Wanderings of a beauty

The to-morrow of our good intentions, sometimes, it may be frequently, never dawns. On this particular to-morrow, according to Parisian custom, we were to be at home to our friends.

Our morning was devoted to the duties of the toilet and those of the ménage. There was a duett to be practiced for piano and harp by myself and Ella, who now played that graceful instrument with exquisite taste. She was also to accompany her mother on the harp, in the lovely romance and prayer from Rossini’s Otello, by particular request of the Maestro himself. Evelyn received well. Her salon was much frequented by artistes and men of letters; and a few charming female friends added greatly to the brilliancy of these réunions.

A thorough musician herself, she had a perfect horror of the usual style of amateur singing; and no one was permitted, at her house, to display their mediocrity at the expense of the nerves of the company.

Our apartment was situate in the Avenue Gabriel—to my taste, the most delightful location in Paris. Near, yet not actually in, the Champs Elysées, it combines cheerfulness and gaiety with privacy and retirement. Our apartment was au rez de chaussée (on the ground floor), all the rooms, as is usual in Paris, en suite. It had been furnished with remarkable taste by a Russian Princess, who, being suddenly recalled by the Czar, was glad to let her apartment to English ladies—on, to us, most advantageous terms. We were, therefore, lodged as few strangers may hope to be. The suite of rooms were now thrown open, and brilliantly lighted—all except Evelyn’s boudoir, which led into the conservatory, and in which reigned a subdued light, inviting to lovers or to those who prefer to muse in solitude and watch the crowd from afar. At present, all were congregated in the salon, around the fair hostess, who herself looked like a queen surrounded by her court.

“Ah! ma chère,” exclaimed a pretty vivacious little marquise, perfumed like a rose, as only a French woman can be—“your soirée is really charming—delicious—but pardon me, there are two things, or rather persons, wanting to make your réunion perfect.”

“Indeed,” replied Evelyn, smiling; “and pray, who may these be?”

“Nay, you must guess,” rejoined another fair lady of the party; “for, at present, those two persons are indispensable in the beau monde.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Evelyn, “you mean my dear friend Rossini?”

“Oh! no; we are all aware he is quite a hermit.”

“The Emperor, perhaps, and the peerless Castiglione?”

“Neither, I assure you,” persisted the pretty marquise.

“Well, Wagner, the ‘musician of the future.’”

“Madame, you surprise me,” said a beautiful Spanish countess, advancing into the circle—“you a dame du grand monde, and not to have heard of the great magician par exemple!”

“And who, pray, may that be, countess?”

“Oh!” drawled an Englishman, “the man who calls up the devil, and made Napoleon come out of his tomb and sign his name, or something of that sort.”

“And,” added another, “frightened poor Eugenie out of her wits.”

“No very difficult matter, either,” growled an old legitimist with a brown wig, “considering how few wits she has, if report speak true.”

“Fi donc, monsieur” or “not so bad,” chimed in the audience at this rather obvious witticism in every sense.

“I suppose,” said Evelyn “you mean Home, the Medium. We are, I believe, to meet him next week. So your swan, Madame la Marquise, has turned out to be a goose, after all. And now for that other, without whom no party is complete.”

“That, madame,” said a young Frenchman, full of conceit and affectation, “is a long-bony American, about whom, it appears, all the ladies are raving—though, ma foi, I cannot imagine what for, except that they say he is enormously rich.”

“Precisely so,” said the perfumed little marquise, “but monsieur is jealous, for my Yankee is very handsome, but disdainful, à briser le coeur—Monsieur D’Arcy.”

“D’Arcy,” exclaimed Evelyn, “I expect him here to-night. Madame de Villiers has requested permission to present him, and——”

At this moment the folding doors were thrown open, and a charming and aristocratic looking elderly lady, richly but simply attired, entered leaning on the arm of a gentleman, whom she presented with much empressement to the lady of the house.

“Talk of his Satanic Majesty,” whispered the Englishman, while a smile might be perceived on more than one pair of rosy lips, as the unconscious object of all this persiflage advanced into the charmed circle and gracefully paid his devoirs to its presiding genius.

Philip D’Arcy was one of those rarely endowed beings who, at first sight, impress you with a sense of power—you feel you are in the presence of one born to command. Where this moral force is combined with magnetic influence, or odic affinity, if you please so to term that irresistible attraction we all have felt, more or less at times, then the fascination of such a being is irresistible. He can draw you according to the degree of your sensitive nature, into his sphere, as into a vortex. Nor can you escape.—Fatal gift, if dissevered from heart and principle!

Mr. D’Arcy may have been about thirty; slightly above the medium stature, his erect and lofty bearing gave the idea of greater height than he actually possessed. But for this too—the extreme delicacy of his form, (a defect common to the transatlantic race of the Northern States), might perhaps, have been considered as somewhat detracting from the manliness of his appearance. To say that the features were chiselled, were little. Intellect sat enthroned on the regal brow, and the deep-set eyes—calm, blue, and unfathomable as the ocean—seemed the fitting mirror of “the human soul divine.” The lips firmly closed, pale, and somewhat severe in their habitual expression, could, nevertheless, occasionally wear a smile of rare beauty. The complexion, white as Parian marble, harmonized well with the crisply curling locks, and the full beard, of that cold, brown tint, which almost universally accompanies the refined style of male beauty. Mr. D’Arcy engaged Evelyn in that light conversation which, well talked, has so much charm, and beneath which occasionally runs a vein of the deepest sentiment or the richest humor. But the tête-à-tête was not of long duration.

Most pressing entreaties drew our heroine to the harp, before which Ella was seated, having already commenced the exquisite accompaniment which preludes the “willow song” of the gentle Desdemona. Ella was now in her fifteenth year. The warm sun of Italy had almost visibly ripened the child of a year since into premature womanhood. Though of a form so slight as to appear almost ethereal, she was already taller than her mother, and so pure was her girlish beauty, so infantine her air of candid innocence, you might have fancied her the youngest and loveliest of the nymphs of Diana. Her small, Grecian head seemed actually bending under the weight of the rich masses of soft, blond hair, which formed a triple crown above the classic brow, and fastened in a knot behind, fell in a luxuriance of clustering curls to the slender throat.

Though like in feature, Ella formed a striking contrast to her mother; and for the first time I confessed that it were difficult to decide which might bear the palm, the dazzling beauty and ever-varying expression of the still young matron, or the timid, retiring loveliness of the girl. The one appeared as a royal rose, in all her splendor; the other, a tender bud, shrinking even from the kiss of the sunbeam—the former, a gorgeous tropical plant, whose rare beauty can only be equalled by its fragrance; the latter, a sweet and modest lily, hiding amid its leaves in the greenest and most sequestered dell, haunted alone by fairy footsteps.

Evelyn had never sung so well. The rich tones of her voice vibrated with sentiment, as she portrayed the sorrows of the loving but forsaken wife. The audience forgot to applaud, (the greatest compliment that can be paid to a singer.) The lovely minstrel’s own eyes were humid with emotion. Ella looked a coldness she perhaps did not feel. Mr. D’Arcy advanced to the harp.

“Madame,” he said, “compliment to you would be misplaced. The genius of Rossini has found in your own a worthy interpreter. You have sang as he must have desired in his moments of deepest inspiration—when the ideal descending embraced the real. Nay,”—as she prepared to disclaim the praise so delicious to a true artiste, from one whose taste and judgment is felt to be unimpeachable—“nay, fairest songstress,”—and he smiled that smile of rare fascination which thrilled to the very inmost of her being—“if I have praised, it is because I have felt the pathos of those sympathetic tones, the poetry breathing through each phrase of melody, and I,” he added, as if to himself, “so rarely indulge in the luxury of emotion. But pray, Mrs. Travers, present me to the young lady who has so ably seconded you.”

“To my daughter? Certainly—she is but a child. Ella, dearest, Mr. D’Arcy would make your acquaintance.”

The young girl bent to the salutation of the stranger, and a blush of the softest pink overspread features, throat and arms, reaching even to the ends of the taper fingers, as she timidly replied in monosyllables to the few words of common-place civility he addressed to her.