Never was there a creature so instinct with life as she! It was little wonder she could not imagine herself as past caring for the small pleasures for which she had always had so keen a taste. She never lost the heart of a child. Though when last we saw her she must have been, as years go, almost an old woman, there was no touch of age about her: only a snowier white of her hair made her more like an adorable little Marquise than ever. Her pretty picturesque ways were unchanged, her eager sympathy, the delicious freshness of her mind, the lightness, the charm, the simplicity.
She had a soft oval face; rich southern tints; the bluest eyes between black lashes that it is possible to imagine; her small nose like a falcon’s beak—which gave a character of decision, an untamed, spirited look to the whole countenance. The word savage could not apply to anything so exquisitely dainty in manner and appearance; and yet one felt the long line of savage ancestry at the back of her, a wildness no other European nation would show in such a flower of its race. And, to finish the description, no one had ever so pretty a mouth with the smile of a child and a thousand fascinating expressions.
Life had dealt very hardly with her, as is sometimes the case with such buoyant souls. She lost all she loved, and was left in the end with half a province in land, and no creature nearer than the son of a second cousin to whom to bequeath the vast inheritance.
JOHNNIE’S SOUL
Wedded to an English officer in the Austrian service, while still in her teens, one might have thought she would have had a better chance of domestic bliss than if her choice had fallen upon one of her own countrymen; since, above all in those middle Victorian days, the English home and the English virtues are so proverbial. But he was all that a husband ought not to be. And her only child died in babyhood. For thirty years she devoted herself in an alien land to what she conceived to be her duty. A fervent believer in the higher destinies of man and the necessity of repentance, she would say, “I will not give up Johnnie’s soul.”
The dashing Chevau-leger became an old curmudgeon of the crankiest description. To a less courageous spirit life would really have been intolerable beside him. Nevertheless the small London house near the Park, every window of which was bright with flower-boxes, was as gay within as it was without, and friends flocked to those Sunday tea-parties—the only entertainments she was permitted to give.
Well, she had the reward she craved. Johnnie “made his soul,” in Irish parlance, quite sufficiently long before softening of the brain became too marked to preclude intelligent action. And after three years more she was able to send that telegram to her intimates: “Released!” It was the cry of one who had been enslaved and in prison for all her youth and all her bright womanhood.
But, characteristically, “Johnnie’s” funeral was a matter of great importance. He had been very fond of driving four-in-hand, and so there were four horses to the hearse that conveyed all that was left of the Tyrant to Kensal Green. It was as splendid as lavish instructions could make it; and the little widow would pop her head out of the window at every turning to watch the noble appearance of the hearse with its nodding plumes and murmur contentedly:
“Poor Johnnie, he vas so fond of driving behind four horses: I vas determined he should have it for de last time!”
We were not a little startled to receive a postcard a few weeks later, containing the cryptic phrase: