Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 29

"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 repet.i.tion."

"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 I have pa.s.sed 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 Melusine 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 Tritericae; they are all I shall ever enjoy, and they, at the best, are withered."

"Nina, love," interrupted Selina, coming up with much amiability, "I was _obliged_ to come and tell you not to be _quite_ so 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 thousand times before; secondly, for having been so weak as to introduce Madame de Melusine to the Gordons; and, thirdly, for having--he the thorough-paced _Lion_, whose manual was Rochefoucauld, and tutor in love, De k.o.c.k--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 ecarte with a beau joueur, went to an Opera supper--_not_ to the De Melusine'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 Melusine 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 n.o.bility 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 n.o.blesse and bourgeois decores 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 n.o.blest 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 be charitable 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 conge."

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 role 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's _dot_, and it amused him very much to see Nina's joyous laughter as he leaned over her chair at the Opera Comique, to hear her animated satire on Madame de Melusine, 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 cafes, and the Boulevards, and the boudoirs missed Ernest while he accompanied Nina through the glades of St. Cloud, or down the Seine to Asnieres, or up the slopes of Pere 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 Doree, 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 Breda, or in the flow of the Sillery at la Melusine's soupers. All this was new to the tired _Lion_, and amused him immensely. La chevelure doree 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 pet.i.te."

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 marie' 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 a handsome 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 Melusine 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 garcon."

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 Freres Provencaux--a souper au cabinet--Mademoiselle Celine, premiere 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 Carmelites, some miles down the Seine. It was very late, and I was very tired, so turned into the Freres Provencaux to take some little refreshment, and I there saw my unhappy cousin in society which _ought_, 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, her _bouche 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 mult.i.tude 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. _I_ should 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 pet.i.tesses, I thank Heaven, are utterly beneath me, and I should have fancied Miss Gordon was too generous to suppose them. G.o.d 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 roue--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 splendid _dot_ which 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 that they were not merely enemies, but--rivals: a Warden with Church principles, all the cardinal virtues, strict morality, and money; and a _Lion_ with 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?

IV.

MISCHIEF.