Far from causing Clive to avoid Madame la Duchesse, these cautions very likely would have made him only the more eager to make her acquaintance, but that a much nobler attraction drew him elsewhere. At first, being introduced to Madame d’Ivry’s salon, he was pleased and flattered, and behaved himself there merrily and agreeably enough. He had not studied Horace Vernet for nothing; he drew a fine picture of Kew rescuing her from the Arabs, with a plenty of sabres, pistols, burnouses, and dromedaries. He made a pretty sketch of her little girl Antoinette, and a wonderful likeness of Miss O’Grady, the little girl’s governess, the mother’s dame de compagnie;—Miss O’Grady, with the richest Milesian brogue, who had been engaged to give Antoinette the pure English accent. But the French lady’s great eyes and painted smiles would not bear comparison with Ethel’s natural brightness and beauty. Clive, who had been appointed painter in ordinary to the Queen of Scots, neglected his business, and went over to the English faction; so did one or two more of the Princess’s followers, leaving her Majesty by no means well pleased at their desertion.
There had been many quarrels between M. d’Ivry and his next-of-kin. Political differences, private differences—a long story. The Duke, who had been wild himself, could not pardon the Vicomte de Florac for being wild. Efforts at reconciliation had been made which ended unsuccessfully. The Vicomte de Florac had been allowed for a brief space to be intimate with the chief of his family, and then had been dismissed for being too intimate. Right or wrong, the Duke was jealous of all young men who approached the Duchesse. “He is suspicious,” Madame de Florac indignantly said, “because he remembers: and he thinks other men are like himself.” The Vicomte discreetly said, “My cousin has paid me the compliment to be jealous of me,” and acquiesced in his banishment with a shrug.
During the emigration the old Lord Kew had been very kind to exiles, M. d’Ivry amongst the number; and that nobleman was anxious to return to all Lord Kew’s family when they came to France the hospitality which he had received himself in England. He still remembered or professed to remember Lady Kew’s beauty. How many women are there, awful of aspect, at present, of whom the same pleasing legend is not narrated! It must be true, for do not they themselves confess it? I know of few things more remarkable or suggestive of philosophic contemplation than those physical changes.
When the old Duke and the old Countess met together and talked confidentially, their conversation bloomed into a jargon wonderful to hear. Old scandals woke up, old naughtinesses rose out of their graves, and danced, and smirked, and gibbered again, like those wicked nuns whom Bertram and Robert le Diable evoke from their sepulchres whilst the bassoon performs a diabolical incantation. The Brighton Pavilion was tenanted; Ranelagh and the Pantheon swarmed with dancers and masks; Perdita was found again, and walked a minuet with the Prince of Wales. Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York danced together—a pretty dance. The old Duke wore a jabot and ailes-de-pigeon, the old Countess a hoop, and a cushion on her head. If haply the young folks came in, the elders modified their recollections, and Lady Kew brought honest old King George and good old ugly Queen Charlotte to the rescue. Her ladyship was sister of the Marquis of Steyne: and in some respects resembled that lamented nobleman. Their family had relations in France (Lady Kew had always a pied-a-terre at Paris, a bitter little scandal-shop, where les bien-pensants assembled and retailed the most awful stories against the reigning dynasty). It was she who handed over le petit Kiou, when quite a boy, to Monsieur and Madame d’Ivry, to be lancé into Parisian society. He was treated as a son of the family by the Duke, one of whose many Christian names, his lordship, Francis George Xavier, Earl of Kew and Viscount Walham, bears. If Lady Kew hated any one (and she could hate very considerably) she hated her daughter-in-law, Walham’s widow, and the Methodists who surrounded her. Kew remain among a pack of psalm-singing old women and parsons with his mother! Fi donc! Frank was Lady Kew’s boy; she would form him, marry him, leave him her money if he married to her liking, and show him life. And so she showed it to him.
Have you taken your children to the National Gallery in London, and shown them the “Marriage a la Mode?” Was the artist exceeding the privilege of his calling in painting the catastrophe in which those guilty people all suffer? If this fable were not true, if many and many of your young men of pleasure had not acted it, and rued the moral, I would tear the page. You know that in our Nursery Tales there is commonly a good fairy to counsel, and a bad one to mislead the young prince. You perhaps feel that in your own life there is a Good Principle imploring you to come into its kind bosom, and a Bad Passion which tempts you into its arms. Be of easy minds good-natured people! Let us disdain surprises and coups-de-théâtre for once; and tell those good souls who are interested about him, that there is a Good Spirit coming to the rescue of our young Lord Kew.
Surrounded by her court and royal attendants, La Reine Marie used graciously to attend the play-table, where luck occasionally declared itself for and against her Majesty. Her appearance used to create not a little excitement in the Saloon of Roulette, the game which she patronised, it being more “fertile of emotions” than the slower trente-et-quarante. She dreamed of numbers, had favourite incantations by which to conjure them: noted the figures made by peels of peaches and so forth, the numbers of houses, on hackney-coaches—was superstitious comme toutes les rimes poétiques. She commonly brought a beautiful agate bonbonniere full of gold pieces, when she played. It was wonderful to see her grimaces: to watch her behaviour: her appeals to heaven, her delight and despair. Madame la Baronne de la Cruchecassée played on one side of her, Madame la Comtesse de Schlangenbad on the other. When she had lost all her money her Majesty would condescend to borrow—not from those ladies:—knowing the royal peculiarity, they never had any money; they always lost; they swiftly pocketed their winnings and never left a mass on the table, or quitted it, as courtiers will, when they saw luck was going against their sovereign. The officers of her household were Count Punter, a Hanoverian, the Cavaliere Spada, Captain Blackball of a mysterious English regiment, which might be any one of the hundred and twenty in the Army List, and other noblemen and gentlemen, Greeks, Russians, and Spaniards. Mr. and Mrs. Jones (of England), who had made the princess’s acquaintance at Bagneres (where her lord still remained in the gout) and perseveringly followed her all the way to Baden, were dazzled by the splendour of the company in which they found themselves. Miss Jones wrote such letters to her dearest friend Miss Thompson, Cambridge Square, London, as caused that young person to crever with envy. Bob Jones, who had grown a pair of mustachios since he left home, began to think slightingly of poor little Fanny Thompson, now he had got into “the best Continental society.” Might not he quarter a countess’s coat on his brougham along with the Jones arms, or, more slap-up still, have the two shields painted on the panels with the coronet over? “Do you know the princess calls herself the Queen of Scots, and she calls me Julian Avenel?” says Jones delighted, to Clive, who wrote me about the transmogrification of our schoolfellow, an attorney’s son, whom I recollected a snivelling little boy at Grey Friars. “I say, Newcome, the princess is going to establish an order,” cried Bob in ecstasy. Every one of her aides-de-camp had a bunch of orders at his button, excepting, of course, poor Jones.
Like all persons who beheld her, when Miss Newcome and her party made their appearance at Baden, Monsieur de Florac was enraptured with her beauty. “I speak of it constantly before the Duchesse. I know it pleases her,” so the Vicomte said. “You should have seen her looks when your friend M. Jones praised Miss Newcome! She ground her teeth with fury. Tiens ce petit sournois de Kiou! He always spoke of her as a mere sac d’argent that he was about to marry—an ingot of the cité—une fille de Lord Maire. Have all English bankers such pearls of daughters? If the Vicomtesse de Florac had but quitted the earth, dont elle fait l’ornement—I would present myself to the charmante meess and ride a steeple-chase with Kiou!” That he should win it the Viscount never doubted.
When Lady Anne Newcome first appeared in the ballroom at Baden, Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry begged the Earl of Kew (notre filleul, she called him) to present her to his aunt miladi and her charming daughter. “My filleul had not prepared me for so much grace,” she said, turning a look towards Lord Kew, which caused his lordship some embarrassment. Her kindness and graciousness were extreme. Her caresses and compliments never ceased all the evening. She told the mother and the daughter too that she had never seen any one so lovely as Ethel. Whenever she saw Lady Anne’s children in the walks she ran to them (so that Captain Blackball and Count Punter, A.D.C., were amazed at her tenderness), she étouffé’d them with kisses. What lilies and roses! What lovely little creatures! What companions for her own Antoinette. “This is your governess, Miss Quigli; mademoiselle, you must let me present you to Miss O’Gredi, your compatriot, and I hope your children will be always together.” The Irish Protestant governess scowled at the Irish Catholic—there was a Boyne Water between them.
Little Antoinette; a lonely little girl, was glad to find any companions. “Mamma kisses me on the promenade,” she told them in her artless way. “She never kisses me at home!” One day when Lord Kew with Florac and Clive were playing with the children, Antoinette said, “Pourquoi ne venez-vous plus chez nous, M. de Kew? And why does mamma say you are a lâche? She said so yesterday to ces messieurs. And why does mamma say thou art only a vaurien, mon cousin? Thou art always very good for me. I love thee better than all those messieurs. Ma tante Florac a été bonne pour moi à Paris aussi—Ah! qu’elle a été bonne!”
“C’est que les anges aiment bien les petits chérubins, and my mother is an angel, seest thou,” cries Florac, kissing her.