Delphi collected works o.., p.35
Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated), page 35
Curly left him, and De Vigne threw himself into an arm-chair, all the fiery thoughts roused in him beating like the strong pinions of chained eagles. The passions which had already cost him so much, and which from his fatal marriage-day he had vowed should never regain their Circean hold upon him, were now let loose, and rioted in his heart He knew that he loved, as he had sworn to himself never to love woman; that the honour and the pride on which he had piqued himself had been futile to save him from the danger which he had so scornfully derided and recklessly provoked; that his own iron-will, on which he had so fearlessly relied, had been powerless to hold him back from the old intoxication, whose fiery draught had poisoned him even in its sweetness, and to whose delirium he had vowed never again to succumb.
He loved her, and De Vigne was not a man cold enough, or, as the world would phrase it, virtuous enough, to say to the woman he idolised, “Flee from me — society will not smile upon our love.” Yet Curly’s words had struck into his brain with marks of fire. “Going on as you have done day by day, deceiving her by concealment of your marriage, yet knitting her heart to yours!” These stung him cruelly, for, of all sins, De Vigne abhorred concealment or cowardice; of all men, he was most punctilious in his ideas of truth and honour, and his conscience told him that had he acted straightforwardly, or, for her, wisely, he would have let Alma know in the earliest days of their intimacy of the cruel ties of Church and Law which fettered him with so uncongenial and so unmerited a chain. True, he had never concealed it from bad motives; it was solely his disgust at every thought of the Trefusis, and the semi-oblivion into which — never seeing his wife to remind him of it — the bare fact of his so-called marriage had sunk, which had prevented his revealing it. He had never thought the matter would be of consequence to her; he had looked on her as a mere acquaintance, and it had no more occurred to him to tell her his history, than it had done to talk it over in the clubs. The imputation of want of candour, of lacking to a young girl the honour he had been ever so scrupulous in yielding to men, stung him, however, to the quick. Other words, too, lingered on his mind, bringing with them keen, sharp pain. The doubt whether his love was returned was to him like the bitterness of death. It should not have been, we know, had he been unselfish as he ought; he should have prayed for punishment to fall upon his head, and for her to be spared the fruits of his own imprudence; but what man amongst us can put his hand upon his heart, and say before God that he could have summoned up such unselfishness under such a temptation! Not I — not you — not Granville de Vigne, for, as Sabretasche would have said, we are unhappily mortal, mon ami!
One resolution he made amidst the whirl of thoughts and feelings which the stormy scene with Curly had so unexpectedly called into life — that was to tell her of his marriage at once. Perhaps there mingled with it some thought that by Alma’s reception of it he would see how little or how much she cared for him. I know not; if there were I dare throw no stone at him. How many of my motives — how many of yours — of any man’s, are unmixed and undefiled? He resolved to tell her, to be cold and guarded with her, to let her see no sign or shadow of the passion she had awakened. All his past warnings had failed to teach him wisdom; he still trusted in his own strength, still believed his will powerful enough to hold his love down without word or token of it, while it gnawed at his heart-strings in the very presence of the woman who had awakened it! Once more De Vigne had gone down before his old foe and syren, Passion; like Sisera before the treacherous wife of Heber the Kenite, at her feet he bowed and fell
CHAPTER IV.
The Ordeal by Fire.
THERE WAS THE beauty of the “summer time” in the fragrant air, and on the moistened roads, and on the rich green woodlands, but it never reached his eyes or heart as De Vigne rode to Richmond, spurring his horse into a mad gallop, with that one world within him which blinds a man to all the rest of earth. He galloped on and on, never slackening his pace; for the first time in all his soldier’s life he felt dread — dread of telling the woman he loved, that he was tied to the woman he hated! His pulse throbbed and his heart beat loudly as he came in sight of the farmhouse of St. Crucis, and saw coming out of the little gate, and taking his horse’s bridle off the post — Vane Castleton.
“Good Heavens!” thought De Vigne, with a deadly anguish tightening at his heart, “is she, then, like the rest? Has she duped us all? Is her guileless frankness as great a lie as other women’s artifice?”
Castleton did not see him; he threw himself across his bay, and rode down the opposite road. De Vigne wavered a moment; sceptical as he was, he was almost ready to turn his horse’s head and leave her, never to see her again. If she chose Castleton, let him have her! But love conquered; the girl’s face had grown too dear to him for him of his own act never to look upon it again. He flung his bridle over the gate, pushed the little wicket open, and entered the garden. In the window, with her eyes lifted upwards to a lark singing far above in the blue ether, the chesnut-boughs hanging over her in their dark green framework, the honeysuckles and china roses bending down till they touched her shining golden hair; her cheeks a little flushed, was Alma. At the sight of her he trembled like a woman with the passion that had grown silently up and ripened into such sudden force. How could he give her up to any living man? Right or wrong, how could he so tame down his inborn nature as to wish to win from such a woman only the calm, chill affection of a sister?
That mad jealousy which had awoke in all its fire at the sight of Castleton, and the suspicion that it was for Castleton’s sake and not for his own that she had rejected Curly’s suit, drove all memory of the Trefusis, all recollection of what he came to avow to Alma, from his mind!
He stood and looked at her — the rush of that delirium, half rapture and half suffering, which, for long years, none of her sex had had the power to rouse in him, told him that he should not dare to trust himself in her presence, for no will, however strong, could have strength enough to tame its fever down and chill his veins into ice-water. Still he lingered, not master of himself. The man’s nature, alive and vigorous, rebelled against the stoicism he had thought to graft upon it, and dung off the cold and alien bonds of the chill philosophy circumstances had taught him to adopt. His heart was made for passionate joys; and against reason it demanded its rights and clamoured for his freedom. He lingered there loth — who can marvel? — to close upon himself the golden gates of a fuller, sweeter, more glorious existence; and turn away to bear an unmerited curse alone — a wanderer from that Eden which was his right and heritage as a man. He lingered — then she looked up and saw him, her lips parted with a low, glad cry, the rose dush deepened in her cheeks, the first blush she had ever given for him. She sprang down from the window, which was scarcely a foot above the ground, ran across the lawn as lightly as a fawn, and stood by his side.
“Oh, Sir Folko! how long you have been away!”
How could he leave her then?
She came and stood by him; her golden hair nearly touching his arm, her fingers still on his hand, her glad beaming face turned up to his with the full glow of the afternoon sunshine upon it She stood by him, only thinking of her happiness at seeing him, never dreaming of the torture her presence was to him — a torment yet an ecstasy, like the exultation and the awakening of an opium-smoker combined in one. Seeing her thus, with her hand in his, her eyes looking upwards to him, so near to her that he could count every breath that parted her soft warm lips, it was hard for him to keep stem and cold to her, repress the words that hung upon his lips, chain down the impulse that rosé in him with irresistible longing to take her to his heart, and carry her far away where no man could touch her, and no false laws deny him the love that was his common birthright among men.
“What a long time you have been away!” began Alma again. “Ten whole days! Have you been out of town?”
“Oh no!” said De Vigne, moving towards the house without looking at her.
“Then why have you been so long?”
“I have been engaged, and you have had plenty of other visitors,” he answered, his jealousy of Vane Castleton working up into a bittemess he could not wholly conceal.
She coloured. Looking aside at her, he saw the flush in her cheeks. She had never looked confused before at any words of his, and he put it down, not to his own abruptness, but to the memory of his rival.
“No visitors whom I care for,” said Alma, with that pretty petulance which became her so well. “I have told you till I am tired of telling you that nobody makes up, or ever could make up, to me for your absence!”
“Still, when I am absent,” he said, with that satire which with him was often a veil to very deep feeling, “you can console yourself very agreeably with other men!”
They had now passed into her room. He leaned against the side of the window, playing impatiently with sprays of the honeysuckle and clematis that hung round it, snapping the sprays and throwing the fragrant flowers recklessly on the grass outside the sill, careless of the ruin of beauty he was causing. She stood opposite to him, stroking ‘the parrot’s scarlet crest unconsciously — she and her ‘bird making a brilliant picture.
“If I thought so,” she answered quickly, “I should not honour the woman I suspected by any visits at all, were I you.”
“Is that a hint to me to leave your new friend Castleton the monopoly?” asked De Vigne, between his teeth.
“Sir Folko!”
That was all she deigned to answer — her eyes flashing fire in their dark-blue depths, her cheeks hot as the crimson roses above her head, her expressive lips full of tremulous indignation, her attitude, all fire and grace and outraged pride, said the rest.
“Would you try to make me believe, then, that you do not know that Castleton loves you?” asked De Vigne, fiercely.
Alma’s cheeks glowed to a warmer crimson still, and. resentment at his tone flashed from under her black lashes, like azure lightning. He had put her passions up now.
“You must be mad to speak to me in that tone! I bear no imputation of a falsehood even from you. I do not suppose Lord Vane loves me, as you phrase it! That he flatters me, and would talk more foolish nonsense still, I know.”
“You will be very unwise if you give ear or weight to his ‘foolish nonsense;’ many a girl, as young and as fair as you, have been ruined by listening to it,” interrupted De Vigne. He was so mad that Vane Castleton should even have dreamt that he would win her; he was so rife with passions wild and reckless, that rather than stand calmly by the girl, he must upbraid her; and the storm that was in his heart found vent in cruel and sarcastic words, being denied the softer and natural outlet of love vows and fond caresses. The love that murdered Desdemona, and condemned Heloïse to a Jiving death, is not dead in the world yet. “Castleton can love, not as you idealise it, perhaps, but as he holds it. There is no man so brutal, so heartless, or so egotistical, but can love — as he translates the word, at least — for his own private ends or selfish gratification. ‘Love’ is men’s amusement, like horse-racing, or gaming, or drinking, and you would not find that ‘bad men’ abstain from it — rather the contrary, I am afraid! Castleton will love you, I dare say, if you let him, very dearly — for a month or two!”
Alma gazed at him, her large eyes wide open, like a startled gazelle’s, her cheeks crimson with the blush his manner and his subject awoke.
“Sir Folko, what has come to you? Are you mad?”
“Perhaps,” said De Vigne, between his teeth. “All I say is, that you are unwise to receive Castleton’s visits and listen to his flattering compliments. Many women have rued them.”
“Sir Folko! What right have you to speak to me like this?” interrupted Alma, with a passionate gesture. “What right have you to suppose that I should stoop to Vane Castleton, or any other man? If you had listened to me you would have heard that his fulsome compliments are detestable to me, that I hate them and loathe them, that I told him so this very afternoon, and that I shall have strangely mistaken him if ever he repeats his visits here again. Would you wish to give me over to your friend? Would you think so meanly of me as to — Oh, Heaven forgive you!”
She stood beside him passionate as a little Pythoness, with all the fervour of her moiety of Italian nature awoke and aroused; her cheeks crimson with her indignation, her grief,’ and her vehemence, her lips just parted with their rush of words, her head thrown back in defiance, her hands clenched together, and in her large brilliant eyes inexpressible tenderness, reproach, and wistful agony. Her gaze was fixed upon him even while her heart heaved with the new emotions his words had aroused; and tears rose in her throat and gathered in her eyes — those tears of blood, the tears of woman’s love. All his passions surged up in De Vigne’s heart with resistless force; that love which had crept into his heart with such insidious stealth, and burst into such sudden flame but a few hours before, mastered and conquered him. In her strange and brilliant fascination, in her fond and childlike frankness, in her newly-dawned and impassioned tenderness she stood before him. Will, power, reason, self-control were shivered to the winds, he was no statue of clay, no sculptured god of stone to resist such fierce temptation — to pass over and reject all for which nature and manhood, and tenderness pleaded — to put away with unshaken hand the love for which every fibre of his being yearned!
She stood before him in all her witchery of dawning womanhood, and before her De Vigne’s strength bowed down and fell; the love within him wrestled with and overthrew him; every nerve of his frame thrilled and throbbed, every vein seemed turned to fire; he seized her in his arms where she stood, he crushed her slight form against his heart in an embrace long and close enough for a farewell, while he covered her flushed cheeks and soft warm lips with “lava kisses melting while they burned.” He needed no words to tell him he was loved; between them now there was an eloquence compared to which all speech is dumb.
Those moments of deep rapture passed uncounted by De Vigne, conscious only of that ecstasy of which he had been robbed so long, which was to his heart as the flowing of water-springs through a dry land; all the outer world was forgotten by him, all his unnatural and cruel ties faded from his memory; all he remembered was — that he loved and was loved! Holding her still in his arms he leaned against the side of the window, the soft summer wind fanning their brows, flushed with their mutual joy; his passion spending itself in broken sighs and deep delight, and hurried words and fond caresses.
“You love me, Alma!” he whispered eagerly.
“How could I choose but love you!”
“My God! Would to Heaven I could reward you for it!”
Alma, who knew not his meaning, looked up with a smile, half shy, half mournful, yet inexpressibly beautiful, with its frank gladness and deep tenderness.
“Ah, what reward is there like your love!”
De Vigne kissed her lips to silence; he dare not listen to the eloquence that lured him in its unconscious innocence with such fierce temptation. For, now that the first moments of wild rapture had passed, came the memory of his marriage, of his resolves, of his duty, shown him by a much younger, and in such matters equally latitudinarian a man, and acknowledged to himself by reason and honour, justice and generosity; of his right to tell her fully and freely of the fetters that held him, and the woman whom Law decreed to be, though heart and nature refused ever to acknowledge as, his wife. All these rushed on him, and stood between him and his new-won heaven, as we have seen the dark and spectral Shadow of the Hartz Mountains rise up cold, and grim, between us and the sweet rose-hued dawn which is breaking over the hills and valleys, and chasing away with its golden glories, the poisonous shades and shapes of night.
He had no power to end with his own hand this fresh and glorious existence which had opened before him. If he had ended with absinthe or with laudanum his own life, men would have prosed sermons over him, and printed his condemnation in glaring letters; yet, alas! for charity or judgment, they would have condemned him equally because he shrank from this far worse and more cruel self-murder — the assassination of joy, the suicide of the soul. By Heaven, men need be gods to conform to all the laws of men! We must love life so well, that when it is at its darkest, its loneliest, brimful with misery, bitter and poisonous as hemlock, we must never, in our hardest hours of solitude, feel for an instant tempted to flee from its fret and anguish to the silent sleep of the tomb. Yet — we must love it so little, that when it smiles the sweetest, when it is fair as the dawn and generous as the sunshine, when it has led us from the dark and pestilent gloom of a charnel-house back to a laughing and joyous earth, when it has turned our tears into smiles, our sorrow into joy, our solitude into a heaven of delight, then with an unhesitating hand we are to put aside the glorious cup of life, and turn away, without one backward glance, from our loved Eden into the land of darkness, of silence, and of tears. Alas! if God be as harsh to us as man is to his fellow-man!
“How well do you love me, Alma?” he said, abruptly, as they sat beside the open bay-window, his arms round her, her head leaning against his breast, and on her face the flush of joy too deep to last “How well do I love you?” she repeated, with her old, arch, amused smile playing round her lips. “Tell me, first, how many petals there are in those roses, how many leaves on the chesnut-boughs, how many feathers in that butterfly’s wings — then perhaps I may tell you how well I love you, Sir Folko!”
De Vigne could not but smile at the poetry and enthusiasm of the reply — so like Alma herself; but as he smiled he sighed impatiently.
“I am ‘Sir Folko’ no longer, Alma; the name was never appropriate. I have always told you I am no stainless knight. Call me Granville. I have no one to give me the old familiar name now.”
“Granville!” murmured Alma, repeating the name to herself, with a deeper flush on her cheeks. “Granville! Yes it is a beautiful name, and I love it because it is yours; yet I love Sir Folko best, because others have called you Granville before me, but ‘Sir Folko’ is all my own!”
