Chapter 20

"'Tis good to be merry and wise; 'Tis good to be honest and true; 'Tis good to be off with the old love Before you are on with the new."

There was a sound of revelry by night in Mrs. Wallace's villa at Richmond, and fair women and brave men mustered there strong. Every one liked those parties. The hostess was young and very charming, while her husband, a bald, inoffensive, elderly man, was equally eminent in his own department of the commissariat. His wines were things to dream of in after years, when, like Curran, "confined to the Port" of a remote country inn, one sacrifices one's self heroically on the altar of the landlord for the good of the house.

The crowd was not so dense as at most London parties, and the temperature consequently something below that of a vapor-bath or of the _Piombi_, but the generality of the guests were either amusing, or pretty, or otherwise eligible. To be sure, it was rather an expedition and a question of passports to get down there, but the drive home through the cool dewy morning made you amends.

Constance Brandon was present. I never saw her look so lovely as on this, her last appearance on the world's stage. No one could have guessed that, five hours later, the light was to die in her eyes and the color in her cheeks, never to return to either again till she shall wake on the Resurrection morning.

Flora Bellasys was there too, in all the insolence of beauty, defying criticism, and challenging the admiration that was lavished on her. I should like to describe her dress; but I know how dangerous it is for the uninitiate to venture within the verge of those awful mysteries over which, as hierophants, Devy and Maradon-Carson preside. Conscious of my sex, I retire. Have we not read of Actæon?

Still I may say that I have an impression of her being surrounded by a sort of cloud of pale blue _tulle_, over which bouquets of geranium were scattered here and there; and I remember perfectly a certain serpent of scarlet velvet and diamonds flashing amid the rolls and braids of her dark shining tresses.

The evening began with private theatricals, which were most successful. There was a _soubrette_--provoking enough to have set all the parti-colored world by the ears--who traced her descent from a vavasor of Duke William the Norman, and an attorney's clerk, who had evidently mistaken his profession when he took a commission in the Coldstreams.

Soon after the ball which followed had begun, Livingstone arrived. He had been dining at the mess of his old regiment. I never remember seeing him what is called the worse for liquor. His head was marble under the influence of wine and of yet stronger compounds; but the instant I met his eyes, I guessed from their unusual brilliancy, and from the slight additional flush on his brown cheeks, that the wassail had been deep.

He paused for a moment to say a word or two to me, and I noticed that the first person whom his glance lighted on was, not his betrothed, but Flora Bellasys. The latter was resting after her first polka, with her usual staff of admirers round her. Guy watched the circle paying their homage, and I heard him mutter to himself the formula of the Roman arena--_Morituri te salutant_. Then he passed on; and, after retaining Constance for her first disengaged turn, he began talking to a lady, whom I have not noticed yet, but who merits to be sketched hastily.

Rose Thornton was not clever. She was no longer in her first youth, and had never been pretty or very attractive. Her figure was neat, and her face had a sort of nervous deprecating expression, that made you look at it a second time. Nevertheless, she was always deeply engaged, and generally to the best goers in the room. She was a good performer herself, but this would not account for it; ninety-nine girls out of every hundred are that, after two seasons' practice. Those who were in the secret did not wonder at her luck. She was the _âme damnee_ of Flora Bellasys.

Whenever the latter ventured on any unusually daring escapade, she was always really accompanied by Miss Thornton, or supposed to be so. How the influence was originally acquired I know not; at the time I speak of she had no more volition left than a Russian Grenadier. She had some principles of action once, I suppose, and considered herself as an accountable being; but all such vanities her "dashing white sergeant" had drilled out of her long ago. Poor thing! It was no wonder that the frightened look had become habitual to her face, and that she always spoke with reserve and constraint, as if to guard against the chance-betrayal of some terrible secret. It was no sinecure, her office--alternately scapegoat and _confidante_. My own idea is, that having still a little feeble remnant of a conscience remaining, she suffered agonies of remorse at times in the latter capacity. Dancing was her great--almost her only pleasure, and Flora certainly provided her regularly with partners. Indeed, some one had irreverently designated Miss Thornton as The Turnpike, inasmuch as, before securing a waltz with the beauty, it was necessary to pay toll in the shape of a duty-dance with her _protégée_. Rose's gratitude was boundless. She never wearied in rendering small services to her patroness. She would write her notes for her, as La Raffé did for Richelieu, and fetch and carry like the best of retrievers; venturing every now and then on a timid caress, which was permitted rather than accepted with an imperial nonchalance. The only subject on which she ever expanded into eloquence was the fascinations of her friend. She spent all her weak breath in blowing that laudatory trumpet, as if she expected the defenses of the best guarded heart to fall prostrate before it, like the walls of Jericho. And yet, if all the truth were known, I think she had as much reason to complain as the dwarf in the story who swore fellowship in arms with the giant.

I was sorry to see Livingstone linger at her side, yet more sorry when, by an easy transition, he passed on to Flora's, and the circle around her, from old habit, made room for him to pass. He did not stay there long, though--only long enough to make future arrangements, I suppose--and then, for some time, I lost sight of him.

I had been driving heavily through a quadrille in the society of a very foolish virgin, whose ideas of past, present, and future seemed bounded by the last Opera, which she had and I had not seen. A horror of great dullness had fallen upon me, and I went out to restore the tone of my depressed spirits by a libation, wherein I devoted, solemnly, my late partner to the infernal gods. When I returned they were playing "The Olga," and Flora was whirling round on Guy Livingstone's arm.

Among her many perilous fascinations, have I ever mentioned her wonderful waltzing? She was as untiring as an Almè; and when once fairly launched with a steerer who could do her justice, had a sway with her--to use an Americanism--like that of a clipper three points off the wind.

As I watched her, almost reclining in her partner's powerful grasp, her lips moving incessantly, though audibly only to him, as her head leaned against his shoulder, I thought of the old Rhineland tradition of the Wilis; then the daughter of Herodias came into my mind; and then that scarcely less murderous _danseuse_, at whose many-twinkling feet they say the second Napoleon cast his frail life down.

If, in his assault on St. Anthony, the Evil One mingled no Terpsichorean temptation, be sure it was because the ancient man had no ear for music, I do not think that weapon was forgotten when Don Roderick, who had once been a courtly king, did battle through a long winter's night with the phantasm of fair, sinful La Cava.

The waltz was over, and I saw Guy and Flora disappear through the curtained door of the conservatory. If there was one thing Mrs. Wallace was prouder of than another, it was the arrangement of this sanctum. Very justly so; for it had witnessed the commencement and happy termination of more flirtations than half the ball-rooms in London put together. When you got into one of those nooks, contrived in artful recesses, shaded by magnolias, camellias, and the broad, thick-leaved tropical plants, lighted dimly by lamps of many-colored glass, you felt the recitation of some chapter in "the old tale so often told" a necessity of the position, not a matter of choice. Against eyes you were tolerably safe, though not against ears; but this is of very secondary importance. The man who would not assist a woman in distress (as the stage sailor has it) by adhering to the whisper appropriate to the imparting of interesting information, deserves to be--overheard.

Flora sank down on a convenient _causeuse_, still panting slightly--not from breathlessness, but past excitement--the ground-swell after the storm.

"Ah! what a waltz!" she said, with a sigh. "And what a pity it is so nearly the last! I shall never find any one else who will understand my step and pace so well."

"Why should it be nearly the last?" Guy asked, contemplating the varying expression of her face and the somewhat careless _pose_ of her magnificent figure with more than admiration in his eyes.

"_On se range,_" Flora answered, demurely. "And the first step in the right direction will be to give up one's favorite partners."

He sat down by her with a short laugh that was rather forced.

"Bah! do you think, because we are virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

"Of course I do. I could sketch your future so easily. It will be so intensely respectable. You will become a model country squire. You will hunt a good deal, but never _ride_ any more. (You must sell the Axeine, you know.) You will go to magistrates' meetings regularly, and breed immense cattle; and you will grow very fat yourself. That's the worst of all. I don't like to fancy you stout and unwieldy, like Athelstan."

She ended, pensively. The languor of reaction seemed stealing over her, but it only made her more charming as she leaned still farther back on the soft cushions, watching the point of her tiny foot tracing the pattern of the carpet.

"What a brilliant horoscope!" said Guy; "and so benevolently sketched, too! Now your own, Improvisatrice."

"I shall marry too," she answered, gravely. "I ought to have done so long ago. Perhaps I shall make up my mind soon. Evil examples are so contagious."

"And who will draw the great prize?"

"I have not the faintest idea. I suppose some fine old English gentleman, who has a great estate."

"I only hope the said estate will be near Kerton," Livingstone suggested; and he drew closer to his companion.

"Ah! dear old Kerton," she said, sighing again, "I shall never go there any more."

"The reason?"

"Perhaps because my husband, whoever he may be, will not choose to bring me."

"Absurd!" Guy retorted, biting his lip hard. "As if that individual would have any will of his own. You want to provoke me, I see."

The answer came in so low a whisper that, though he bent his ear down, he had almost to guess at the words.

"No, I have never tried to do that, even during the last three months. I am not brave enough. Perhaps I should not come, because--I could not bear it."

They were silent. She was so near him now that her quick breath stirred his hair, and he could feel the pulse of her heart beating against his own side. The fiery Livingstone blood, heated seven-fold by wine and passion, was surging through his veins like molten iron. Memory and foresight were both swept away like withered leaves by the strength of the terrible temptation.

His arm stole round her waist, and he drew her toward him--close--closer yet; then she looked up in his face. The cloud of thoughtful gravity has passed away from hers, and the provocations of a myriad of coquettes and courtesans concentrated in her marvelous eyes.

He bent down his lofty head, and instantly their lips met, and were set together fast.

A kiss! Tibullus, Secundus, Moore, and a thousand other poets and poetasters, have rhymed on the word for centuries, decking it with the choicest and quaintest conceits. But, remember, it was with a kiss that the greatest of all criminals sealed the unpardonable sin--it was a kiss which brought on Francesca punishment so unutterably piteous that he swooned at the sight who endured to look on all other terrors of nine-circled hell.