On dit an villageQu'Argire est volage."
On dit an villageQu'Argire est volage."
"Madame's own thoughts possibly suggest the supposition of mine," said Nina, coldly.
"Comme ces Anglaises sont impolies," thought the baronne. "No, indeed," she said, laughing carelessly, "I know Ernest too well to let my thoughts dwell on him. He is charming to talk to, to waltz with, to flirt with, but from anything further Dieu nous garde! Lauzun himself were not more dangerous or more unstable."
"You speak as bitterly, madame, as if you had suffered from the fickleness," said Nina, with a contemptuous curl of her soft lips. Sweet temper as she was, she could thrust a spear in her enemy's side when she liked.
Madame's eyes glittered like a rattlesnake's. Nina's chance ball shot home. But madame was a woman of the world, and could mask her batteries with a skill of which Nina, with her impetuousabandon, was incapable. She smiled very sweetly, as she answered, "No, petite I have unhappily seen too much of the world not to know that we must never put our trust in those charming mauvais sujets. At your age, I dare say I should not have been proof against your countryman's fascinations, but now, I know just how much his fondest vows are worth, and I have been deaf to them all, for I would not let my heart mislead me against my reason and my conscience. Ah, petite! you little guess what the traitor word 'love' means here, in Paris. We women growaccustomed to our fate, but the lesson is hard sometimes."
"You have been reading 'Mes Confidences,' lately?" asked Nina, with a sarcastic flash of her brilliant eyes.
"How cruel! Do you suppose I can have noémotionsexcept I learn them second-hand through Lamartine or Delphine Gay? You are very satirical, Miss Gordon——How strange!" said the baronne, interrupting herself; "your bouquet is the fac-simile of mine! Look! De Kerroualle sent you that I fancy? You know he raffoles of you. I was very silly to use mine, but Mr. Vaughan sent me such a pretty note with it, that I had not the resolution to disappoint him. Poor Ernest!" And Madame sighed softly, as if bewailing in her tender heart the woes her obduracy caused. The blood flamed up in Nina's cheeks, and her hand clenched hard on Ernest's flowers: theywerethe fac-similes of the widow's; delicate pink blossoms, mixed with white azalias. "Is he here to-night, do you know?" madame continued. "I dare say not; he is behind the coulisses, most likely. Céline, the new danseuse from the Fenice, makes her début to-night. Here comes poor Gaston to petition for a valse. Be kind to him, pray."
She herself went off to the ball-room, and the effect of her exordium was to make Nina very disagreeable to poor De Kerroualle, whom she really liked, and who wasentêtéabout her. Not long afterwards, Nina saw in the distance Vaughan's haughty head and powerful brow, and her silly little heart beat as quick as a pigeon's just caught in the trap: he was talking to the widow.
"Look at our young English friend," Pauline was saying, "how she is flirting with Gaston, and De Lafitolle, and De Concressault. Certainly, when your Englishwomen do coquet, they go further than any of us."
"Est-ce possible?" said Ernest, raising his eyebrows.
"Méchant!" cried madame, with a chastising blow of her fan. "But, do you know, I admire the petite very much. I believe all really beautiful women had that rare golden hair of hers—Lucrezia Borgia (I could never bear Grisi asLucrezia, for that very reason). La Cenci, the Duchess of Portsmouth, Ænone—and Helen, I am sure, netted Paris with those gold threads. Don't you think it is very lovely?"
"I do, indeed," said Vaughan, with unconscious warmth.
Madame laughed gaily, but there was a disagreeable glitter in her eye. "What, fickle already? Ah well, I give you full leave."
"And example, madame," said Ernest, as he bowed and left her side, glad to have struck the first blow of his freedom from this handsome tyrant, who was as capricious and exacting as she was clever and captivating. But fetters made of fairer roses were over Ernest now, and he never bethought himself of the probable vengeance of that bitterest foe, a woman who is piqued.
"Tout beau!" thought Pauline, as she saw him waltzing with Nina. "Mais je vous donnerai encore l'échec et mat, mon brave joueur."
"Did you give Madame de Mélusine the bouquet she carries this evening?" asked Nina, as he whirled her round.
"No," said Ernest, astonished. "Why do you ask?"
"Because she said you did," answered Nina, never accustomed to conceal anything; "and, besides, it is exactly like mine."
"Infernal woman!" muttered Ernest. "How could you for a moment believe that I would have so insulted you?"
"I didn't believe it," said Nina, lifting her frank eyes to his. "But how very late you are; have you been at the ballet?"
His face grew stern. "Did she tell you that?"
"Yes. But why did you go there, instead of coming to dance with me? Do you like those danseuses better than you do me? What was Céline's or anybody's début, to you?"
Ernest smiled at the native indignation of the question. "Never think that I do not wish to be with you; but—I wanted oblivion, and one cannot shake off old habits. Did you miss me among all those other men that you have always round you?"
"How unkind that is!" whispered Nina, indignantly. "You know I always do."
He held her closer to him in the waltz, and she felt his heart beat quicker, but she got no other answer.
That night Nina stood before her toilette-table, putting her flowers in water, and some hot tears fell on the azalias.
"I will have faith in him," she cried, passionately; "though all the world be witness against him, I will believe in him. Whatever his life may have been, his heart is warm and true; they shall never make me doubt it."
Her last thoughts were of him, and when she slept his face was in her dreams, while Ernest, with some of the wildest men of his set, smoked hard and drank deep in his chambers to drive away, if he could, the fiends of Regret and Passion and the memory of a young, radiant, impassioned face, which lured him to an unattainable future.
"Nina dearest," said Selina Ruskinstone, affectionately, the morning after, "I hope you will not think me unkind—you know I have no wish but for your good—butdon'tyou think it would be better to be a little more—more reserved, a little less free, with Mr. Vaughan?"
"Explain yourself more clearly," said Nina, tranquilly. "Do you wish me to send to Turkey for a veil and a guard of Bashi-Bazouks, or do you mean that Mr. Vaughan is so attractive that he is better avoided, like a mantrap or a Maëlstrom?"
"Don't be ridiculous," retorted Augusta; "you know well enough what we mean, and certainly you do run after him a great deal too much."
"You are soverydemonstrative," sighed Selina, "and it is so easily misconstrued. It is not feminine to court any man so unblushingly."
Nina's eyes flashed, and the blood colored her brow. "I am not afraid of being misconstrued by Mr. Vaughan," she said, haughtily; "gentlemen are kinder and wiser judges in those things than our sex."
"I wouldn't advise you to trust to Ernest's tender mercies," sneered Augusta.
"My dear child, remember his principles," sighed Selina; "his life—his reputation——"
"Leave both him and me alone," retorted Nina, passionately. "I will not stand calmly by to hear him slandered with your vague calumnies. You preach religion often enough; practice it now, and show more common kindness to your cousin: I do not say charity, for I am sick of the cant word, and he is above your pity. You think me utterly lost because I dance, and laugh, and enjoy my life, but, bad asmyprinciples are, I should be shocked—yes, Selina, and I should think I merited little mercy myself, were I as harsh and bitter upon any one as you are upon him. How canyoujudge him?—how can you say what nobility, and truth, and affection—thatwill shame your own cold pharisaism—may lie in his heart unrevealed?—how can you dare to censurehim?"
In the door of the salon, listening to the lecture his young champion was giving these two blue, opinionated, and strongly pious ladies, stood Ernest, his face even paler than usual, and his eyes with a strange mixture of joy and pain in them. Nina colored scarlet, but went forward to meet him with undisguised pleasure, utterly regardless of the sneering lips and averted eyes of the Miss Ruskinstones. He had come to go with them to St. Germain, and, with a dexterous manœuvre, took the very seat in the carriage opposite Nina that Eusebius had planned for himself. But the Warden was no match for theLionin such affairs, and, being exiled to the barouche with Gordon and Augusta, took from under the seat a folio of the "Stones of Venice," and read sulkily all the way.
"My dear fellow," said Vaughan, when they reached St. Germain, "don't you think you would prefer to sit in the carriage, and finish that delightful work, to coming to see some simple woods and terraces? If you would, pray don't hesitate to say so; I am sure Miss Gordon will excuse your absence."
The solicitous courtesy of Ernest's manner was boiling oil to the fire raging in the Warden's gentle breast, and Eusebius, besides, was not quick at retorts. "I am not guilty of any such bad taste," he said, stiffly, "though I do discover a charm in severe studies, which I believe you never did."
"No, never," said Ernest, laughing; "my genius does not lie that way; and I've no vacant bishopric in my mind's eye to make such studies profitable. Even you, you know, light of the Church as you are, want recreation sometimes. Confess now, the chansons à boire last nightsounded pleasant after long months of Faithandgrace services!"
Eusebius looked much as I have seen a sleek tom-cat, who bears a respectable character generally, surprised in surreptitiously licking out of the cream-jug. He had the night before (when he was popularly supposed to be sitting under Adolphe Monod) tasted rather too many petits verres up at the Pré Catalan, utterly unconscious of his cousin's proximity. The pure-minded soul thus cruelly caught looked prayers of piteous entreaty to Vaughan not to damage his milk-white reputation by further revelation of this unlucky detour into the Broad Road; and Ernest, who, always kind-hearted, never hit a man when he was down, contented himself with saying:
"Ah! well, we are none of us pure alabaster, though some of the sepulchresdocontrive to whiten themselves up astonishingly. My father, poor man, once wished to put me in the Church. Do you think I should have graced it, Selina?"
"I can't say I do," sneered Selina.
"You think I shoulddisgraceit? Very probably. I am not good at 'canting.'" And giving Nina his arm, the Warden being much too confused to forestall him, he whispered: "when is that atrocious saint going to take himself over the water? Couldn't we bribe his diocesan to call him before the Arches Court? Surely those long coats, so like the little wooden men in Noah's Ark, and that straightened hair, so mathematically parted down the centre, look 'perverted' enough to warrant it."
Nina shook her head. "Unhappily, he is here for six months for ill health!—the sick-leave of clergymen who wish for a holiday, and are too holy to leave their flock without an excuse to society."
Vaughan laughed, then sighed. "Six months—and you have been here four already! Eusebius hates me cordially—all my English relatives do, I believe; we do not get on together. They are too cold and conventional for me. I have some of the warm Bohemian blood, though God knows I've seen enough to chill it to ice by this time; but it isnotchilled—so much the worse for me," muttered Ernest "Tell me," he said, abruptly—"tell me why you took the trouble to defend me so generously this morning?"
She looked up at him with her frank, beaming regard. "Because they dare to misjudge you, and they know nothing, and are not worthy to know anything of your real self."
He pressed his lips together as if in bodily pain. "And what do you know?"
"Have you not yourself said that you talk to me as you talk to no one else?" answered Nina, impetuously; "besides—I cannot tell why, but the first day I met you I seemed to find some friend that I had lost before. I was certain that you would never misconstrue anything I said, and I felt that I saw further into your heart and mind than any one else could do. Was it not very strange?" She stopped, and looked up at him. Ernest bent his eyes on the ground, and breathed fast.
"No, no," he said at last; "yours is only an ideal of me. If you knew me as I really am, you would cease to feel the—the interest that you say——"
He stopped abruptly; facile as he was at pretty compliments, and versed in tender scenes as he had been from his school-days, the longing to make this girl love him, and his struggle not to breathe love to her, deprived him of his customary strength and nonchalance.
"I do not fear to know you as you are," said Nina,gently. "I do not think you yourself allow all the better things that there are in you. People have not judged you rightly, and you have been too proud to prove their error to them. You have found pleasure in running counter to the prudish and illiberal bigots who presumed to judge you; and to a world you have found heartless and false you have not cared to lift the domino and mask you wore."
Vaughan sighed from the bottom of his heart, and walked on in silence for a good five minutes. "Promise me, Nina," he said at length with an effort, "that no matter what you hear against me, you will not condemn me unheard."
"I promise," she answered, raising her eyes to his, brighter still for the color in her checks. It was the first time he had called her Nina.
"Miss Gordon," said Eusebius, hurriedly overtaking them, "pray come with me a moment: there is the most exquisite specimen of the Flamboyant style in an archway——"
"Thank you for your good intentions," said Nina, pettishly, "but really, as you might know by this time, I never can see any attractions in your prosaic and matter-of-fact-fact study."
"It might be more profitable than——"
"Than thinking of La Vallière and poor Bragelonne, and all the gay glories of the exiled Bourbons?" laughed Nina. "Very likely; but romance is more to my taste than granite. You would never have killed yourself, like Bragelonne, for the beaux yeux of Louise de la Beaume-sur-Blanc, would you?"
"I trust," said Eusebius, stiffly, "that I should have had a deeper sense of the important responsibilities of the gift of life than to throw it away because a silly girl preferred another."
"You are very impolitic," said Ernest, with a satirical smile. "No lady could feel remorse at forsaking you, if you could get over it so easily."
"Hewouldget over it easily," laughed Nina. "You would call her Delilah, and all the Scripture bad names, order Mr. Ruskin's new work, turn your desires to a deanship, marry some bishop's daughter with high ecclesiastical interest, and console yourself in the bosom of your Mother Church—eh, Mr. Ruskinstone?"
"You are cruelly unjust," sighed Eusebius. "You little know——"
"The charms of architecture? No; and I never shall," answered his tormentor, humming the "Queen of the Roses," and waltzing down the forest glade, where they were walking. "How severe you look!" she said as she waltzed back. "Isthatwrong, too? Miriam danced before the ark and Jephtha's daughter."
The Warden appeared not to hear. Certainly his mode of courtship was singular.
"Ernest," he said, turning to his cousin as the rest of the party came up, "I had no idea your sister was in Paris. I have not seen her since she was fourteen. I should not have known her in the least."
"Margaret is in India with her husband," answered Vaughan. "What are you dreaming of? Where have you seen her?"
"I saw her in your chambers," answered the Warden, slowly. "I passed three times yesterday, and she was sitting in the centre window each time."
"Pshaw! You dreamt it in your sleep last night. Margaret's in Vellore, I assure you."
"I saw her," said the Warden, softly; "or, at least, I saw some lady, whom I naturally presumed to be your sister."
Ernest, who had not colored for fifteen years, and would have defied man or woman to confuse him, flushed to his very temples.
"You are mistaken," he said, decidedly. "There is no woman in my rooms."
Eusebius raised his eyebrows, bent his head, smiled and sighed. More polite disbelief was never expressed. The Miss Ruskinstones would have blushed if they could; as they could not, they drew themselves bolt upright, and put their parasols between them and the reprobate. Nina, whose hand was still in Vaughan's arm, turned white, and flashed a quick, upward look at him; then, with a glance at Eusebius, as fiery as the eternal wrath that that dear divine was accustomed to deal out so largely to other people, she led Ernest up to her father, who being providentially somewhat deaf, had not heard this by-play, and said, to her cousin's horror, "Papa, dear, Mr. Vaughan wants you to dine with him at Tortoni's to-night, to meet M. de Vendanges. You will be very happy, won't you?"
Ernest pressed her little hand against his side, and thanked her with his eyes.
Gordon was propitiated for that day; he was not likely to quarrel with a man who could introduce him to "Son Altesse Monseigneur le Duc de Vendanges."
In a little cabinet de peinture, in a house in the Place Vendôme, apart from all the other people, who having come to a déjeûner were now dispersed in the music rooms, boudoirs, and conservatories, sat Madame de Mélusine,talking to Gordon, flatteringly, beguilingly, bewitchingly, as that accomplished widow could. The banker found her charming, and really, under her blandishments, began to believe, poor old fellow, that she was in love with him!
"Ah! by-the-by, cher monsieur," began madame, when she had soft-soaped him into a proper frame of mind, "I want to speak to you about that mignonne Nina. You cannot tell, you cannot imagine, what interest I take in her."
"You do her much honor, madame," replied her bourgeois gentilhomme, always stiff, however enraptured he might feel internally.
"The honor is mine," smiled Pauline. "Yes, I do feel much interest in her; there is a sympathy in our natures, I am certain, and—and, Monsieur Gordon, I cannot see that darling girl on the brink of a precipice without stretching out a hand to snatch her from the abyss."
"Precipice—abyss—Nina! Good Heavens! my dear madame, what do you mean?" cried Gordon—a fire, an elopement, and the small-pox, all presenting themselves to his mind.
"No, no," repeated madame, with increasing vehemence, "I will not permit any private feelings, I will not allow my own weakness to prevent me from saving her. It would be a crime, a cruelty, to let your innocent child be deceived, and rendered miserable for all time, because I lack the moral courage to preserve her. Monsieur, I speak to you, as I am sure I may, as one friend to another, and I am perfectly certain that you will not misjudge me. Answer me one thing; no impertinent curiosity dictates the question. Do you wish your daughter married to Mr. Vaughan?"
"Married to Vaughan!" exclaimed the startled banker; "I'd sooner see her married to a crossing sweeper. Shenever thought of such a thing. Impossible! absurd! she'll marry my friend Ruskinstone as soon as she comes of age. Marry Vaughan! a fellow without a penny——"
Pauline laid her soft, jewelled hand on his arm:
"My dear friend,hethinks of it if you do not, and I am much mistaken if dear Nina is not already dazzled by his brilliant qualities. Your countryman is a charming companion, no one can gainsay that; but, alas! he is a roué, a gambler, an adventurer, who, while winning her young girl's affections, has only in view the wealth which he hopes he will gain with her. It is painful to me to say this" (and tears stood in madame's long, velvet eyes). "We were good friends before he wanted more than friendship, while poor De Mélusine was still living, and his true character was revealed to me. It would be false delicacy to allow your darling Nina to become his victim for want of a few words from me, though I know, if he were aware of my interference, the inference he would basely insinuate from it. But you," whispered madame, brushing the tears from her eyes, and giving him an angelic smile, "I need not fear that you would ever misjudge me?"
"Never, I swear, most generous of women!" said the banker, kissing the snow-white hand, very clumsily, too. "I'll tell the fellow my mind directly—an unprincipled, gambling——"
"Non, non, je vous en prie, monsieur!" cried the widow, really frightened, for this would not have suited her plans at all. "You would put me in the power of that unscrupulous man. He would destroy my reputation at once in his revenge."
"But what am I to do?" said the poor gulled banker. "Nina's a will of her own, and if she take a fancy to this confounded——"
"Leave that to me," said la baronne, softly. "I have proofs which will stagger her most obstinate faith in her lover. Meanwhile give him no suspicion, go to his supper on Tuesday, and—you are asked to Vauvenay, accept the invitation—and conclude the fiançailles with Monsieur le Ministre as soon as you can."
"But—but, madame," stammered this new Jourdain to his enchanting Dorimène, "Vauvenay is an exile. I shall not see you there?"
"Ah, silly man," laughed the widow, "I shall be only two miles off. I am going to stay with the Salvador; they leave Paris in three weeks. Listen—your daughter is singing 'The Swallows.' Her voice is quite as good as Ristori's."
Three hours after, madame held another tête-à-tête in that boudoir. This time the favored mortal was Vaughan. They had had a pathetic interview, of which the pathos hardly moved Ernest as much as the widow desired.
"You love me no longer, Ernest," she murmured, the tears falling down her cheeks—her rouge was the product of high art, and never washed off—"I see it, I feel it; your heart is given to that English girl. I have tried to jest about it; I have tried to affect indifference, but I cannot. The love you once won will be yours to the grave."
Ernest listened, a satirical smile on his lips.
"I should feel more grateful," he said, calmly, "if the gift had not been given to so many; it will be a great deal of trouble to you to love us all to our graves. And your new friend Gordon, do you intend cherishing his grey hairs, too, till the gout puts them under the sod?"
She fell back sobbing with exquisiteabandon. No deserted Calypso'sposewas ever more effective.
"Ernest, Ernest! that I should live to be so insulted, and by you!"
"Nay, madame, end this vaudeville," said he bitterly. "I know well enough that you hate me, or why have you troubled yourself to coin the untruths about me that you whispered to Miss Gordon?"
"Ah! have you no pity for the first mad vengeance dictated by jealousy and despair?" murmured Pauline. "Once there was attraction in this face for you, Ernest; have some compassion, some sympathy——"
Well as he knew the worth of madame's tears, Ernest, chivalric and generous at heart, was touched.
"Forgive me," he said, gently, "and let us part. You know now, Pauline, that she has my deepest, my latest love. It were disloyalty to both did we meet again save in society."
"Farewell, then," murmured Pauline. "Think gently of me, Ernest, for Ihaveloved you more than you will ever know now."
She rose, and, as he bent towards her, kissed his forehead. Then, floating from the room, passed the Reverend Eusebius, standing in the doorway, looking in on this parting scene. The widow looked at herself in her mirror that night with a smile of satisfaction.
"C'est bien en train," she said, half aloud. "Le fou! de penser qu'il puisse me braver. Je ne l'aime plus, c'est vrai, mais je ne veux pas qu'elle réussisse."
Nina went to bed very happy. Ernest had sat next her at the déjeûner; and afterwards at a ball had waltzed often with her and with nobody else; and his eyes had talked love in the waltzes though his tongue never had.
Ernest went to his chambers, smoked hard, half mad with the battle within him, and took three grains of opium, which gave him forgetfulness and sleep. He woke, tired and depressed, to hear the gay hum of life in the street below, and to remember he had promised Nina to meet them at Versailles.
It was Sunday morning. In England, of course, Gordon would have gone up to the sanctuary, listened to Mr. Bellew, frowned severely on the cheap trains, and, after his claret, read edifying sermons to his household; but in Paris there would be nobody to admire the piety, and the "grandes eaux" only play once a week, you know—on Sundays. So his Sabbath severity was relaxed, and down to Versailles he journied. There must be something peculiar in continental air, for it certainly stretches our countrymen's morality and religion uncommonly: it is only up at Jerusalem that our pharisees worship. Eusebius dare not go—he'd be sure to meet a brother-clerical, who might have reported the dereliction at home—so that Vaughan, despite Gordon's cold looks, kept by Nina's side though he wasn't alone with her, and when they came back in thewagonthe banker slept and the duenna dozed, and he talked softly and low to her—not quite love, but something very like it—and as they neared Paris he took the little hand with its delicate Jouvin glove in his, and whispered,
"Remember your promise: I can brave, and have braved most things, but I could not bear your scorn.Thatwould make me a worse man than I have been, if, as some folks would tell you, such a thing be possible."
It was dark, but I dare say the moonbeams shining on the chevelure dorée showed him a pair of truthful, trusting eyes that promised never to desert him.
The day after he had, by dint of tact and strategy, planned to spend entirely with Nina. He was going with them to the races at Chantilly, then to the Gaité to see the first representation of a vaudeville of a friend of his, and afterwards he had persuaded Gordon to enter the Lion's den, and let Nina grace a petit souper at No. 10, Rue des Mauvais Sujets, Chaussée d'Antin.
The weather was delicious, the race-ground full, if notquite so crowded as the Downs on Derby Day. Ernest cast away his depression, he gave himself up to the joy of being loved, his wit had never rung finer nor his laugh clearer than as he drove back to Paris opposite Nina. He had never felt in higher spirits than, after having given carte blanche to a cordon bleu for the entertainment, he looked round his salons, luxurious as Eugène Sue's, and perfumed with exotics from the Palais Royal, and thought of one rather different in style to the women that had been wont to drink his Sillery and grace his symposia.
He knew well enough she loved him, and his heart beat high as he put a bouquet of white flowers into a gold bouquetière to take to her.
On his lover-like thoughts the voice of one of his parrots—Ernest had almost as many pets as there are in the Jardin des Plantes—broke in, screaming "Bluette! Bluette! Sacre bleu, elle est jolie! Bluette! Bluette!"
The recollection was unwelcome. Vaughan swore a "sacre bleu!" too. "Diable! she mustn't hear that François, put that bird out of the way. He makes a such a confounded row."
The parrot, fond of him, as all things were that knew him, sidled up, arching its neck, and repeating what De Concressault had taught it: "Fi donc, Ernest! Tu es volage! Tu ne m'aimes plus! Tu aimes Pauline!"
"Devil take the bird!" thought its master; "even he'll be witness against me." And as he went down stairs to his cab, a chorus of birds shouting "Tu aimes Pauline!" followed him, and while he laughed, he sighed to think that even these unconscious things could tell her how little his love was worth. He forgot all but his love, however, when he leaned over her chair in the Gaités and saw that, strenuously as De Concressault and De Kerroualle sought to distract her attention, and manyas were the lorgnons levelled at the chevelure dorée, all her thoughts and smiles were given to him.
Ernest had never, even in his careless boyhood, felt so happy as he did that night as he handed her into Gordon's carriage, and drove to the Chaussée d'Antin; and though Gordon sat there heavy and solemn, looming like an iceberg on Ernest's golden future, Vaughan forgot him utterly, and only looked at the sunshine beaming on him from radiant eyes that, skeptic in her sex as he was from experience, he felt would always be true to him. The carriage stopped at No. 10, Rue des Mauvais Sujets. He had given her one or two dinners with the Senecterre, the De Salvador, and other fine ladies—grand affairs at the Frères Provençaux that would have satisfied Brillat-Savarin—but she had never been to his rooms before, and she smiled joyously in his face as he lifted her out—the smile that had first charmed him at the Français. He gave her his arm, and led her across the salle, bending his head down to whisper a welcome. Gordon and Selina and several men followed. Selina felt that it was perdition to enter theLion'sden, but a fat old vicomte, on whom she'd fixed her eye, was going, and the "femmes de trente ans" that Balzac champions risk their souls rather than risk their chances when the day is far spent, and good offers grow rare.
Ernest's Abyssinian, mute, subordinate to that grand gentleman, M. François, ushered them up the stairs, making furtive signs to his master, which Vaughan was too much absorbed to notice. François, in all his glory, flung open the door of the salon. In the salon a sight met Ernest's eyes which froze his blood more than if all the dead had arisen out of their graves on the slopes of Père la Chaise.
The myriad of wax-lights shone on the rooms, fragrant with the perfume of exotics, gleamed on the supper-table, gorgeous with its gold plate and its flowers, lighted up the aviary with its brilliant hues of plumage, and showed to full perfection the snowy shoulders, raven hair, and rose-hued dress of a woman lying back in a fauteuil, laughing, as De Cheffontaine, a man but slightly known to Ernest, leaned over her, fanning her. On a sofa in an alcove reclined another girl, young, fair, and pretty, the amber mouthpiece of a hookah between her lips, and a couple of young fellows at her feet.
The brunette was Bluette, who played the soubrette rôles at the Odéon; the blonde was Céline Gamelle, the new première danseuse. Bluette rose from the depths of her amber satin fauteuil, with her littlepétillanteyes laughing, and her small plump hands stretched out in gesticulation. "Méchant! Comme tu es tard, Ernest. Nous avons été ici si longtemps—dix minutes au moins! And dis is you leetler new Ingleesh friend. How do you do, my dear?"
Nina, white as death, shrank from her, clinging with both hands to Ernest's arms. As pale as she, Vaughan stood staring at the actress, his lips pressed convulsively together, the veins standing out on his broad, high forehead. The boldLionhunted into his lair, for once lost all power, all strength.
Gordon looked over Nina's shoulder into the room. He recognized the women at a glance, and, with his heavy brow dark as night, he glared on Ernest in a silence more ominous than words or oaths, and snatching Nina's arm from his, he drew her hand within his own, and dragged her from the room.
Ernest sprang after him. "Good God! you do not suppose me capable of this. Stay one instant. Hear me——"
"Let us pass, sir," thundered Gordon, "or by Heaven this insult shall not go unavenged."
"Nina, Nina!" cried Ernest, passionately, "do you at least listen!—you at least will not condemn——"
Nina wrenched her hands from her father, and turned to him, a passion of tears falling down her face. "No, no! have I not promised you?"
With a violent oath Gordon carried her to her carriage. It drove away, and Ernest, his lips set, his face white, and a fierce glare in his dark eyes that made Bluette and Céline tremble, entered his salons a second time, so bitter an anguish, so deadly a wrath marked in his expressive countenance, that even the Frenchmen hushed their jests, and the women shrunk away, awed at a depth of feeling they could not fathom or brave.
The fierce anathemas of Gordon, the "Christian" lamentations of Eusebius, the sneers of Selina, the triumphs of Augusta, all these vials of wrath were poured forth on Ernest, in poor little Nina's ears, the whole of the next day. She had but one voice among many to raise in his defence, and she had no armor but her faith in him. Gordon vowed with the same breath that she should never see Vaughan again, and that she should engage herself to Ruskinstone forthwith. Eusebius poured in at one ear his mild milk-and-water attachment, and, in the other, details of Ernest's scene in the boudoir with Madame de Mélusine, or, at least, what he had seen of it,i. e.her parting caress. Selina rang the changes on her immodesty in loving a man who had never proposed to her; and Augusta drew lively pictures of the eternal fires which were already being kept up below, ready for theLion'sreception. Against all these furious batteries Nina stood firm. All their sneers and arguments could not shake her belief, all her father's commands—and, when he was roused, the old banker was very fierce—could not move her to promise not to see Ernest again, or alter her firm repudiation of the warden's proposals.The thunder rolled, the lightning flamed, the winds screamed all to no purpose, the little reed that one might have fancied would break, stood steady.
The day passed, and the next passed, and there were no tidings of Ernest. Nina's little loyal heart, despite its unhesitating faith, began to tremble lest it should have wrecked itself: but then, she thought of his eyes, and she felt that all the world would never make her mistrust him.
On thesurlendemainthe De Mélusine called. Gordon and Eusebius were out, and Nina wished her to be shown up. Ill as the girl felt, she rose haughtily and self-possessed to greet madame, as, announced by her tall chasseur, with his green plume, the widow glided into the room.
Pauline kissed her lightly (there are no end of Judases among the dear sex), and, though something in Nina's eye startled her, she sat down beside her, and began to talk most kindly, most sympathisingly. She waschagrinée, désoléethat herchèreNina should have been so insulted; every one knew M. Vaughan was quiteentêtéwith that little, horrid, coarse thing, Bluette; but it was certainly very shocking; men were suchdémons. The affair was alreadyrépanduein Paris; everybody was talking of it. Ernest was unfortunately so well known; he could not be in his senses; she almost wished hewasmad, it would be the only excuse for him; wild as he was, she should scarcely have thought, &c., &c., &c. "Ah! chère enfant," madame went on at the finish, "you do not know these men—I do. I fear you have been dazzled by this naughty fellow; heisvery attractive, certainly: if so, though it will be a sharp pang, it will be better to know his real character at once. Voyez donc! he has been persuading you that you were all the world to him, while at the same time, he has been trying to make mebelieve the same. See, only two days ago he sent me this."
She held out a miniature. Nina, who hitherto had listened in haughty silence, gave a sharp cry of pain as she saw Vaughan's graceful figure, stately head, and statue-like features. But, before the widow could pursue her advantage, Nina rallied, threw back her head, and said, her soft lips set sternly:
"If you repulsed his love, why was he obliged to repulse yours? Why did you tell him on Saturday night that 'you had loved him more than he would ever know now?'"
The shot Eusebius had unconsciously provided, struck home. Madame was baffled. Her eyes sank under Nina's, and she colored through her rouge.
"You have played two rôles, madame," said Nina, rising, "and not played them with you usual skill. Excuse my English ill-breeding, if I ask you to do me the favor of ending this comedy."
"Certainly, mademoiselle, if it is your wish," answered the widow, now smiling blandly. "If it please you to be blind, I have no desire to remove the bandage from your eyes. Seulement, je vous prie de me pardonner mon indiscrétion, et j'ai l'honneur, mademoiselle, de vous dire adieu!"
With the lowest ofrévérencesmadame glided from the room, and, as the door closed, Nina bowed her head on the miniature left behind in thedéroute, and burst into tears.
Scarcely had la Mélusine's barouche rolled away, when another visitor was shown in, and Nina, brushing the tears from her cheeks, looked up hurriedly, and saw a small woman, finely dressed, with a Shetland veil on, through which her small black eyes roved listlessly.
"Mademoiselle," she said, in very quick but very badEnglish, "I is come to warn you against dat ver wrong man, Mr. Vaughan. I have like him, helas! I have like him too vell, but I do not vish you to suffer too."
Nina knew the voice in a moment, and rose like a little empress, though she was flushed and trembling. "I wish to hear nothing of Mr. Vaughan. If this is the sole purport of your visit, I shall be obliged by your leaving me."
"But mademoiselle——"
"I have told you I wish to hear nothing," interposed Nina, quietly.
"Ver vell, ma'amselle; den read dat. It is a copy, and I got de original."
She laid a letter on the sofa beside Nina. Two minutes after, Bluette joined her friend Céline Gamelle in a fiacre, and laughed heartily, clapping her little plump hands. "Ah, mon Dieu! Céline, comme elle est fière, la petite! Je ne lui ai pas dit un seul mot—elle m'a arrêtée si vite, si vite! Mais la lettre fera notre affaire n'est pas? Oui, oui!"
The letter unfolded in Nina's hand. It was a promise of marriage from Ernest Vaughan to Bluette Lemaire. Voiceless and tearless, Nina sat gazing on the paper: first she rose, gasping for breath; then she threw herself down, sobbing convulsively, till she heard a step, caught up the miniature and letter, dreading to see her father, and, instead, saw Ernest, pale, worn, deep lines round his mouth and eyes, standing in the doorway. Involuntarily she sprang towards him. Ernest pressed her to heart, and his hot tears fell on the chevelure dorée, as he bent over her, murmuring, "Youhave not deserted me. God bless you for your noble faith." At last he put her gently from him, and, leaning against the mantelpiece, said, with an effort, between his teeth, "Nina,I came to bid you farewell, and to ask your forgiveness for the wrong I have done you."
Nina caught hold of him, much as Malibran seized hold ofElvino: "Leave me! leave me! No, no; you cannot mean it!"
"I have no strength for it now I see you," said Ernest, looking down into her eyes; and the bold, recklessLionshivered under the clinging clasp of her little hands. "I need not say I was not the cause of the insult you received the other night. Pauline de Mélusine was the agent, women willing to injure me the actors in it. But there is still much for you to forgive. Tell me, at once, what have you heard of me?"
She silently put the miniature and letter in his hand. The blood rushed to his very temples, and, sinking his head on his arms, his chest rose and fell with uncontrollable sobs. All the pent-up feelings of his vehement and affectionate nature poured out at last.
"And you have not condemned me even on these?" he said at length, in a hoarse whisper.
"Did I not promise?" she murmured.
"But if I told you they were true?"
She looked at him through her tears, and put her hand in his. "Tell me nothing of your past; it can make no difference to my love. Let the world judge you as it may, it cannot alter me."
Ernest strained her to him, kissing her wildly. "God bless you for your trust! would to God I were more worthy of it! I have nothing to give you but a love such as I have never before known; but most would tell you allmylove is worthless, and my life has been one of reckless dissipation and of darker errors still, until you awoke me to a deeper love—to thoughts and aspirations that I thought had died out for ever. Painful as it is to confess——"
"Hush!" interrupted Nina, gently. "Confess nothing; with your past life I can have nothing to do, and I wish never to hear anything that it gives you pain to tell. You say that you love me now, and will never love another—that is enough for me."
Ernest kissed the flushed cheeks and eloquent lips, and thanked her with all the fiery passion that was in him; and his heart throbbed fiercely as he put her promise to the test.
"No, my darling! Priceless as your love is to me I will not buy it by concealment. I will not sully your ears with the details of my life. God forbid I should! but it is only due to you to know that I did give both these women the love-tokens they brought you. Love! It is desecration of the name, but I knew none better then! Three years ago, Bluette Lemaire first appeared at the Odéon. She is illiterate, coarse, heartless, but she was handsome, and she drew me to the coulisses. I was infatuated with her, though her ignorance and vulgarity constantly grated against all my tastes. One night at her petit souper I drank more Sillery than was wise. I have a stronger head than most men: perhaps there was some other stimulant in it; at any rate, she who was then poor, and is always avaricious, got from me a promise to marry her, or to pay twenty thousand francs. Three months after I gave it I cared no more for her than for my old glove. France is too wise to have Breach of Promise cases, and give money to coarse and vengeful women for their pretended broken hearts; but I had no incentive to create a scene by breaking with her, and so she kept the promise in her hands. What Pauline de Mélusine is, you can judge. Twelve months ago I met her at Vichy; the love she gave me, and the love I vowed her, were of equal value—the love of Paris boudoirs. That I sent her that picture only two days ago, is, ofcourse, false. On my word, as a man of honor, since the moment I felt your influence upon me I have shunned her. Now, my own love, you know the truth. Will you send me from you, or will you still love and still forgive?"
In an agony of suspense he bent his head to listen for her answer. Tears rained down her cheeks as she put her arms round his neck, and whispered:
"Why ask? Are you not all the world to me? I should love you little if I condemned you for any errors of your past. I know your warm and noble heart, and I trust to it without a fear. There is no doubt between us now!"
Oh, my prudent and conventional young ladies, standing ready to accuse my poor little Nina, are you any wiser in your generation? You who have had all nature taken out of you by "finishing," whose heads are crammed with "society's" laws, and whose affections are measured out by rule, who would have been cold, and dignified, and read Ernest a severe lesson, and sent him back hopeless and hardened to go ten times worse than he had gone before—believe me, that impulse points truer than "the world," and that the dictates of the heart are better than the regulations of society. Take my word for it, that love will do more for a man than lectures; and faith in him be more likely to keep him straight than all your moralising; and before you judge him severely for having drunk a little too deep of the Sillery of life, remember that his temptations are not your temptations, nor his ways your ways, and be gentle to dangers which society and custom keep out of your own path. The stern thorn crows you offer to us when we are inclined to ask your absolution, are not the right means to win us from the rose wreaths of our bacchanalia.
Nina, as you see, loved herLiontoo well to rememberdignity, or take her stand on principle; and gallantly did the young lady stand the bombardment from all sides that sought to break her resolutions and crush her "misplaced affections." Gordon chanced to come in that day and light upon Ernest, and the fury into which he worked himself ill beseemed so respectable a pharisee. Vaughan kept tranquilly haughty, and told the banker, calmly, that he "thanked God he had his daughter's love, and his money he would never have stooped to accept." Gordon forbade him the house, and carried Nina back to England; but before she went they had a parting interview, in which Ernest offered to leave her free. But such freedom would have been worse than death to Nina, and, before they separated, she told him that in three months more she should be of age, and then, come what might, she would be his if he would take her without wealth. Take her he would have done from the arms of Satanus himself, but to disentangle himself from all his difficulties was a task that beat the Augean stables hollow. The three months of his probation he worked hard; he sold off all his pictures, his stud, and hismeubles; he sold, what cost him a more bitter pang, his encumbered estates in Surrey; he paid off all his debts, Bluette's twenty thousand francs included; and shaking himself free of the accumulated embarrassments of fifteen years, he crossed the water to claim his last love. No poor little Huguenot was ever persecuted for her faith more than poor little Nina for her engagement. Every relative she had thought it his duty to write admonitory letters, plentifully interspersed with texts. Eusebius and his 4000l.a year, and his perspective bishopric, were held up before her from morning to night; the banker, whose deception in the Mélusine had turned him into sharper vinegar than before, told her with chill stoicism that she must of course choose her own path inlife, but that if that path led her into the Chaussée d'Antin, she need never expect a sou from him, for all his property would be divided between her two brothers. But Nina was neither to be frightened nor bribed. She kept true to her lover, and disinherited herself.
They were married a week or two after Nina's majority; and Gordon knew it, though he could not prevent it. They did not miss the absence of bridesmaids, bishop, déjeûner, and the usual fashionable crowd. It was a marriage of the heart, you see, and did not want the trappings with which they gild that bitter pill so often swallowed now-a-days—a "mariage de convenance." Nina, as she saw further still into the wealth of deep feeling and strong affection which, at her touch, she had awoke in his heart, felt that money, and friends, and the world's smile were well lost since she had won him. And Ernest—Ernest's sacrifice was greater; for it is not a little thing, young ladies, for a man to give up his accustomed freedom, and luxuries, and careless vie de garçon, and to have to think and work for another, even though dearer than himself. But he had long since seen so much of life, had exhausted all its pleasures so rapidly, that they palled upon him, and for some time he had vaguely wanted something of deeper interest, of warmer sympathy. Unknown to himself, he had felt the "besoin d'être aimé"—a want the trash offered him by the women of his acquaintance could never satisfy—and his warm, passionate nature found rest in a love which, though the strongest of his life, was still returned to him fourfold.
After some months of deliciousfar nientein the south of France, they came back to Paris. Though anything but rich, he was not absolutely poor, after he had paid his debts, and the necessity to exertion rousing his dormant talents, theLionturnedlittérateur. He was toopopular with men to be dropped because he had sold his stud or given up his petits soupers. The romance of their story charmed the Parisians, and, though (behind his back) they sometimes jested about the "Lion amoureux," there were not a few who envied him his young love, and the sunshine that shone round them in his inexpensive appartement garni.
Ernestwassingularly happy—and suddenly he became the star of the literary, as he had been of the fashionable world. His mots were repeated, his vaudevilles applauded, his feuilletons adored. The world smiled on Nina and herLion; it made little difference to them—they had been as contented when it frowned.
But it made a good deal of difference across the Channel. Gordon began to repent. Ernest's family was high, his Austrian connexions very aristocratic: there would be something after all in belonging to a man so well known. (Be successful, ami lecteur, and all your relatives will love you.) Besides, he had found out that it is no use to put your faith in princes, or clergymen. Eusebius had treated him very badly when he found he could not get Nina and her money, and spoke against the poor banker everywhere, calling him, with tender pastoral regret, a "worldly Egyptian," a "Dives," a "whitened sepulchre," and all the rest of it.
Probably, too, stoic though he was, he missed the chevelure dorée; at any rate, he wrote to her stiffly, but kindly, and settled two thousand a year upon her. Vaughan was very willing she should be friends with her father, but nothing would make him draw a sou of the money. So Nina—the only sly thing she ever did in her life—after a while contrived to buy back the Surrey estate, and gave it to him, with no end of prayers and caresses, on the Jour de l'An.
"And you do not regret, my darling," smiled Ernest,after wishing her the new year's wishes, "having forgiven me for once drinking too much Sillery, and all the other naughty things of my vie de garçon?"
"Regret!" interrupted Nina, vehemently—"regret that I have won your love, live your life, share your cares and joys, regret that my existence is one long day of sunshine? Oh, why ask! you know I can never repay you for the happiness of my life."
"Rather can I never repay you," said Vaughan, looking down into her eyes, "for the faith that made you brave calumny and opposition, and cling to my side despite all. I was heart-sick of the world, and you called me back to life. I was weary of the fools who misjudged me, and I let them think me what they might."
"Ah, how happy you make me!" cried Nina. "I should have been little worthy of your love if I had suffered slander to warp me against you, or if any revelations you cared enough for me to make of your past life, had parted us: