Читать книгу Vivienne - Rita - Страница 13

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"I dream'd that as I wandered by the way

Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring." .... Shelley

MANON BEAUVOIR was buried, and the Countess de Verdreuil announced to her husband that she had promised to befriend and protect the beautiful girl who had lived under her guardianship so long—the child who had known no mother's care or father's love; whose nature, whose beauty, and high-born instincts all seemed to unfit her for the coarse, rough life of a peasant, and yet who had no other life to look forward to unless she, Blanche de Verdreuil, gave her the shelter and protection she needed so much.

And the old count thought how sweet and charitable a nature was that of his beautiful wife, and cordially approved of her plan, and welcomed Vivienne to Renonçeux with a chivalry and courtesy such as he might have shown the noblest lady in the land.

It never occurred to him to treat her as a dependant. The first sight of her face, the sound of her voice, the grace and ease which seemed so natural to her, all convinced him that the girl, in spite of the mystery of her birth and parentage, was in all respects fitted for a higher sphere in life than she had hitherto occupied.

So through the autumn and winter, Vivienne remained at the château, and the count insisted upon her having every advantage and instruction possible to complete her neglected education and her wonderful musical talents. Her voice seemed to him as to every one else—a marvel, and the cultivation and care it now received seemed to add to its charm and perfect its beauty.

In the long winter evenings when it rang through the lofty rooms, thrilling and echoing far out into the night, even Blanche de Verdreuil was entranced by its magical power. Her very teachers were lost in wonder when they heard her, and prophesied she might rival Pasta herself if she chose to do so.

But to Albert Hoffmann this girl's genius and magnificent gifts were as revelations of a new and soul-felt delight, an inexhaustible wonder.

With him the shyness and reserve of her manner were changed to frank and familiar confidence. They were constantly together, and their mutual love for the same art, their passionate delight and absorbing admiration for all belonging to music were naturally sufficient to account for their frequent and uninterrupted companionship. So at least the old count thought, and so apparently did Blanche de Verdreuil, for no restraint was ever placed upon their intercourse, no barrier ever raised between that friendly and almost hourly intercourse which to Albert Hoffmann was gradually becoming the one thing worth living for—the one joy of his life.

And yet to meet and speak and associate with this lovely, gifted girl was a danger whose nature and source of joy he never questioned. He was still so much of a boy in looks, in his shy reserve and habitual diffidence, that to Vivienne he seemed even younger than herself, and she treated him with the frank, natural affection she might have shown to a brother, as indeed she began to consider him; while he day by day let his thoughts dwell on her, watched for her footsteps, hungered for her words and looks and smiles, till his life seemed merged into a paradise of dreams, so holy and so pure, that they coloured every thought and hope of his heart.

He did not speak of them, he hardly dared to breathe the fullness of their meaning even to himself, for they could not be clothed in the language of any earthly passion; they were so vague and dreamy, and yet withal so beautiful in their innocent dawn, so fresh and unsullied by any breath of worldly sophistry, or mere selfish desire, that none could have read them without a deep and intense pity for the boy-dreamer, whose very love was like his nature—a poem not to be understood or read by every eye, but shut up in his own heart's depths, fostered by his own vivid imagination, and coloured by the force of his own fervent fancies and poetic thoughts.

The months glided swiftly by, the winter was never dark, the days never dreary, the hours never long to Albert now. Life was a beautiful, glorious reality, a paradise, an elysium. The earth seemed glorious and glad as with the radiance of eternal summer. There was no shadow upon its brightness for him, no cloud upon its beauty. Of the future he never thought, of any termination to his dream of delight, which seemed at once so perfect and so inexhaustible, he never questioned. Vivienne was beside him—that was all he knew and all he cared to know.

The girl grew more lovely as the months passed by. The deep, marvellous eyes, the dusky glory of her hair, the rich colouring of the faultless face all grew into yet more vivid beauty with the grace of her dawning womanhood. The sweetness and infinite gentleness of her nature shone out more fully as her timidity and restraint wore off, and the new life she led became habitual in its thousand wonders of luxury and ease which had seemed so strange at first.

Brilliant, graceful, fanciful, and yet with a strange, deep undercurrent of sadness flowing beneath the mirth and buoyancy of her natural character, Vivienne St. Maurice was in every respect a woman dangerously fascinating and dowered with wonderful gifts—a woman whom a man might well deem worthy of his whole heart, a woman whom many would love, but who would only love once, and for ever.

With the first early days of spring, Blanche de Verdreuil left for Paris, only too thankful that her banishment was over, and inwardly vowing never to submit to such an enforced exile, as she termed it, again. Vivienne of course remained at Renonçeux, the countess taking care to provide her with a chaperon in the form of an elderly dowager, who was to combine the duties of companion with the charge of the household, in the absence of its mistress.

What blissful months those were to the young artist!

Vivienne and he were together under the same roof, sharing the same life. The days were all gladness, the nights all delight. She was near him. What fairer joy could earth bestow?

They strolled through woods, all fresh and green with the breath of spring. They watched the day die out in glory and the night shine out of gloom. In the soft dusk of the evening she sang to him, or made him play to her sweet, dreamy melodies of Mendelssohn, or grand and passionate compositions of Beethoven, that stirred her own soul to its very depths with their sublime meaning.

And all unconsciously her smiles, her praises, her very gentleness, and untroubled calm were leading him on to love her with a worship deep and passionate, yet humble as its own strength and exalted trust. Her beauty, perfect as it was, could never have won such reverence and love from him, had it not been the index of a nature—noble, generous, exalted—yet withal womanly and tender.

Meanwhile Raoul de Verdreuil was drifting from country to country with his usual uncertainty of movement. At intervals he had news from Renonçeux, but for many months he had not heard from Albert, and he began to grow troubled at this unwonted silence, when at last a letter reached him. A strange, odd, bewildering letter it was too—one that raised a smile to his lips, and lit the dark, earnest eyes with a look of quizzical amusement.

"Albert must be hard hit," he said to himself; "six pages, and not one without Vivienne appearing in it two or three times at least. Poor boy! What a pity that he should have taken the disease so early! I'm afraid he'll be quite spoilt for anything by the time I see him again. What a description of the girl too! She must be wonderfully beautiful if she's anything like it. Now I wonder what induced Blanche to have her at Renonçeux. It's odd, and unlike her, to say the least of it. I should like to find out her motive!"

He folded up the letter and returned it to its envelope, with a thoughtful look replacing his former amused one, and the old gravity deepening in his eyes.

"What a strange thing it must be to feel all these raptures about a woman!" he exclaimed presently, half aloud, as he rose from his seat and went to the window. "I can't understand it at all myself—long may I say the same, and I think I shall too; my heart must be uncommonly tough, it has stood so many sieges, and yet feels none the worse; and here I am eight-and-twenty years of age, and might be fifty, for all the power a woman has to rouse or interest me."

He looked out on the calm, starry night, on the beautiful rushing waters of the distant Danube, on all the glitter and splendour of the Austrian capital where he was now staying.

"The world is fair enough," so ran his thoughts, "and men are happy enough and content enough while they are free. I would not change places with Albert though Vivienne St. Maurice were twice as beautiful, and ten times as enchanting, and that is hardly possible, I suppose."

Then he turned away and entered his dressing-room; he was to go to an ambassador's ball that night, and the hour was already late. Nevertheless, he never hurried his toilet in any way, or troubled himself to remember the fact that bright eyes were watching for him, and lovely faces growing pale with anger or disappointment as the time massed, and his promises to them seemed forgotten, as indeed they were, for Raoul de Verdreuil rarely paid the compliment of a second thought to any of the women he met in society, and their airy graces and coquettish exactions were too trivial to be remembered in their absence by one so indifferent to their presence.

The ball was at its height when he arrived, and not a few graceful reproaches fell on his ear as one fair aristocrat after another greeted him. For Raoul de Verdreuil had that surest and strongest attraction for all women in the languid, egotistic high-bred society among which he moved—complete and perfect indifference to their charms.

No more complete method exists for rousing a woman's interest than to appear totally careless respecting it. And his coldness was so natural, so unfeigned, that no woman, however beautiful, could ever flatter herself that she had penetrated beneath its icy mask—had ever won a second thought from him when he had left her side. He was perfectly courteous, but withal rarely moved from the grave, serene composure of his manner, and his conquest had become a task even the vainest and the loveliest deemed impossible.

Amidst all the mirth and revelry of the ambassador's ball his face never seemed to lighten with interest or enjoyment, his eyes never seemed to rest on any form, however beautiful, with more admiration than he would have bestowed on a picture presented to his notice, and at any moment a word from some great statesman, or political authority in the ministerial world had twofold more interest for him than the sweetest glance, or softest whispers of any woman present.

When he left the assemblage of brilliant beauties, of titled dignitaries, of political rulers of all nations, a sigh of relief escaped his lips. It seemed that the fresh, sweet air, the starlit night, were doubly grateful after the heated rooms, with their heavy scents and fragrant odours, their glitter of wealth and show, their mockery of enjoyment, and load of insincerity.

He walked on to his hotel, not caring to drive back, late as the hour was, or rather early, for already the dawn was breaking in the east, though the stars were bright as ever in the clear, soft sky above.

He could hear the rush of the swift river sweeping ever onwards to the far-off sea. He could catch the glance of its waters, flowing on with the stars mirrored in their depths, and murmuring a solemn melody, as of the mighty deeds of past ages, the records of dead years.

Something of melancholy, of foreboding, seemed to come to him in that moment; one of those strange, wistful, and wholly indescribable sensations that shadow the brightness of our lives with the prescience of evil or of sorrow, we know not why. It was new to Raoul de Verdreuil to feel thus, and he wondered dimly why at this moment, when success and high praise had just rewarded his mission, he should experience a feeling so totally at variance with the triumphs he had won.

"I think Albert's letter has made me discontented," he muttered to himself, as he tried to shake off the gloom and heaviness oppressing him. "I have always been first with him, and now I am dethroned for a woman—a girl whom he has known but a few brief months, but yet who has taught him in that space to forget for the first time in our lives his earliest friend. Am I jealous, I wonder—jealous of the sex I despise? Pshaw! it is ridiculous."

But ridiculous or not, Raoul de Verdreuil could not shake the shadow from his heart, the gloom from his brow.

He walked on, far on, in the cool, fresh dawn of the early day—on till he reached the river's rushing waters, all dark and swift as the restless thoughts of his own mind, and gazing down at them he mused on all the changes they had witnessed, on all the secrets they had kept, while centuries and cycles had swept over them, leaving them still unchanged. Fleeting and innumerable phantoms, generations of the dead seemed trooping by in the faint, grey morning light; wings rushing past like the restless sweep of the waters, fanned his brow in that mysterious solitude.

Thus in years gone by had others mused before him—thus in years to come would others muse long after him. Nations might perish, dynasties change; but the same river would roll on unchanged to the distant sea, and the same thoughts fill men's hearts as they watched its course, and heard its voices speak from the grave of past ages.