CHAPTER XIII.
Lady Ilminster was a very charming woman—kind, gracious, and good-natured. Very rich herself, the wife of a rich man, she delighted in throwing about her the pleasures which wealth confers, and in inviting others to share them.
She was sensuous; that is to say, she loved good things. She loved to gaze on pretty and happy faces, and the harmony of colours. She loved the sound of music, the smell of flowers, the gliding sensation of a boat; nay, she was not averse to a good dinner, and quaffed iced champagne, not to excess, but à discrétion. She had no children herself, and so surrounded herself with those who loved her. These were not toadies, but men of equal rank, whose tastes chimed in with her own. At first she was accused of flirting; but the scandal soon subsided, for it was pure scandal. Even had there been any foundation, a hostess so bountiful would soon have overcome the charge; but with Lady Ilminster there were no thoughts of evil. She did a thousand things others could not do. She rode, she drove, she even smoked, as fancy prompted her; but she was faithful to her lord, though, perhaps, her example stimulated in others freedoms of which she disapproved. Like many women whose conduct is pure, her conversation was not the reflex of her conduct.
The party Lady Ilminster gave was to be, as Lady Coxe had declared, very “shwosi.” Her recovery from indisposition was the pretext assigned—one of those excuses the hospitable find when, for the sake of pleasure to others, or for the maintenance of their social renown, they think fit to display their leading quality.
Preparations had been made, astounding in their extravagance and beauty. The grounds, which sloped down to the river were covered with flowers, tents, and temporary palaces. Lady Ilminster had taste enough to draw that delicate line which separates fairy-land from a tea-garden.
In one of these temporary structures a large party of young ladies and gentlemen were assembled eating ices and drinking tea. Lady Coxe was presiding in her magenta dress, nodding from the heat, and fanning with magenta fan her magenta countenance. Florence was talking merrily with a young guardsman; but the conversation generally assumed that tone which, as Mr Whiting describes it, smacks less of the lady than of the reduplicate Φ.
“Let us take up our position here,” said one young lady to her partner; “I hate being with the swells.”
Lady Coxe heard this; her face more magenta than ever. She ranked herself with the nobility.
“Did you see Croquet in the park yesterday,” asked another, “with the prettiest pony?”
“Yes; but not such a habit as Julia Fitzwiggins,” burst in a third. “What a waist she has!”
“Quite like an hour-glass,” illustrates a guardsman, aloud.
“I doubt if it be all real,” interposed another young lady.
“What are you talking of?” asked the guardsman.
“Of course the rest must be filled with sand,” retorts the first.
“A sand-glass in every respect,” murmured Whiting.
Lady Coxe nods, puffs, fans, and smiles, not quite understanding what Mr Whiting meant.
“Toole, who makes her habits, declares she pads them with brown paper,” resumed the guardsman.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t purchase a waist at that price,” rejoined the partner.
“You’ve a very pretty little one of your own, Lady Janet.”
Oh, young ladies, young ladies, why are you in such haste for the freedom and abundance of married life? Why compete for magenta dresses with I won’t say what? Why adopt the language of I won’t say whom? You may attract young men from the society of the first by using the phraseology of the second, but will you retain them with you? They may in time give up Richmond dinners and midnight orgies with Thaïs, for a quiet meal, loving looks, and worthy sentiments with Lucretia. If this will not attract them, so much the worse for them and so much the better for Lucretia. But Lucretia will never win them by the arts of Thaïs. Thaïs, on her own ground, will always beat Lucretia. She knows her weapons better. However far Lucretia may go, she can never come up to Thaïs. Thaïs has a grammar of her own, a syntax, and a prosody—winged words and winged actions. Lucretia may study the accidence, she can never master the rhetoric. Lucretia may unveil her ankle, Thaïs blushes not if her garter be exposed. Think you Lord Tom Noddy will marry Lucretia if she shows him her garter? Thaïs dresses expensively. Thousands will not pay her milliner’s bills. But at the end of six months or a year Lord Tom Noddy leaves her, and she retrenches.
But if Lucretia rivals Thaïs in her dress, Lord Tom Noddy knows that, if he marries her, six months will not see the end of it. Sir Cresswell Cresswell even cannot untie the knots of ribbon and the tangles of lace which figure on that long lithographed linear document, and the lands of Noddy will soon melt in the basilisk smiles of furbelowed Lucretia.
Thaïs is a dashing river, which receives a thousand tributaries, the drainings of the country and the sewers of the town, till it is lost in a morass or absorbed in the ocean. But Lucretia should be a gentle brook, pure from its source, content to murmur innocently and calmly onward, reflecting the light of heaven in its pellucid waters, till it mingles with and strengthens a stronger current than itself. To such as these, tranquil and tranquillising, will man return for happiness and peace, when, jaded with the roar of cities and the struggle of life, he seeks to reconcile his existence with his Creator, to pursue and accomplish his allotted task before the night cometh.
“’Ow de do?” said Lady Coxe, blandly, as Bromley appeared for the first time.
Drawing a chair near the table, he took his seat near Constance.
“You are very late,” she began.
“I have had so much to do to-day; some one ought to write a Song of the Shirt for me. Scratch, scratch, scratch—in lieu of stitch, stitch, stitch.”
“But recollect all the good you are doing,” answered Constance.
“Yes, that is a reflection which conveys great comfort to me.”
Augustus smiled somewhat in his answer.
“Why are you always sarcastic?”
“I feel I am very sincere.”
“You are never in earnest.”
“You think so; you will find I am in earnest in some things.”
“’Ow de do?” said Lady Coxe.
The couple looked up at the new-comer—it was the Count.
“Oh, Congte, I did not know you were asked.”
“I go to St James’s Club to read papers and meet Gorillian Minister. He great friend Lady Ilminster—bring me and present me.”
“You dance this waltz with me,” said Bromley hurriedly to Constance.
She was pale and red by turns, and heard not what he said.
Touching her hand slightly, he repeated his observation.
With an effort she answered—
“Oh yes; of course, I remember.”
The music struck up in the distance, and the whole party left for a distant lawn dedicated to dancing.
A circle was formed. A band was stationed in a kiosk, and the first strains had just begun, when Lady Ilminster beckoned to Augustus.
“Do you know that Count Rabelais?”
“A little.”
“He is not a friend of yours?”
“No, I cannot say he is.”
“The Gorillian Minister brought him. I have asked Madame Carron to come and superintend some charades. She told me that an acquaintance of hers, Count Rabelais, was a capital actor, and I asked Don Marmosetto Uran y Babon to bring him. Now the Bushman Minister, who hates Don Marmosetto, tells me this Count is very disreputable.”
“Well, it can’t be helped now he’s here. You had better set him at charades.”
Augustus returned for his partner. There she was, twirling in the arms of the Count.
“He has asked her to take a turn, but no. There they are stopping opposite, as though to avoid me. Shall I go and take her away, and kick the Count? No good.”
The waltz was over, and Bromley, with entire self-possession, walked over to Constance.
“You have disappointed me this time, Miss Coxe,” he said, good-naturedly. “Will you dance the next quadrille?”
“Mademoiselle is already engaged to me,” grinned the Count.
“Then perhaps the waltz after that.”
Bromley looked steadily at the Count, in a manner the latter did not seem to admire.
“Oh yes, yes,” almost screamed Constance, whose countenance during this scene had betrayed the emotion she underwent.
Bromley, with a slight bow, turned away. He cannot, this time, deny his knowledge of her being engaged to me.
He directed his steps to the room used as a theatre, which abutted on the garden. A verandah outside was covered in for a greenroom. The large oriel window was to serve as a stage. Entering the house by the ordinary doorway, he proceeded to the body of the theatre. He arranged a few of the ornaments, and then sat down to muse.
There is certainly nothing so discreditable as eavesdropping. Nothing can justify it, and no possible excuse can be alleged in palliation of such an offence; but in this life the best of us occasionally commit an unjustifiable action. We have all of us said foolish things which, in the retirement of our bed-clothes, flash across us, and make us burn with shame. We have all put up from friends with affronts which we should have resented; for, alas! in this age we are as afraid of being called tetchy as of being considered dishonourable.
We have all of us, except myself and you, kind reader—we have all of us, at least once in our lives, been the authors of some little act which Paley would not have approved, and Butler would have refused to ratify.
So, on this occasion, Bromley was guilty of a great moral offence. He heard voices—voices not unknown to him—and he listened.
“Not dancing, Achille?” spoke a voice in French.
“The dancing is suspended for a tombola, and I come to pay my homage to my sister.”
“Hush, Achille, for Heaven’s sake! We may be overheard.”
“And if so?”
“The object of my life would be at an end. Yes, Achille, my pride is foolish, ridiculous. To it I have sacrificed my life, my position, nay, my love. When my mother commended you to me as the heir—the ruined heir of our house—it was my resolve that you should once again resume the place my father had forfeited. It might have been done sooner, Achille, in time even for me to enjoy the sweets of life. Already had my pen achieved more than success, when that fatal passion which has destroyed us before, displayed itself in you. For you I have slaved and worn out my life. For you have I polluted my existence by publicity. For you, or rather, for our name, I have sacrificed the hopes and joys of a household. Even now, ruined as we are, my daily labour supplies your extravagance. If once the stage could be connected with your name, Achille, my heart would break.”
“This is all very well, belle dame—very pretty and very dramatic. The charades have not yet commenced. I meant to say that, if overheard calling you my sister, all would perceive the joke.”
“It must end some day, Achille. Heaven make you kinder to that lovely girl than to me. When once you are married I shall retire to beautiful Italy.”
“The dream of actresses.”
“Thank you, Achille. The actress will not sully your name by her presence.”
“Ah, bah! cousine. Once married to the little Cogues, and, actress or no actress, you share the booty.”
“Achille, the pride that has enabled me to support you in affluence will not admit of your affluence to support me. It is you who have chosen the way to riches by marriage. Opposed to it at first, I yielded to your wishes, though I had offered to you many a more honourable career. I presented to you that detestable woman Mélanie to inform you of the girl’s movements and her friends. I disliked, I loathed the intrigue, but it was undertaken, and it must be accomplished, for my strength is giving way.”
“Mélanie is a cleverer woman than you, Adelgonde. She has shown me a way to success that you would never have dreamt of.”
“Indeed! I hope it is honourable.”
“Honourable, inasmuch as it profits her as well as myself.”
“What is it?”
Bromley bent forward to listen, but the Count spoke in too low a tone.
“Good heaven! Achille! Have you stooped to this?” cried the actress.
“Come, no heroics, belle dame. I hear the music of the dance, and I go to pulverise my rival.”
“Have we fallen as low as this?” murmured the actress. Bromley heard a window open, the retreating steps of the Count, and the chords of the distant music. Noiselessly he left the theatre, and hurried to the lawn.
The Count had reached Constance about a minute before him. She was standing with her mother apart from the dance. No one was near the group as Bromley approached.
“This is my dance, Miss Constance,” he observed, offering his arm.
“Forgive me, Monsieur Bromley. It is mine.”
“You must be mistaken, Count. You yourself heard the engagement.”
“One word apart, Monsieur Bromley.”
“Certainly.” The two retired to a grove adjacent.
“You recollect the compact we made, my friend, the night of the ball at Conisbro’ House.”
“I recollect the compact you proposed.”
“My part of it is complete, I dare say, with your assistance. Rely on me as regards la petite belle-sœur la Florence. Mademoiselle Constance, with the consent of Miladi Cogues and her own, is my affianced bride.”
“Indeed, Monsieur le Comte! till this moment I believed she was mine. You will pardon me in your turn, but for such a statement I must, under the circumstances, demand a little corroboration—especially as the waltz is already begun.”
Taking the Count’s arm, he forced rather than persuaded him to the spot where Lady Coxe and her daughter were still standing. Constance was pale as death—Lady Coxe a deep magenta.
“Lady Coxe, the Count tells me I may congratulate you on having secured him as a son-in-law. May I do so?”
“’E ’as my full consent.”
“And, Miss Constance, may I offer you my felicitations?”
“Y—y——” The word was never completed, for Constance fell to the ground.
As the Count hurried with the crowd to assist the swooning girl, a strong arm took his, and a firm voice whispered in her ear. “Your place is not here; it is with your sister in the theatre.”
Rabelais turned towards the young man with the eyes of a frightened ape, and slunk away.
In a few minutes Bromley had lifted Constance into her carriage, and, with Florence and Lady Coxe, was driving towards London.
The skirts had much contracted for the occasion.
“Did ’e tell any one but you?” asked Lady Coxe, in an anxious whisper.
“No one.”
“Then, for ’eaven’s sake, don’t breathe it to Sir Joshphat, and take the carriage on for Dr Leadbitter.”
Bromley bowed reassuringly, and hurried on, in the family coach, to Bedford Square.
Dr Leadbitter was at home, and Constance was raving in a fever.