Читать книгу Cerise: A Tale of the Last Century - G. J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 5

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The crowd had passed on to witness the king’s dinner, now in full progress, and the two soberly-clad friends found themselves the only occupants of the gardens. Side by side they took their seats on a bench under a row of lime-trees, and continued the conversation which had originated in little Cerise and her childish beauty.

“It is a face as God made it,” said Florian, his boyish features lighting up with enthusiasm. “Children are surely nearer Heaven than ourselves. What a pity to think that they should grow into the painted, patched, powdered hypocrites, of whom so many have passed by us even now.”

“Beautifully dressed, however,” answered his worldly senior, placidly indifferent, as usual, to all that did not concern his own immediate comfort. “If there were no women, Florian, there would be no children, I conclude. Both seem necessary evils. You, I observe, prefer the lesser. As for being near Heaven, that, I imagine, is a mere question of altitude. The musketeer over there is at least a couple of inches nearer it than either of us. What matter? It will make little difference eventually to any one of the three.”

Florian looked as if he did not understand. Indeed, the Abbé’s manner preserved a puzzling uncertainty between jest and earnest. He took a pinch of snuff, too, with the air of a man who had thoroughly exhausted the question. But his companion, still harping on the beauty of the child, continued their conversation.

“Is she not a cousin of yours, this little angel? I know you are akin to that beautiful Marquise, her mother. Oh, Malletort, what advantages you possess, and how unconscious you seem of them!”

“Advantages!” repeated the Abbé, musing. “Well, perhaps you are right. Handsome women are the court-cards of the game, if a man knows how to play them. It is a grand game, too, and the stakes are well worth winning. Yet I sometimes think if I had foreseen in time how entirely you must devote body and soul to play it, I might never have sat down at all. I could almost envy a boy, like that merry page who passed us with my baby-cousin—a boy, whose only thought or care is to spend the time gaily now, and wear a sword as soon as his beard is grown hereafter.”

“The boy will carry a sword fairly enough,” answered Florian; “for he looks like a little adventurer already. Who is he? I have remarked him amongst the others for a certain bold bearing, that experience and sorrow alone will, I fear, be able to tame.”

“It will take a good deal of both to tame any of that family,” answered Malletort; “and this young game-chick will no doubt prove himself of the same feather as the rest of the brood when his spurs are grown. He’s a Hamilton, Florian; a Hamilton from the other side of the water, with a cross of the wildest blood in France or Europe in his veins. You believe the old monkish chronicles—I don’t. They will tell you that boy’s direct ancestor went up the breach at Acre in front of Cœur de Lion—an Englishman of the true pig-headed type, who had sense enough, however, to hate his vassal ever after for being a bigger fool than himself. On the mother’s side he comes of a race that can boast all its sons brave, and its daughters—well, its daughters—very much the same as other people’s daughters. The result of so much fighting and gasconading being, simply, that the elder branch of the family is sadly impoverished, while the younger is irretrievably ruined.”

“And this lad?” asked Florian, interested in the boy, perhaps because the page’s character was in some respects so completely the reverse of his own.

“Is of the younger branch,” continued Malletort, “and given over body and soul to the cause of this miserable family, whose head died, not half-a-dozen years ago, under the shadow of our grand and gracious monarch, a victim to prejudice and indigestion. Well, these younger Hamiltons have always made it their boast that they grudged neither blood nor treasure for the Stuarts; and the Stuarts, I need hardly tell you, Florian, for you read your breviary, requited them as men must expect to be requited who put their trust in princes—particularly of that dynasty. The elder branch wisely took the oaths of allegiance, for the ingratitude of a reigning house is less hopeless than that of a dethroned family. I believe any one of them would be glad to accept office under the gracious and extremely ungraceful lady who fills the British throne, established, as I understand she is, on so broad a basis, there is but little room for a consort. They are scarce likely to obtain their wish. The younger branch would scout the idea, enveloped, one and all, in an atmosphere of prejudice truly insular, which ignorant people call loyalty. This boy’s great-grandfather died in a battle fought by Charles I., at a place with an unpronounceable name, in the province of ‘Yorkshires.’ His grandfather was shot by a platoon of musketeers in his own courtyard, under an order signed by the judicious Cromwell; and his father was drowned here, in the channel, carrying despatches for his king, as he persisted in calling him, under the respectable disguise of a smuggler. I believe this boy was with him at the time. I know when first he came to Court, people pretended that although so young he was an accomplished sailor; and I remember his hands were hard and dirty, and he always seemed to smell of tar. I will own that now, for a page, he is clean, polished, and well dressed.”

Florian’s dark eyes kindled.

“You interest me,” said he; “I love to hear of loyalty. It is the reflection of religion upon earth.”

“Precisely,” replied the other. “A shadow of the unsubstantial. Well, all his line are loyal enough, and I doubt not the boy has been brought up to believe that in the world there are men, women, and Stuarts. The fact of his being page here, I confess, puzzles me. Lord Stair protested against it, I know, but the king would not listen, and used his own wise discretion, consenting, however, that the lad should drop his family name and be called simply—George. So George fulfils the destiny of a page, whatever that may be—as gaudy, as troublesome, and to all appearance as useless an item in creation as the dragon-fly.”

“And has the child no relations?” asked Florian; “no friends, nobody to whom he belongs? What a position; what a fate; what a cruel isolation!”

“He is indeed in that enviable situation which I cannot agree with you in thinking merits one grain of pity. You and I, Florian, with our education and in our career, should, of all people, best appreciate the advantages of perfect freedom from those trammels which old women of both sexes call the domestic affections.”

“So young, so hopeful, so spirited,” continued Florian, speaking rather to himself than his informant, “and to have no mother!”

“But he had a mother, I tell you,” replied Malletort, “only she died of a broken heart, as women always do when a little energy is required to repair their broken fortunes. Our mother, my son,” he proceeded, still in the same half-mocking, half-impressive tone, “our mother is the Church. She provides for us carefully during life, and when we die in her embrace, at least affords us decent burial and prayers for our welfare hereafter. I tell you, Florian, she is the most thoughtful as she is the most indulgent of mothers. She offers us opportunity for distinction, or allows us shelter and repose according as our ambition soars to heaven, or limits itself, as I confess mine does, to the affairs of earth. Who shall be found exalted above their kind in the next world? (I speak as I am taught)—Priests. Who fill the high places in this? (I speak as I learn)—Priests. The king’s wisest councillors, his ablest financiers, are men of the sober garment and the shaven crown; nay, judging from the simplicity of his habits, and the austerity of his demeanour, I cannot but think that the bravest marshal in our armies is only a priest in disguise.”

“There are but two careers worthy of a life-sacrifice,” observed Florian, his countenance glowing with enthusiasm, “and glory is the aim of each. But who would compare the soldier of France with the soldier of Rome?—the banner of the Bourbon with the cross of Calvary? How much less noble is it to serve earth than heaven?”

Malletort looked in his young friend’s face as if he thought such exalted sentiments could not possibly be real, and shrewdly suspected him of covert sarcasm or jest; but Florian’s open brow admitted of no misconstruction, and the elder man’s features gradually relaxed into the quiet expression of amusement, not devoid of pity, with which a professor in the swimmer’s art, for instance, watches the floundering struggles of a neophyte.

“You are right,” said he, calmly and after a pause; “ours is incomparably the better profession of the two, and the safer. We risk less, no doubt, and gain more. Persecution, in civilised countries at least, is happily all the other way. It is extremely profitable to be saints, and there is no call for us to become martyrs. I think, Florian, we have every reason to be satisfied with our bargain. Why, the very ties we sever, the earthly affections we resign, are, to my mind, but so many more enforced advantages, for which we cannot be too thankful.”

“There would be no merit were there no effort,” answered the other. “No self-denial were there nothing to give up; but with us it is different. I am proud to think we do resign, and cheerfully, all that gives warmth and colouring to the hard outlines of an earthly life. Is it nothing to forego the triumphs of the camp, the bright pageantry, the graceful luxuries of the Court? Is it nothing to place yourself at once above and outside the pale of those sympathies which form the very existence of your fellow-men? More than all, is it nothing, Malletort,”—the young man hesitated, blushed, and cast his eyes down—“is it nothing to trample out of your heart, passions, affections—call them what you will—that seem the very mainspring of your being? Is it nothing to deny yourself at once and for ever the solace of woman’s companionship and the rapture of woman’s love?”

“You declaim well,” replied Malletort, not affecting to conceal that he was amused, “and your arguments would have even more weight were it not that you are so palpably in earnest. This of itself infers error. You will observe, my dear Florian, as a general rule, that the reasoner’s convictions are strong in direct proportion to the weakness of his arguments. But let us go a little deeper into this question of celibacy. Let us strip it of its conventional treatment, its supposed injustice, its apparent romance. To what does it amount? That a priest must not marry—good. I repeat, so much the better for the priest. What is marriage in the abstract?—The union of persons for the continuation of the species in separate and distinct races. What is it in the ideal?—The union of souls by an unphilosophical and impossible fusion of identity, which happily the personality of every human being forbids to exist. What is it in reality?—A fetter of oppressive weight and inconvenient fabric, only rendered supportable from the deadening influence of habit, combined with its general adoption by mankind. Look around you into families and observe for yourself how it works. The woman has discovered all her husband’s evil qualities, of which she does not fail to remind him; and were she a reflective being, which admits of argument, would wonder hourly how she could ever have endured such a mass of imperfections. The man bows his head and shrugs his shoulders in callous indifference, scorning to analyse the disagreeable question, but clear only of one thing—that if he were free, no consideration would induce him to place his neck again beneath the same yoke. Another—perhaps! The same—never! Both have discovered a dissimilarity in tastes, habits, and opinions, so remarkable that it seems scarcely possible that it should be fortuitous. To neither does it occur that each was once the very reflection of the other, in thought, word, and deed; and that a blessing pronounced by a priest—a few years, nay a few months, of unrestricted companionship—have wrought the miraculous change. Sometimes there are quarrels, scenes, tears, reproaches, recriminations. More often, coldness, self-restraint, inward scorn, and the forbearance of a repressed disgust. Then is the separation most complete of all. Their bodies preserve to each other the outward forms of an armed and enforced neutrality, but their souls are so far asunder that perhaps, of all in the universe, this pair alone could, under no circumstances, come together again.”

“Sacrilege!” broke in Florian, indignantly. “What you say is sacrilege against our very nature! You speak of marriage as if it must be the grave of Love. But at least Love has lived. At least the angel has descended and been seen of men, even though he touched the mountain only to spring upward on his flight again towards the skies. He who has really loved, happily or unhappily, married or alone, is for that love ever after a wiser, a nobler, and a better man.”

“Not if he should happen to love a Frenchwoman,” observed the other, taking a pinch of snuff. “Thus much I will not scruple to say for my countrywomen: their coquetries are enough to drive an honest man mad. With regard to less civilised nations (mind, I speak not from personal experience so much as observation of my kind), I admit that for a time, at least, the delusion may possess a charm, though the loss must in all cases far exceed the gain. Set your affections on a German, for instance, and observe carefully, for the experiment is curious, if a dinner with the idol does not so disgust you that not a remnant of worship is left to be swept away by supper-time. A Pole is simply a beautiful barbarian, with more clothing but less manner than an Indian squaw. An Italian deafens you with her shrill voice, pokes your eye out with her fingers, and betrays your inmost secrets to her director, if indeed she does not prefer him to you in every respect. An Englishwoman, handsome, blonde, silent, and retiring, keeps you months in uncertainty while you woo, and when won, believes she has a right to possess you body and soul, and becomes, from a sheer sentiment of appropriation, the most exacting of wives and the most disobliging of mistresses. To make love to a Spaniard is a delicate phrase for paying court to a tigress. Beautiful, fierce, impulsive—with one leap she is in your arms—and then for a word, a look, she will stab you, herself, a rival, perhaps all three, without hesitation or remorse. Caramba! she considers it a compliment no doubt! Yet I tell you, Florian, were I willing to submit to such weaknesses, I had rather love any one of these, or all of them at once for that matter, than attach myself to a Frenchwoman.”

Florian opened his dark eyes wide. This was new ground to the young student. These were questions more interesting than the principles of Aristotle or the experiences of the Saints. He was penetrated, too, with that strange admiration which the young entertain for familiarity with evil in their elders. The other scanned him with half-pitying interest; broke a branch from the fragrant lime-tree under which they sat, and proceeded to elucidate his theory.

“With all other women,” said Malletort, “you have indeed a thousand rivals to out-do; still you know their numbers and can calculate their resources; but with the Frenchwoman, in addition to these, you have yet another, who changes and multiplies himself day by day—who assumes a thousand Protean forms, and against whom you cannot employ the most efficient weapons—such as vanity, gaiety, and love of dissipation, by which the others are to be subdued. This enemy is dress—King Chiffon is the absolute monarch of these realms. Your mistress is gay when you are sad, sarcastic when you are plaintive, reserved when you are adventurous. All this is a matter of course; but as Monsieur Vauban told the king the other day in these gardens, ‘no fortress is stronger than its weakest place,’ and every citadel may be carried by a coup de main, or reduced by the slower process of blockade. But here you have a stronghold within a stronghold; a reserve that can neither be tampered with in secret nor attacked openly; in brief a rival who owns this incalculable advantage, that in all situations and under all circumstances he occupies the first place in your mistress’s thoughts. Bah!” concluded the Abbé, throwing from him the branch which he had stripped of leaves and blossoms, with a gesture that seemed thus to dismiss the subject once for all; “put a Frenchwoman into what position you will, her sympathies indeed may be with her lover, but her first consideration is for her dress!”

As the Abbé spoke he observed a group of four persons passing the front of the palace, under the windows of the king’s dining-saloon. It consisted of little Cerise, her mother, Célandine, and the page. They were laughing and chatting gaily, George apparently taking his leave of the other three. Florian observed a shadow cross the Abbé’s face, that disappeared, however, from those obedient features quickly as it came; and at the same moment the Marquise passed her hand caressingly over the boy’s dark curls, while he bent low before her, and seemed to do homage to her beauty in the act of bidding her a courteous farewell.