When he saw Ethel again, which he did in an hour’s time, the generous young gentleman held his hand out to her. “My dear,” he said, “if you had loved me you never would have shown me that letter.” It was his only reproof. After that he never again reproved or advised her.
Ethel blushed. “You are very brave and generous, Frank,” said, bending her head, “and I am captious and wicked.” He felt the hot tear blotting on his hand from his cousin’s downcast eyes.
He kissed her little hand. Lady Anne, who was in the room with her children when these few words passed between the two in a very low tone, thought it was a reconciliation. Ethel knew it was a renunciation on Kew’s part—she never liked him so much as at that moment. The young man was too modest and simple to guess himself what the girl’s feelings were. Could he have told them, his fate and hers might have been changed.
“You must not allow our kind letter-writing friend,” Lord Kew continued, “to fancy we are hurt. We must walk out this afternoon, and we must appear very good friends.”
“Yes, always, Kew,” said Ethel, holding out her hand again. The next minute her cousin was at the table carving roast-fowls, and distributing the portions to the hungry children.
The assembly of the previous evening had been one of those which the fermier des jeux at Baden beneficently provides for the frequenters of the place, and now was to come off a much more brilliant entertainment, in which poor Clive, who is far into Switzerland by this time, was to have taken a share. The Bachelors had agreed to give a ball, one of the last entertainments of the season: a dozen or more of them had subscribed the funds, and we may be sure Lord Kew’s name was at the head of the list, as it was of any list, of any scheme, whether of charity or fun. The English were invited, and the Russians were invited; the Spaniards and Italians, Poles, Prussians, and Hebrews; all the motley frequenters of the place, and the warriors in the Duke of Baden’s army. Unlimited supper was set in the restaurant. The dancing-room glittered with extra lights, and a profusion of cut-paper flowers decorated the festive scene. Everybody was present, those crowds with whom our story has nothing to do, and those two or three groups of persons who enact minor or greater parts in it. Madame d’Ivry came in a dress of stupendous splendour, even more brilliant than that in which Miss Ethel had figured at the last assembly. If the Duchess intended to écraser Miss Newcome by the superior magnificence of her toilet, she was disappointed. Miss Newcome wore a plain white frock on the occasion, and resumed, Madame d’Ivry said, her rôle of ingenue for that night.
During the brief season in which gentlemen enjoyed the favour of Mary Queen of Scots, that wandering sovereign led them through all the paces and vagaries of a regular passion. As in a fair, where time is short and pleasures numerous, the master of the theatrical booth shows you a tragedy, a farce, and a pantomime, all in a quarter of an hour, having a dozen new audiences to witness his entertainments in the course of the forenoon; so this lady with her platonic lovers went through the complete dramatic course,—tragedies of jealousy, pantomimes of rapture, and farces of parting. There were billets on one side and the other; hints of a fatal destiny, and a ruthless, lynx-eyed tyrant, who held a demoniac grasp over the Duchess by means of certain secrets which he knew: there were regrets that we had not known each other sooner: why were we brought out of our convent and sacrificed to Monsieur le Duc? There were frolic interchanges of fancy and poesy: pretty bouderies; sweet reconciliations; yawns finally—and separation. Adolphe went out and Alphonse came in. It was the new audience; for which the bell rang, the band played, and the curtain rose; and the tragedy, comedy, and farce were repeated.
Those Greenwich performers who appear in the theatrical pieces above-mentioned, make a great deal more noise than your stationary tragedians; and if they have to denounce a villain, to declare a passion, or to threaten an enemy, they roar, stamp, shake their fists, and brandish their sabres, so that every man who sees the play has surely a full pennyworth for his penny. Thus Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry perhaps a little exaggerated her heroines’ parts liking to strike her audiences quickly, and also to change them often. Like good performers, she flung herself heart and soul into the business of the stage, and was what she acted. She was Phedre, and if in the first part of the play she was uncommonly tender to Hippolyte, in the second she hated him furiously. She was Medea, and if Jason was volage, woe to Creusa! Perhaps our poor Lord Kew had taken the first character in a performance with Madame d’Ivry; for his behaviour in which part it was difficult enough to forgive him; but when he appeared at Baden the affianced husband of one of the most beautiful young creatures in Europe,—when his relatives scorned Madame d’Ivry,—no wonder she was maddened and enraged, and would have recourse to revenge, steel, poison.
There was in the Duchess’s court a young fellow from the South of France, whose friends had sent him to faire son droit at Paris, where he had gone through the usual course of pleasure and studies of the young inhabitants of the Latin Quarter. He had at one time exalted republican opinions, and had fired his shot with distinction at St. Méri. He was a poet of some little note—a book of his lyrics, Les Râles d’un Asphyxié, having made a sensation at the time of their appearance. He drank great quantities of absinthe of a morning; smoked incessantly; played roulette whenever he could get a few pieces; contributed to a small journal, and was especially great in his hatred of l’infame Angleterre. Delenda est Carthago was tattooed beneath his shirt-sleeves. Fifine and Clarisse, young milliners of the students’ district, had punctured this terrible motto on his manly right arm. Le léopard, emblem of England, was his aversion; he shook his fist at the caged monster in the Garden of Plants. He desired to have “Here lies an enemy of England” engraved upon his early tomb. He was skilled at billiards and dominoes, adroit in the use of arms, of unquestionable courage and fierceness. Mr. Jones of England was afraid of M. de Castillonnes, and cowered before his scowls and sarcasms. Captain Blackball, the other English aide-de-camp of the Duchesse d’Ivry, a warrior of undoubted courage, who had been “on the ground” more than once, gave him a wide berth, and wondered what the little beggar meant when he used to say, “Since the days of the Prince Noir, monsieur, my family has been at feud with l’Angleterre!” His family were grocers at Bordeaux, and his father’s name was M. Cabasse. He had married a noble in the revolutionary times; and the son at Paris called himself Victor Cabasse de Castillonnes; then Victor C. de Castillonnes; then M. de Castillonnes. One of the followers of the Black Prince had insulted a lady of the house of Castillonnes, when the English were lords of Guienne; hence our friend’s wrath against the Leopard. He had written, and afterwards dramatised a terrific legend describing the circumstances, and the punishment of the Briton by a knight of the Castillonnes family. A more awful coward never existed in a melodrama than that felon English knight. His blanche-fille, of course, died of hopeless love for the conquering Frenchman, her father’s murderer. The paper in which the feuilleton appeared died at the sixth number of the story. The theatre of the Boulevard refused the drama; so the author’s rage against l’infame Albion was yet unappeased. On beholding Miss Newcome, Victor had fancied a resemblance between her and Agnes de Calverley, the blanche Miss of his novel and drama, and cast an eye of favour upon the young creature. He even composed verses in her honour (for I presume that the “Miss Betti” and the Princess Crimhilde of the poems which he subsequently published, were no other than Miss Newcome, and the Duchess, her rival). He had been one of the lucky gentlemen who had danced with Ethel on the previous evening. On the occasion of the ball, he came to her with a highflown compliment, and a request to be once more allowed to waltz with her—a request to which he expected a favourable answer, thinking, no doubt, that his wit, his powers of conversation, and the amour qui flambait dans son regard, had had their effect upon the charming Meess. Perhaps he had a copy of the very verses in his breast-pocket, with which he intended to complete his work of fascination. For her sake alone, he had been heard to say that he would enter into a truce with England, and forget the hereditary wrongs of his race.
But the blanche Miss on this evening declined to waltz with him. His compliments were not of the least avail. He retired with them and his unuttered verses in his crumpled bosom. Miss Newcome only danced in one quadrille with Lord Kew, and left the party quite early, to the despair of many of the bachelors, who lost the fairest ornament of their ball.