Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other StoriesOuida
General
Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories
Ouida
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
The highest suitors of the day sought her smile and sued for her hand;
men left the Court and the Mall to join the Flanders army before the
lines at Bouchain less for loyal love of England than hopeless love of
Cecil Castlemaine. Her father vainly urged her not to fling away offers
that all the women at St. James's envied her. She was untouched and
unwon, and when her friends, the court beauties, the fine ladies, the
coquettes of quality, rallied her on her coldness (envying her her
conquests), she would smile her slight proud smile and bow her stately
head. "Perhaps she was cold; she might be; they were personnable men? Oh
yes! she had nothing to say against them. His Grace of Belamour?--A
pretty wit, without doubt. Lord Millamont?--Diverting, but a coxcomb. He
had beautiful hands; it was a pity he was always thinking of them! Sir
Gage Rivers?--As obsequious a lover as the man in the 'Way of the
World,' but she had heard he was very boastful and facetious at women
over his chocolate at Ozinda's. The Earl of Argent?--A gallant soldier,
surely, but whatever he might protest, no mistress would ever rival with
him the dice at the Groom Porter's. Lord Philip Bellairs?--A proper
gentleman; no fault in him; a bel esprit and an elegant courtier;
pleased many, no doubt, but he did not please her overmuch. Perhaps her
taste was too finical, or her character too cold, as they said. She
preferred it should be so. When you were content it were folly to seek a
change. For her part, she failed to comprehend how women could stoop to
flutter their fans and choose their ribbons, and rack their tirewomen's
brains for new pulvillios, and lappets, and devices, and practise their
curtsy and recovery before their pier-glass, for no better aim or stake
than to draw the glance and win the praise of men for whom they cared
nothing. A woman who had the eloquence of beauty and a true pride should
be above heed for such affectations, pleasure in such applause!"
So she would put them all aside and turn the tables on her friends, and
go on her own way, proud, peerless, Cecil Castlemaine, conquering and
unconquered; and Steele must have had her name in his thoughts, and
honored it heartily and sincerely, when he wrote one Tuesday, on the
21st of October, under the domino of his Church Coquette, "I say I do
honor to those who _can be coquettes and are not such_, but I despise
all who would be so, and, in despair of arriving at it themselves, hate
and vilify all those who can." A definition justly drawn by his keen,
quick graver, though doubtless it only excited the ire of, and was
entirely lost upon, those who read the paper over their dish of bohea,
or over their toilette, while they shifted a patch for an hour before
they could determine it, or regretted the loss of ten guineas at crimp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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