Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories. Ouida
the Baron Guatamara, and the Marchioness St. Julian, as among my kindest friends. They have been yachting in the Levant, and are now staying in Malta: they are all most kind to me; and I know you will appreciate the intellectual advantages that such contact must afford me; at the same time you will understand that I can hardly enter such circles as a snob, and you will wish your son to comport himself as a gentleman; but gentlemanizing comes uncommon dear, I can tell you, with all the care in the world: and if you could let me have another couple of hundred, I should vote you'—a what, Simon?—'an out-and-out brick' is the sensible style, but I suppose 'the best and kindest of parents' is the filial dodge, eh? There! 'With fond love to mamma and Florie, ever your affectionate son, Cosmo Grandison.' Bravo! that's prime; that'll bring the yellows down, I take it. Here, old fellow, copy it to your governor; you couldn't have a more stunning effusion—short, and to the purpose, as cabinet councils ought to be, and ain't. Fire away, my juvenile."
I did fire away; only I, of a more impressionable and poetic nature than Little Grand, gave a certain vent to my feelings in expatiating on the beauty, grace, condescension, &c., &c., of the Marchioness to my mother; I did not mention the grivois stories, the brandy, and the hookah: I was quite sure they were the sign of that delirious ease and disregard of snobbish etiquette and convenances peculiar to the "Upper Ten," but I thought the poor people at home, in vicarage seclusion, would be too out of the world to fully appreciate such revelations of our crême de la crême; besides, my governor had James's own detestation of the divine weed, and considered that men who "made chimneys of their mouths" might just as well have the mark of the Beast at once.
Little Grand and I were hard-up for cash, and en attendant the governors' replies and remittances, we had recourse to the tender mercies and leather bags of napoleons, ducats, florins, and doubloons of a certain Spanish Jew, one Balthazar Miraflores, a shrivelled-skinned, weezing old cove, who was "most happy to lent anytink to his tear young shentlesmen, but, by Got! he was as poor as Job, he was indeed!" Whether Job ever lent money out on interest or not, I can't say; perhaps he did, as in the finish he ended with having quadrupled his cattle and lands, and all his goods—a knack usurers preserve in full force to this day; but all I can say is, that if he was not poorer than Mr. Miraflores, he was not much to be pitied, for he, miserly old shark, lived in his dark, dirty hole, like a crocodile embedded in Nile mud, and crushed the bones of all unwary adventurers who came within range of his great bristling jaws.
Money, however, Little Grand and I got out of him in plenty, only for a little bit of paper in exchange; and at that time we didn't know that though the paper tax would be repealed at last, there would remain, as long as youths are green and old birds cunning, a heavy and a bitter tax on certain bits of paper to which one's hand is put, which Mr. Gladstone, though he achieve the herculean task of making draymen take kindly to vin ordinaire, and the popping of champagne corks a familiar sound by cottage-hearths, will never be able to include in his budgets, to come among the Taxes that are Repealed!
Well, we had our money from old Balthazar that morning, and we played with it again that night up at the Casa di Fiori. Loo this time, by way of change. Saint-Jeu said he always thought it well to change your game as you change your loves: constancy, whether to cards or women, was most fatiguing. We liked Saint-Jeu very much, we thought him such a funny fellow. They said they did not care to play much—of course they didn't, when Guatamara had had écarté with the Grand-Duke of Chaffsandlarkstein at half a million a side, and Lord Dolph had broken the bank at Homburg "just for fun—no fun to old Blanc, who farms it, though, you know." But the Marchioness, who was doubly gracious that night, told them they must play, because it amused her chers petits amis. Besides, she said, in her pretty, imperious way, she liked to see it—it amused her. After that, of course, there was no more hesitation; down we sat, and young Heavystone with us.
The evening before we had happened to mention him, said he was a fellow of no end of tin, though as stupid an owl as ever spelt his own name wrong when he passed a military examination, and the Marchioness, recalling the name, said she remembered his father, and asked us to bring him to see her; which we did, fearing no rival in "old Heavy."
So down we three sat, and had the evening before over again, with the cards, and the smiles, and wiles of our divinity, and Saint-Jeu's stories and Fitzhervey's cognac and cigars; with this difference, that we found loo more exciting than vingt-et-un. They played it so fast, too, it was like a breathless heat for the Goodwood Cup, and the Marchioness watched it, leaning alternately over Grand's, and Heavy's, and my chair, and saying, with such naïve delight, "Oh, do take miss, Cosmo; I would risk it if I were you, Mr. Heavystone; pray don't let my naughty brother win everything," that I'd have defied the stiffest of the Stagyrites or the chilliest of Calvinists to have kept their head cool with that syren voice in their ear.
And La Lucrezia sat, as she had sat the night before, by the open window, still and silent, the Cape jasmines and Southern creepers framing her in a soft moonlight picture, contrast enough to the brilliantly lighted room, echoing with laughter at Saint-Jeu's stories, perfumed with Cubas and narghilés, and shrining the magnificent, full-blown, jewelled beauty of our Marchioness St. Julian, with which we were as rapidly, as madly, as unreasoningly, and as sentimentally in love as any boys of seventeen or eighteen ever could be. What greater latitude, you will exclaim, recalling certain buried-away episodes of your hobbedehoyism, when you addressed Latin distichs to that hazel-eyed Hebe who presided over oyster patties and water ices at the pastrycook's in Eton; or ruined your governor's young plantations cutting the name of Adeliza Mary, your cousin, at this day a portly person in velvet and point, whom you can now call, with a thanksgiving in the stead of the olden tremor, Mrs. Hector M'Cutchin? Yes, we were in love in a couple of evenings, Little Grand vehemently and unpoetically, I shyly and sentimentally, according to our temperament, and as the fair Emily stirred feud between the two Noble Kinsmen, so the Marchioness St. Julian began to sow seeds of jealousy and detestation between us, sworn allies as we were. But "le véritable amant ne connaît point d'amis," and as soon as we began to grow jealous of each other, Little Grand could have kicked me to the devil, and I could have kicked him with the greatest pleasure in life.
But I was shy, Little Grand was blessed with all the audacity imaginable; the consequence was, that when our horses came round, and the Maltese who acted as cherub was going to close the gates of Paradise upon us, he managed to slip into the Marchioness's boudoir to get a tête-à-tête farewell, while I strode up and down the veranda, not heeding Saint-Jeu, who was telling me a tale, to which, in any other saner moments, I should have listened greedily, but longing to execute on Little Grand some fierce and terrible vengeance, to which the vendetta should be baby's play. Saint-Jeu left me to put his arm over Heavy's shoulder, and tell him if ever he came to Paris he should be transported to receive him at the Hôtel de Millefleurs, and present him at the Tuileries; and I stood swearing to myself, and breaking off sprays of the veranda creepers, when I heard somebody say, very softly and low—
"Signore, come here a moment."
It was that sweetly pretty mute whom we had barely noticed, absorbed as we were in the worship of our maturer idol, leaning out of the window, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted, her eyes sad and anxious. Of course I went to her, surprised at her waking up so suddenly to any interest in me. She put her hand on my coat-sleeve, and drew me down towards her.
"Listen to me a moment. I hardly know how to warn you, and yet I must. I cannot sit quietly by and see you and your young friends being deceived as so many have been before you. Do not come here again—do not——"
"Figlia mia! are you not afraid of the night-air?" said the Prince of Orangia Magnolia, just behind us.
His words were kind, but there was a nasty glitter in his eyes. Lucrezia answered him in passionate Italian—of which I had no knowledge—with such fire in her eyes, such haughty gesticulation, and such a torrent of words, that I really began to think, pretty soft little dear as she looked, that she must positively be a trifle out of her mind, her silence before, and her queer speech to me, seemed such odd behavior for a young lady in such high society. She was turning to me again when Little Grand came out into the veranda, looking flushed, proud, and self-complaisant, as such a winner and slayer of women would do. My hand clenched on the jasmine, I thirsted to spring