23 To Love Or Hate—To Win Or Lose
SO matters stand on this bright evening, when Miss Dolores Valentine walks up and down the lamp-lit Sala in lustrous evening robe, and listens to Mrs. Tinker and her talk of the new will. No one has ever said to her directly one word on the subject matrimonial, but it is in all their minds, nevertheless, and mademoiselle knows it. Why not take the initiative herself, come generously forward, and put them out of their misery. It is through a sense of delicacy and consideration for her, no doubt, they hesitate. Well, she in turn will show them she is not lacking in nice perception. One must marry, it seems; it appears to be a state of being no properly regulated young lady can hope to escape—since it must be done, then it were well ’twere done quickly.
Of late Sir Vane has been looking more than commonly black and bilious, and Eugene Aramish; has talked in moody strains of returning to England, and rather committing social suicide, than otherwise. Bonne maman has been rather silent and grave, a little perturbed, and as if in doubt, and has contracted a habit of regarding them both with anxious, half-closed eyes. The moral atmosphere is unpleasantly charged with electricity. Miss Valentine feels it incumbent upon her to apply a match and touch it off, and with one grand explosion clear away the vapors forever.
“Mrs. Tinker,” she says, pausing in her meditative walk, “go to grandmamma, please; see if the lawyer has gone, and if she will admit me.”
Mrs. Tinker goes.
In all things, great and small, this young princess’ will is autocratic. In a minute or two she is back. Madame is alone in the drawing-room, and bids her come.
Gathering up her lustrous, shimmering train, Miss Valentine sweeps away, bearing herself like the regal little personage she is—golden head well erect, slight figure held straight as an arrow.
“Bless you, my pretty—my pretty!” murmurs adoring Mrs. Tinker, “look where I will, among contessas, and marchesas, and then, I see no one fit to hold a candle to you.”
Swinging lamps sparkle like fire-flies down the lofty length of this blue drawing-room. Madame, in black silk and guipures, sits enthroned in a great blue and gilded chair, with rather a weary, care-worn look upon her pale face. But it changes to a quick, glad, welcoming light, as her granddaughter enters.
“Dressed, my dear?” she says; “have I kept you waiting? It is still too early, is it not?”
For they are due at a party at the big, grim, palazzo of the laughing Contessa—not one of the great Paladino state balls, Miss Valentine not being yet properly” out—a rather small reception—madame’s weekly At Home.
“Too early? Yes,” Dolores answers, absently. She draws up a low seat, sits close to madame’s side, folds her small hands on the elder lady’s silken lap, looks up with two wide, blue, utterly unembarrassed eyes, and plunges at once into her subject.
“Grandmamma, Mrs. Tinker says you have been making a will.”
“Mrs. Tinker is a foolish old gossip. But it is true, Mr. Carson has just gone.”
“Mrs. Tinker says it is a will in my favor, leaving me almost all your money.”
“Tinker is worse than a gossip; she is an old fool. But it is true again. I have.”
One jeweled old hand rests lovingly, lingeringly on the fair head. She looks down with worshiping eyes on the fair, upturned, sweet young face.
“My pretty Dolores,” she says, “you will be—you are—a very great heiress. You are dowered like a princess, do you know it?”
“I know that you must be very rich, grandmamma.”
“And it is a very fine thing to be very rich, my dear. It brings the world to your feet. Have you found that out in these last two years? All our English circle here in Rome—ay, and these titled Italians also, talk of the rich and beautiful Signorina Valentine. And you have known poverty, too, there on your island. Which do you think is best?”
She puts back the strands of yellow hair with a complacent smile, and waits, sure of the answer. But that answer is not quite to order when it comes.
“I was very happy there on my island, grandmamma—ah, happy! happy! Everybody was good to me—so good. And I loved them all dearly. I never wanted for anything. I never thought of being rich—never wanted to be. But, yes, I suppose it is a fine thing; it gives me music, and books, and pretty dresses, and jewels, and handsome horses and carriages, and parties, and pleasant people, and it makes the beggars shower one with blessings; but somehow, I think I could be quite happy with out so much money. It’s not everything. I suppose I am not ambitious. At least,” seeing madame’s brow darken, “it is not worth quarreling over, and having hard feelings about. And I am afraid,” nervously, “there may be much hard feeling about this new will.”
“What do you mean, Dolores?” a little sternly.
“Don’t be displeased, grandmamma. Only is it quite fair to Sir Vane?”
“It is quite fair—it is perfectly fair. My money is mine to do as I please with; to dower hospitals, if I see fit. I see fit to give it to my granddaughter. What more right or natural than that ?”
“Yes, grandmamma, but still you know Sir Vane expects——”
“My dear,” sarcastically,”Sir Vane expected I would die some fifteen or more years ago and leave him my ducats. I believe he considers himself a wronged man, that I have not done so. Perhaps he is no more mercenary and selfish than the majority; perhaps it is natural enough he should wish me out of the way, and my fortune his, but you see even Sir Vane Valentine cannot quite have everything to suit him. I do not think he has much to complain of, on the whole. I do not fetter him in any way. If he remains here constantly, it is his own wish. I think he finds me liberal in all ways. And if I have re-made my will, and left you my heiress, I have not forgotten him. Something is due him—much is due him. I grant that, after all these years of waiting and expectation. Noblesse oblige, my dear—I forget nothing. I am as desirous as he is to see Valentine restored, and the old name, a power in the land, once more. Your inheritance would amply do that. Dolores, you plead his cause-plead against your own interests. Is it possible—child, let me look at you—is it possible you care for Vane Valentine?”
Red as the heart of a June rose, for a moment, grows the upturned face, but the blue, frank eyes neither falter nor fall.
“As my very good friend and yours, grandmamma—yes. I see him every day, you know,” naively, as though that was a reason. “I am sure I don’t know half the time how we would get on without him. Oh, yes, madre carissima, I like him very much!”
“Ah!” grandmamma laughs a sarcastic little laugh, “in that way—I understand. As you like the family cat! Vane is a tame cat in his way too. But as a husband, petite, we have not time to mince matters—it grows late. As a husband, how does Sir Vane strike you?”
The blush fades, the little hands fold resignedly—a deep sigh comes from the pretty lips.
“Oh, grandmamma, I don’t know. It is very tiresome to have to marry. Why need one—at least until one is quite, quite old—four-and-twenty say? Grand mamma, I wish—I wish, very earnestly, this, that you would destroy this last will. Let it be as it was before—let Sir Vane have the great Valentine fortune, and then it will not be necessary for me to marry him, or anybody. Money makes so much trouble—it is so hard to make enemies, and bitterness, and family quarrels just for its sake. If I am not an heiress, no one will want to marry me. I could live with you, for years and years to come, this pleasant life of ours, and then—may be—by and by——”
“Well? and by and by?” says grandmamma, half amused, half provoked. “Oh! you great baby! how differently you will think when you come to that antiquated age—four-and-twenty! You would hardly thank me then if I took you at your word to-night. No, my dear, as it is, so it shall remain. You are my heiress—it is your birthright. If you have a mind to marry Vane Valentine, well and good; you might easily do worse, and great interests will then be combined. It is what I would decidedly prefer. If you have not a mind, then there is no more to be said—your inclinations will not be forced, and he must take what I give and be content.”
“But he will not be,” says the young lady, ruefully, “that is the worst of it. And he will look upon me as his rival and enemy, and be bitter and angry, and feel wronged. If I have a mind to, indeed! I wonder at you, grandmamma! Of course, I have no mind to him, or any one else, but right is right, and if you wish it—”
“I do wish it.”
“And he wishes it—why, then—”
“You consent, my dearest Dolores, is that your meaning?”
Mademoiselle rises hastily to her feet, with a little foreign gesture of both hands, palms downward, but she makes no answer in words, for at the moment enters Sir Vane, ready to escort them to the party.
They go in silence. The Corso is all ablaze with light, and thronged with people and carriages, as they drive slowly through. Overhead there is a purple sky, golden stars, a shining half-ring of silver; and Dolores, lying back in a corner, wrapped to the chin in snowy cashmere and swan’s-down, looks up at it, and thinks of the moonlight nights long ago. Bay Chalette, one great sheet of polished silver; the black crags of Isle Perdrix, tipped with shafts of radiance; the little white cottages, looking like a miniature ivory temple. Where are they all—they who dwell together on lonely Isle Perdrix, now? Old Tim is there still in his light-house; Ma’am Weesy dwells alone in her cottage; Johnny is among those who go down to the “great waters” in ships; and Rene is—somewhere—studying his beloved art. It is more than a year ago since she heard from him. He too was traveling; and that reminds her, she has never answered that last letter. Mere Maddelena is still at Villa des Anges, and Dr. Macdonald—ah! Dr. Macdonald’s name is written in marble, and he has gone to be a citizen of that City whose maker and builder is God.
The great, grim stone front of the tall palazzo is all a glitter of light; music comes to them as they enter. A dashing young officer, in the glittering uniform of the Guardia Nobile, meets them on the threshold, and devotes himself with empressement to the fair Signorina Inglese from that moment. He is a handsome lad, and a gallant, a cousin of the Paladini, and deeply, hopelessly in love with Meess Valentine. A dim suspicion that it is so dawns on Miss Valentine’s mind this evening, but she is not sure; she is quite pathetically innocent, for eighteen, of the phases and workings of the grande passion.
“May I, grandmamma?” she says, looking over her shoulder gayly, as, permission granted, she flits away by his side.
For Sir Vane—he is distinctly cross. He takes his stand near madame’s chair, with folded arms and moody brow, looking darker and thinner, and older than usual, and frowning rather on the gay company before him. He watches with jealous eyes the golden head, pearl crowned, of his youthful kinswoman, with her glittering Noble Guard by her side. Is this to be the end?
The young fellow will be a marchese one day; he is just five and-twenty; he is handsome, and he is in the deepest depths of the sovereign passion. It is patent in his liquid Italian eyes for all the world to read. Is this to be the end? And Carson was at the house to-day, and a new will was made—a final one this time, no doubt, and the Valentine fortune has been left irrevocably to this amber-haired girl. After all his wasted years, his lost youth, his hopes, is this to be the end?
“Is there anything the matter with you, my good Vane?” madame asks at last, struck, as no one can fail to be, by the dark look his face wears.
“There is nothing the matter with my health, if that is what you mean,” he answers, shortly enough.
“Ah! that is satisfactory. Your illness then is a mind disease, I take it.”
“Does it follow” still curtly, “that I must be ill at all, because I do not choose to talk in this din?”
Sir Vane has often been irritable—so distinctly as this, never before. But she is in exceptionally good humor herself, and great allowance is to be made for Sir Vane, she is aware. “If you do not choose to talk, that is another thing,” she says, coolly; “when you do I have a word or two to say to you, you may like to hear.”
“Indeed?” coldly; “anything pleasant will be rather a welcome change. My letters from home to-day were all most confoundedly unpleasant. Everything is going wrong, everything from the manor to the cottages tumbling to pieces. I must go over, Dorothy says, if anything is to be done. I can go, of course, although I fail to see of what particular benefit my going can be. I feel rather hipped, I must confess, in the face of all this. And that does not add to one’s comfort.” He motions to where Dolores, still on the arm of the Noble Guard, is waltzing over the waxed floor, to the music of Gourond. “It is of that I would speak. Come closer, my good Vane, we can talk here as securely as at home. You saw Mr. Carson at the house to-day, I infer?”
“Yes,” curtly.
“I have made a will—a new will—my final disposition this time. The bulk of my fortune is left to my granddaughter—naturally.”
“Naturally,” he repeats, with a half sneer, setting his teeth behind his mustache, and biting back a sullen oath.
“Dolores discovered, and, strange to say, objected. She wished you to have the larger share. She considered it due to you. She pleaded your cause most urgently.”
“I am infinitely obliged to my fair cousin—the future Marchesa Salvini.”
“She is not your cousin—at least, the cousinship is so remote that it need not count. I object to the marriage of cousins. And there is a question of marriage here, Vane. We spoke of it, she and I. I told her I wished it, you wished it, and she——”
“Well ?”—breathlessly.
“Consents. Dolores will marry you, my good Vane.” There is silence. He stands erect, and for a moment draws his breath in hard. It is a moment before he can quite realize what he hears. Marry him! Then that tall fellow in black and gold is no favored lover after all. He looks at her with kindling eyes; triumphant eyes. At last! The fortune is secured! And she is pretty very pretty—yes, beautiful—a bride to be proud of! And she is dowered like a grand-duchess! Only a moment ago all seemed lost—and now—— Lamps, flowers, waltzes, music, surge around him as things do in a dream. “You say nothing,” madame says, suspiciously, and in some anger. “Am I to understand——”
“That a man may be dazed, stunned, speechless, from sheer good fortune—yes. There are shocks and shocks, my dear aunt. You have just given me one. I was in despair—I may tell you now—one moment ago. I meant to throw up everything to-morrow, to go back to England, and return here no more. I thought she cared for that fellow. And now—to know this—”
“Do you mean to say,” demands madame, and looks up at him earnestly, “that you care for the child apart from her fortune—that you love her, in short?”
“You need hardly ask that question, I think,” he answers, calmly. “Could any man see her, in her beauty and sweetness, as I do day after day, and not love her? You hardly compliment our lovely Dolores by the doubt.”
“Pardon. I thought—I mean-well, I am very glad. Yes, she is lovely enough to inspire love in any one. There is a great disparity of years,” with a sigh; “but that must be overlooked. You will be good to her, Vane?—my poor little tender one!”
And Sir Vane protests, and takes a seat by her side, and while the music swells around them, and the dancers dance, and the rosy hours fly, they two sit there and plan, and talk of the future, and the restored fortunes of the house of Valentine.
