In a Winter City/Chapter 14

by Marie Louise de la Ramée

CHAPTER XIV.

"C'est étonnant!" murmured the Due de St. Louis the same evening softly to himself, standing on the steps of the Hôtel Murat, after assisting in the morning at those various civil ceremonies and impediments with which our beloved Italy, in her new character as a nation of Free Thought, does her best to impede and deter all such as cling to so old-world and pedantic a prejudice as marriage.

The dénoûment of the drama which he himself had first set in action had fallen upon him like a thunder-bolt. He had had no conception of what would happen. He had thought to enrich his friend by one of the finest fortunes in Europe, and lo!—the Duc remained in an amazement and a sense of humiliation from which he could not recover.

"C'est étonnant!" he murmured again and again. "Who would ever have believed that Miladi was a woman to beggar herself and play the romance of the 'world lost for love?' If I had only imagined—if I had only dreamed! I will never propose a marriage to any living being again; never."

"You have nothing to be so remorseful about, Duc," said Lord Clairvaux, with a sigh, himself utterly exhausted by all the law work that he had been obliged to go through. "It is very funny certainly—she of all women in the world! But they are happy enough, and he really is the only living creature that ever could manage her. If anybody had ever told me that any man would change Hilda like that!"

"Happy!" echoed M. de St. Louis, with his delicate and incredulous smile. He was a man who had no delusions; he was perfectly aware that there were no marriages that were happy; some were calm, this was the uttermost, and to remain calm required an immense income; money alone was harmony.

Lord Clairvaux lighted a very big cigar, and grumbled that it had been horrible to have to leave England in the Epsom month, but that he thanked goodness that it was the last of her caprices that he would be worried with; and he hoped that this Italian would like them when he had had a year or two of them.

"I don't know, though, but what it is the only sensible caprice she ever did have in her life; eh?" he added; "except buying Escargot and giving him to me after the races—you remember?—Hang it, I've never seen such a Chantilly before or since as that was!"

"We never do see such a race as the one that we happen to win," murmured M. de St. Louis.

"Of course it's an awful cropper to take, and all that; but I'm not sure but what she's done a wise thing, though all the women are howling at her like mad," continued Lord Clairvaux; "a woman can't live for ever on chiffons, you see."

"Most women can—admirably. They buy at eighty as much white hair, the coiffeurs tell me, as they buy blonde or black at twenty."

"Ah, but they can't, if they have a bit of heart or mind in them. Hilda has both."

"The case is so rare I could not prescribe for it—let us hope Miladi's own prescription will suit her," said the Duc, whose serene good-humour was still slightly ruffled.

"Well, she always was all extremes and contraries," said Lord Clairvaux. "You never could say one minute what she wouldn't do the next. By George! you know there is nothing too odd for her to go in for; I should not wonder an atom if when we come here two or three years hence, we find her worshipping a curly Paolino, seeing to the silkworms, and studying wine-making: she's really tried everthing else, you know."

"Everything except happiness? Well, very few of us get any chance of trying that, or would appreciate it if we did get it. Happiness," pursued the Duc pensively, "must, after all, be almost as monotonous as discontent—when one is used to it. It is comforting to think so; for there is very little of it. I cannot realize Miladi amongst the babies and the wine-presses; but you may be right."

"Well, you know she's tried everything else," repeated Lord Clairvaux. "It will be like Julius Cæsar and his cabbage-garden."

"You mean Diocletian," said the Duc. "Do you leave to-night? We may as well go as far as Paris together."

And he turned back into the hotel to bid farewell to Madame Mila.

Madame Mila,—who had made the religious and civil ceremonies gorgeous in the last new anomalous anachronisms, with a classic and clinging dress, quite Greek in its cut, covered all over with the eyes out of peacocks' feathers, and a cotte de maille boddice, stiff as pasteboard, with gold and silver embroideries,—was now on the point of departure from the Winter City across the Mont Cenis, and was covered up in the most wonderful of hooded cloaks trimmed with the feathers of the Russian diver and the grebe; about one hundred and fifty birds, happy, peaceful, and innocent under their native skies, had died to trim the wrap, and it would probably be worn about half-a-dozen times; for feathers are so very soon tumbled, as everybody knows.

"They are quite mad, both of them!" said the little lady, giving her small fingers in adieu, and turning to see that Maurice had all the things she wanted, and was duly hooking them on to her ceinture of oxydised silver.

She travelled with her two maids, a courier, and a footman, but none of them did as much hard work as the indefatigable Maurice.

"Perhaps, Madame," said the Duc, who indeed thought so himself; but was not going to admit it too strongly of two persons who, despite their lamentable weakness, remained his favourites. "But if a few people were not mad occasionally there would be no chance for the sanity of the world."

"Well, they will repent horribly, that is one comfort; she most of all," said Madame Mila, with asperity. "She ought to have been prevented; treated for lunacy, you know; in France they would have managed it at once with a conseil de famille. Maurice, you are screwing the top of that flacon on all wrong—do take more care! She will repent horribly, but she don't see it now. Of course if she had had to lose the jewels they would have brought her to reason. As it is she don't in the least realise the horrible thing that she's done;—not in the least, not in the least! And the idea of going to his villa to-day! So unusual you know;—so positively improper! So utterly contrary to all custom! When I said to her, too, that she wouldn't be able even to afford Worth, she laughed, and answered, that she would have one dress from him every year for old friendship's sake for the Palestrina vintage balls, and that he would be sure to embroider her the loveliest Bacchic symbolisms and put the cone of the thyrsus for buttons!—only fancy! She could actually jest about that! How miserable she will be in three months when she has come back to her senses; and how miserable she will make him!"

"Chère comtesse," said the Duc, taking up his hat and cane, "everybody repents everything. It is a law of Fate. The only difference is that some people repent pleasantly, and some unpleasantly. Let us hope that our beautiful Duchesse will repent pleasantly. Madame, j'ai l'honneur de vous saluer—Bon voyage; au revoir."

 

THE END.

 

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITE FRIARS.