"Well, but how do they annoy you, Toshington?" asked Gilbert, who was rather amused at this outbreak on the old gentleman's part.
"They don't actually annoy me, except by bein' such a dam low-bred lot, yahooin' all over the place. And to think of 'em comin' just now, when we were so pleasant. It's rather late in the season, to be sure; but there's a very nice set of people here. My Lady Carabas is here, but that youknew, of course; and the Dook and Duchess of Winchester, and the Dashwoods, and the Grevilles, and the Alsagers, and Tom Gregory and half the First. It's monstrous pleasant, you can't think!"
"It must be," said Gilbert quietly. "So new and fresh and charming. Such a change, too, for you all, not to see anybody you are accustomed to meet in London,--it must be delightful. Goodbye, Toshington; I'm going in for rusticity, and intend to have a turn before breakfast."
Although Mr. Toshington's sense of humour was very slight, and although he took most things au pied de la letter, he detected some sarcasm in Gilbert's remarks, and looked after him from under scowling brows. "That's another of 'em," he muttered; "another of your horse-racin' customers, though he is in society, and all that. Damme if I know how they let 'em in; I don't, by George! They'd as soon have thought of lettin' a fiddler, or a painter, or a fellow of that sort into society when I was a young man. But it's best to keep in with this one; he has the orderin' of everything at Etchingham's, and might leave me out of many a good thing if he chose to be disagreeable." So saying, the old worldling finished his second glass of Brunnenwasser, paid his kreutzers, audibly cursed the coinage of the country in a select mixture of the English and German languages prepared expressly by him for his own use, and departed.
Mr. Toshington was perfectly right in stating that the Marchioness of Carabas was enthroned in great state at Baden, but wrong in imagining that Gilbert Lloyd was aware of that fact. Truth to tell, there had been a slight misunderstanding, what is vulgarly but intelligibly called a "tiff," between her ladyship and Lloyd, and for a few weeks past he had not been enlightened as to her movements. The fact was, that when Lloyd had sufficiently used the grand dameas a means to various business ends, as a stepping-stone to certain objects which without her aid he would have been unable to reach, he began to find his position rather a wearying one. It was pleasant to be the custodian and hierophant of the Soul while it served his purpose, but it was dreary work when that purpose was achieved, and his interest in the Soul's owner was consequently gone. He attended at the shrine as regularly as ever for reasons of policy, but his policy was not sufficiently strong to keep him from occasionally gaping and betraying other signs of weariness. Lady Carabas was too observant a woman not to mark this immediately on its first occurrence, but she thought it might be accidental, and determined to wait a repetition of it before speaking. The repetition very shortly afterwards took place, and even then her ladyship did not speak. After a little reflection she determined on adopting another plan. She resolved upon taking to herself someone else who should be admitted into the mysteries of the Soul. This, she thought, would capitally answer a double purpose; it would tend to her amusement--and she was beginning to feel the want of a little novelty, she confessed to herself--and would probably have the effect of rendering Gilbert Lloyd jealous. A little time showed the result. In the turf-idiom which she had learned of Lloyd, and which she sometimes used in self-communion, she acknowledged that "while the first event had come off all right, the second had gone to grief;" which, being interpreted, meant that while she (Lady Carabas) was thoroughly amused, and indeed at the height of one of her Platonic flirtations with the new possessor of the Soul (a young man in the Foreign Office, with lovely hair parted in the middle, charming whiskers, and brilliant teeth), he (Gilbert Lloyd) had not shown the smallest symptom of jealousy. On the contrary, Gilbert Lloyd was unfeignedly glad to find that his place had been satisfactorily filled up, and that he would no longer be constantly required to be on escort-duty. And when Lady Carabas found that this was the case--and she discovered it very quickly, being a woman of great worldly penetration and tact--she made up her mind that the best thing for her to do was to accept the position at once, and give Lloyd his liberty. This accordingly she did; and when they met at Baden,
"They seemed to those who saw them meet, Mere casual friends of every day;"
as Lord Houghton says in a very charming little poem, though there was an echo of bygone tenderness, of the voice of the Soul, in fact, pervading her ladyship's tones for many a day after. Meantime she was the queen of a very pleasant little coterie. Half the frequenters of Carabas House did a little passing homage at her ladyship's temporary court at Baden on their way to and from the other watering-places. The promenade contained types of all the people usually seen seated on the Hyde-Park chairs, with a large sprinkling of others never seen in that aristocratic locality. For though H.R.H. the Duke of Brentford, the captains and commanders and mighty men of valour, the senators, the clerks in the government offices, and the nothing-doers have plenty of time to lounge about in London, the working-bees--the judges and barristers, the doctors, the civil-engineers, the cunning workers in ink and pigment, all of whom grind their brains to make their bread--have no such opportunity when in town, and are only seen idling in daylight during their brief autumn holiday. "Society"--except that Carabas-House set, which knew them very well--stared very much at most of these people, and called Jack Hawkes of the F. O. to its aid to explain who they were; and Jack Hawkes, who was only too delighted to act as cicerone to society when it had a handle to its name, explained, "Tall man with the round high shoulders and the long gray hair is great lady's doctor, don't you know? uses up three pair of horses a-day whippin' about town; that's his wife and daughter with him--think her pretty, the daughter? nice-lookin' they call her. The man with the red face, not him in the white hat--that's Kollum the portrait-painter; that one in the wideawake is Sir Blewson Bagge, one of the judges--say he knows more law than any other three men in England The fat man with the cigar is Protheroe, and the man talkin' to him dressed all in black is Tuberville; they're great engineers--one laid out the John o' Groat's and Land's End Extension Line, and the other designed the Channel-Islands Submarine Railway. Wonderful how they stick together, those railway fellows; if one knows a good thing he tells the other of it, and they hunt in couples to keep other fellows off the game. Tuberville's son has married Protheroe's daughter; and the money that's there passes all count. There are two writin' chaps comin' this way; they belong to the Kresse, that blackguard paper that attacks everybody, don't you know? Don't look bad fellows, do they? and they're always laughin' and keepin' it up at the Badischer. Who's the little round fat fellow they've stopped and are talkin' to?--that's Bellows of the Old-Bailey Bar; first-rate in his business, and such good company; and the man with him of course you know? No! Why that's Finchington, the light comedian of the Minerva. Yes, he does look different in the daylight, as you say. These? No, these are people who have come over for the races, and I don't know anything about them. We must get Lloyd to give us that information.--Here, Lloyd, come and tell her grace who are these odd people who are coming this way; they're turf-people, I suppose, so you'll know all about them."
But Gilbert Lloyd, objecting very much to be patronised either by Mr. Hawkes or the great people to whom that social barnacle had temporarily attached himself, declared his inability to perform the duties assigned to him, and took himself off with a bow. It was the night before the first race-day, and all the Baden world was enjoying itself on the promenade in front of the Kursaal. There had been a grand excursion-party that day to the Favourite, a party of which Lady Carabas had been the reigning star, and after a delightful outing they had returned, and were now formed into a large group, laughing and talking loudly. Gilbert Lloyd carefully avoided these people, and steered equally clear of another group in the midst of which the Duchess of Winchester was enthroned. These two great ladies had never much liked each other, and when they met at Baden their antagonism was patent, and their rivalry openly declared. Each had her circle of admirers, and whatever one did the other tried to outdo. The Winchester faction having heard that the Carabas people were going that day to the Favourite, had themselves had a picnic at Eberstein Schloss, and both were now planning their next day's diversion at the races.
Gilbert Lloyd was in no humour to join either of these parties at that moment, though each would have been glad to have secured him as an adherent. He was in a bad temper, having just had some sharp words with Lord Ticehurst on a question on which that young nobleman a few weeks since would not have dared to offer an opinion. Just before they left town for Doncaster, Lloyd had dismissed a groom; the man appealed to Lord Ticehurst in a letter. This letter Lloyd opened, read, and contemptuously threw into the fire. The man heard of this, and made a fresh appeal to his lordship, setting forth the treatment his former letter had received, and defying Lloyd to deny it. This letter was forwarded to Lord Ticehurst at Baden, and made him exceedingly angry. He went at once to Lloyd, and spoke very plainly, said that he would not be treated like a child, that all letters addressed to him--no matter on what subject--should be brought to him, and even hinted that on their return to England Lloyd's position and responsibility must be more exactly defined.
"It was that infernal Maitland's hint that he can't swallow," said Lloyd, as he seated himself at an empty table on the verge of the crowd and ordered some brandy. "He referred to it just now when he said he wouldn't be treated like a child. O he's never spoken to me like that since we've been together.--Here!" to the waiter who brought the brandy, "encore; another of these carafons.. What's the good of a drop like that to a man!--He's never been the same since that night he dined with those fellows, after he had been over to that place to-- Lord! I forgot--to propose to her!Of course shemust be mixed up in everything that's unlucky for me! How I wish I'd never set eyes on her! how I wish--What the devil does this fellow want!"