Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories Part 9

"I do not know really what to do or what to advise," would Lady Marabout say to herself over and over again (so disturbed by her onerous burden of responsibilities that she would let Despreaux arrange the most outrageous coiffures, and, never noticing them, go out to dinner with emeralds on blue velvet, or something as shocking to feminine nerves in her temporary aberration), forgetting one very great point, which, remembered, would have saved her all trouble, that n.o.body asked her to do anything, and not a soul requested her advice. "But Goodwood is decidedly won, and Goodwood must not be lost; in our position we owe something to society," she would invariably conclude these mental debates; which last phase, being of a vagueness and obscure application that might have matched it with any Queen's speech or electional address upon record, was a mysterious balm to Lady Marabout's soul, and spoke volumes to _her_, if a trifle hazy to you and to me.

But Lady Marabout, if she was a little bit of a sophist, had not worn her eye-gla.s.s all these years without being keen-sighted on some subjects, and, though perfectly satisfied with her niece's conduct with Goodwood, saw certain symptoms which made her tremble lest the detrimental Lancer should have won greater odds than the eligible Marquis.

"Arthur Cardonnel is excessively handsome! Such very good style!

Isn't it a pity they're all so poor! His father played away everything--literally everything. The sons have no more to marry upon, any one of them, than if they were three crossing-sweepers," said her ladys.h.i.+p, carelessly, driving home from St. Paul's one Sunday morning.

And, watching the effect of her stray arrow, she had beheld an actual flush on the beauty's fair, impa.s.sive cheek, and had positively heard a smothered sigh from an admirably brought-up heart, no more given ordinarily to such weaknesses than the diamond-studded heart pendent from her bracelet, the belle's heart and the bracelet's heart being both formed alike, to fetch their price, and bid to do no more:--power of volition would have been as inconvenient in, and interfered as greatly with, the sale of one as of the other.

"She does like him!" sighed Lady Marabout over that Sabbath's luncheon wines. "It's always my fate--always; and Goodwood, never won before, will be thrown--actually thrown--away, as if he were the younger son of a n.o.body!" which horrible waste was so terrible to her imagination that Lady Marabout could positively have shed tears at the bare prospect, and might have shed them, too, if the Hon. Val, the butler, two footmen, and a page had not inconveniently happened to be in the room at the time, so that she was driven to restrain her feelings and drink some Amontillado instead. Lady Marabout is not the first person by a good many who has had to smile over sherry with a breaking heart. Ah! lips have quivered as they laughed over Chambertin, and trembled as they touched the bowl of a champagne-gla.s.s. Wine has a.s.sisted at many a joyous festa enough, but some that has been drunk in gayety has caught gleams, in the eyes of the drinkers, of salt water brighter than its brightest sparkles: water that no other eyes can see. Because we may drink Badminton laughingly when the gaze of Society the Non-Sympathetic is on us, do you think we must never have tasted any more bitter dregs? _Va-t'en, beca.s.se!_ where have you lived! Nero does not always fiddle while Rome is burning from utter heartlessness, believe me, but rather--sometimes, perhaps--because his heart is aching!

"Goodwood will propose to-night, I fancy, he is so very attentive,"

thought Lady Marabout, sitting with her sister chaperones on the cosy causeuses of a mansion in Carlton Terrace, at one of the last b.a.l.l.s of the departing season. "I never saw dear Valencia look better, and certainly her waltzing is----Ah! good evening, Major Cardonnel! Very warm to-night, is it not? I shall be so glad when I am down again at Fernditton. Town, in the first week of July, is really not habitable."

And she furled her fan, and smiled on him with her pleasant eyes, and couldn't help wis.h.i.+ng he hadn't been on the Marchioness Rondeletia's visiting list, he _was_ such a detrimental, and he was ten times handsomer than Goodwood!

"Will Miss Valletort leave you soon?" asked Cardonnel, sitting down by her.

"_Ah! monsieur, vous etes la!_" thought Lady Marabout, as she answered, like a guarded diplomatist as she was, that it was not all settled at present what her niece's post-season destiny would be, whether Devon or Fernditton, or the Spas, with her mother, Lady Honiton; and then unfurled her fan again, and chatted about Baden and her own indecision as to whether she should go there this September.

"May I ask you a question, and will you pardon me for its plainness?"

asked Cardonnel, when she'd exhausted Baden's desirable and non-desirable points.

Lady Marabout shuddered as she bent her head, and thought, "The creature is never going to confide in me! He will win me over if he do, he looks so like his mother! And what shall I say to Adeliza!"

"Is your niece engaged to Goodwood or not?"

If ever a little fib was tempting to any lady, from Eve downward, it was tempting to Lady Marabout now! A falsehood would settle everything, send Cardonnel off the field, and clear all possibility of losing the "best match of the season." Besides, if not engaged to Goodwood actually to-night, Val would be, if she liked, to-morrow, or the next day, or before the week was over at the furthest--would it be such a falsehood after all? She colored, she fidgeted her fan, she longed for the little fib!--how terribly tempting it looked! But Lady Marabout is a bad hand at prevarication, and she hates a lie, and she answered bravely, with a regretful twinge, "Engaged? No; not----"

"Not yet! Thank G.o.d!"

Lady Marabout stared at him and at the words muttered under his moustaches:

"Really, Major Cardonnel, I do not see why you----"

"Should thank Heaven for it? Yet I do--it is a reprieve. Lady Marabout, you and my mother were close friends; will you listen to me for a second, while we are not overheard? That I have loved your niece--had the madness to love her, if you will--you cannot but have seen; that she has given me some reasonable encouragement it is no c.o.xcombry to say, though I have known from the first what a powerful rival I had against me; but that Valencia loves me and does not love him, I believe--nay, I _know_. I have said nothing decided to her; when all hangs on a single die we shrink from hazarding the throw. But I must know my fate to-night. If she come to you--as girls will, I believe, sometimes--for countenance and counsel, will you stand my friend?--will you, for the sake of my friends.h.i.+p with your son, your friends.h.i.+p with my mother, support my cause, and uphold what I believe Valencia's heart will say in my favor?"

Lady Marabout was silent: no Andalusian ever worried her fan more ceaselessly in coquetry than she did in perplexity. Her heart was appealed to, and when that was enlisted, Lady Marabout was lost!

"But--but--my dear Major Cardonnel, you are aware----" she began, and stopped. I should suppose it may be a little awkward to tell a man to his face he is "not desirable!"

"I am aware that I cannot match with Goodwood? I am; but I know, also, that Goodwood's love cannot match with mine, and that your niece's affection is not his. That he may win her I know women too well not to fear, therefore I ask _you_ to be my friend. If she refuse me, will you plead for me?--if she ask for counsel, will you give such as your own heart dictates (I ask no other)--and, will you remember that on Valencia's answer will rest the fate of a man's lifetime?"

He rose and left her, but the sound of his voice rang in Lady Marabout's ears, and the tears welled into her eyes: "Dear, dear! how like he looked to his poor dear mother! But what a position to place me in! Am I _never_ to have any peace?"

Not at this ball, at any rate. Of all the worried chaperones and distracted duennas who hid their anxieties under pleasant smiles or affable lethargy, none were a quarter so miserable as Helena, Lady Marabout. Her heart and her head were enlisted on opposite sides; her wishes pulled one way, her sympathies another; her sense of justice to Cardonnel urged her to one side, her sense of duty to "dearest Adeliza"

urged her to the other; her pride longed for one alliance, her heart yearned for the other. Cardonnel had confided in her and appealed to her; _sequitur_, Lady Marabout's honor would not allow her to go against him: yet, it was nothing short of grossest treachery to poor Adeliza, down there in Devon, expecting every day to congratulate her daughter on a prospective duchy won, to counsel Valencia to take one of these beggared Cardonnels, and, besides--to lose all her own laurels, to lose the capture of Goodwood!

No Guelphs and Ghibelins, no Royalists and Imperialists, ever fought so hard as Lady Marabout's divided duties.

"Valencia, Major Cardonnel spoke to me to-night," began that best-hearted and most badgered of ladies, as she sat before her dressing-room fire that night, alone with her niece.

Valencia smiled slightly, and a faint idea crossed Lady Marabout's mind that Valencia's smile was hardly a pleasant one, a trifle too much like the play of moonbeams on ice.

"He spoke to me about you."

"Indeed!"

"Perhaps you can guess, my dear, what he said?"

"I am no clairvoyante, aunt;" and Miss Val yawned a little, and held out one of her long slender feet to admire it.

"Every woman, my love, becomes half a clairvoyante when she is in love,"

said Lady Marabout, a little bit impatiently; she hadn't been brought up on the best systems herself, and though she admired the refrigeration (on principle), it irritated her just a little now and then. "Did he--did he say anything to _you_ to-night?"

"Oh yes!"

"And what did you answer him, my love?"

"What would you advise me?"

Lady Marabout sighed, coughed, played nervously with the ta.s.sels of her peignoir, crumpled Bijou's ears with a reckless disregard to that priceless pet's feelings, and wished herself at the bottom of the Serpentine. Cardonnel had trusted her, she couldn't desert _him_; poor dear Adeliza had trusted her, she couldn't betray _her_; what was right to one would be wrong to the other, and to reconcile her divided duties was a Danaid's labor. For months she had worried her life out lest her advice should be asked, and now the climax was come, and asked it was.

"What a horrible position!" thought Lady Marabout.

She waited and hesitated till the pendule had ticked off sixty seconds, then she summoned her courage and spoke:

"My dear, advice in such matters is often very harmful, and always very useless; plenty of people have asked my counsel, but I never knew any of them take it unless it chanced to chime in with their fancy. A woman's best adviser is her own heart, specially on such a subject as this. But before I give my opinion, may I ask if you have accepted him?"

Lady Marabout's heart throbbed quick and fast as she put the momentous question, with an agitation for which she would have blushed before her admirably nonchalante niece; but the tug of war was coming, and if Goodwood should be lost!

"You have accepted him?" she asked again.

"No! I--refused him."

The delicate rose went out of the Hon. Val's cheeks for once, and she breathed quickly and shortly.

Goodwood was _not_ lost then!

Was she sorry--was she glad? Lady Marabout hardly knew; like Wellington, she felt the next saddest thing after a defeat is a victory.

"But you love him, Valencia?" she asked, half ashamed of suggesting such weakness, to this glorious beauty.

The Hon. Val unclasped her necklet as if it were a chain, choking her, and her face grew white and set: the coldest will feel on occasion, and all have _some_ tender place that can wince at the touch.

"Perhaps; but such folly is best put aside at once. Certainly I prefer him to others, but to accept him would have been madness, absurdity. I told him so!"

"You told him so! If you had the heart to do so, Valencia, he has not lost much in losing you!" burst in Lady Marabout, her indignation getting the better of her judgment, and her heart, as usual, giving the coup de grace to her reason. "I am shocked at you! Every tender-hearted woman feels regret for affection she is obliged to repulse, even when she does not return it; and you, who love this man----"