CHAPTER I.
THE BIRTH-NIGHT BALL.
“The festal board is crowned with flowers, The red wine floweth free, And gayly speed the midnight hours On wings of revelry. Here youth and love enraptured hang On beauty’s sparkling glance, While sweetest strains that ever rang Keep time unto the dance.”--MRS. MILLER.
“Look at my dress, Madame Orne! Isn’t it sweet?”
The slender figure, standing alone at the open window in quiet contemplation of the beauty of the moonlit Virginia landscape, turned with a pensive smile and looked at the vision of youth and beauty that stood courtesying gayly before her--a dazzling mist of white tulle and silk, pearls, and pink rosebuds that framed the beauty of a young girl, a slender maiden, dark and lovely, with lips like crimson flowers, and proud, dark eyes that flashed with happy radiance.
Before the quiet governess could speak the girl continued joyously:
“The boys are here at last! The train was late, of course--always is when it ought to be on time!--so they will have to make their toilets in a fearful hurry! Brother is looking just splendid, dear old fellow!”
“Viva, I wish you wouldn’t say ‘dear old fellow.’ It sounds coarse from a young girl’s lips. And it isn’t correct to apply the adjective fearful to trifles, as you did just now. What would your newly fledged graduates think of such slang?”
“Think?” a smile rippling over the piquant scarlet lips. “Only that I learned it from them! When Max Verne spent a month with us last summer, they talked nothing else. Of course, being their intimate companion, I was duly initiated into their choice vocabulary of expressions, and heard about ‘fearful bores,’ ‘fearful weather,’ and ‘good old fellows,’ and ‘dear old fellows’ and such trifles, every hour in the day. So may it please you to pronounce my pardon, madam?”
She bent with saucy grace, and Madame Orne lifted her delicate white hand and lightly caressed the little dark, curly head as she answered fondly:
“I will blame the boys, not my little Vivian, this time; but remember, love, you are eighteen to-day--quite a grown-up young lady--and you must hereafter set examples for the boys to imitate, not follow their rude lead.”
“Examples for them!” A puzzled look crossed Vivian Leigh’s bright face. “How the boys would laugh to hear you! They are older and wiser than I am. My brother is five-and-twenty, Earle Essex is the same, and Max Verne is three-and-twenty--all grave and reverend seigniors, you see.”
“They are not too old to learn of you, my child, many things that might profit heedless youth.”
“What things, my grave mentor? Tell me, please?” laughed the joyous girl.
“Not now--you are too gay--to-morrow.”
“‘To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow,’” quoted a musical masculine voice, and Vivian’s brother, entering in faultless evening dress, bowed to the governess.
“Madam, I am most happy to meet you again, and would be charmed to learn the import of that promise of which I only caught the fag-end--‘to-morrow.’”
“Old Curiosity Shop!” laughed Vivian, in an audible aside.
“It was only the threat of a private lecture to my pupil,” Madame Orne answered, a little wearily, and half-turned to the window again, as though dismissing the conversation.
“Come, Vivian, isn’t it time to go down?” asked Charlton, taking her hand.
“Yes, indeed, for I want you to see the tables before our guests come. The caterer has really outdone himself. And such flowers, such confections, such wines, champagnes, verzenay, veuve cliquot, port, sherry--a perfect bouquet of colors!”
He was leading her to the door as she spoke, but she turned suddenly and floated back to the window where the tall, slight, graceful figure still kept its pensive pose.
“Madam,” she murmured, touching a fold of the soft, sweeping black robe, “will you not come down? And won’t you--just this once--lay aside this gloomy mourning?”
“I shall come down and see you dance by and by, dear.” The tone was sad and languid. “I will wear black lace and white flowers to please you.”
“She is so strange,” Charlton said thoughtfully, as they went arm-in-arm down the stairs.
“But I love her dearly!” cried his sister, then forgot Madame Orne all at once and beamed radiantly, for at the bottom of the stairway two gentlemen were waiting her ladyship’s descent. She gave each a hand in welcome, and spoke to both at once in joyous greeting, but her face turned unconsciously to one, the younger of the pair, and his eyes met hers in eager pleasure.
“It seems awfully jolly to meet you again, Viva,” observed this latter youth, who bore the blushing honors of his Alma Mater thick upon him.
“Thank you,” she murmured demurely, with dimpling cheeks and an amused wonder as to what her dignified governess would have thought of the young graduate’s “awfully jolly” pleasure.
She did not see the dark frown that clouded Earle Essex’s pale face as Max Verne drew her arm in his and led her into the long drawing-room where the balmy summer breeze came floating in through the lace-draped windows fragrant with the breath of June, and where all was light and splendor. She did not see it, and if she had she would not have dreamed that she called it forth. Who could frown upon her, this fair favorite of fortune, so young, so lovely, so rich and happy! Happy, so happy, for she loved and was loved in return. The heart that was dearest to her on earth was throbbing quick and fast against the beautiful, warm, white arm that rested so confidingly in his. Life to them both was a dream of gladness, the future a distant Paradise.
As they walk up and down the long room she observes with pretty dignity:
“I congratulate you on getting through college with such honors. Brother says you were the valedictorian.”
“Yes, I had that honor,” he answered simply, then asked:
“Are you through with lessons yet, Viva?”
“Through with lessons, but not with lectures.” She glances up to see if he is laughing at her, but only meets a gravely attentive look, so adds: “My education is finished, but papa retains Madame Orne to form my mind and manners.”
“As though either could be improved,” he rejoins gayly, then striking an attitude, quotes, half earnestly, half lightly, but in deep, sweet, musical intonations, Shakespeare’s lines:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily; To throw a perfume on the violet; To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper light To seek the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish, Were wasteful and ridiculous excess.”
“Stage-struck,” she comments laughingly.
“Am I?” he asks, looking down at her with a glance that makes her upraised dark eyes fall. “Am I, Viva? I might be, could I play Romeo to your Juliet!”
“I have no fancy for the sighing Juliet,” she answers, with a shrug of her white shoulders; “I shudder at hopeless loves, at poisons, and daggers, and death. I love to be happy.”
A pause.
He is looking down at her with a strangely earnest face, studying her with an intent gravity that makes his handsome young face seem older and more manly.
He has the face of a thinker, this Max Verne--a broad, full, white brow, strongly marked in the perceptive and intellectual organs, and in the regions of courage and self-reliance as well. Sweetness and firmness combined look at you from the beautiful blue gray eyes that go with the clear, fair complexion and silky, slightly curling, light-brown hair. The Grecian nose, the curved red lips, the strong, tall, symmetrical form, so indicative of a well balanced temperament, all show passion and power--intense, passionate power, lying dormant now in his sunny, hopeful youth as the stormy sea lies calm beneath the sunlight of a summer sky.
Looking at Vivian Leigh, the young man sees a sensitive, passionate, impulsive face, the fair low brow marked with ideality, and mirthfulness as well, the full dark eye beaming with truth and tenderness, while the pretty, piquant nose, the delicate contour of the oval face, the thin scarlet line of her lips, the sweet dimpled chin, all are distinct with exquisite susceptibilities, full of purity and nobility, and breathing in every line deep capacity for either joy or sorrow. He sighs unconsciously as her lips part in a dazzling smile.
“Viva, it would take much to make you happy all your life,” he exclaims; then, half to himself: “He would be a brave man who took the precious trust of your happiness into his keeping.”
“Indeed you mistake,” she cries eagerly, though a blush creeps up to the edge of the silken curls on her brow. “Why, Max, it takes very little to content me. Nothing ever saddens me, or clouds my cheerful spirit. I am always happy.”
“So are the birds and the butterflies, Viva, because like you, they are always in the sunshine, and flitting, round the flowers. But the butterflies perish in the wintry blast, the blithest birds ofttimes lift broken wings when storms have passed above them.”
“Broken wings!” A shadow dims the brightness of the lifted face. “I tell you, Max, I would rather die than live like that. There is my governess, for instance, so grave, so cold, so sad in her black dress. A widow! What desolation, what heart-weariness must be her fate!”