hear a fishmonger cry, as you pa.s.s his shop-door, referring by his epithet to some Mrs. Gamp or Betsy Priggs in search of that piscatory cheer at his stall. Heaven forbid we should give the abused and degenerate t.i.tle to any woman deserving of the name! Generalize a thing, and it is vulgar.

"A gentleman of my acquaintance," says Spriggs, an auctioneer and house-agent, to Smith, a collector of the water-rate. "A man I know,"

says Pursang, one of the Cabinet, to Greville Tempest, who is heir to a Dukedom, and has intermarried with a royal house. The reason is plain enough. Spriggs thinks it necessary to inform Smith, who otherwise might remain ignorant of so signal a fact, that he actually does know a gentleman, or rather what he terms such. Pursang knows that Tempest would never suspect him of being _lie_ with men who were anything else; the one is proud of the fine English, the other is content with the simple phrase! Heaven forbid, I say, we should, nowadays, call any woman a lady who is veritably such; let us fall back on the dignified, definitive, courtly last-century-name of gentlewoman. I should be glad to see that name revived; it draws a line that sn.o.bbissimi cannot pa.s.s, and has a grand simplicity about it that will not attract Spriggs, Smith, and Spark, and Mesdames S., leurs femmes!

Our sister-tourist, then, at the Toison d'Or, looked, to my eyes at the least, much more than a "lady," she looked an _aristocrate jusqu'au bout des ongles_, a beautiful, brilliant, dazzling brunette, with lovely hazel eyes, flas.h.i.+ng like a tartaret falcon's under their arched pencilled eyebrows, quite an unhoped G.o.dsend in Vicq d'Azyr, where only stragglers resort as yet, though--alas for my Arcadia--my sister's pet physician, who sent them thither, is about, I believe, to publish a work, ent.i.tled "The Water-Spring in the Wilderness; or, A Scamper through Spots Unknown," which will do a little advertising of himself opportunely, and send hundreds next season to invade the wild woodlands and sunny valleys he inhumanly drags forth into the gas-glare of the world.

The brilliant hazel eyes were opposite to me at dinner, and were, I confess, more attractive to me than the stewed pigeons, the crisp frog-legs, and the other viands prepared by the (considering we were in the heart of one of the most remote provinces) really not bad cook of the Toison d'Or. Lady Marechale and Mrs. Protocol honored her with that stare by which one woman knows so well how to destroy the reputation of another without speech; they had taken her measurement by some method of feminine geometry unknown to us, and the result was apparently not favorable to her, for over the countenances of the two ladies gathered that expression of stiff dignity and virtuous disdain, in the a.s.suming of which, as I have observed before, they are inimitable proficients.

"Evidently not a proper person!" was written on every one of their lineaments. Constance and Agneta had made up their minds with celerity and decision as to her social status, with, it is to be presumed, that unerring instinct which leads their s.e.x to a conclusion so instantaneously, that, according to a philosopher, a woman will be at the top of the staircase of Reasoning by a single spring, while a man is toiling slowly up the first few steps.

"You are intending to remain here some days, madame?" asked the fair stranger, with a charming smile, of Lady Marechale--a pleasant little overture to chance ephemeral acquaintance, such as a table d'hote surely well warrants.

But the pleasant little overture was one to which Lady Marechale was far too English to respond. With that inimitable breeding for which our countrymen and women are continentally renowned, she bent her head with stately stiffness, indulged herself with a haughty stare at the offender, and turned to Agneta, to murmur in English her disgust with the _cuisine_ of the really unoffending Toison d'Or.

"Poor Spes would eat nothing. Fenton must make him some panada. But perhaps there was nothing better than goat's milk in the house! What could Dr. Berkeley be thinking of? He described the place quite as though it were a second Meurice's or Badischer Hof!"

A look of amus.e.m.e.nt glanced into the sparkling, yet languid eyes of my opposite neighbor.

"Englis.h.!.+" she murmured to herself, with an almost imperceptible but sufficiently scornful elevation of her arched eyebrows, and a slight smile, just showing her white teeth, as I addressed her in French; and she answered me with the ease, the aplomb, the ever suave courtesy of a woman of the world, with that polish which gives the most common subjects a brilliance never their own, and that vivacity which confers on the merest trifles a spell to amuse and to charm. She was certainly a very lovely creature, and a very charming one, too; frank, animated, witty, with the tone of a woman who has seen the world and knows it.

Dunbar adored her, at first sight; he is an inflammable fellow, and has been ignited a thousand times at far less provocation. Marechale prepared for himself fifty conjugal orations by the recklessness with which, under the very eyes of madame, he devoted himself to another woman. Even Albany Protocol, dull, somnolent, and superior to such weaknesses, as becomes a president of many boards and a chairman of many committees, opened his eyes and glanced at her; and some young Cantabs and artists at the other end of the table stopped their own conversation, envying Dunbar and myself, I believe, for our juxtaposition with the _belle inconnue_; while my sisters sat trifling with the wing of a pigeon, in voluntary starvation (they would have had nothing to complain of, you see, if they had suffered themselves to dine well!), with strong disapprobation marked upon their lineaments, of this lovely vivacious unknown, whoever she might be, talking exclusively to each other, with a certain expression of sarcastic disdain and offended virtue, hinting far more forcibly than words that they thought already the "very worst" of her.

So severe, indeed, did they look, that Dunbar, who is a good-natured fellow, and thinks--and thinks justly--that Constance and Agneta are very fine women, left me to discuss, Hoffmann, Heine, and the rest of Germany's satirical poets, with my opposite neighbor, and endeavored to thaw my sisters; a very difficult matter when once those ladies are iced. He tried Paris, but only elicited a monosyllabic remark concerning its weather; he tried Vicq d'Azyr, and was rewarded for his trouble by a withering sarcasm on the unlucky Toison d'Or; he tried chit-chat on mutual acquaintances, and the unhappy people he chanced to name were severally dismissed with a cutting satire appended to each. Lady Marechale and Mrs. Protocol were in one of those freezing and una.s.sailable moods in which they sealed a truce with one another, and, combining their forces against a common foe, dealt out sharp, spherical, hard-hitting little bullets of speech from behind the abatis in which they intrenched themselves.

At last he, in despair, tried Lemongenseidlitz, and the ladies thawed slightly--their antic.i.p.ations from that fas.h.i.+onable little quarter were couleur de rose. They would meet their people of the best _monde_, all their dearest--that is of course their most fas.h.i.+onable--friends; the dear d.u.c.h.ess of Frangipane, the Millamonts those charming people, M. le Marquis de Croix-et-Cordon, Sir Henry Pullinger, Mrs.

Merivale-Delafield, were all there; that delightful person, too, the Graf von Rosenlau, who amused them so much at Baden last year, was, as of course Dunbar knew, Master of the Horse to the Prince of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz; they would be well received at the Court. Which last thing, however, they did not _say_, though they might imply, and a.s.suredly fully thought it; since Lady Marechale already pictured herself gently awakening his Serene Highness to the spiritual darkness of his soul in legitimatizing gaming-tables in his duchy, and Mrs. Protocol already beheld herself closeted with his First Minister, giving that venerable Metternich lessons in political economy, and developing to him a system for filling his beggared treasury to overflowing, without taxing the people a kreutzer--a problem which, though it might have perplexed Kaunitz, Colbert, Pitt, Malesherbes, Talleyrand, and Palmerston put together, offered not the slightest difficulty to _her_ enterprising intellect. Have I not said that Sherlock states women are at the top of the staircase while we are toiling up the first few steps?

"The d.u.c.h.ess--Princess Helene is a lovely woman, I think. Winton saw her at the Tuileries last winter, and raved about her beauty," said Dunbar, finding he had hit at last on an acceptable subject, and pursuing it with more zeal than discretion; for if there be one thing, I take it, more indiscreet than another, it is to praise woman to woman.

Constance coughed and Agneta smiled, and both a.s.sented. "Oh yes--very lovely, they believed!"

"And very lively--up to everything, I think I have heard," went on Dunbar, blandly, unconscious of the meaning of cough, smile, and a.s.sent.

"Very lively!" sighed the Saint.

"_Very_ lively!" smiled the Politician.

"As gay a woman as Marie Antoinette," continued Dunbar, too intent on the truffles to pay en meme temps much heed to the subject he was discussing. "She's copied the Trianon, hasn't she?--has fetes and pastorals there, acts in comedies herself, shakes off etiquette and ceremonial as much as she can, and all that sort of thing, I believe?"

Lady Marechale leaned back in her chair, the severe virtue and dignified censure of a British matron and a modern Lucretia expressed in both att.i.tude and countenance.

"A second Marie Antoinette?--too truly and unfortunately so, I have heard! Levity in _any_ station sufficiently reprehensible, but when exhibited in the persons of those whom a higher power has placed in exalted positions, it is most deeply to be deplored. The evil and contagion of its example become incalculable; and even when, which I believe her excusers are wont to a.s.sert of Princess Helene, it is merely traceable to an over-gayety of spirit and an over-carelessness of comment and censure, it should be remembered that we are enjoined to abstain from every _appearance_ of evil!"

With which Constance shook out her phylacteries, represented by the thirty-guinea bracade-silk folds of her skirt (a dress I heard her describe as "very plain!--serviceable for travelling"), and glanced at my opposite neighbor with a look which said, "You are evidently not a proper person, but you hear for once what a proper person thinks!"

Our charming companion did hear it, for she apparently understood English very well. She laughed a little--a sweet, low, ringing laugh--(I was rather in love with her, I must say--I am still)--and spoke with a slight pretty accent.

"True, madame! but ah! what a pity your St. Paul did not advise, too, that people should not go by appearances, and think evil where evil is not!"

Lady Marechale gave stare number two with a curl of her lip, and bent her head stiffly.

"What a very strange person!" she observed to Agneta, in a murmur, meant, like a stage aside, to be duly heard and appreciated by the audience. And yet my sisters are thought very admirably bred women, too!

But then, a woman alone--a foreigner, a stranger--surely no one would exact courtesy to such, from "ladies of position?"

"Have you ever seen Princess Helene, the d.u.c.h.ess of Lemongenseidlitz, may I ask?" Marechale inquired, hastily, to cover his wife's sneer. He's a very good fellow, and finds the constant and inevitable society of a saint slightly trying, and a very heavy chastis.e.m.e.nt for a few words sillily said one morning in St. George's.

"I have seen her, monsieur--yes!"

"And is she a second Marie Antoinette?"

She laughed gayly, showing her beautiful white teeth.

"Ah, bah, monsieur! many would say that is a great deal too good a comparison for her! A second Louise de Savoie--a second d.u.c.h.esse de Chevreuse--nay, a second Lucrezia Borgia, some would tell you. She likes pleasure--who does not, though, except those with whom 'les raisins sont trop verts et bons pour des goujats?'"

"What an insufferably bold person!" murmured Constance.

"Very disagreeable to meet this style of people!" returned Agneta.

And both stiffened themselves with a little more starch; and we know that British wheats produce the stiffest starch in the world!

"Who, indeed!" cried Marechale, regardless of madame's frown. "You know this for truth, then, of Princess Helene?"

"Ah, bah, monsieur! who knows anything for truth?" laughed the lovely brunette. "The world dislikes truth so much, it is obliged to hide itself in out-of-the-way corners, and very rarely comes to light. n.o.body knows the truth about her. Some think her, as you say, a second Marie Antoinette, who is surrendered to dissipation and levity, cares for nothing, and would dance and laugh over the dead bodies of the people.

Others judge her as others judged Marie Antoinette; discredit the gossip, and think she is but a lively woman, who laughs at forms, likes to amuse herself, and does not see why a court should be a prison! The world likes the darker picture best; let it have it! I do not suppose it will break her heart!"

And the fair stranger laughed so sweetly, that every man at the dinner-table fell in love with her on the spot; and Lady Marechale and Mrs. Protocol sat throughout the remainder of the meal in frozen dignity and unbreakable silence, while the lovely brunette talked with and smiled on us all with enchanting gayety, wit, and abandon, chatting on all sorts of topics of the day.

Dinner over, she was the first to rise from the table, and bowed to us with exquisite grace and that charming smile of hers, of which the sweetest rays fell upon _me_, I swear, whether you consider the oath an emanation of personal vanity or not, my good sir. My sisters returned her bow and her good evening to them with that pointed stare which says so plainly, "You are not my equal, how dare you insult me by a courtesy?"

And scarcely had we begun to sip our coffee up-stairs in the apartments Chanderlos had secured for the miladies Anglaises, than the duo upon her began as the two ladies sat with Spes between them on a sofa beside one of the windows opening on the balcony that ran round the house. A chance inadvertent a.s.sent of Dunbar's, a propos of--oh, sin unpardonable!--the beauty of the incognita's eyes, touched the valve and unloosened the hot springs that were seething below in silence. "A handsome woman!--oh yes, a gentleman's beauty, I dare say!--but a very odd person!"

commenced Mrs. Protocol. "A very strange person!" a.s.sented Mrs.

Marechale. "Very free manners!" added Agneta. "Quite French!" chorused Constance. "She has diamond rings--paste, no doubt!" said the Politician. "And rouges--the color's much too lovely to be natural!"

sneered the Saint. "Paints her eyebrows, too!" "Not a doubt--and tints her lashes!" "An adventuress, I should say!" "Or worse!" "Evidently not a proper person!" "Certainly not!"

Through the soft mellow air, hushed into evening silence, the words reached me, as I walked through the window on to the balcony, and stood sipping my coffee and looking lazily over the landscape wrapped in sunset haze, over the valley where the twilight shadows were deepening, and the mountains that were steeped yet in a rose-hued golden radiance from the rays that had sunk behind them.

"My dear ladies," I cried, involuntarily, "can't you find anything a little more kindly to say of a stranger who has never done you any harm, and who, fifty to one, will never cross your path again?"

"Bravo!" echoed Marechale, who has never gone as quietly in the matrimonial break as Protocol, and indeed will never be thoroughly broken in--"bravo! women are always studying to make themselves attractive; it's a pity they don't put down among the items a trifle of generosity and charity, it would embellish them wonderfully."

Lady Marechale beat an injured tattoo with the spoon on her saucer, and leaned back with the air of a martyr, and drawing in her lips with a smile, whose inimitable sneer any lady might have envied--it was quite priceless!

"It is the first time, Sir George, I should presume, that a husband and a brother were ever heard to unite in upbraiding a wife and a sister with her disinclination to a.s.sociate with, or her averseness to countenance, an improper person!"

"An improper person!" I cried. "But, my dear Constance, who ever told you that this lady you are so desperately bitter upon has any fault at all, save the worst fault in her own s.e.x's eyes--that of beauty? I see nothing in her; her manners are perfect; her tone----"

"You must pardon me if I decline taking your verdict on so delicate a question," interrupted Lady Marechale, with withering satire. "Very possibly you see nothing objectionable in her--nothing, at least, that _you_ would call so! Your views and mine are sufficiently different on every subject, and the women with whom I believe you have chiefly a.s.sociated are not those who are calculated to give you very much appreciation for the more refined cla.s.ses of our s.e.x! Very possibly the person in question is what _you_, and Sir George too, perhaps, find charming; but you must excuse me if I really cannot, to oblige you, stoop to countenance any one whom my intuition and my knowledge of the world both declare so very evidently what she should not be. She will endeavor, most probably, if she remain here, to push herself into our acquaintance, but if you and my husband should choose to insult us by favoring her efforts, Agneta and I, happily, can guard ourselves from the objectionable companions.h.i.+p into which those who _should_ be our protectors would wish to force us!"

With which Lady Marechale, with a little more martyrdom and an air of extreme dignity, had recourse to her _flacon_ of Viola Montana, and sank among the sofa cus.h.i.+ons, a model of outraged and Spartan virtue. I set down my coffee-cup, and lounged out again to the peace of the balcony; Marechale shrugged his shoulders, rose, and followed me. Lo! on the part of the balcony that ran under _her_ windows, leaning on its bal.u.s.trade, her white hand, white as the flowers, playing with the clematis tendrils, the "paste" diamond flas.h.i.+ng in the last rays of the setting sun, stood our "dame d'industrie--or worse!" She was but a few feet farther on; she must have heard Lady Marechale's and Mrs.