Cerise: A Tale of the Last Century

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

Cerise was a good girl too; so kind, so truthful, so affectionate. Yet in the present instance, if a shadow had really come between husband and wife, Cerise must be in the wrong!

Women generally argue thus when they adjudicate for the sexes. In the absence of proof they almost invariably assume that their own is in fault. Perhaps they decide from internal evidence, and know best.

Lady Hamilton accompanied the Marquise to her bedroom, where mother and daughter found themselves together again as they used to be in the old days. It was not quite the same thing now. Neither could tell why, yet both were conscious of the different relation in which they stood to each other. It was but a question of perspective after all. Formerly the one looked up, the other down. Now they occupied the dead level of a common experience, and the mother felt her child was in leading-strings no more.

Then came the old story; the affectionate fencing match, wherein one tries to obtain a full and free confession without asking a single direct question, while the other assumes an appearance of extreme candour, to cover profound and impenetrable reserve. The Marquise had never loved her child so little as when the latter took leave of her for the night, having seen with her own eyes to every appliance for her mother’s comfort, combining gracefully and fondly the solicitude of a hostess with the affectionate care of a daughter; and Lady Hamilton, seeking her own room, with a pale face and a heavy heart, wondered she could feel so little inspirited by dear mamma’s arrival, and acknowledged with a sigh that the bloom was gone from everything in life, and the world had grown dull and dreary since this cold shadow came between her and George.

He alone seemed satisfied with the turn affairs had taken. There need be no more hesitation now, and it was well to know the worst. Sir George’s demeanour always became the more composed the nearer he approached a disagreeable necessity. Though Madame de Montmirail’s arrival had exceedingly startled him, as in the last degree unexpected, he received her with his customary cordial hospitality. Though he had detected, as he believed, a deliberate falsehood, told him for the first time by the wife of his bosom, he in no way altered the reserved, yet good-humoured kindness of manner with which he forced himself to accost her of late. Though he had discovered, as he thought, a scheme of black and unpardonable treachery on the part of his friend, he could still afford the culprit that refuge which was only to be found in his protection; could treat him with the consideration due to every one beneath his own roof.

But none the more for this did Sir George propose to sit down patiently under his injuries. I fear the temper cherished by this retired Captain of Musketeers savoured rather of a duellist’s politeness than a philosopher’s contempt, or the forgiveness of a Christian. When he sought his chamber that night, the chamber in which stood the unfinished model of his brigantine, and from the window of which he had watched his wife and Florian on the terrace, there was an evil smile round his lips, denoting that thirst of all others the most insatiable, the thirst for blood. He went calmly through the incidents of the past day, as a man adds up a sum, and the wicked smile never left his face. Again he saw his wife’s white dress among the roses, and her graceful figure bending over the flower-beds with that pale dark-eyed priest. Every look of both, every gesture, seemed stamped in fire on his brain. He remembered the eagerness with which she brought out her packet and confided it to the Jesuit. He had not forgotten the cold, haughty tone in which she told him, him, her husband, who perhaps had some little right to inquire, that it contained letters for her mother in France. In France! And that very night her mother appears at his own house in the heart of Great Britain!

He shuddered in a kind of pity to think of his own Cerise descending to so petty a shift. Poor Cerise! Perhaps, after all, this coquetry was bred in her, and she could not help it. She was her mother’s own daughter, that was all. He remembered there used to be strange stories about the Marquise in Paris, and he himself, if he had chosen—well, it was all over now; but he ought never to have entrusted his happiness to that family. Of course if a married woman was a thorough coquette, as a Montmirail seemed sure to be, she must screen herself with a lie! It was contemptible, and he only despised her!

But was nobody to be punished for all the annoyances thus thrust upon himself; the disgrace that had thus overtaken his house? The smile deepened and hardened now, while he took down a glittering rapier from the wall, and examined the blade and hilt carefully, bending the weapon and proving its temper against the floor.

His mind was made up what to do, and to-morrow he would set about his task.

So long as Florian remained under his roof, he argued, the rights of hospitality required that a host should be answerable for his guest’s safety. Nay more, he would never forgive himself if, from any undue haste or eagerness of his own, the satisfaction should elude him of avenging his dishonour for himself. What gratification would it be to see the Jesuit hanged by the neck on Tower Hill? No, no. His old comrade and lieutenant should die a fairer death than that. Die like a soldier, on his back, with an honourable man’s sword through his heart. But how if it came about the other way? Florian’s was a good blade, the best his own had ever crossed. He flourished his wrist involuntarily, remembering that deadly disengagement which had run poor Flanconnade through the body, and was the despair of every scientific fencer in the company. What if it should be his own lot to fall? Well, at least, he should have taken no advantage, he would have fought fair all through, and Cerise, in the true spirit of coquetry, would love him very dearly when she found she was never to see him again.