Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories Part 4

She touched her veiny temple significantly as she spoke, and I understood, and felt tremendously shocked at it, that the young, fair Italian girl was a fierce and cruel maniac, who had the heart (oh! most extraordinary madness did it seem to me; if _I_ had lost my senses I could never have harmed _her_!) to hate, absolutely hate, the n.o.blest, tenderest, most beautiful of women!

"I never alluded to it to any one," continued the Marchioness.

"Guatamara and Saint-Jeu, though such intimate friends, are ignorant of it. I would rather have any one think ever so badly of me, than reveal to them the cruel misfortune of my sweet Lucrezia----"

How n.o.ble she looked as she spoke!

"But you, Augustus, you," and she smiled upon me till I grew as dizzy as after my first taste of milk-punch, "I have not the courage to let _you_ go off with any bad impression of me. I have known you a very little while, it is true--but a few hours, indeed--yet there are affinities of heart and soul which overstep the bounds of time, and, laughing at the chill ties of ordinary custom, make strangers dearer than old friends----"

The room revolved round me, the lights danced up and down, my heart beat like Thor's hammer, and my pulse went as fast as a favorite saving the distance. _She_ speaking so to me! My senses whirled round and round like fifty thousand witches on a Walpurgis Night, and down I went on my knees before my magnificent idol, raving away I couldn't tell you what now--the essence of everything I'd ever read, from Ovid to Alexander Smith. It must have been something frightful to hear, though Heaven knows I meant it earnestly enough. Suddenly I was pulled up with a jerk, as one throws an unbroken colt back on his haunches in the middle of his first start. _I thought I heard a laugh._

She started up too. "Hush! another time! We may be overheard." And drawing her dress from my hands, which grasped it as agonisingly as a c.o.c.kney grasps his saddle-bow, holding on for dear life over the Burton or Tedworth country, she stooped kindly over me, and floated away before _I_ was recovered from the exquisite delirium of my ecstatic trance.

She loved me! This superb creature loved me! There was not a doubt of it; and how I got back to the barracks that night in my heavenly state of mind I could never have told. All I know is, that Grand and I never spoke a word, by tacit consent, all the way back; that I felt a fiendish delight when I saw his proud triumphant air, and thought how little he guessed, poor fellow!----And that Dream of One Fair Woman was as superior in rapture to the "Dream of Fair Women" as Tokay to the "Fine Fruity Port" that results from damsons and a decoction of sloes!

The next day there was a grand affair in Malta to receive some foreign Prince, whose name I do not remember now, who called on us _en route_ to England. Of course all the troops turned out, and there was an inspection of us, and a grand luncheon and dinner, and ball, and all that sort of thing, which a month before I should have considered prime fun, but which now, as it kept me out of my paradise, I thought the most miserable bore that could possibly have chanced.

"I say," said Heavy to me as I was getting into harness--"I say, don't you wonder Fitzhervey and the Marchioness ain't coming to the palace to-day? One would have thought Old Stars and Garters would have been sure to ask them."

"Ask them? I should say so," I returned, with immeasurable disdain. "Of course he asked them; but she told me she shouldn't come, last night.

She is so tired of such things. She came yachting with Fitzhervey solely to try and have a little quiet. She says people never give her a moment's rest when she is in Paris or London. She was sorry to disappoint Stars and Garters, but I don't think she likes his wife much: she don't consider her good ton."

On which information Heavy lapsed into a state of profoundest awe and wonderment, it having been one of his articles of faith, for the month that we had been in Malta, that the palace people were exalted demiG.o.ds, whom it was only permissible to worship from a distance, and a very respectful distance too. Heavy had lost some twenty odd pounds the night before--of course we lost, young hands as we were, unaccustomed to the society of that entertaining gentleman, Pam--and had grumbled not a little at the loss of his gold bobs. But now I could see that such a contemptibly pecuniary matter was clean gone from his memory, and that he would have thought the world well lost for the honor of playing cards with people who could afford to disappoint Old Stars and Garters.

The inspection was over at last; and if any other than Conran had been my senior officer, I should have come off badly, in all probability, for the abominable manner in which I went through my evolutions. The day came to an end somehow or other, though I began to think it never would, the luncheon was ended, the bigwigs were taking their sieste, or otherwise occupied, and I, trusting to my absence not being noticed, tore off as hard as man can who has Cupid for his Pegasus. With a bouquet as large as a drum-head, clasped round with a bracelet, about which I had many doubts as to the propriety of offering to the possessor of such jewelry as the Marchioness must have, yet on which I thought I might venture after the scene of last night, I was soon on the veranda of the Casa di Fiori, and my natural shyness being stimulated into a distant resemblance of Little Grand's enviable bra.s.s, seeing the windows of the drawing-room open, I pushed aside the green venetians and entered noiselessly. The room did not look a quarter so inviting as the night before, though it was left in precisely a similar state. I do not know how it was, but those cards lying about on the floor, those sconces with the wax run down and dripping over them, those emptied caraffes that had diffused an odor not yet dissipated, those tables and velvet couches all _a tort et a travers_, did not look so very inviting after all, and even to my unsophisticated senses, scarcely seemed fit for a Peeress.

There was n.o.body in the room, and I walked through it towards the boudoir; from the open door I saw Fitzhervey, Guatamara, and my Marchioness--but oh! what horror unutterable! doing--_que pensez-vous?_ Drinking bottled porter!--and drinking bottled porter in a _peignoir_ not of the cleanliest, and with raven tresses not of the neatest!

Only fancy! she, that divine, _spirituelle_ creature, who had talked but a few hours before of the affinity of souls, to have come down, like any ordinary woman, to Guinness's stout, and a checked dressing-gown and unbrushed locks! To find your prophet without his silver veil, or your Leila dead drowned in a sack, or your Guinevere flown over with Sir Lancelot to Boulogne, or your long-esteemed Griselda gone off with your c.o.c.kaded Jeames, is nothing to the torture, the unutterable anguish, of seeing your angel, your divinity, your bright particular star, your hallowed Arabian rose, come down to--Bottled Porter! Do not talk to me of Dore, sir, or Mr. Martin's pictures; their horrors dwindle into insignificance compared with the horror of finding an intimate liaison between one's first love and Bottled Porter!

In my first dim, unutterable anguish, I should have turned and fled; but my syren's voice had not lost all its power, despite the stout and dirty dressing-gown, for she was a very handsome woman, and could stand such things as well as anybody. She came towards me, with her softest smile, glancing at the bracelet on the bouquet, apologizing slightly for her neglige:--"I am so indolent. I only dress for those I care to please--and I never hoped to see _you_ to-day." In short, magnetizing me over again, and smoothing down my outraged sensibilities, till I ended by becoming almost blind (_quite_ I could not manage) to the checked _robe de chambre_ and the unbrushed bandeaux, by offering her my braceleted bouquet, which was very graciously accepted, and even by sharing the atrocious London porter, "that horrid stuff," she called it, "how I hate it! but it is the only thing Sir Benjamin Brodie allows me, I am so very delicate, you know, my sensibilities so frightfully acute!"

I had not twenty minutes to stay, having to be back at the barracks, or risk a reprimand, which, happily, the checked _peignoir_ had cooled me sufficiently to enable me to recollect. So I took my farewell--one not unlike Medora's and Conrad's, Fitzhervey and Guatamara having kindly withdrawn as soon as the bottled porter was finished--and I went out of the house in a very blissful state, despite Guinness and the unwelcome demi-toilette, which did not accord with Eugene Sue's and the Parlor Library's description of the general getting-up and stunning appearance of heroines and peeresses, "reclining, in robes of cloud-like tissue and folds of the richest lace, on a cabriole couch of amber velvet, while the air was filled with the voluptuous perfume of the flower-children of the South, and music from unseen choristers lulled the senses with its divinest harmony," &c., &c., &c.

Bottled porter and a checked dressing-gown! Say what you like, sirs, it takes a very strong pa.s.sion to overcome _those_. I have heard men ascribe the waning of their affections after the honeymoon to the constant sight of their wives--whom before they had only seen making papa's coffee with an angelic air and a toilette _tiree a quatre epingles_--everlastingly coming down too late for breakfast in a dressing-gown; and, upon my soul, if ever I marry, which Heaven in pitiful mercy forfend! and my wife make her appearance in one of those confounded _peignoirs_, I will give that much-run-after and deeply-to-be-pitied public character, the Divorce Judge, some more work to do--I will, upon my honor.

However, the _peignoir_ had not iced me enough that time to prevent my tumbling out of the house in as delicious an ecstasy as if I had been eating some of Monte Cristo's "hatchis." As I went out, not looking before me, I came bang against the chest of somebody else, who, not admiring the rencontre, hit my cap over my eyes, and exclaimed, in not the most courtly manner you will acknowledge, "You cursed owl, take that, then! What are you doing here, I should like to know?"

"Confound your impudence!" I retorted, as soon as my ocular powers were restored, and I saw the blue eyes, fair curls, and smart figure of my ancient Iolaus, now my bitterest foe--"confound your impertinence! what are _you_ doing here? you mean."

"Take care, and don't ask questions about what doesn't concern you,"

returned Little Grand, with a laugh--a most irritating laugh. There are times when such cachinnations sting one's ears more than a volley of oaths. "Go home and mind your own business, my chicken. You are a green bird, and n.o.body minds you, but still you'll find it as well not to come poaching on other men's manors."

"Other men's manors! Mine, if you please," I shouted, so mad with him I could have floored him where he stood.

"Phew!" laughed Little Grand, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his lips into a contemptuous whistle, "you've been drinking too much Ba.s.s, my daisy; 'tis n't good for young heads--can't stand it. Go home, innocent."

The insult, the disdainful tone, froze my blood. My heart swelled with a sense of outraged dignity and injured manhood. With a conviction of my immeasurable superiority of position, as the beloved of that divine creature, I emanc.i.p.ated myself from the certain sort of slavery I was generally in to Little Grand, and spoke as I conceived it to be the habit of gentlemen whose honor had been wounded to speak.

"Mr. Grandison, you will pay for this insult. I shall expect satisfaction."

Little Grand laughed again--absolutely grinned, the audacious young imp--and he twelve months younger than I, too!

"Certainly, sir. If you wish to be made a target of, I shall be delighted to oblige you. I can't keep ladies waiting. It is always Place aux dames! with me; so, for the present, good morning!"

And off went the young c.o.xcomb into the Casa di Fiori, and I, only consoled by the reflection of the different reception he would receive to what mine had been (_he_ had a braceleted bouquet, too, the young pretentious puppy!), started off again, a.s.suaging my lacerated feelings with the delicious word of Satisfaction. I felt myself immeasurably raised above the heads of every other man in Malta--a perfect hero of romance; in fact, fit to figure in my beloved Alexandre's most highly-wrought yellow-papered _roman_, with a duel on my hands, and the love of a magnificent creature like my Eudoxia Adelaida. She had become Eudoxia Adelaida to me now, and I had forgiven, if not forgotten, the dirty dressing-gown: the bottled porter lay, of course, at Brodie's door. If he would condemn spiritual forms of life and light to the common realistic aliments of horrible barmaids and draymen, she could not help it, nor I either. If angels come down to earth, and are separated from their natural nourishment of manna and nectar, they must take what they can get, even though it be so coa.r.s.e and sublunary a thing as Guinness's x.x.x, must they not, sir? Yes, I felt very _exalte_ with my affair of honor and my affair of the heart, Little Grand for my foe, and my Marchioness, for a love. I never stopped to remember that I might be smashing with frightful recklessness the Sixth and the Seventh Commandments. If Little Grand got shot, he must thank himself; he should not have insulted me; and if there was a Marquis St. Julian, why--I pitied him, poor fellow! that was all.

Full of these sublime sensations--grown at least three feet in my varnished boots--I lounged into the ball-room, feeling supreme pity for ensigns who were chattering round the door, admiring those poor, pale garrison girls. _They_ had not a duel and a Marchioness; _they_ did not know what beauty meant--what life was!

I did not dance--I was above that sort of thing now--there was not a woman worth the trouble in the room; and about the second waltz I saw my would-be rival talking to Ruthven, a fellow in Ours. Little Grand did not look glum or dispirited, as he ought to have done after the interview he must have had; but probably that was the boy's bra.s.s. He would never look beaten if you had hit him till he was black and blue.

Presently Ruthven came up to me. He was not over-used to his business, for he began the opening chapter in rather school-boy fashion.

"Hallo, Gus! so you and Little Grand have been falling out. Why don't you settle it with a little mill? A vast deal better than pistols. Duels always seem to me no fun. Two men stand up like fools, and----"

"Mr. Ruthven," said I, very haughtily, "if your princ.i.p.al desires to apologize----"

"Apologize! Bless your soul, no! But----"

"Then," said I, cutting him uncommonly short indeed, "you can have no necessity to address yourself to me, and I beg to refer you to my friend and second, Mr. Heavystone."

Wherewith I bowed, turned on my heel, and left him.

I did not sleep that night, though I tried hard, because I thought it the correct thing for heroes to sleep sweetly till the clock strikes the hour of their duel, execution, &c., or whatever it may hap. Egmont slept, Argyle slept, Philippe Egalite, scores of them, but I could not.

Not that I funked it, thank Heaven--I never had a touch of that--but because I was in such a delicious state of excitement, self-admiration, and heroism, which had not cooled when I found myself walking down to the appointed place by the beach with poor old Heavy, who was intensely impressed by being charged with about five quires of the best cream-laid, to be given to the Marchioness in case I fell. Little Grand and Ruthven came on the ground at almost the same moment, Little Grand eminently jaunty and most _confoundedly_ handsome. We took off our caps with distant ceremony; the Castilian hidalgos were never more stately; but, then, what Knights of the Round Table ever splintered spears for such a woman?

The paces were measured, the pistols taken out of their case. We were just placed, and Ruthven, with a handkerchief in his hand, had just enumerated, in awful accents, "One! two!"--the "three!" yet hovered on his lips, when we heard a laugh--the third laugh that had chilled my blood in twenty-four hours. Somebody's hand was laid on Little Grand's shoulder, and Conran's voice interrupted the whole thing.

"Hallo, young ones! what farce is this?"

"Farce, sir!" retorted Little Grand, hotly--"farce! It is no farce. It is an affair of honor, and----"

"Don't make me laugh, my dear boy," smiled Conran; "it is so much too warm for such an exertion. Pray, why are you and your once sworn friend making popinjays of each other?"

"Mr. Grandison has grossly insulted me," I began, "and I demand satisfaction. I will not stir from the ground without it, and----"

"You _sha'n't_," shouted Little Grand. "Do you dare to pretend I want to funk, you little contemptible----"

Though it was too warm, Conran went off into a fit of laughter.

I dare say our sublimity had a comic touch in it of which we never dreamt. "My dear boys, pray don't, it is too fatiguing. Come, Grand, what is it all about?"

"I deny your right to question me, Major," retorted Little Grand, in a fury. "What have you to do with it? I mean to punish that young owl yonder--who didn't know how to drink anything but milk-and-water, didn't know how to say bo! to a goose, till I taught him--for very abominable impertinence, and I'll----"

"My impertinence! I like that!" I shouted. "It is your unwarrantable, overbearing self-conceit, that makes you the laughing-stock of all the mess, which----"

"Silence!" said Conran's still stern voice, which subdued us into involuntary respect. "No more of this nonsense! Put up those pistols, Ruthven. You are two hot-headed, silly boys, who don't know for what you are quarrelling. Live a few years longer, and you won't be so eager to get into hot water, and put cartridges into your best friends. No, I shall not hear any more about it. If you do not instantly give me your words of honor not to attempt to repeat this folly, as your senior officer I shall put you under arrest for six weeks."

O Alexandra Dumas!--O Monte Cristo!--O heroes of yellow paper and pluck invincible! I ask pardon of your shades; I must record the fact, lowering and melancholy as it is, that before our senior officer our heroism melted like Vanille ice in the sun, our glories tumbled to the ground like twelfth-cake ornaments under children's fingers, and before the threat of arrest the lions lay down like lambs.

Conran sent us back, humbled, sulky, and crestfallen, and resumed his solitary patrol upon the beach, where, before the sun was fairly up, he was having a shot at curlews. But if he was a little stern, he was no less kind-hearted; and in the afternoon of that day, while he lay, after his siesta, smoking on his little bed, I unburdened myself to him. He did not laugh at me, though I saw a quizzical smile under his black moustaches.