"Messieurs les étudiensMontez á la Chaumière!"
"Messieurs les étudiensMontez á la Chaumière!"
that he never heard a knock at his door, and he lookedup with an impatient frown on his white, broad forehead as a man enteredsans cérémonie.
"Mon Dieu! Ernest," cried his friend, "what the devil are you doing here with your pipe and your pastels, when I've been waiting at Tortoni's a good half-hour, and at last, out of patience, drove here to see what on earth had become of you?"
"My dear fellow, I beg you a thousand pardons," said Vaughan, lazily. "I was sketching this, and you and your horses went clean out of my head, I honestly confess."
"And your breakfast too, it seems," said De Concressault, glancing at the table. "Is it Madame de Mélusine or the little Bluette whose portrait absorbs you so much? No, by Jove! it's a prettier woman than either of 'em. If she's like that, take me to see her this instant. What glorious gold hair! I adore your countrywomen when they've hair that color. Where did you get that face? Is she a duchess, or a danseuse, a little actress you're going to patronise, or a millionnaire you're going to marry?"
"I can't tell you," laughed Vaughan. "I've not an idea who she may be. I saw her last evening coming out of the Français, and picked up her bouquet for her as she was getting into her carriage. The face was young, the smile very pretty and bright, and, as they daguerreotyped themselves in my mind, I thought I might as well transfer them to paper before newer beauties chased them out of it."
"Diable! and you don't know who she is? However, we'll soon find out. That gold hair mustn't be lost. But get your breakfast, pray, Ernest, and let us be off to poor Armand's sale."
"That's the way we mourn our dead friends," saidVaughan, with a sneer, pouring out his coffee. "Armand is jesting, laughing, and smoking with us one day, the next he's pitched out of his carriage going down to Asnières, and all we think of is—that his horses are for sale. If I were found in the Morgue to-morrow, your first emotion, Emile, would be, 'Vaughan's De l'Orme will be sold. I must go and bid for it directly."
De Concressault laughed as he looked up at a miniature of Marion de l'Orme, once taken for the Marquis of Gordon. "I fancy, mon garçon, there'll be too many sharks after all your possessions for me to stand any chance."
"True enough," said Vaughan; "and I question if they'll wait till my death before they come down on 'em. But I don't look forward. I take life as it comes. Vogue la galère! At least, I'velived, not vegetated." And humming his refrain,
"L'amour! l'amour!La nuit comme le jour!"
"L'amour! l'amour!La nuit comme le jour!"
he lounged down the stairs and drove to a sale in the Faubourg St. Germain, where one of his Paris chums, a virtuoso and connoisseur, had left endlessmeublesto be sold by his duns and knocked down to his friends.
Vaughan was quite right; hehadlived, and at a pretty good pace, too. When he came of age a tolerably good fortune awaited him, but it had not been long in his hands before he contrived to let it slip through them. He'd been brought up at Sainte Barbe, after being expelled from Rugby, knew all the best of the "jeunesse dorée," and could not endure any place after Paris, where his life was as sparkling and brilliant as the foam off a glass of champagne. Wild and careless, highspirited, and lavish in his Opera suppers, hiscabaretdinners, his Trois Frères banquets, his lansquenet parties, his bouquets for baronnes, and his bracelets for ballerinas, Ernest gained his reputation as aLion, and—ruined himself, too, poor old fellow!
His place down in Surrey had mortgages thick on every inch of its lands, and the money that kept him going was borrowed from those modern Satans, money lenders, at the usually ruinous interest. "But still," Ernest was wont to say, with great philosophy, "I've had ten years' swing of pleasure. Does every man get as much as that? And should I have been any happier if I'd been a good boy, and a country squire, sat on the bench, amused my mind with turnips, and married some bishop's daughter, who'd have marched me to church, forbidden cigars, and buried me in family boots?"
Certainly that wouldnothave been his line, and so, in natural horror at it, he dashed into a diametrically opposite one, and after the favor he had shown him from every handsome woman that drove through Longchamp, wore diamonds at the Tuileries, and supped with dominos noirs at bals d'Opéra, and the favor he showed to cards, thecourses, and thecoulisses, few bishops would have imperilled their daughters' souls by setting them to hunt down this wickedLion, especially as the poorLionnow wasn't worth the trapping. If he had been, there would have been hue and cry enough after him I don't doubt; but the Gordon Cummings of the beau sexe rarely hunt unless it's worth their while, and they can bring home splendid spoils to make their bosom friends mad with envy; and Ernest, despite his handsome face, his fashionable reputation, and the aroma of conquest that hung about him (they used to say he never wooed ever so negligently but he won), was assuredly neither an "eligiblespeculation" nor a "marrying man," and was an object rather of terror to English mammas steering budding young ladies through the dangerous vortex of French society with a fierce chevaux de frise of British prejudices and a keen British eye to business. If Ernest was of no other use, however, he was invaluable to his uncles, aunts, and male cousins, as a sort of scapegoat andépouvantail, to be held up on high to show the unwary what they would come to if they followed his steps. It was so pleasant to them to exult over his backslidings, and, cutting him mercilessly up into little bits, hold condemnatory sermons over every one of the pieces. "Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplait pas;" and Vaughan's friends, like the rest of us pharisees, dearly loved to glance at the publican (especially if he was handsomer, cleverer, or any way better than themselves), and thank God loudly that they were not such men as he. Ernest was a hardened sinner, however; he laughed, put the Channel between him and them, and went on his ways without thinking or caring for their animadversions.
"By Jove! Emile," said he as they sat dining together at Leiter's, "I should like to find out my golden-haired sylphide. She was English, by her fair skin, and though I'm not very fond of my compatriotes, especially when they're abroad (I think touring John Bull detestable wrapped up in his treble plaid of reserve), still I should like to find her out just for simple curiosity. I assure you she'd the prettiest foot and ankle I ever saw, not excepting even Bluette's."
"Ma foi! that's a good deal fromyou. She must be found, then. Voyons! shall we advertise in theMoniteur, employ the secret police, or call at all the hotels in person to say that you're quite ready to act out Soulié's'Lion Amoureux,' if you can only discover the petite bourgeoise to play it with you?"
Vaughan laughed as he drank his demi-tasse.
"Lion amoureux! that's an anomaly; we're only in love just enough pour nous amuser; and of us Albin says, very rightly,
Si vous connaissiez quelques meilleurs,Vous porteriez bientôt cette âme ailleurs."
Si vous connaissiez quelques meilleurs,Vous porteriez bientôt cette âme ailleurs."
"Very well, then: if you don't know of anything better, let's hunt up this incognita. If she went to the Français, she's most likely at the Odéon to-night," said De Concressault. "Shall we try?"
"Allons!" said Vaughan, rising indolently, as he did most things. "But it's rather silly, I think; there are bright smiles and pretty feet enough in Paris without one's setting off on a wild-goose chase after them."
They were playing the last act of "La Calomnie," as Vaughan and De Concressault took their places, put up their lorgnons, and looked round the house. He swore a few mental "Diables!" and "Sacrés!" as his gaze fell on faces old or ugly, or too brunes or too blondes, or anything but what he wanted. At last, without moving his glass, he touched De Concressault's arm.
"There she is, Emile, in the fourth from the centre, in a white opera cloak, with pink flowers in her hair."
"I see her, mon ami," said Emile. "I found her out two seconds ago (see how well you sketch!) but I wouldn't spoil your pleasure in discovering her. Mon Dieu! Ernest, she's looking at you, and smiles as if she recognised you. Was there ever so lucky a Lauzun?"
Vaughan could have laughed outright to see by the brightness of the girl's expression that she knew the saviour of her bouquet again, for though he was accustomedto easy conquests, such naive interest in him at such short notice was something new to him.
He didn't take his lorgnon off her again, and she was certainly worth the honor, with her soft, lustrous gold hair, the eyes that defy definition—black in some lights, violet in others—a wide-arched forehead, promising plenty of brains, and a rayonnante, animated, joyous expression, quite refreshing to anybody as bored and blasé as Vaughan and De Concressault. As soon as the last piece was over Vaughan slipped out of his loge, and took up his station at the entrance.
He didn't wait in vain: the golden hair soon came, on the arm of a gentleman—middle aged, as Vaughan noticed with a sensation of satisfaction. She glanced up at him as she passed: he looked very handsome in the gas glare. Vaughan perhaps was too sensible a fellow to think of his pose, but evenwehave our weaknesses under certain circumstances, as well as the crinolines. Luckily for him, he chanced to have in his pocket a gold serpent bracelet he had bought that morning for some fair dame or demoiselle. He stopped her, and held it out to her.
"I beg your pardon, mademoiselle," he said in French, "but I think you dropped this?"
She looked up at him with the sunniest of smiles as she answered, in a pure accent, "No monsieur, thank you, it does not belong to me."
The middle-aged man glanced sideways at him with true British suspicion—I dare say a pickpocket, a Rouge, and Fieschi, were all mixed up in his mind as embodied in the graceful figure and bold glance of theLion. He drew the girl on, looking much like a heavy cloud with a bright sun ray after it; but she half turned her head over her shoulder to give him a farewell smile, which Ernest returned with ten per cent. interest.
"Anglais," said Emile, concisely.
"Malheureusement," said Ernest as briefly, as he pushed his way into the air, and saw the gold hair vanish into her carriage. He went quickly up to the cocher.
"Où demeurent-ils, mon ami?" he whispered, slipping a five-franc piece into his hand.
The man smiled. "A l'Hôtel de Londres, monsieur; No. 6, au premier."
"The devil! pourquoir ne allez pas?" said an unmistakably English voice from the interior of the voiture. The man set off at a trot; Ernest sprang into his own trap.
"Au Chateau Rouge! May as well go there, eh, Emile? What a deuced pity la chevelure dorée is English!"
"I wish she were a danseuse, an actress, a fleuriste—anything one could make his own introduction to. Confound it there's the 'heavy father,' I'm afraid, in the case, and some rigorous mamma, or vigilantbéguineof a governess: but, to judge by the young lady's smiles, she'll be easy game unless she's tremendously fenced in."
With which consolatory reflection Vaughan leaned back and lighted a cheroot,en routeto spend the night as he had spent most of them for the last ten years, till the fan had begun to be more bore than pleasure.
"Have you been to the Hôtel de Londres, Ernest?" said De Concressault, as Vaughan lounged into Tortoni's next day, where Emile and three or four other men weredrinking Seltzer and talking of how Cerisette had beaten Vivandière by a neck at Chantilly, or (the sport to which a Frenchman takes much more naturally) of how well Rivière played in the "Prix d'un Bouquet;" what abelle taillela De Servans had; and what a fool Senecterre had made of himself in the duel about Madame Viardot.
"Of course I have," said Vaughan. "The name is Gordon—general name enough in England. They were gone to the Expiatoire, the portière told me. Thereisthe heavy father, as I feared, and a quasi-governess acting duenna; they're travelling with another family, whose name I could not hear: the woman said 'C'était beaucoup trop dur pour les lèvres.' I dare say they're some Brummagem people—some Fudge family or other—on their travels. Confound it!"
"Poor Ernest," laughed De Concressault. "Some gold hair has bewitched him, and instead of finding it belongs to a danseuse, or a married woman, or a fleuriste of the Palais Royal, or something attainable, he finds it turn into an unapproachable English girl, with no end of outlying sentries round her, who'll fire at the first familiar approach."
"It is a hard case," said De Kerroualle, a dashing fellow in one of the "Régiments de famille." "Never mind, mon ami; 'contre fortune bon cœur,' you know: it'll be more fun to devastate one of our countrymen's inviolate strongholds than to conquer where the white flag's already held out. Halloa! here's a compatriot of yours, I'd bet; look at his sanctified visage and stiff choker—a Church of England man, eh?"
"The devil!" muttered Vaughan, turning round; "deuce take him, it's my cousin Ruskinstone! What in the world doeshedo in Paris?"
The man he spoke of was the Rev. Eusebius Ruskinstone,the Dean's Warden of the cathedral of Faithandgrace, a tall, thin young clerical of eight or nine-and-twenty, with goodness enough (it was generally supposed) in his little finger to make up for all Ernest's sins, scarlet though they were. He had just sat down and taken up the carte to blunder through "Potage au Duc de Malakoff," "Fricassée de volaille à la Princesse Mathilde," and all the rest of it, when his eye lit on his graceless cousin, and a vinegar asperity spread over his bland visage. Vaughan rose with a lazy grace, immensely bored within him: "My dear Ruskinstone, what an unanticipated pleasure. I never hoped Vanity Fair would have had power to lureyouinto its naughty peep-shows and roundabouts."
The Rev. Eusebius reddened slightly; he had once stated strongly his opinion that poor Paris was Pandemonium. "How do you do?" he said, giving his cousin two fingers; "it is a long time since we saw you in England."
"England doesn't want me," said Ernest, dryly. "I don't fancy I should be very welcome at Faithandgrace, should I? The dear Chapter would probably consign me to starvation for my skeptical notions, as Calvin did Castellio. But whathasbrought you to Paris? Are you come to fight the Jesuits in a conference, or to abjure the Wardenship and turn over to them?"
Eusebius was shocked at the irreverent tone, but there was a satirical smile on his cousin's lips that he didn't care to provoke. "I am come," he said, stiffly, "partly for health, partly to collect materials for a work on the 'Gurgoyles and Rose Mouldings of Mediæval Architecture,' and partly to oblige some friends of mine. Pardon me, here they come."
Vaughan lifted his eyes, expecting nothing very delectablein Ruskinstone's friends; to his astonishment they fell on his beauty of the Français! with the outlying sentries of father, governess, and two other women, the Warden's maiden sisters, stiff, maniérées, and prudish, like too many Englishwomen. The young lady of the Français was a curious contrast to them: she started a little as she saw Vaughan, and smiled brilliantly. On the spur of that smile Ernest greeted his cousins with a degree ofempressementthat they certainly wouldn't have been honored by without it. They were rather frightened at coming in actual contact with such a monster of iniquity as a ParisLion, who, they'd heard, had out-Juan'd Don Juan, and gave him but a frigid welcome. Mr. Gordon had doubtless heard, too, of Vaughan's misdemeanors, for he looked stoical and acidulated as he bowed. But the young girl's eyes reconciled Ernest to all the rest, as she frankly returned a look with which he was wont to win his way through women's hearts, 'midst the hum of ball rooms, in the soft tête-à-tête in boudoirs, and over the sparkling Sillery ofpetits soupers. So, for the sake of his new quarry, he disregarded the cold looks of the others, and made himself so charming, that nobody could withstand the fascination of his manner till their dinner was served, and then, telling his cousins he would do himself the pleasure of calling on them the next day, he left the café to drive over to Gentilly, to inspect a grey colt of De Kerroualle's.
"La chevelure dorée is quite as pretty by daylight, Ernest," said De Concressault. "Bon dieu! it is such a relief to see eyes that are not tinted, and a skin whose pink and white is not born from the mysterious rites of the toilet."
Vaughan nodded, with his Manilla between his teeth.
"That cousin of yours is queer style, mon garçon,"said Kerroualle. "How some of those islanders contrive to iron themselves into the stiffness and flatness they do, is to me the profoundest enigma. But what Church of England meaning lies hid in his coat-tails? They are, for all the world, like our révérends pères! What is it for?"
"High Church. Next door shop to yours, you know. Our ecclesiastics are given to balancing themselves on a tight rope between their 'mother' and their 'sister,' till they tumble over into their sister's open arms—the Catholics say into salvation, the Protestants into damnation; into neither, I myself opine, poor simpletons. Ruskinstone is fearfully architectural. The sole things he'll see here will be façades, gurgoyles, and clerestories, and his soul knows no warmer loves than 'stone dolls,' as Newton calls them. I say, Gaston, what do you think ofmylove of the Français; isn't shechic, isn't she mignonne, isn't she spirituelle?"
"Yes," assented De Kerroualle, "prettier than either Bluette or Madame de Mélusine would allow, or—relish."
Ernest frowned. "I've done with Bluette; she's a pretty face, but—ah, bah! one can't amuse oneself always with a little paysanne, for she's nothing better, after all; and I'm half afraid the Mélusine begins to bore me."
"Better not tell her so, mon ami," said De Kerroualle; "she'd be a nasty enemy."
"Pooh! a woman like that loves and forgets."
"Sans doute; but they also sometimes revenge. Poor little Bluette you may safely turn over; but Madame la Baronne won't so easily be jilted."
Vaughan laughed. "Oh, I'm not going to break her heart. Don't you know, Gaston, 'on a bien de la peine à rompre, même quand on ne s'aime plus."
"I shouldn't have said you found it so," smiled DeConcressault, "for you change your loves as you change your gloves. La chevelure dorée will be the next, eh?"
"Poor little thing!" said Ernest, bitterly. "I wish her a better fate."
He went to call on la chevelure dorée, nevertheless, the morning after, and found her in the salon alone, greatly to his surprise and pleasure. Nina Gordonwasprettyevenin the morning—as Byron says—and she was much more, she was fascinating, and as perfectly demonstrative and natural as any peasant girl out of the meadows of Arles, ignorant of the magic words toilette, cosmétique, and crinoline.
She received him with evident pleasure and perfect unreserve, which even this daring and skepticalLioncould not twist or contort into boldness, and began to talk fast and gaily.
"Do I like Paris?" she said, in answer to his question. "Oh yes; or at least I should, if I could see it differently. I detest sight-seeing, crowding one's brains with pictures, statues, palaces, Holy Families jostling Polinchinelle, races, mixing up with grand masses, Versailles, clouding St. Cloud—the Trianon rattled through in five minutes—all in inextricable muddle.Ishould like to see Paris at leisure, with some one with whom I had a 'rapport,' my thoughts undisturbed, and my historical associations fresh and fervent."
"I wish I were honored with the office of your guide," said Ernest, smiling. "Do you think you would have a 'rapport' with me?"
She smiled in return. "Yes, I think I should. I cannot tell why. But as it is, my warmest souvenir of Condé is chilled by the offer of an ice, and my tenderest thought of Louise de la Vallière is shivered with the suggestion of dinner."
Vaughan laughed. "Bravo!" thought he. "Thank God this is no tame English icicle. I would give much," he said, "to be able to take my cousin's place, and show you Paris. We would have no such vulgar gastronomical interruptions; we would go through it all perfectly. I would make you hear the very whispers with which La Vallière, under the old oaks of St. Germain, unknowingly, told her love to Louis. In the forest glades of St. Cloud you should see Cinq-Mars and the Royal Hunt riding out in thechasse de nuit; in the gloomy walls of the prisons you should hear André Chénier reciting his last verses, and see Egalité completing his last toilet. The glittering 'Cotillons' on the terraces of Versailles, the fierce canaille surging through the salons of the Tuileries, the Templars dying in the green meadows at the back of St. Antoine—they should all rise up for you under my incantations."
Positively Ernest, bored and blasé, accustomed to look at Paris through the gas-lights of hisLion'slife, warmed into romance to please the eyes that now beamed upon him.
"Ah! that would be delightful," said the girl, her eyes sparkling. "Mr. Ruskinstone, you know, is terrible to me, for he goes about with 'Ruskin' in one hand, 'Murray' in the other, and a Phrase-book or two in his pocket (of course he wants it, as he's a 'classical scholar'), and no matter whatever associations cling around a place, only looks at it in regard to its architectural points. I beg your pardon," she said, interrupting herself with a blush, "I forgot he was your cousin; but really that constant cold stone does tease me so."
At that moment the heavy father, as Ernest irreverently styled the tall, pompous head of one of the first banks in London, who was worth a million if he was worth asou, entered, and the Rev. Eusebius after him, who had been spending a lively morning taking notes among the catacombs. He was prepared to be as cold as a refrigerator, and the banker to follow his example, at finding thisbête noireof the Chaussée d'Antin tête-à-tête with Nina. But Ernest had a sort of haughty high breeding and careless dignity which warned people off from any liberties with him; and Gordon remembered that he knew Paris and itshaute voléeso well that he might be a useful acquaintance if kept at arm's length from Nina, and afterwards dropped. Unlucky man! he actually thought his weak muscles were strong enough to cope with aLion's!
Vaughan took his leave, after offering his box at the Opéra-Comique to Mr. Gordon, and drove to the Jockey Club, pondering much on this new species of thebeau sexe. He was too used to women not to know at a glance that she had nothing bold about her, and yet he was too skeptical to credit that a girl could possibly exist who was neither a coquette nor a prude. As soon as the door closed on him his friends began to open their batteries of scandal.
"How sad it is to see life wasted as my cousin wastes his," said the Warden, balancing a paper-knife thoughtfully, with a depressed air; "frittered away on mere trifles, as valuless and empty as soap-bubbles, but not, alas! so innocent."
"What do you mean?" Nina asked, quickly.
"What do I mean, Miss Gordon?" repeated Eusebius, reproachfully; "what can I mean but the idle whirl of gaiety, the vitiating pleasures, the debts and the vices which are to be laid at poor Ernest's door. Ever since we were boys together, and he was expelled from Rugbyfor going to Coventry fair and staying there all night, he has been going rapidly down the road to ruin."
"He looks very comfortable in his descent," smiled the young lady. "Pray why, after all, shouldn't horses, operas, and Manillas, be as legitimate objects to set one's affections upon as Norman arches and Gregorian chants? He has his dissipations, you have yours. Chacun à son goût!"
The Warden had his reasons for conciliating the young heiress, so he made a feeble effort to smile. "You know as well as I that you do not think what you say, Miss Gordon. Were it merely Vaughan's tastes that were in fault it would not be of such fearful consequence, but unfortunately it is his principles."
"He is utterly without any," said Miss Selina Ruskinstone, who, ten years before, had been deeply and hopelessly in love with Ernest, and never forgave him for not reciprocating the passion.
"He is a skeptic, a gambler, a spendthrift; and a more heartlessless flirt never lived," averred Miss Augusta, who hated the whole of Ernest's sex—even the Chapter—pour cause.
"Gentlemen can't help seeming flirts sometimes, some women pay such attention to them," said Nina, with a mischievous laugh. "Poor Mr. Vaughn! I hope he's not as black as he is painted. His physiognomy tells a different tale; he is just my ideal of 'Ernest Maltravers.' How kind his eyes are; have you ever looked into them, Selina?"
Miss Ruskinstone gave an angry sneer, vouchsafing no other response.
"My dear Nina, how foolishly you talk, about looking into a young man's eyes," frowned her father. "I am surprised to hear you."
Her own eyes opened in astonishment. "Why mayn't I look at them? It is by the eyes that, like a dog, I know whom to like and whom to avoid."
"And pray does your prescience guide you to see a saint in a ruinedLionof the Chaussée d'Antin?" sneered Selina, with another contemptuous sniff.
"Not a saint. I'm not good enough to appreciate the race," laughed Nina. "But I do not believe your cousin to be all you paint him; or, at least, if circumstances have led him into extravagance, I have a conviction that he has a warm heart and a noble character au fond."
"We will hope so," said the Warden, meekly, with an expression which plainly said how vain a hope it was.
"I think we have wasted a great deal too much conversation on a thankless subject," said Selina, with asperity. "Don't you think it time, Mr. Gordon, for us to go to the Louvre?"
That day, as they were driving along the Boulevards, they passed Ernest with Bluette in his carriage going to the Pré Catalan: they all knew her, from having seen her play at the Odéon. Selina and Augusta turned down their mouths, and turned up their eyes. Gordon pulled up his collar, and looked a Brutus in spectacles. Nina colored, and looked vexed. Triumph glittered in Eusebius's meek eyes, but he sighed a pastor's sigh over a lost soul.
The morning after, as they were going into the Exposition des Beaux Arts, they met Vaughan; and no ghostwould have been more unwelcome to the Warden than the distingué figure of his fashionable cousin. Nina was the only one who looked pleased to recognise him, and she, as she returned his smile, forgot that the evening before it had been given to Bluette.
"Are you coming in too?" she asked.
"I was not, but I will with pleasure," said Ernest. And into the Exhibition with them he went, to Ruskinstone's wrath and Gordon's annoyance.
Vaughan was a connoisseur in art. The Warden knew no more than what he took verbatim from the god of his idolatry, Mr. John Ruskin. It was very natural that Nina should listen to the friend of Ingres and Vernet instead of to the second-hand worshipper of Turner. Vaughan, by instinct, dropped his customary tone of compliment—compliment he never used to women he delighted to honor—and talked so charmingly, that Nina utterly forgot the luckless Eusebius, and started when a low, sweet voice said, close beside her, "What, Ernest, you here?"
She turned, and saw a woman about eight-and-twenty, dressed in perfection of taste, with an exquisite figure, and a face of brunette beauty; the rouge most undiscoverable, and the eyes artistically tinted to make them look larger, which, Heaven knows, was needless. She darted a quick look at Vaughan's companion, which Nina gave back with a dash of hauteur. A shade came over his face as he answered her greeting.
"Will you not introduce me to your friend?" said the new comer. "She is of your nation, I fancy, and you know I am entêtée of everything English."
Ernest looked rather gloomy at the compliment, but turning to Nina, begged to introduce her to Madame de Mélusine. The gay, handsome baronne, taking in allthe English girl's points as rapidly as a groom at Tattersall's does a two-year-old's, was chatting volubly to Nina, when the others came up. Gordon, though wont to boast that he belonged to the aristocracy of money, was always ready to fall in the dust before the noblesse of blood, and was gratified at the introduction, remembering to have read in theMoniteurthe name of De Mélusine at the ball at the Tuileries. And the widow was very charming even to the professedly stoical eyes of a Brutus of sixty-two. She soon floated off, however, with her party, giving Vaughan a gay "A ce soir!" and requesting to be allowed the honor of calling on the Gordons.
"Is she a great friend of yours?" asked Nina, when she and he were a little in advance of the others.
"I have known her some time."
"And you are very intimate, I suppose, as she called you by your Christian name?"
He smiled a smile that puzzled Nina. "Oh! we soon get familiar here!"
"Where are you going to see her again this evening?" she persevered, playing with her parasol fringe.
"At her own house—a house that will charm you. By the way, it once belonged to Bussy Rabutin, and it has all Louis Quatorze furniture."
"Is it a dinner?—a ball?"
"No, an Opera supper—she is famed for her Sillery and her mots. Ten to one I shall not go; what amuses one once palls with repetition."
"I don't understand that," said Nina, quickly; "what I like, I like pour toujours."
"Pauvre enfant! you little know life," muttered Ernest. "Ah! Miss Gordon, you are at the happy age when one can believe in the feelings and friendships, and all the charming little romances of existence. But Ihave passed it, and so that I am amused for a moment, so that something takes time off my hands, I look no further, and expect no more. I know well enough the champagne will cease to sparkle, but I drink it while it foams, and don't trouble myself to lament over it. Qu'importe? when one bottle's empty, there is another!"
"Ah! it is such women as Madame de Mélusine who have taught you that doctrine," cried Nina, with an energy that rather startled Ernest, though his nerves were as strong as any man's in Paris. "My romances, as you term them, still I believe sleep in your heart, but the world you live in has stifled them. Do you think amusement will always be enough for you?—do you think you will never want something better than your empty champagne foam?"
"I hope I shall not, mademoiselle," said Vaughan, bitterly, "for I am certain I do not believe in it, and am quite sure I should never get it. Leave me to the roses of my Tritericæ; they are all I shall ever enjoy, and they, at the best, are withered."
"Nina, love," interrupted Selina, coming up with much amiability, "I wasobligedto come and tell you not to bequiteso energetic. All the people in the room are looking at you."
"I dare say they are," said Vaughan, calmly. "It is not often the Parisians have the pleasure of seeing beauty unaffected, and fascinations careless of their own charms. Nature, Selina, is unhappily as rare one side the Channel as the other, and we men appreciate it when we do see it."
When Vaughan parted from them soon after, he swore at himself for three things. First, for having driven Bluette, en plein jour, through the Boulevards, though he had driven Bluette, and such as Bluette, a thousandtimes before; secondly, for having been so weak as to introduce Madame de Mélusine to the Gordons; and, thirdly, for having—he the thorough-pacedLion, whose manual was Rochefoucauld, and tutor in love, De Kock—actually talked romance as if he were Werter or Paul Flemming, or some other sentimental simpleton.
Vaughan, to his great disgust, felt a fit of blue devils stealing on him, hurled one or two rose notes waiting for him into the fire with an oath, smoked half a dozen Manillas fiercely, and then, to get excitement, went to a dinner at the Rocher de Cancale, played écarté with a beau joueur, went to an Opera supper—notto the De Mélusine's—then to Mabille and came home at seven in the morning after a night such as would have raised every hair off Brutus's head, given a triumphant glitter to the Warden's small blue eyes, and possibly even staggered the hot faith of his young champion. Pauline de Mélusine was as good as her word—she did call on the Gordons—and Brutus, stoic though he was, was well pleased; for the baronne, though her nobility only dated from the Restoration, and was not received by the exclusive Legitimists of the old Faubourg St. Germain, had a very pleasant set of her own, and figured among the nouvelle noblesse and bourgeois décorés who fill the vacant places of the De Rochefoucauld, the De Rohan, and the Montmorency, in the "imperial" salons of the Tuileries, where once the noblest blood in Europe was gathered.
"It is painful to me to frequent Ernest's society," the Warden was wont to say, "for every word he utters impresses me but more sadly with the conviction of his lost state. But we are commanded to be in the world though not of it, and, if I shun him, how can I hope to benefit him?"
"True; and, as your cousin, it would scarcely becharitable to avoid him entirely, terrible as we know his habits to be. But there is no necessity to be too intimate, and I do not wish Nina to be too much with him," the banker was accustomed to answer.
"Anglice, Vaughan gets us good introductions, and makes Paris pleasant to us; we'll use him while we want him: when we don't, we will give him his congé."
That's the reading of most of our dear friends' compliments and caresses, isn't it?
Vaughan knew perfectly well that they would like to make a cat's-paw of him, and was the last man likely to play that simple and certainly not agreeable rôle unless it suited him. But he had reasons of his own for forcing Gordon to be civil and obliged to him, despite the prejudices of that English, and therefore, of course, opinionated gentleman. It amused him to mortify Eusebius, whom he saw at a glance was bewitched with the prospect of Nina'sdot, and it amused him very much to see Nina's joyous laughter as he leaned over her chair at the Opéra Comique, to hear her animated satire on Madame de Mélusine, for whom, knowing nothing of her, the young lady had conceived hot aversion, and to listen to her enthusiasm when she poured out to him her vivid imaginings.
Gradually the cafés, and the Boulevards, and the boudoirs missed Ernest while he accompanied Nina through the glades of St. Cloud, or down the Seine to Asnières, or up the slopes of Père la Chaise, in his new pursuit; and often at night he would leave the coulisses, or a lansquenet, or the gas-lights of the Maison Dorée, and the Closerie des Lilas, to watch her thorough enjoyment of a vaudeville, her fervent feeling in an opera, or to waltz with her at a ball, and note her glad recognition of him.
To this girl, Ernest opened his heart and mind as he—being a reserved, proud, and skeptical man—had never done to any one; there was a sympathy and confidence between them, and she learned much of his inner nature as she talked to him soft and low under the forest trees of Fontainebleau, such talk as could not be heard in Bluette's boudoir, under the wax-lights of the Quartier Bréda, or in the flow of the Sillery at la Mélusine's soupers. All this was new to the tiredLion, and amused him immensely. La chevelure dorée was twisting the golden meshes of its net round him, as De Concressault told him one day.
"Nonsense," said Ernest; "have I not two loves already on my hands more than I want?"
"Dethrone them, and promote la petite."
Vaughan turned on his friend with his eyes flashing.
"Bon Dieu! do you take her for a ballet-girl or a grisette?"
"Well, if you don't like that, marry her then, mon cher. You will satisfy your fancy, and get cinquante mille francs de rente—at a sacrifice, of course; but, que veux-tu? There is no medal without its reverse, though a 'lion marié' is certainly an anomaly, an absurdity, and an intense pity."
"Tais-toi," said Ernest, impatiently; "tu es fou! Caught in the toils of a wretched intrigante, in the power of any tailor in the Rue Vivienne, any jeweller in the Palais Royal, my money spent on follies, my life wasted in play, the turf, and worthless women, I have much indeed to offer to a young girl who has wealth, beauty, genius, and heart!"
"All the more reason why you should make a good coup," said Emile, calmly, after listening with pitying surprise to his friend in his new mood. "You have ahandsome face, a fashionable reputation, and a good name. Bah! you can do anything. As for your life, all women like a mauvais sujet, and unless the De Mélusine turn out a Brinvilliers, I don't see what you have to fear."
"When I want your counsel, Emile, I will ask it," said Vaughan, shortly; "but, as I have no intention of going in for the prize, there is no need for you to bet on the chance of the throw."
"Comme tu veux!" said the Parisian, shrugging his shoulders. "That homme de paille, your priestly cousin, will take her back to the English fogs, and make her a much better husband than you'd ever be, mon garçon."
Vaughan moved restlessly.
"The idiot! if I thought so—— The devil take you, Emile! why do you talk of such things?"
At that minute Nina was sitting by one of the windows of their hotel, watching for Ernest, with a bouquet he had sent her on a table by her side; and the Rev. Eusebius was talking in a very low tone to her father. She caught a few words. "Last night—Vaughan at the Frères Provençaux—a souper au cabinet—Mademoiselle Céline, première danseuse—quite terrible," &c., &c.
Nina flushed scarlet, and turned round. "If you blame your cousin, Mr. Ruskinstone, why were you there yourself?"
The Warden colored too. With him, as with a good many, foreign air relaxed the severity of the Decalogue, and what was sin at home, where everybody knew it, was none at all abroad—under the rose. Some dear pharisees will not endanger their souls by a carpet-dance in England, but if a little bird followed them in their holiday across the Channel, it might chance to see them disporting under a domino noir.
"I had been," he stammered, "to see, as you know, a beautiful specimen of the arcboutant in a ruined chapel of the Carmélites, some miles down the Seine. It was very late, and I was very tired, so turned into the Frères Provençaux to take some little refreshment, and I there saw my unhappy cousin in society whichought, Miss Gordon, to disqualify him for yours. It is very painful to me to mention such things to you. I never thought you overheard——"
"Then, if it is very painful to you," Nina burst in, impetuously, herbouche de rose, as De Kerroualle called it, curving haughtily, "why are you ceaselessly raking up every possible bit of scandal that you can against your cousin? His life does not clash with yours, his acts do not matter to you, his extravagance does not rob you. I used to fancy charity should cover a multitude of sins, but it seems to me that, now-a-days, clergymen, like Dr. Watt's naughty dogs, only delight to bark and bite."
"You are cruelly unjust," answered the Warden, in those smooth tones that irritate one much more than "hard swearing." "I have no other wish than Christian kindness to poor Ernest. If, in my place as pastor, I justly condemn his errors and vices, it is only through a loving desire to wean him from his downward course."
"Your love is singularly vindictive," said his vehement young opponent, her cheeks hot and her eyes bright. "No good was ever yet done to a man by proclaiming his faults right and left.Ishould like you much better, Mr. Ruskinstone, if you said, candidly, I don't like my cousin, and I have never forgiven him for thrashing me at Rugby, and playing football better than I did."
Eusebius winced at this little touch up of his bygone years, but he smiled a benign, superior, pitying smile. "Such petitesses, I thank Heaven, are utterly beneathme, and I should have fancied Miss Gordon was too generous to suppose them. God forbid that I should envy poor Vaughan his dazzling qualities. I sorrow over him as a relative and a precious human soul, but as a minister of our holy Church I neither can, nor will, countenance his gross violations of all her divinest laws." With which peroration the Warden, with a sigh, took up a work on "The Early English Piscini and Aspersoria," and became immersed therein.
"Poor Mr. Vaughan!" cried Nina, impatiently. "Probably he is too wise to concern himself about what people buzz in his absence, or else he need be cased in mail to avoid being stung to death with the musquito bites of scandal."
Gordon came down on her with his heavy artillery. "Silence, Nina! you do not know what you are defending. I fear that no slander can darken Mr. Vaughan's character more than he merits."
"A gambler—a roué—a lover of married woman, of dancing-girls," murmured Eusebius, in an aside, meant, like those on the stage, to tell killingly with the audience.
Nina flushed as scarlet as the camellias in her bouquet, and put up her head with a haughty gesture. "Here comes the subject of your vituperation, Mr. Ruskinstone, so you can repeat your denunciations, and favor him with a sermon in person—unless, indeed, the secular recollections of Rugby intimidate the religious arm."
I fear something as irreverent as "Little devil!" rose to the Warden's pious lips as he flashed a fierce glance at her from his pale-blue eyes, for he loved not her, but the splendiddotwhich the banker was sure to pay down if his son-in-law were to his taste. He caught his cousin's glance as he came into the salons, and in the superb scorn gleaming in Ernest's dark eyes, Eusebius saw thatthey were not merely enemies, but—rivals: a Warden with Church principles, all the cardinal virtues, strict morality, and money; and aLionwith Paris principles (if any), great fascinations, debts, entanglements, and an empty purse. Which will win, with Nina for the cup and Gordon for the umpire?
"Qui cherchez-vous, petite?"
The speaker was la Mélusine, and the hearer was Nina who considerably resented the half-patronising, half mocking, yet intensely amiable manner the widow chose to assume towards her. Gordon was stricken with warm admiration of madame, and never inquired intohermorality, only too pleased when she condescended to talk to or invite him. They had met at a soirée at some intimate friends of Vaughan's in the Champs Elysées. (Ernest was a favorite wherever he went, and the good-natured French people at once took up his relatives to please him.) He was not there himself, but the baronne's quick eyes soon caught and construed her restless glances through the crowded rooms.
"Je ne cherche personne, madame," said Nina, haughtily. Dressed simply in white tulle, with the most exquisite flowers to be had out of the Palais Royal in the famous golden hair, which gleamed in the gaslight like sunshine, she aroused the serpent which lay hid in the roses of madame's smiles.
Pauline laughed softly, and flirted her fan. "Nay, nay, mignonne, those soft eyes are seeking some one. Who is it? Ah! it is that méchant Monsieur Vaughan n'est-ce pas? He is very handsome, certainly, but