Читать книгу The Young Seigneur - W. D. Lighthall - Страница 32

Grace Carter came over on the way to the ball, and when I descended I found her entertaining my grandmother, while a young man named Chinic, teaming with good nature and compliments, sat near her and rising with the rest grasped me by the hand as I entered. Grace too, smiling, held out her hand. As we went to the door my grandmother delivered me over to her, saying playfully: "Chamilly will be in your charge this evening. He is melancholy. C'est à toi de le guérir."

"I will be his sister of Charity!" she cried merrily and pressed my arm. I laughed. It was not so undelightful to be taken into the companionship of a graceful girl.

As we whirled along in the carriage, the half-moon in the dark blue sky, making heavy shadows on the trees and mansions, lit her cheek and Greek-knotted hair on the side next me with a glamour so that her head and shoulders shone softly in it like a bust of Venus.

Picault's was an extensive family mansion of sandstone, built thirty years before for one of the wealthiest merchants of Montreal. It was on a corner.

One end rose into a rococo tower, lit then with the curious kind of clearness produced by a half-moon's light. In the centre, before the hospital door, projected a pillared portico, under which our carriage drove, and at the other end lurked the shades of a massive gate-way with cobbled road leading through. The carriage-road past the front was bordered by lilacs in bloom—on the one side, as we went through, all shadows, on the other faintly colored, mingling their fragrance with that of huge rose-bushes.

The doors were thrown open, and we saw a great staircase in a wide hall hung with colored lights, and entering passed into one of the most lavish of interiors. As I looked around the dressing-room to which Chinic and myself were shown and saw the windows stacked with tropical plants, the colored candles set about the walls in silver sconces; the bijou paintings and the graceful carving of the furniture; the deep blending of tints and shades in the carpets, curtains and ornaments, I felt another new experience—the sensation of luxury—and dropping back in an easy chair, asked my companion:

"Chinic, what does Picault do?"

"Ma foi, I do not pretend to say," replied the young Frenchman, half turning towards me from the mirror where he was brushing his hair." Suffice it he is a millionaire, and I get summoned to drink his wine. Some say he is in politics, others that he deals with stocks; for me it is enough that he deals with the dance and good table. Is it not magnificent to so live? I would sell my soul for fifteen years of it."

The remark set me thinking a moment, but it only complicated the charm of delivering oneself over to sensations.

We met Grace at the head of the staircase. She had never looked more Venus-like than in this fairy glow, with a plant-filled window behind her, opening out into the summer darkness. The music of a waltz of Strauss was rising from below, and I felt a wonderful thrill as she again took my arm.

Our respects being paid to the hostess, Madame Picault, Grace gave me a couple of dances on her card, and introducing me to a slender young girl, with pretty eyes, and two very long, crisp plaits of hair, went off on the arm of some one else.

As my father's plan of education had taken me hitherto wholly into English society, so far as into any, the unique feeling of being a stranger to my own race came with full force upon me for a moment and I stood silent beside the pretty eyes and looked at the scene. The walls were a perfect gallery of sublime landscapes, and small pictures heavily set; four royal chandeliers threw illumination over a maze of flowered trains and flushed complexions, moving through a stately "Lancers," under a ceiling of dark paintings, divided as if framed, by heavy gilded mouldings, like the ceiling of a Venetian Palace.

"Is it not gay—that scene there!" I exclaimed.

"It is charming, Monsieur," said the pretty eyes. "Montreal is altogether charming."

"Ah, you come from Quebec, Mademoiselle?"

"No, Monsieur, from New Orleans," she replied confidingly.

Now the Louisiana French are very interesting to us French of Canada. Once we formed parts of one continuous Empire, though now divided by many thousands of miles, and their fate is naturally a bond of strong sympathy to us.

"We have there only the Carnival," she continued with the winning prettiness of a child. "That is in the spring, and the young men dress up for three or four days and throw bon-bons and flowers at us. When the carnival is over, they present the young ladies with the jewels they have worn?"

"And the ladies return them smiles more prized than jewels?"

She looked up at me in fresh-natured delight.

"Monsieur, you must come to New Orleans sometime, during the season of the Carnival."

"I shall most certainly if you will assure me the ladies of New Orleans are all of one kind."

"You are pleased to jest, sir. But judge from my sister. Is she not handsome?"

Her sister—a Southern beauty, the sensation just then of Montreal—was truly a noble type. The pretty one watched my rising admiration.

"What do you think of her?"

"She is wonderful.—And she is your sister?"

"My married sister, Monsieur. She is on her way to France. I will tell you a little romance about her. Last year she came to Montreal with our father, and they were delighted with it. She used to say she would not marry a Frenchman; nor a blonde. Above all she detested Paris, and declared she would never live there. While she was here she left her portrait with Mde. De Rheims as a souvenir. Soon a young officer in the army of France comes out and visits Mde. De Rheims and sees the picture of my sister. He was struck with it, declared he would see the original, travelled straight to New Orleans, and has married my sister. See him there—he is a blonde and he is taking her to Paris."

"How strange that is! Montreal is a dangerous place for the ladies of your family."

She glanced at me with sly pleasure.

"But we are not dangerous to Montreal, sir."

"Ah non, ma'm'selle."

Then this was my first type to begin on, of our French society world. Were they all like her? I watched the ladies and gentlemen who stood and sat chatting about, and saw that everyone else too made an art of charming. Grace also. She frequently passed, and I could catch her silvery French sentences and cheerful laugh.

As a partner now took away my little Southern friend, I caught Chinic on the wing, got introduced once more, and found myself careering in a galop down the room with a large-looking girl—Mlle. Sylphe—whose activity was out of proportion to her figure, though in more harmony with her name. Her build was commanding, she was of dark complexion and hair, in manner demure, alluring with great power by the instrumentality of lustrous eyes, though secretly, I felt, like the tigress itself in cruelty to her victims. She was a magnificent figure, and gave me a merry dance. After it, she set about explaining the meaning of her garland decorations and the language of flowers, the Convent school at Sault-au-Recollet, dinner parties, and the young men of her acquaintance.

"You seem very fond of society?" I advanced.

"I adore society—it is my dream. I waltz, you see. I know it is wrong, and the church forbids it; but—I do not dance in Lent. After all," shrugging her shoulders, "we can confess, you know, and when we are old it will suffice to repent and be devout. I shall begin to be excessively devout," (toying with a jet cross on her necklace)—"the day I find my first grey hair."

"You have then a number of years to waltz."

Her dark eyes looked over my face as a possible conquest.

"I tremble when I think it is not for ever. But look at my aunt's and that of Madame de Rheims!"

These ladies were indeed distinguished by their hair; but I suspect that it was not the mere fact of its greyness to which she wished to draw my attention—rather it was to the manner in which they wore it, brushed up high and away from their foreheads, like dowagers of yore. Standing in a corner together very much each other's counterpart, both a trifle too dignified, they were obviously proud leaders of society. She watched my shades of expression, and cried:

"There is my favorite quadrille—Là là-là-là-là-là-à-là," softly humming and nodding her head, an action not common among the English.

"Pardon me, sir, your name is Mr. 'Aviland, I believe," interrupted a young man with a close-cut, very thick, very black beard, and the waxed ends of his moustache fiercely turned up.

I bowed.

"Our Sovereign Lady De Rheims requests the pleasure of your conversation."

On turning to Mlle. Sylphe to make my excuses, she smiled, saying with a regretful grimace: "Obeissez."

Mde. De Rheims stood with Mde. Fée, the aunt of Mile. Sylphe, near the musicians, receiving and surveying her subjects—a woman of majestic presence. Nodding dismissal to the fierce moustache, she acknowledged my deep bow with a slight but gracious inclination.

"Madame Fée, permit me to introduce Monsieur Chamilly Haviland, a D'Argentenaye of Dormillière—and the last. My child, your attractions have been too exclusively of the 'West End.' You have lived among the English; enter now into my society." Mde. Fée smiled, and Mde. de Rheims taking a look at me continued: "The stock is incomparable out of France. Remember, my child, that your ancestors were grande noblesse," haughtily raising her head. A novel feeling of distinction was added to my swelling current of new pleasures.

A ruddy, simply-dressed, black-haired lady, but of natural and cultured manner, was now received by her with much cordiality, and I had an opportunity to survey the whole concourse and continue my observations. Brought up as I had been for the last few years, I found my own people markedly foreign—not so much in any obtrusive respect as in that general atmosphere to which we often apply the term.