BABY BRANDON.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 11, 14 March 1891, Page 16

BABY BRANDON.

T *'&» one of those evenings in earlier II May when whatever is finest in the Hl world of women and horses is still to II be seen in the Park. We—my friend, Dr. Philip Duran of Paris, and myself — -Tffirri —were standing at one of the windows Jr ' .fljHHr of an up town club house, surveying (/ ■- with much satisfaction the splendid equipages dashing parkward with their JrK' i ,raver y stylish gowns and pretty IV facea - ' 'n( '* Suddenly the doctor, who had been • I '’.Wl taking it all in with the rather blase airs of a man who had seen the most gorgeous society of the world roll down the Bois de Boulogne, gave an exclamation of astonishment, and in his efforts to see more of the cause of it almost projected himself through the window. ‘ Well,’ he said, recovering his equilibrium, but by no means his composure. ‘ Baby Brandon, of all the women in the world, alive and in London. And yet,’ he added, musingly, ‘ she was a Londoner by birth. But,’ turning to me, * it’s rather a shock to a fellow’s sensibilities to find a woman on one occasion acting the part of the Tragic Muse, and on the very next, some twenty years after, driving liere.’ ■ 11 Now I knew Miss Brandon very well; that is, as well as a man should pretend to know any woman not of his immediate household. (I think it is one of the most wretched compliments to the subtlety of the sex to say that you know any one of its members intimately.) Hers was indeed a curious and charming personality. An old maid, perhaps, but with such a virginal freshness of face, such a tenderness in the brown eyes and, withal, such a great fortune that her hand was still considered quite a prize in Vanity Fair’s matrimonial booth. And there was something so eerie in the doctor’s white-faced surprise, and his reference to some tragedy that once disturbed the placid life, that I requested as a personal favour to hear the story. ‘ Well,’ answered the doctor, * she came with her mother to Paris in 1869. Long before I saw her at the great ball given by the wife of the English Ambassador I had heard her described as the English Bebee, and never did name better describe its bearer. Fancy a girl of 18, perhaps,with the rose-leaf face of a child and a child’s unconscious delight with the great world, who looked unutterably lovely in the diamonds which she wore in profusion, in defiance of all the laws of good taste, and took a kittenish delight in the extreme annoyance of elder ladies thereat; such a girl as could not, under any circumstances, have been bred m France —at once gentle and capricious, impeiative and loving, as only the solitary daughter of an American mamma could be. • Well, being all this, it was the most natural thing in the world that my friend, Victor Dupressy, should fall in love with her. He was a handsome fellow and a good fellow, belonging to the bluest blood of the old regime and having the good sense to despise the fact. He had been a hero even to us young revolutionists in the old days in the military school of St. Cyr. And though he. now disdained to seek notoriety by the low and ignoble devices common at all times to young men of Parisian fashion, he held a most enviable position, one which might have made the proudest woman still prouder to share. ‘ And Baby Brandon was proud indeed of her conquest. How I remember her, the small creature leaning on the arm of the tall Frenchman, sweeping through the room with an air of Cmsarian triumph, her absurdly rich dress trailing behind her, the diamonds in her hair hardly as bright as her eyes. ‘ The dress was of a sort of mignonette, over a mauve petticoat ; I can’t tell you the stuff. The bodice was of silver, I think. And then there was the grand house in the Rue de Jena, in which they were to live after the wedding ceremony in Notre Dame. No two simple lovers of the provinces, surveying with ecstasy their small, new household arrangements, could have been more unaffectedly delighted than were these two with their grand ones. ‘ But trouble was coming. There happened at the time to be attached to the English Legation a very good-looking young Englishman, by name Courtenay Rivers. I suppose you guess the sequel— he, too, fell head over ears in love with the little Bebee. To speak the truth of the latter, and which any one with an unprejudiced judgment must have acknowledged, she didn’t care a rap for the poor fellow. But some slight attentions on his part, some half unconscious acknowledgments of the same on hers, was enough to rouse a fierce and hitherto undreamt of jealousy of her fiancee. The feeling was encouraged by his sistei, a very great lady, with whose plans for his matrimonial welfare this engagement to Miss Brandon had horribly interfered. It was at a ball given in her own house that matters came to a climax. ‘ It seemed that a very small devil of mischief had entered into Julia Brandon’s heart that evening. She flirted with Courtenay Rivers; she made it a point to give him the best dances. Madame Leo Leisner, Victor’s sister, had another very good reason to add to those she had already urged against the marriage. Once, when brother and sister were standing together, and Julia swept past on the arm of < ’ourtenay Rivers, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming, a very golden butterfly, that had found its wings, I heard Madame Leisner say to Victor : • “ A girl who can flirt like that a few months before her marriage, what will she not do after? We have never yet had a married flirt in our family. It rests on us to keep up its dignity.” • The rest seems even yet like a dream. It was all in the gray of early morning. Julia Brandon and her mother bad gone out for their wiaps. I had strolled out on the balcony to smoke a cigar. When I came in I was struck with the excitement that had sprung up in my absence. Seeing M. Bertin, one of the greatest cynics and best editors in Paris, I at once asked the cause.

‘The cause! Oh! a woman, of course. It seems your |s>or friend Victor has been lather annoyed by the attentions of that stupid Rivers to his pretty little fiancee. It seems that when she went for her wraps the two met in the doorway of the conservatory. Some words ; a blow ; and they have gone off to Fontainebleau for a duel with swords. They say that every third generation one of these Dupresssy

Ets killed in a duel. Everyone is trying to keep it from adame Leisner. Consequently she’ll hear it in a minute or two. ’

* And she did hear it. and the hearing seemed to turn her into a white statue. Her love for Victor was the one true thing of her life. While looking at her, I felt a light touch on my arm, and turning round met the face of Julia Brandon, grown white as that of a ghost, looking out pitifully from its masses of snowy swansdown. * “ For Cod’s sake,” she said, “ come with me. I have heard it all, and it s all my fault—all my fault.” * Unhesitatingly I followed her. Before entering the carriage there was the tedious inquiries, the uncertainty of the direction taken by the duellists, to be got over. When we reached the dark woods of Fontainebleau one more life was slowly ebbiag out where so many had gone in the same fashion before. They said it was the curse of Victor’s family. He was one of the best swordsmen and best soldiers in Paris, and must, according to any calculation, have defeated the Englishman. But the latter had received only a flesh wound on the shoulder, while Victor lay on the ground, seeing the last of the fair earth that had opened so promisingly for him. * I shall never forget that scene. Julia Brandon kneeling on the oozy soil in her gleaming ball dress, her face gray as the chilly morning, bent down in vain repentance to that other face where the endless shadow already lay. Something of his old life as a child in the Normandy chateau of his fathers floated over his mind in that death-delirium, for he murmured :

‘ “ Listen, my mother ! There is the Angelus 1 But—l have forgotten the prayer, and I cannot see your face. There is another face between ns always—a child’s face, vain and beautiful. Bah !it is gone now and it is night—night.” ’ ‘ “ Oh, Victor !’ sobbed the childish creature, endeavouring by the light in her own eyes to call reason back into his. “ See, my face is not scornful. See, it has forgotten its vanity ; see that I love yon better than all the world,” and then the long cry of self-reproach, like the wailing of a Greek chorus, “ All my own fault, all my own fault,” went up again. * I think it was the very force of her loving spirit that caused his to rally so unexpectedly during those last few moments. Anyhow there was time given him to make bis confession to the white-haired cure of a neighbouring church and to forgive the small wife that was not to be now. ‘ “ Till we meet again,” was all he murmured, as the small fingers lay in his own still firm hand. ‘ “Dear love,dear husband, till we meetagain, ’’she answered aloud, in the presence of us all. And we knew that these two were as irrevocably wed as if the great bells of Notre Dame had pealed for the wedding. And she knelt there until his face had grown gray, and the kiss, the first and last she had given him, had grown cold on his lips.’ The doctor turned away, and I think for all his cynicism there wei e tears in his eyes. So this was the secret of the wistful lovely eyes, the wasted girlhood. Poor Baby Brandon !