CHAPTER VI.PAMELA CHANGES HER MIND.
Luciferhimself, after his fall, could not have felt worse than César Castellani when he followed Mildred Greswold to Nice, as he did within a week after she left Pallanza.
He went to Nice partly because he was an idle man, and had no desire to go back to English east winds just when the glory of the southern springtide was beginning. He was tolerably well furnished with money, and Nice was as good to him as any other place, while the neighbourhood of Monte Carlo was always an attraction. He followed in Mildred’s footsteps, therefore; but he had no idea of forcing himself upon her presence for some time to come. He knew that his chances were ruined in that quarter for the time being, if not for ever.
This was his first signal overthrow. Easy conquests had so demoralised him that he hadgrown to consider all conquests easy. He had unlimited faith in the charm of his own personality—his magnetic power, as he called it: and, behold! his magnetic power had failed utterly with this lovely, lonely woman, who should have turned to him in her desolation as the flowers turn to the sun.
For once in his life he had overrated himself and his influence; and in so doing he had lost the chance of a very respectable alliance.
“Fifteen hundred a year would be at least bread and cheese,” he reflected, “and to marry an English heiress of a good old family would solidify my position in society. The girl is pretty enough, and I could twist her round my finger. She would bore me frightfully; but every man must suffer something. There is always a discord somewhere amidst the harmony of life; and if one’s teeth are not too often set on edge by that false note, one should be content.”
He remembered how contemptuously he had rejected the idea of such a marriage in his talk with Miss Fausset, and how she had been set upon it.
“I should stand ever so much better with her if I married well, and solidified myself into Britishrespectability. I might naturalise myself, and go into Parliament perhaps, if that would please the good soul at Brighton. What will she leave me when she dies, I wonder? She is muter than the Sphinx upon that point. And will she ever die? Brighton is famous for pauper females of ninety and upwards. A woman like Miss Fausset, who lives in cotton-wool, and who has long done with the cares and passions of life, might go well into a second century. I don’t see any brilliancy in the prospectthere; but so long as I please her and do well in the world she will no doubt be generous.”
He told himself that it was essential he should make some concession to Miss Fausset’s prejudices now that he had failed with Mildred. So long as he had hoped to win that nobler prize he had been careless how he jeopardised the favour of his elderly patroness. But now he felt that her favour was all in all to him, and that the time for trifling was past.
She had been very generous to him during the years that had gone by since she first came to his aid almost unasked, and helped him to pay his college debts. She had come to the rescue many timessince that juvenile entanglement, and her patience had been great. Yet she had not failed to remonstrate with him at every fresh instance of folly and self-indulgent extravagance. She had talked to him with an unflinching directness; she had refused further help; but somehow she had always given way, and the cheque had been written.
Again and again she had warned him that there were limits even to her forbearance.
“If I saw you working earnestly and industriously, I should not mind, even if you were a failure,” said his benefactress severely.
“I have worked, and I have produced a book which wasnota failure,” replied César, with his silkiest air.
“One book in a decade of so-called literary life! Did the success of that book result in the payment of one single debt?”
“Dearest lady, would you have a man waste his own earnings—the first-fruits of his pen—the grains of fairy gold that filtered through the mystic web of his fancy—would you have him fritter away that sacred product upon importunate hosiers or vindictivebootmakers?Thatmoney was altogether precious to me. I kept it in my waistcoat pocket as long as ever I could. The very touch of the coin thrilled me. I believe cabmen and crossing-sweepers had most of it in the long-run,” he concluded, with a remorseful sigh.
Miss Fausset had borne with his idleness and his vanity, as indulgent mothers bear with their sons; but he felt that she was beginning to tire of him. There were reasons why she should always continue forbearing; but he wanted to insure himself something better than reluctant subsidies.
These considerations being taken into account, Mr. Castellani was fain to own to himself that he had been a fool in rejecting the substance for the shadow, however alluring the lovely shade might be.
“But I loved her,” he sighed; “I loved her as I had never loved until I saw her fair Madonna face amidst the century-old peace of her home. She filled my life with a new element. She purified and exalted my whole being. And she is thrice as rich as that prattling girl!”
He ground his teeth at the remembrance of hisfailure. There had been no room for doubt. Those soft violet eyes had been transformed by indignation, and had flashed upon him with angry fire. That fair Madonna face had whitened to marble with suppressed passion. Not by one glance, not by one tremor in the contemptuous voice, had the woman he loved acknowledged his influence.
He put up at the Cosmopolitan, got in half-a-dozen French novels of the most advanced school from Galignani’s Library, and kept himself very close for a week or two; but he contrived to find out what the ladies at the Westminster were doing through Albrecht the courier, who believed him to be Miss Ransome’s suitor, and was inclined to be communicative, after being copiously treated to bocks, orpetits verres, as the case might be.
From Albrecht, Castellani heard how Miss Ransome spent most of her time at the Palais Montano, or gadding about with her ladyship and Mrs. Murray; how, in Albrecht’s private opinion, the balls and other dissipations of Nice were turning that young lady’s head; how Mrs. Greswold went for lonely drives day after day, and would not allow Albrecht toshow her the beauties of the neighbourhood, which it would have been alike his duty and pleasure to have done. He had ascertained that her favourite, and, indeed, habitual, drive was to St. Jean, where she was in the habit of leaving the fly at the little inn while she strolled about the village in a purposeless manner. All this appeared to Albrecht as eccentric and absurd, and beneath a lady of Mrs. Greswold’s position. She would have employed her time to more advantage in going on distant excursions in a carriage and pair, and in lunching at remote hotels, where Albrecht would have been sure of abonne mainfrom a gratified landlord, as well as his commission from the livery-stable.
Castellani heard with displeasure of Pamela’s dancings and junketings, and he told himself that it was time to throw himself across her pathway. He had not been prepared to find that she could enjoy life without him. Her admiration of him had been so transparent, her sentimental fancy so naïvely revealed, that he had believed himself the sultan of her heart, having only to throw the handkerchief whenever it might suit him to claim his prey. Muchas he prided himself upon his knowledge of human nature, as exemplified in the softer sex, he had never estimated the fickleness of a shallow sentimental character like Pamela’s. No man with a due regard to the value and dignity of his sex could conceive the ruthless rapidity with which a young lady of this temperament will transfer her affections and her large assortment of day-dreams and romantic fancies from one man to another. No man could conceive her capacity for admiring in Number Two all those qualities which were lacking in Number One. No man could imagine the exquisite adaptability of girlhood to surrounding circumstances.
Had Castellani taken Miss Ransome when she was in the humour, he would have found her the most amiable and yielding of wives; a model English wife, ready to adapt herself in all things to the will and the pleasure of her husband; unselfish, devoted, unassailable in her belief in her husband as the first and best of men. But he had not seized his opportunity. He had allowed nearly a month to go by since his defeat at Pallanza, and he had allowedPamela to discover that life might be endurable, nay, even pleasant, without him.
And now, hearing that the young lady was gadding about, and divining that such gadding was the high-road to forgetfulness, Mr. Castellani made up his mind to resume his sway over Miss Ransome’s fancy without loss of time. He called upon a dashing American matron whom he had visited in London and Paris, and who was now the occupant of a villa on the Promenade des Anglais, and in her drawing-room he fell in with several of his London acquaintances. He found, however, that his American friend, Mrs. Montagu W. Brown, had not yet succeeded in being invited to the Palais Montano, and only knew Lady Lochinvar and Miss Ransome by sight.
“Her ladyship is too stand-offish for my taste,” said Mrs. Montagu Brown, “but the girl seems friendly enough—no style—not as we Americans understand style. I am told she ranks as an heiress on this side, but at the last ball at the Cercle she wore a frock that I should call dear at forty dollars. That young Stuart is after her, evidently. I hope you are going to the dance next Tuesday, Mr.Castellani? I want some one nice to talk to now my waltzing days are over.”
Castellani protested that Mrs. Montagu Brown was in the very heyday of a dancer’s age, and would be guilty of gross cruelty to terpsichorean society in abandoning that delightful art.
“You make me tired,” said Mrs. Montagu Brown, with perfect good-humour. “There are plenty of women who don’t know when they’re old, but I calculate every woman knows when she weighs a hundred and sixty pounds. When my waist came to twenty-six inches I knew it was time to leave off waltzing; and I was pretty good at it, too, in my day, I can tell you.”
“With that carriage you must have been divine,” replied César; “and I believe the cestus of the Venus de Milo must measure over twenty-six inches.”
“The Venus de Milo has no more figure than the peasant-women one sees on the promenade, women who seem as if they set their faces against the very idea of a waist. Be sure you get a card for Tuesday. I hate a dude; but I love to have some smart men about me wherever I go.”
“I shall be there,” said Castellani, bending over his hostess and imparting a confidential pressure to her fat white hand by way of leave-taking, before he slipped silently from the room.
He had studied the art of departure as if it were a science: never lingered, never hummed and hawed; never said he must go and didn’t; never apologised for going so soon while everybody was pining to get rid of him.
The next day there was a battle of flowers; not the great floral fête before the sugar-plum carnival, but an altogether secondary affair, pleasant enough in the balmy weather of advancing spring.
Every one of any importance was on the promenade, and among the best carriages appeared Lady Lochinvar’s barouche, decorated with white camellias and carmine carnations. She had carefully eschewed that favourite mixture of camellias and Parma violets which has always a half-mourning or funereal air. Malcolm Stuart and Miss Ransome sat side by side on the front seat with a great basket of carnations on their knees, with which they pelted their acquaintance, while Lady Lochinvar, in brownvelvet and ostrich plumage, reposed at her ease in the back of the spacious carriage, and enjoyed the fun without any active participation.
It was Pamela’s first experience in flower-fights, and to her the scene seemed enchanting. The afternoon was peerless. She wore a white gown, as if it had been midsummer, and white gowns were the rule in most of the carriages. The sea was at its bluest, the pink walls and green shutters, white walls and red roofs, the orange-trees, cactus and palm, made up a picture of a city in fairyland, taken as a background to a triple procession of carriages all smothered in Parma violets, Dijon roses, camellias, and narcissus, with here and there some picturesque coach festooned with oranges and lemons amidst tropical foliage.
The carriages moved at a foot-pace; the pavements were crowded with smart people, who joined in the contest. Pamela’s lap was full of bouquets, which fell from her in showers as she stood up every now and then to fling a handful of carnations into a passing carriage.
Presently, while she was standing thus, flushedand sparkling, she saw a familiar figure on the footpath by the sea, and paled suddenly at the sight.
It was César Castellani, sauntering slowly along, in a short coat of light-coloured cloth, and a felt hat of exactly the same delicate shade. He came to the carriage-door. There was a block at the moment, and he had time to talk to the occupants.
“How do you do, Lady Lochinvar? You have not forgotten me, I hope—César Castellani—though it is such ages since we met?”
He only lifted his hat to Lady Lochinvar, waiting for her recognition, but he held out his hand to Pamela.
“How do you like Nice, Miss Ransome? As well as Pallanza, I hope?”
“Ever so much better than Pallanza.”
There was a time when that coat and hat, thesoupçonof dark blue velvet waistcoat just showing underneath the pale buff collar, the loose China silk handkerchief carelessly fastened with a priceless intaglio, the gardenia and pearl-gray gloves, would have ensnared Pamela’s fancy: but that time was past. She thought that César’s costume lookedeffeminate and underbred beside the stern simplicity of Mr. Stuart’s heather-mixturecomplet. The scales had fallen from her eyes; and she recognised the bad taste and the vanity involved in that studied carelessness, that artistic combination of colour.
She remembered what Mildred had said of Mr. Castellani, and she was deliberately cold. Lady Lochinvar was gracious, knowing nothing to the Italian’s discredit.
“I remember you perfectly,” she said. “You have changed very little in all these years. Be sure you come and see me. I am at home at five almost every afternoon.”
The carriage moved on, and Pamela sat in an idle reverie for the next ten minutes, although the basket of carnations was only half empty.
She was thinking how strange it was that her heart beat no faster. Could it be that she was cured—and so soon? It was even worse than a cure; it was a positive revulsion of feeling. She was vexed with herself for ever having exalted that over-dressed foreigner into a hero. She felt she had been un-English, unwomanly even, in her exaggeratedadmiration of an exotic. And then she glanced at Malcolm Stuart, and averted her eyes with a conscious blush on seeing him earnestly observant of her.
He was plain, certainly. His features had been moulded roughly, but they were not bad features. The lines were rather good, in fact, and it was a fine manly countenance. He was fair and slightly freckled, as became a Scotchman; his eyes were clear and blue, but could be compared to neither sapphires nor violets, and his eyelashes were lighter than any cultivated young lady could approve. The general tone of his hair and complexion was ginger; and ginger, taken in connection with masculine beauty, is not all one would wish. But then ginger is not uncommon in the service, and it is a hue which harmonises agreeably with Highland bonnets and tartan. No doubt Mr. Stuart had looked really nice in his uniform. He had certainly appeared to advantage in a Highland costume at the fancy ball the other night. Some people had pronounced him the finest-looking man in the room.
And, again, good looks are of little importancein a man. A plainish man, possessed of all the manly accomplishments, a dead shot and a crack rider, can always appear to advantage in English society. Pamela was beginning to think more kindly of sporting men, and even of Sir Henry Mountford.
“I’m sure Mr. Stuart would get on with him,” she thought, dimly foreseeing a day when Sir Henry and her new acquaintance would be brought together somehow.
César Castellani took immediate advantage of Lady Lochinvar’s invitation. He presented himself at the Palais Montano on the following afternoon, and he found Pamela established there as if she belonged to the house. It was she who poured out the tea, and dispensed those airy little hot cakes, which were a kind of idealised galette, served in the daintiest of doyleys, embroidered with Lady Lochinvar’s cipher and coronet.
Mr. and Mrs. Murray were there, and Malcolm Stuart, the chief charm of whose society seemed to consist in his exhibition of an accomplished Dandie Dinmont which usurped the conversation, and whichCastellani would have liked to inocculate then and there with the most virulent form of rabies. Pamela squatted on a little stool at the creature’s feet, and assisted in showing him off. She had acquired a power over him which indicated an acquaintance of some standing.
“What fools girls are!” thought Castellani.
His conquests among women of maturer years had been built upon rock as compared with the shifting quicksand of a girl’s fancy. He began to think the genus girl utterly contemptible.
“He has but one fault,” said Pamela, when the terrier had gone through various clumsy evolutions in which the bandiness of his legs and the length of his body had been shown off to the uttermost. “He cannot endure Box, and Box detests him. They never meet without trying to murder each other, and I’m very much afraid,” bending down to kiss the broad hairy head, “that Dandie is the stronger.”
“Of course he is. Box is splendid for muscle, but weight must tell in the long-run,” replied Mr. Stuart.
“My grandmother had a Dandie whose father belonged to Sir Walter Scott,” began Mrs. Murray: “he was simply a per-r-r-fect dog, and my mamma—”
Castellani fled from this inanity. He went to the other end of the room, where Lady Lochinvar was listening listlessly to Mr. Murray, laid himself out to amuse her ladyship for the next ten minutes, and then departed without so much as a look at Pamela.
“The spell is broken,” he said to himself, as he drove away. “The girl is next door to an idiot. No doubt she will marry that sandy Scotchman. Lady Lochinvar means it, and a silly-pated miss like that can be led with a thread of floss silk.Moi je m’en fiche.”
About a week after Mr. Castellani’s reappearance Mildred Greswold received a letter from Brighton, which made a sudden change in her plans.
It was from Mr. Maltravers the Incumbent of St. Edmund’s:
“St. Edmund’s Vicarage.“Dear Mrs. Greswold,—After our thoroughly confidential conversations last autumn I feel justified in addressing you upon a subject which I know is very near to your heart, namely, the health and welfare, spiritual as well as bodily, of your dear aunt and my most valued parishioner, Miss Fausset. The condition of that dear lady has given me considerable uneasiness during the last few months. She has refused to take her hand from the plough; she labours as faithfully as ever in the Lord’s vineyard; but I see with deepest regret that she is no longer the woman she was, even a year ago. The decay has been sudden, and it has been rapid. Her strength begins to fail her, though she will hardly admit as much, even to her medical attendant, and her spirits are less equable than of old. She has intervals of extreme depression, against which the efforts of friendship, the power of spiritual consolation, are unavailing.“I feel it my duty to inform you, as one who has a right to be interested in the disposal of Miss Fausset’s wealth, that my benefactress has consummatedthe generosity of past years by a magnificent gift. She has endowed her beloved Church of St. Edmund with an income which, taken in conjunction with the pew-rents, an institution which I hope hereafter to abolish, raises the priest of the temple from penury to comfort, and affords him the means of helping the poor of his parish with his alms as well as with his prayers and ministrations. This munificent gift closes the long account of beneficence betwixt your dear aunt and me. I have nothing further to expect from her for my church or for myself. It is fully understood between us that this gift is final. You will understand, therefore, that I am disinterested in my anxiety for this precious life.“You, dear Mrs. Greswold, are your aunt’s only near relative, and it is but right you should be the companion and comforter of her declining days. That the shadow of the grave is upon her I can but fear, although medical science sees but slight cause for alarm. A year ago she was a vigorous woman, spare of habit certainly, but with a hardness of bearing and manner which promised a long life. To-dayshe is a broken woman, nervous, fitful, and, I fear, unhappy, though I can conceive no cause for sadness in the closing years of such a noble life as hers has been, unselfish, devoted to good works and exalted thoughts. If you can find it compatible with your other ties to come to Brighton, I would strongly recommend you to come without loss of time, and I believe that the change which you will yourself perceive in my valued friend will fully justify the course I take in thus addressing you.—I am ever, dear Mrs. Greswold, your friend and servant,“Samuel Maltravers.”
“St. Edmund’s Vicarage.
“Dear Mrs. Greswold,—After our thoroughly confidential conversations last autumn I feel justified in addressing you upon a subject which I know is very near to your heart, namely, the health and welfare, spiritual as well as bodily, of your dear aunt and my most valued parishioner, Miss Fausset. The condition of that dear lady has given me considerable uneasiness during the last few months. She has refused to take her hand from the plough; she labours as faithfully as ever in the Lord’s vineyard; but I see with deepest regret that she is no longer the woman she was, even a year ago. The decay has been sudden, and it has been rapid. Her strength begins to fail her, though she will hardly admit as much, even to her medical attendant, and her spirits are less equable than of old. She has intervals of extreme depression, against which the efforts of friendship, the power of spiritual consolation, are unavailing.
“I feel it my duty to inform you, as one who has a right to be interested in the disposal of Miss Fausset’s wealth, that my benefactress has consummatedthe generosity of past years by a magnificent gift. She has endowed her beloved Church of St. Edmund with an income which, taken in conjunction with the pew-rents, an institution which I hope hereafter to abolish, raises the priest of the temple from penury to comfort, and affords him the means of helping the poor of his parish with his alms as well as with his prayers and ministrations. This munificent gift closes the long account of beneficence betwixt your dear aunt and me. I have nothing further to expect from her for my church or for myself. It is fully understood between us that this gift is final. You will understand, therefore, that I am disinterested in my anxiety for this precious life.
“You, dear Mrs. Greswold, are your aunt’s only near relative, and it is but right you should be the companion and comforter of her declining days. That the shadow of the grave is upon her I can but fear, although medical science sees but slight cause for alarm. A year ago she was a vigorous woman, spare of habit certainly, but with a hardness of bearing and manner which promised a long life. To-dayshe is a broken woman, nervous, fitful, and, I fear, unhappy, though I can conceive no cause for sadness in the closing years of such a noble life as hers has been, unselfish, devoted to good works and exalted thoughts. If you can find it compatible with your other ties to come to Brighton, I would strongly recommend you to come without loss of time, and I believe that the change which you will yourself perceive in my valued friend will fully justify the course I take in thus addressing you.—I am ever, dear Mrs. Greswold, your friend and servant,
“Samuel Maltravers.”
Mildred gave immediate orders to courier and maid, her trunks were to be packed that afternoon, acoupéwas to be taken in the Rapide for the following day, and the travellers were to go straight through to Paris. But when she announced this fact to Pamela the damsel’s countenance expressed utmost despondency.
“Upon my word, aunt, you have a genius for taking one away from a place just when one is beginning to be happy!” she exclaimed in irrepressible vexation.
She apologised directly after upon hearing of Miss Fausset’s illness.
“I am a horrid ill-tempered creature,” she said; “but I really am beginning to adore Nice. It is a place that grows upon one.”
“What if I were to leave you with Lady Lochinvar? She told me the other day that she would like very much to have you to stay with her. You might stay till she leaves Nice, which will be in about three weeks’ time, and you could travel with her to Paris. You could go from Paris to Brighton very comfortably, with Peterson to take care of you. Perhaps you would not mind leaving Nice when Lady Lochinvar goes?”
Pamela sparkled and blushed at the suggestion.
“I should like it very much, if Lady Lochinvar is in earnest in asking to have me.”
“I am sure she is in earnest. There is only one stipulation I must make, Pamela. You must promise me not to renew your intimacy with Mr. Castellani.”
“With all my heart, aunt. My eyes have been opened. He is thoroughly bad style.”