CHAPTER XXXIII.—TELEMACHUS AND MENTOR.
The Opera-house was very full and proportionably hot on the evening when Coverdale and his wife visited it (it being the début of the since famous Signora Bettimartini), Alice, unused to London gaieties, and uneasy from the suspicions she could not contrive to banish, acquired a headache, which, when she went to bed, prevented her from falling asleep. Thus, being anxious to court without loss of time nature’s sweet restorer, of course she chose the most vexatious and exciting topic she could select as a subject of thought, and began to speculate on all the evidence she could call to mind in regard to her husband’s relations, past and present, towards Arabella Crofton, who, as the reader must have perceived, was just at that especial epoch poor little Mrs. Coverdale’s bête noire. The first circumstance she could recollect to form the initial link in her chain of evidence, was Harry’s inquiry about her when Alice casually mentioned her name during the halcyon days of their honeymoon. In this conversation, Harry had confessed to a previous acquaintance with Miss Crofton, and when pressed farther, added that he knew no good of her, or words to that effect. His manner, Alice remembered, was so peculiar that her curiosity had been at once excited, or as she mentally put it, that “naturally she felt her husband ought immediately to have told her everything about it—she had no concealments from him, she was sure.” Following up this train of thought, another instance of this unkind and unflattering want of confidence occurred to her—the mysterious epistle which he had received that very afternoon, which had annoyed him so much, and about which he had refused to afford her any explanation; and here a new idea flashed like an infernal inspiration across her brain—could that note be in any way connected with Miss Crofton’s arrival? “Yes! it must be so.” She remembered when they entered the drawing-room, and she had felt surprise at finding a stranger there, Harry seemed to take it as a matter of course: good reason why, he knew it previously—this hateful woman, this detestable creature, Arabella Crofton, had written to him privately, informing him of her arrival! Oh! she saw it all; and how she would try to wean his affections away from his poor wife—his poor, neglected, betrayed wife! and succeed most likely—men were such fickle, wicked things; and then it would break her heart, that there could be no question of and she should die in the course of a year—in six months, very likely, for she wasn’t at all strong though she had a colour—consumptive people always had brilliant complexions—think of her poor aunt Kitty! and Harry would be sorry when it was too late, perhaps. And so, drawing a vivid picture of her repentant husband grieving over her untimely decease, she cried herself to sleep, bedewing with her tears the “fickle, wicked thing,” calmly slumbering at her side; who straightway dreamed that, being out hunting, and riding a young thorough-bred, he had charged a brook, and that his horse, refusing it, had pitched him head foremost into its rapid waters.
A month soon elapsed—the London season was at its height. Everybody had been everywhere, and was going again; Grisi and Mario had arrived, recovered from sea-sickness and British catarrh, and “surpassed themselves” in their favourite characters. A mob of costly equipages jostled each other round Hyde Park every afternoon; carriage-horses, deprived of their sleep o’nights, began to grieve coachmen’s hearts by revealing the position of their ribs; young ladies from the Country danced away their roses and their embonpoint; men whose book for the Derby was at all “shy” trembled in their patent-leather boots; the glory of the lilacs in the squares had departed; water-carts made unpleasant canals of the principal thoroughfares; the Honourable Mrs. Windsor Soape had presented her youngest daughter at the last drawing-room, and tried without success to stuff her down the throats of several eligible eldest sons; Lady Close Shaver had inveigled an hundred and seventy unfortunates into her hot drawing-rooms, bored them with Signor Violini’s scientific rendering of Beethoven’s sonata in A B C minor, poisoned them with bad ice and worse Champagne, and turned them out to grass upon lobster salads, of which the principal feature was the unaccountable absence of lobster: these, and many other miseries, attendant on the “joys of our dancing days,” had been gladly suffered by the fanatical votaries of the Juggernaut of Fashion, and still the Coverdales lingered within the precincts of the modern Babylon. Lord Alfred Courtland having received a summons to join his family at Leghorn, had refused to obey it on the plea of ill health, backed by a physician’s opinion, which cost one guinea, and was worth——! Well, really, in this case it was worth something, for it saved Lord Alfred a lecture, and he disliked being lectured, even for his good—silly young man! so he stayed in town, doing as other folks did, and hoping thereby to become a man of fashion; but, as he only acted like other people, and did nothing very clever, or very foolish, or very wrong, he by no means succeeded in obtaining the reputation he coveted. With this consciousness of failure before his eyes, he one night lounged dismally out of his stall at the Opera, and was proceeding with dejected steps along the lobby, when he suddenly encountered Horace D’Almayne, better dressed and better pleased with himself than ever.
“Well met, my lord; I was just wishing for an agreeable companion,” was his complimentary salutation. “I am naturally a sociable animal; if you have no better employment, will you take pity on me for an hour or so?”
Deeply impressed with such unexpected condescension, and overcome by the transcendant cut of D’Almayne’s waistcoat, nothing remained for Lord Alfred but gratefully to consent; which he accordingly did. Linking his arm in that of his companion, D’Almayne continued:—
“You are looking triste, ennuyé; has Grisi developed a cold, or Cerito a corn? is it opera or ballet which has thus bored you?”
“Neither one nor the other,” was the reply; “though even operas cease to excite after one has grown accustomed to them.”
“Yes! that is true; except to an educated musician” (and D’Almayne looked as if he humbly trusted that he was equal to Mendelssohn, at the very least), “I can conceive they grow tedious; but,” he continued, “you should seek some more exciting amusement: mix in clever, witty society; do things—see things; in fact, enjoy life as a young man with such advantages of person and of station should do.”
“It may seem easy to you, who have achieved a reputation in the beau monde, and can command any society you please, to accomplish this; but it is the reverse of easy for a young man in these days, even if he have a handle to his name, to persuade people that he has anything in him; in fact I think a title stands rather in a young fellow’s way on entering London life; people have somehow taken to connect the ideas of a lord and a fool, until I believe they begin to think the terms synonymous!”
“What a frightfully democratic opinion for one of your order to promulgate!” returned D’Almayne, smiling at the disconsolate tone in which Lord Alfred spoke; “really you ought to have been born on the other side of the Channel; but I think I perceive your difficulty: you do not care to be admitted into society merely for your rank, but wish to achieve a distinctive social reputation for yourself; is it not so?”
“Yes! you have expressed my ideas exactly; a great deal better than I could have done myself,” was the reply. “And now tell me in what way is this desirable consummation to be effected.”
“Nothing is more easy. In the first place you require self-confidence; let people see that you think yourself a fine fellow, and they will begin to think so too. In the next place, take a decided line of some kind, and adhere to it steadily; but, in order to be able to do so, be careful, ere you select it, that it is in accordance with your natural dispositions and tastes.”
“Good general maxims,” returned Lord Alfred; “and now to apply them to the particular instance.”
D’Almayne paused for a moment ere he replied—
“If you really wish me to constitute myself your Mentor, you must allow me more opportunities of enjoying your society than I have hitherto possessed, and then, from time to time, I dare say I may be able to give you a few hints which you may find practically beneficial; and as there is nothing like making use of the present occasion, what say you to allowing me to introduce you to a kind of private club, where I and a few of my particular set sometimes meet after the Opera, and while away an hour or two with a hand at whist or écarté, or exchange our ideas on the topics of the day over a game of billiards; the stakes are, of course, suited to the measure of our purses, my own being an uncomfortably shallow one. We are close to the entrance, shall we turn in?”
After a moment’s hesitation, the result of an indefinite notion that he was about to do something wrong, Lord Alfred consented; and D’Almayne knocked at the door of what looked like a good private house. The portal unclosed, and immediately shut again by some mysterious agency, for, when they entered, no domestic was visible; and they proceeded along a passage to a second door covered with red baize, with a glass eye, placed Cyclop-like in the middle of its forehead, through which a human face observed them for a moment, then disappeared, and the red baize door opened and admitted them of its own accord, as the outer one had set it the example. Following his companion up a flight of stone stairs, at the top of which yet another baize door with a Cyclopian optic presented itself, Lord Alfred Courtland heard the sounds of laughing and conversation, and in another moment found himself in a large, well-lighted apartment, round which were dispersed sundry small tables, at which were seated, in groups of three or four, from a dozen to fifteen men, all of whom were recruiting exhausted nature with Champagne, pine-apple ice, or more substantial viands, if their tastes inclined them thereunto. Placing himself at an unoccupied table, D’Almayne inquired in his most insinuating tone—“Champagne, Claret, Johannisberg—what is your pet vanity, my lord?—c’est affreux, the inefficient ventilation of that Opera-house. I am positively famished with thirst, and must drown my enemy before Horace is himself again.”
“Having obtained the privilege of considering you my Mentor, I cannot do better than avail myself of your valuable taste and experience in the selection of a beverage,” returned Lord Alfred, falling into his companion’s humour with that dangerous facility which was at once his bane and his greatest charm. So Champagne and ice, and biscuits, all first-rate of their kind, were brought and discussed; and during the demolition thereof, one or two intimates of D’Almayne, faultless in mien and manners, lounged up, and were introduced to his lordship, and drank wine dreamily, and talked smart nothings with a sleepy wittiness as of inspired dormice; and otherwise exhibited symptoms of that life-weary, all-to-pieces condition which very young men believe in as the ne plus ultra of modern dandyism; and Lord Alfred’s heart leaped within him as he thought that now he had at last really begun “life,” and was in a fair way to become a man-about-town. Such wonderful beings are we, ætatis nineteen!
When a man is thirsty nothing is easier than to drink a bottle of Champagne without knowing it, perhaps even till the next morning; I never heard of the delusion lasting longer. Whether Lord Alfred Courtland drank more or less than a bottle on the occasion in question, history relateth not, but certainly, when he rose and strolled into the billiard-room, he felt considerably exhilarated, and eager to achieve something “fast,” which might tend to impress his incipient “about-townishness” in the minds of his fashionable acquaintances. Thus, hearing the rattle of dice in a further apartment, he, to D’Almayne’s surprise and amusement, declared billiards a bore, and whist “slow,” and “voted” for something with a little more fun in it. So, “Dante"-like, entering the infernal regions, they very soon “knew a bank whereon” much “wild time” had been wasted, and an immense crop of wild oats sown;—and off which certain proprietors had reaped many golden sheaves, while the sowers themselves had gained only experience, teaching them how to take care of their money, about the time when their money was all gone, which must have been more improving than consolatory to the “cleaned-out ones.” Then first upon Lord Alfred’s youthful ear fell the command, diabolical in its persuasive eloquence, “Faites le jeu, messieurs!” then timidly, and with feelings akin to those of mediæval youths who, in the good old feudal times, signed uncomfortable compacts with the Evil One, which never turned out satisfactorily for them even in this world, did Lord Alfred stake his first guinea, and unfortunately lose it. We say unfortunately, for had he won, and so come, seen, and conquered, he might have listened to the appeals of conscience which just then were striving to make a coward of this neophyte man about town; but, as matters stood, he felt a stern necessity to vindicate the sang froid with which he could support a run of ill luck; and playing again—won, doubled his stake—won; then, against D’Almayne’s advice, staked his winnings on “le rouge,” and that colour proved successful; and then the gambler-spirit came upon him, and he played with a fierce eagerness, and drank more Champagne, and played again, until two hours later D’Almayne almost forced him away from the table, and took him home, flushed and excited, a winner of one hundred pounds! Poor boy! as he left that haunt of sordid vice and idle folly, he believed that he had done something clever, and spirited, and manly, and longed for the next evening, when he might again distinguish himself; but could he have foreseen half the consequences of this, his first step in evil, or the sorrow he was thereby bringing upon true hearts that loved him, he would have shrunk from again crossing the threshold, as though it were indeed that of the hell which in their unseemly jesting men term it.
Rising late the next morning, he was informed that a gentleman was waiting to see him, and on entering the sitting-room, found Horace D’Almayne in an easy-chair and an elegant attitude.
“I was anxious about you, mon cher” (they had grown wonder fully familiar over their Champagne), “you appeared so much excited last night,” he began, uncrossing his graceful legs, clad in a seraphic pair of Blin et Fils chef-d’œuvres.
“Sure such a pair were never seen!”
“You seemed so carried away by your enthusiasm that I thought you would not sleep, and thus ventured to call at this unreasonable hour to see how you were getting on.”
“Very kind and friendly of you, I’m sure,” returned Lord Alfred, quite overcome by such unhoped-for condescension on the part of his model Mentor. “I suppose I did get rather excited, but I’m all right again this morning,—at least I shall be,” he continued, as a dizzy swimming in the head obliged him to grasp a chair-back for support, “as soon as I have had a cup of coffee.”
“Or if I might suggest, a bottle of Seltzer-water with a suspicion of Cognac in it, is a much more efficient substitute: allow me to brew for you;—may I ring the bell?”
Receiving the permission he sought, Horace acted accordingly, and when the servant appeared, desired him (on a glance from Lord Alfred, delegating all authority to him) to bring a bottle of Seltzer-water, brandy, and a lemon. Possessed of these desiderata, he commenced shredding off two or three delicate little spiral circles of lemon-peel, like yellow watch-springs, then dropping these into a Brobdignagian tumbler, warranted not to run over under any severity of effervescence, he added thereunto a liqueur glass full of the purest (and strongest) Cognac. Unwiring the Seltzer-water, he allowed it to draw its own cork (for thus, under his skilful control, did the operation appear to be performed), and, forcing it to explode into the tumbler, he presented the beverage, foaming wildly, to Lord Alfred, who, at the risk of immediate suffocation, drank it off in that rabid condition, and providentially surviving, declared himself greatly benefited by the treatment. Having thus re-invigorated his patient’s exhausted frame, D’Almayne proceeded to perform the same friendly office by his mind, and very good counsel did he bestow upon him—only that his advice had this peculiarity, viz., that whilst in words he recommended Lord Alfred Courtland to bend his steps in a northerly direction, that young nobleman felt an unaccountable conviction that by proceeding due south, he should raise himself in the estimation of his Mentor and of all other men of spirit. Thus he heard, with a complacent smile, that D’Almayne was surprised at the manner in which he had carried all before him at the gaming-table on the previous evening; that every one imagined him to be an old hand at such matters; and one individual, who was generally supposed to make a very decent living by gambling, had declared his conviction that Lord Alfred played on a system, and a deucedly clever system too!—At all of which D’Almayne appeared alarmed and uneasy, and assured his friend that it was a very dangerous talent for a young man, and that it would be a great relief to his mind if Lord Alfred would promise never to go there again; to which his lordship replied by lighting a cigar, handing the box to his Mentor, and asking him whether he considered him such an irreclaimable muff as not to be able to win or lose a matter of a hundred pounds without making a ninny of himself. Declaring himself innocent of any such disrespectful innuendo, D’Almayne also lighted a cigar (it being impossible in these piping times to do anything without plenty of puffing), and these new allies grew loquacious and confidential; but with this difference, that Lord Alfred gave his confidence, and Horace obligingly received the sacred deposit. Thus, after a fair amount of the horticultural cruelty, yclept “beating about the bush,” had been committed, that good young man was made acquainted with the “secret sorrow,” which, as the reader is aware, was with much success performing the part of the “worm i’ the bud” to Lord Alfred’s “damask cheek.” As soon as Mentor thoroughly understood the state of the case, which he did in an incredibly short space of time—tact being so strongly developed in him that it almost amounted to intuition—he followed the advice of Polly in the “Beggar’s Opera,” by “pondering well” before he ventured to prescribe for the complaint of his Telemachus. Having sat with bent brows until his cigar was exhausted, he flung the end into the grate, smoothed his beloved moustaches, and then spoke oracularly:—
“You see, mon cher,” he began, “you are taking to the rôle of a flâneur, what you call a man-about-town, full early for an Englishman; thus, the chief thing you want is self-confidence, without which a man can neither do proper justice to himself nor to his position. Now it seems to me the best thing for you would be to get some pretty woman of good station to take you in hand; you must try and establish a flirtation with somebody.”
“Cui bono?” inquired Telemachus; “the governor would never stand me marrying for—oh! not for the next five years!”
“Marrying before you’re one-and-twenty! My dear fellow, what can have put such a frightful idea into your head!” exclaimed Mentor, aghast at the supposition. “No, no; marriage is the last thing I should dream of recommending, except quite as a dernier ressort. For which reason, I was about to add, that the best practice to set you at ease with yourself, and therefore with other people, will be to devote your attentions to some pretty and fashionable married woman;—there! don’t look so awfully scandalized; of course I only mean a sentimental and platonic affair—just enough to excite and interest you into self-oblivion. When you once forget your ipsissimus ego—when, as that punning friend of yours, Mr. Coverdale, would say, you cease to mind your I—all your anxieties in regard to popular opinion will vanish, and you will soon find that with your face, figure, address, and position, Lord Alfred Courtland will become the admired of all admirers. And that reminds me that Mrs. Coverdale would be just the person for that purpose;—she is very pretty, moves in good society, and, entre nous, is smitten with you already!”
“But really—of course I don’t set up to be any better than my neighbours,” stammered the poor boy, colouring at the possibility of being suspected of such slow attributes as good feeling and right principle, and yet unable entirely to silence the promptings of his better nature;—“of course I don’t set up for a saint; but Harry Coverdale is an old friend and schoolfellow, and one of the best creatures in the world; I should not like—that is, I really couldn’t—But, I beg your pardon, I don’t think I exactly understand your meaning.”
“I don’t think you do,” returned D’Almayne, his sarcastic tone expressing such unmistakable contempt that Lord Alfred actually winced as if in pain.
“I don’t think you have the faintest glimmer of my meaning. You don’t suppose I intend you to order a chaise and four, and run off with pretty Mrs. Coverdale to the Continent, do you? My ideas are much less alarming, I can assure you! par exemple—your friend Harry is a physical force man; he is a mighty hunter, a dead shot; he loves only his dogs and his horses; but requires a Joe Manton to ensure him good sport, and a pretty wife to sit at the head of his table: Mrs. Coverdale, on the other hand, has a soul—reads Tennyson, feels her husband’s neglect, and pines for some one who will appreciate her and sympathize with her; you, in the kindness of your heart, pity her, and knowing you can afford her the consolations of congeniality, obligingly make up for her good man’s deficiency; therefore, you read poetry with her, explain the obscure passages which neither she, you, nor any one else can understand; her mind reposes on your superior intelligence; she trusts you, and confides to you important secrets,—the exact age of her dearest female friend, whom she suspects of designs upon your heart, the dress she is going to wear at the next fancy ball,—and eventually, with heightened colour and averted eyes, the history of that ring with the turquoise forget-me-not, together with a biographical sketch of the noble giver—showing how he lived pathetically, and died in the odour of heroism, fighting at the head of his regiment in the Punjaub, the centre of a select circle of slaughtered foemen; which latter confidence may be considered as the latchkey to the fair lady’s heart, ensuring you admittance at all times and seasons.”
“And having attained this agreeable position, how long do you expect so pleasant a state of things to last, and what is to be the end of it?” inquired Telemachus.
“Oh! until she has got rid of her romance, and you of your diffidence; by which time you will have grown mutually tired of each other, and the London season will have come to an end,” was Mentor’s oracular reply. Telemachus mused, lit a fresh cigar, and mused again. He liked the idea, had a faint suspicion it might be wrong, but was quite sure it would be very pleasant. Mentor, thinking this a promising frame of mind in which to leave his pupil, would not weaken the force of his argument by vain repetitions, so made an engagement to meet again in the evening, and departed. And while les petites moustaches noires wounded female hearts as he passed down courtly St. James’s Street, the spirit of the good young man, their wearer, glowed within him, and—
“As he walked by himself,
He talked to himself,
And thus to himself said he!”
“Ha! ha! Milord Courtland, you are mine—your purse, your credit, your influence—all are mine! But what a child it is! what a baby! Sacré! at his age I was winning twenty pounds a day at billiards in New Orleans!—And you, Harry Coverdale, mon ami, I will teach you to watch me with black looks when I am conversing with la belle millionaire; you had better attend to your own wife now—young, pretty, and neglected! Le petit Alfred has a fair game before him, if he have but wit to play it—yes! all goes as it should! fortune fills the sails! there is a cool head and a steady hand at the helm: vogue la galère!”