“What say you to Miss Mildmay?”
“She would show no rudeness at least, but—” here the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of servants.
When the little captain re-appeared in the drawing-room, radiant in blue coat, buff waistcoat and brass buttons, most of the guests had arrived. That semicircle of ladies had been formed which presents to the eye of a hostess as formidable a front as the unbroken square of infantry, bristling with steel, does to an opposing general. Mrs. Effingham was, as yet, entirely unskilled in the art of mixing together the various materials of society. With a shy, anxious air, she glided from one guest to another to accomplish the necessary form of introduction,—to her a serious undertaking, especially as some of her visitors were strangers to her. Clemence tried to forget that the cold, criticizing eye of Lady Selina was watching her every movement, and sought to remember only, that even in the arrangement of a party she might please her husband, and do credit to him. The entrance of Captain Thistlewood had considerable effect in breaking the ice of formality which lies like a crust upon London society, though in a manner that astonished the guests, and embarrassed the master and mistress of the house. The jovial sailor was as much at his ease in the polished circle as amidst shipmates round a cuddy table; and his loud voice and merry laugh, as he stood with his thumbs in his pockets, chatting with Louisa, created an unusual sensation.
“Who may that lively old gentleman be?” inquired Lord Vaughan of Lady Selina.
“One of Mrs. Effingham’s near relations,” was her distinctly audible reply.
Clemence hastened to introduce the captain to Miss Mildmay, in hopes that that lady’s opposite qualities might serve as a kind of compensation balance, to moderate her uncle’s boisterous mirth. Miss Mildmay was a sallow lady on the shady side of forty, attired in a pale sea-green silk, with long, lank sprays of artificial leaves drooping low on each side of her head. She was a mild, inanimate sample of gentility, whose very eyes seemed to have had the colour washed out of them, and whose prim, pursed-up lips rarely unclosed to speak, and still more rarely to smile. Miss Mildmay was one of the dead-weights of society, and was, therefore, judiciously coupled with the little, noisy, bustling captain, who, like some steam locomotive, would sturdily puff straight on his way, regardless of obstacles, unconscious of observation, ready to go over or through an obstruction, but never to turn aside for it, let it be what it might.
As Captain Thistlewood wanted nothing but a listener, he dashed bravely along the railway of conversation, choosing, of course, his own lines—now on country subjects, now on sea—turnips and tornadoes, calves and Cape wines,—till, on dinner being announced, he gallantly handed down his partner, and in his simplicity took his seat near the top of the table, in order to be, as he said, “within hail of my niece.”
Miss Mildmay languidly drew off her gloves; there was a pause of a few minutes in the conversation, for Captain Thistlewood, bending forward, was looking with curious eyes down the length of the table, decked out in the magnificence of modern taste. He had never seen anything like it before.
“I say!” he burst out at length, “do you call this a dinner? Nothing on the table but fruit, and flowers, and sweat-meats, that wouldn’t furnish a meal for a sparrow!”
The sailor’s exclamation overcame the gravity of several of those who sat near him; even Miss Mildmay put up her feather-tipped fan to her lips,—it is possible that it might be to conceal a smile.