TWO, BY TRICKS
[CHAPTER I.]
ON THE GRAND TIER.
It was the week after Ascot, and town was full. Society, which had been amusing itself with the cancans of the season--such as how the Duke of Pimlico, who had been hitherto regarded as the greatest screw in the world, buying his coats from Hyam's, and his hats from the peripatetic Israelites in the streets, dining off a fried sole and half a pint of Hungarian wine, and driving a horse so starved and weak that even Lord ---- would have spared it, had suddenly taken to giving splendid banquets to Royalty, and lighting up the ancestral hall with more wax candles than his grace's father-in-law, the eminent tallow-chandler, had ever sold in a week; how the slim and good-looking Charles Bedford, while playing whist at the Tattenham, had been discovered, not merely with two aces on his lap, but, like the heathen Chinee, with twenty-four packs secreted on various portions of his person; how the noble Master of the Buckhounds had given one of the best boxes at Ascot to pretty Mrs. Delamere, whose husband was away on a scientific expedition inspecting the Fauna and Flora of Central Asia,--society had discussed all these matters, and wanted something new to talk about. It was going to have it.
It was hot everywhere in London that night, but hottest of all at the Opera. Outside, the air was thick and heavy, tainted by vegetable refuse from the neighbouring market, laden with fetid odours from the surrounding coffee-shops, taverns, and crapulous dens; inside, the eye was distracted by the constant fluttering of the fans in the boxes and from the area of the stalls, and the ear tortured by the stifled groan of the obese foreigners who line the outer ring of the pit, sweltering terribly.
There were many foreigners present that night: slim, olive-skinned, black-muzzled Spaniards, with close blue-black hair growing low down on their foreheads, and with their forefingers stained by constant contact with the cigarette; plethoric pudgy Germans, long-bearded and bald-headed, beating time with dumpy hands, ring-bedecked, and not too clean; lively volatile Italians, musical fanatics, who winced at a false note, and shrieked out 'Sh--sh!' in shrillest anger when any of their neighbours attempted conversation. Other foreigners in the boxes--ambassadors these. The Turk, with his crimson fez, in such contrast with his dead-white face; the Russian, who sits with sated eyes and palled ears, looking at indeed, but not regarding, what is going on before him, and thinking of the days when Taglioni danced and Malibran sang; the Frenchman, smiling and chattering with the full knowledge that his own recall is imminent, and that the members of the government which he served might be at any moment displaced, and would be only too thankful if they escaped massacre. A subscription night this, with Patti in the Barbiere, with royal highnesses and a serene transparency on a visit for a few weeks, in the royal box; with Philippa Marchioness of Mont-Serrat, with her luxuriant ringlets, looking like a vignette from the Book of Beauty of the year '42, on the grand tier; and with Tom Lydyeard in the fifth row of the stalls, yawning as though his head were coming off.
This is Tom Lydyeard, the tall well-bred-looking man with the red beard turning silver at the roots, and the fair hair in which the parting is rather broader than it used to be. Not so young or so active as on that cheerless April morning when he marched across Waterloo-bridge with his regiment on their way to join the troops in the Crimea; but a handsome fellow yet, with a well-preserved figure and a keen eye. Tom has preserved his figure better than his temper, which, on occasions, is apt to be remarkably short; 'Hansom and Growler' is the nickname which this combination of good looks and bad temper has obtained for poor Tom from some of the junior members of the Rag, where he grumbles about the wine and the cooking, snaps at the waiters, and requires all the cajolery of St. Kevin, pleasantest of Irish army-doctors, to keep him within bounds.
Tom is evidently not best pleased at the present moment. The man in the stall next to his is a very stout Italian, with lustreless black gloves on his hands and a square diamond brooch in the middle of his plaited shirt-front, who is mopping himself with a purple-silk handkerchief, and with whom Tom Lydyeard is horribly disgusted.
'Can't think what they let such brutes into the place for!' he says to himself, looking over rather than at his dripping neighbour. 'Gad, what a comfort he would have been in the Row this morning when the dust was blowing! I can't imagine what has come to this place; one scarcely ever sees a soul one knows--a lot of foreigners and City people; not like the old stamp of men whom one could always rely upon finding in the stalls, or in the omnibus-box at the old house when the curtain for the ballet went up. They were a better style, those fellows; what they call the "old school,"--vieille école, bonne école,--and that sort of thing. Men go now to that reeking Alhambra, and think they enjoy it. What a queer thing it is to think that so few of the old set are left! There is one of them though, by Jove!' he muttered with a start. 'I haven't seen him for twenty years, but I'd lay my life that's Uffington.'
The man by whom he was attracted looked up at the same instant, and their eyes met. The stranger's cheeks flushed, and for a moment he made as if he would turn away; but when he saw that Tom Lydyeard had left his stall he stopped, and the next moment they were shaking hands with more effusion than is usually shown in present society.