CHAPTER XXIX.
It was on a pleasant evening towards the end of August, that Sir Arthur's chariot stopped at the Granby Hotel, which looked to the travellers more like an entire street than a single house; and Marion thought that accommodation might be prepared in it for all the invalids in Great Britain. Her ears were instantly deafened by a noisy clamor of bells, while the carriage was surrounded by a cluster of shabby waiters, in second-hand looking clothes, dishevelled hair, soiled cotton stockings, and dusty shoes, who were vociferous in their protestations that the house was already more than full, and that a hundred and fifty guests dined every day at the ordinary. In the mean time, however, they hurriedly dismounted Sir Arthur's baggage from the chariot, and at length ushered him into a sitting room, with a promise of finding sleeping apartments for the whole party, up three pair of stairs, in a lodging across the common, a tall old building spotted over like a plum pudding with windows, where they must be ready to abdicate on a moment's notice, if necessary, the whole house having been bespoke some weeks before, for Miss Howard Smytheson, the heiress, and suite.
No place is so little changed by lapse of time as Harrowgate, during the last two centuries which have elapsed since first its unpalatable waters were tasted. There the same three great hotels flourish supreme, as in the days of Smollet, holding their crowded ordinaries, and distinguished by their former designations, as the House of Lords, the House of Commons, and the House of Drs. There, during three months of every successive year, an equal crowd assembles in search of health for their disordered bodies, and excitement for their stagnant minds, while time and money are frantically squandered, as if both were dealt out in unlimited portions among all who thus emulously seek with wearied eagerness for frivolous amusements, idle flutter, and all those relaxations of an unsatisfied existence, which soon became intolerable to those who can amuse themselves, but necessary to those who cannot.
The very same rooms and furniture, the very same tables, knives, glasses, and spoons, and the same hours of eating and drinking, which were used during the time of old Humphrey Bramble, are still in existence, while every thing remains as much unaltered as the blue firmament above, except the company. Year after year has, at Harrowgate, even more, perhaps, than elsewhere, testified the ceaseless mutability of human affairs, where, amidst light laughter, mirth and music, the young have become married, the old have died, and, as days roll on in that little world of eager excitement, the names of all are soon alike forgotten. At Harrowgate the visitors seem scarcely more permanently interested in each other than in actors on the stage, or in characters represented by a novelist. Any lounger who appears in the public saloons a second year, becomes completely naturalized in the house; after a third season, it is ten to one he may be considered a bore; and during the fourth or fifth, he is completely superannuated. In these gay rooms, how much of human life and feeling have existed! how many of its joys and sorrows been experienced! and how many of its deepest interests have arisen, amidst the gay dance, the ringing laugh, the lively coquetry, the frantic dissipation, and the vows of endless attachment! With many a past generation, the fever of frivolity is over, and the dust of death now shrouds every remembrance in oblivion: but a new race yet successively arises, to exist, like their predecessors, in an atmosphere of music, dancing, flirting, riding, driving, feasting, and gayety,
"Smiling as if earth contain'd no tomb."
"I cannot but think, when arriving at any new place," observed Marion, "what solitary desolation must frequently be experienced by those 'citizens of the world,' who are for ever on the wing, from country to country, throughout the habitable and uninhabitable globe! We who live only for social companionship, would feel perfectly lost in arriving at a perpetual succession of places, where not one human being depends upon us for comfort or enjoyment—where not a single genuine tear would be shed by any living individual, if we dropped down dead at their feet!"
"You are right, Marion," replied Sir Arthur. "Once when taken dangerously ill abroad, I was surrounded by those only to whom my very language was unknown, my features strange, my name unheard of, and my whole feelings indifferent. It was dreary and desolate indeed! A new place may divert us for a time, but we do not live to enjoy mere scenery or mere amusement. To find real happiness we must look within the circle of home feelings, home duties, and home enjoyments."
When the very aristocratic and distinguished-looking Sir Arthur Dunbar first appeared in the public room at the Granby, leading in his two radiantly beautiful nieces, the babbling murmur of conversation became suddenly hushed, while a general whisper of surprise and admiration circulated round the tea-table. Many an eager inquiry was rapidly promulgated who they could possibly be, and from whence they came; while Lord Wigton, to produce some amusement, secretly announced that it was the Duke of Lincolnshire and his two eldest unmarried daughters.
The better half of pleasure was its novelty to Marion, whose half-shy, half-amused looks, as she entered among a score or two of perfect strangers, found a pleasing contrast to the criticising, examining, fastidious air with which Agnes, in the full swell of magnificence, glanced her brilliant, haughty eyes round the tables, and muttered contemptuously to Sir Arthur, that the living furniture in the room seemed little better than a zoological garden—a human menagerie of tigers, bears, and monkeys, varied by a large proportion of red inflamed strawberry-colored faces belonging to the water-drinkers. By no means satisfied with the commencement of her Harrowgate existence, Agnes established on the spot a little whispering gallery of satirical discontent, while she ridiculed to Marion those of the company who were unlucky enough first to attract her notice and her disapprobation.
Though the room appeared abundantly peopled with dramatis personæ of many kinds and degrees, yet, instead of seeing, as she had rather too sanguinely anticipated, a society of distinguished-looking personages, as select as if they had been introduced at a drawing-room in St. James' Palace, the saloon was encumbered with groups of people as ridiculous as any that Agnes ever remembered to have seen at a country theatre. Old beaux of half a century's duration,—two or three remarkably conceited, overdressed officers in full-fledged mustachios,—crowds of busy, bustling, managing-looking mothers,—four or five over-dressed Irish fortune-hunters,—a knot of agricultural, kill-your-own-mutton country gentlemen,—one or two widows of not very doubtful age, but rouged to excess,—a few Oxonian professors, who were F.R.S. and the whole alphabet besides,—a multitude of whist-playing clergymen, reverened only on their visiting cards, who bore no symptom of their profession except a white neckcloth,—many old people to be made young, and young people to be made younger,—besides nearly an acre of very un-Almacks-like young ladies, showily attired in pink, blue, or yellow, like a bed of tulips, all in very gay spirits, or pretending to be so, who seemed to lead a life of perpetual smiles and good-humor, as if all the troubles of existence were unknown or a mere laughing matter to them.