Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 40

The Tressillian laughed--a mischievous, _provoquant_ laugh. "No, I believe neither in sudden conversions nor sudden friends.h.i.+ps. Pray do not trouble yourself to be 'just' to me; you see I did not droop and die under the shadow of your wrath."

"Oh no," said Telfer, with a sardonic twist of his moustaches, "one would not accuse you of too much softness, Miss Tressillian."

She colored, and the pride of her family flashed out of her eyes. The Tressillians are all deucedly proud, and would die sooner than yield an inch. "If by softness you mean weakness, you are right," she said, haughtily. "As I have told you, we never forgive injustice."

Telfer frowned. If there was one thing he hated more than another, it was a woman who had anything hard about her. He smiled his chilliest smile. "Those are harsh words from a lady's lips--not so becoming to them as something gentler. You remind me, Miss Tressillian, of a young panther I once had, beautiful to look at, but eminently dangerous to approach, much less to caress. Everybody admired my panther, but no one dared to choose it for a pet."

With this uncourteous allegory the Major turned away, leaving Violet to make it out as best she might. It was good fun to watch the Tressillian's face: I only, standing near, had caught what he said, for he had spoken very low. First she looked haughty and annoyed, then a little troubled and perplexed: she sat quiet a minute, playing thoughtfully with her bracelets; then shook her head with a movement of defiance, and began to sing a Venetian barcarole with more _elan_ and spirit than ever.

"By Jove! Telfer," said I, as we sat in the smoking-room that night, "your would-have-been mother-in-law has plenty of pluck. She'd have kept you in good training, and made a better boy of you; it's quite a loss to your morals that your father didn't marry her."

Telfer didn't look best pleased. He stretched himself full length on one of the divans, and answered not.

"I shouldn't be surprised if, with all her beauty, she hangs on hand,"

said Walsham, "for she hasn't a rap, you know; her governor gamed it all away, and she's certainly a bit of a flirt."

"I don't think so," said Telfer, shortly.

"Oh, by George! don't you? but I do," cried Fred. "Why, she takes a turn at us all, from old De Tintiniac, with his padded figure and coulisses compliments, to Marc, young and beautiful, as the novels say,--but we'll spare his blushes--from Vane, there, with his long rent-roll, to poor me, who she knows goes on tick for my weeds and gloves. She flirts with us all, one after the other, except you, whom she don't dare to touch.

Tell me where you get your _noli me tangere_ armor, Telfer, and I'll adopt it to-morrow, for the girls make such desperate love to me I know some of them will propose before long."

Telfer smoked vigorously during Fred's peroration, and his brow darkened. "I do not consider Miss Tressillian a flirt," he said, slowly.

"She's too careless in showing you her weak points to be trying to trap you. What _I_ call a coquette is a woman who is all things to all men, whose every languis.h.i.+ng glance is a bait, and whose every thought is a conquest."

"And pray how can you tell but what the Tressillian's naturalness and carelessness may be only a superior bit of acting? The highest art, you know, is to imitate nature so close that you can't tell which is which,"

laughed Walsham.

Telfer didn't seem to relish the suggestion, but went on smoking fiercely.

"Not that I want to speak against the girl," Fred went on; "she's very amusing, and well enough, I dare say, if she weren't so devilish proud."

"You seem rather inconsistent," said Telfer, impatiently. "First, you accuse her of being too free, and then blame her for being too reserved."

Walsham laughed.

"If I'm inconsistent, you're a perfect weatherc.o.c.k. A month ago you were calling Violet every name you could think of, and now you snap us all off short if we say a word against her."

Telfer looked haughty enough to extinguish Fred upon the spot; Fred being a small, lively little chap, with not the slightest dignity about him.

"I know little or nothing of Miss Tressillian, but as I was the first to prejudice you all against her, it is only common honor to take her part when I think her unjustly attacked."

Fred gave me a wink of intense significance, but remonstrated no further, for Telfer had something of the dark look upon him that our men knew so well when he led them down to the slaughter at Alma and Balaklava.

"I tell you," continued the Major, after a little silence, "that I am disgusted with myself for having listened to whispers and reports, and believed in them just because they suited the bias of my prejudice. It didn't matter to me whom my father married, as far as money went, for beyond 10,000_l._ or so, it must all come in the entail; but I couldn't endure the idea of his being chiselled by some Becky Sharp or Blanche Armory, and I made up my mind that the Tressillian was of that genre.

I've changed my opinion now. I don't think she either is an actress or an intrigante; and I should be a coward indeed if I hesitated to say so, out of common justice to a young girl who has no one to defend her."

"Bravo, my boy!" said Walsham; "I thought the Tressillian's bright eyes wouldn't let you hate her long. You're quite right, though 'pon my life it is really horrid how women contrive to damage each other. If there's an unlucky girl who has made the best match of the season--she might be an angel from heaven--her bosom-friends would manage gently to spread abroad the interesting facts that she's a 'dreadful flirt,' 'has a snub nose,' is an awful temper, had a ballet-girl for her mamma, or something detrimental. An attractive woman is the target for all her s.e.x to shoot their sneers at, and if the poor thing isn't so riddled with arrows that she's no beauty left, it isn't her sisters' fault."

"I believe you," said Telfer. "My gauge of a woman's fascinations is the amount of hatred all the others bear her. It often amuses me to hear the tone that ladies take in talking of some girl whom we admire. She's a charming creature--a darling--their particular friend but ... there's always a 'but' to neutralize the praise, and with their honeyed hatred they contrive to d.a.m.n the luckless object irretrievably. If another man's a good shot, or whip, or billiard-player, we're not spiteful to him for it. We think him a good fellow, and like him the better; but the dear _beau s.e.xe_ cannot bear a rival, and never rest while one of their acquaintance has diamonds a carat larger, dresses a trifle more costly, has finer horses, or more conquests. The only style of friend I ever heard women speak well of is some plain and timorous individual, good-natured to foolery, and weak as water, who never comes in their orbit, and whom we never look at; and then what a darling she is, and how eloquently they will laud her to the skies, despising her miserably all the while for not having been born pretty!"

"True enough," Marc began. "Why do the Carterets treat the Tressillian so disagreeably?--only because, though without their fortune, she makes ten times their coups; and get themselves up how they may, they know none of us care to waltz with them if she's in the room. Let's drink her health in Marcobrunnen--she's magnificent eyes."

"And first-rate style," said I.

"And a deuced pretty foot," cried Fred.

"_Et une taille superbe_," added de Tintiniac, just come in. "_En verite, elle est chouette cette Violette Anglaise._"

So we chanted the Tressillian's praises. Telfer drank the toast in silence--_I_ thought with a frown on his brow at the freedom with which we discussed his fair foe.

Little Countess Virginie's wedding was to come off in another month, and Marc begged us so hard to stay on till then, that, Telfer seeming very willing, I consented, though it would be the first September I had ever spent out of the English open since I was old enough to know partridges from pheasants. The Tressillian being Virginie's pet friend, after young ladies' custom of contracting eternal alliances (which ordinarily terminate in a quarrel about the shade of a ponceau ribbon, or a mauve flower, or a cornet's eyes, some three months after the signing and sealing thereof), was of course to be one of the _filles d'honneur_. So, as I said to Telfer, he'd have time for a few more battles before the two enemies parted to meet again--n.o.body could tell when.

I began to think that the Major had really been wounded, and that his opponent's bright eyes wouldn't let him come out of the fight wholly scathless, as I saw him leaning against the wall at a ball in the Redoute at Pipesandbeersbad, watching Violet with great earnestness as she whirled round in a _deux temps_, bewitching as was her wont all the frequenters of the Bad. Rich English dyspeptics, poverty-stricken princes, Austrian diplomats, come to cure their hypochondria; French _decores_, to try their new cabals and martingales; British sn.o.bs, to indulge the luxury of grumbling,--all of them found some strange attraction in the "Violette Anglaise."

Violet sank on a seat after her valse. Telfer quietly displaced a young dragoon from Lucca, and sat down by her.

"I am going to stay on another month, Miss Tressillian; are you not sorry to hear it?" he said, with a smile, but I thought a little anxiety in his eyes.

The color flushed over her face, and she answered, with a laugh, not quite a real one: "Of course I am very sorry. I would go away myself to let you enjoy your last week in peace if I were not engaged to Virginie.

Cannot you get me leave of absence from her? I know you would throw your whole heart into the pet.i.tion."

Telfer curled his moustaches impatiently.

"Truth has come out of her well at last," he said, with a dash of bitterness, "and has disguised herself in Miss Tressillian's tulle illusion."

Violet colored brighter still.

"Well," she said, quickly, "was it not your decision that we should never waste courtesy on one another? Was not your own desire _guerre a outrance_?"

"No," answered Telfer, his brow darkening; "that I certainly must deny.

I did you injustice, and I offered you an apology. No man could do more than acknowledge he was in the wrong. I offered you the palm-branch once; you were pleased to refuse it. I am not a man, Miss Tressillian, to run the chance of another repulse. My friends.h.i.+p is not so cheap that I shall intrude it where it is undesired." He spoke with a laugh, but his eyes had a grave anger in them that Violet didn't quite relish.

She looked a little bit frightened up at him. The proud, brilliant Tressillian was as pale and quiet as a little child after a good scolding. But she soon rallied, and flashed up haughtier than ever.

"Major Telfer, you make one great error--one very common to your s.e.x.

You drop us one day, and take us up the next, and then think that we must be grateful to you for the supreme honor you do us. You are cold to us, absolutely rude, as long as it pleases your lordly will, and then, at the first word of courtesy and kindness, you expect us to rise and make you a _reverence_ in the utmost humiliation and thanksgiving. You men"--and Violet began destroying her bouquet with immense energy--"treat us exactly as a cat will treat a mouse. You yourself, for instance, in a moment's hasty judgment, construed all my actions by the light of your own unjust suspicions, and believing everything, no matter how unfounded, spoke against me to all your acquaintance, and treated me with, as you must admit, but scanty courtesy, for one whom I have heard piques himself on his high breeding. And now, when you discover that your suspicions had no foundation, and your hatred no grounds, you wonder that I find it difficult to be as grateful as you seem to think I should be for your having so kindly misjudged me."

As the young lady gave all this forth with much vehemence and spirit, Telfer's lips set, and the blood forced itself through the bronze of his cheeks. He bent towards her till his moustache touched her hair.

"You have no mercy, Violet Tressillian," he said, between his teeth.

"Take care that no one is as pitiless to you in return."

She started, and her bouquet fell to the ground. Telfer gave it her back without looking at her, and turned round to an Austrian with his usual impa.s.sive air.

"Do you know where De Tintiniac is, Staumgaurn? In the roulette room?

All right. I am going there now."

He did go there, and I've a notion that the croupier of Pipesandbeersbad made something that night out of the Major's preoccupation.