The party now broke up. Lady Moppett departed with Miss Bertram and Mr. Jawler, to whom she offered a seat in her carriage. Mr. Cleveland Turner and his patron, Mr. Sweeting, went away together. In a few minutes there remained Mr. Dormer-Smith, with his niece, and Owen Rivers. Miss Patty bustled in with the two children.
"Dear me," said she. "Is the music all over? Well, now let us be comfortable."
But Mr. Dormer-Smith declared he must reluctantly bring his visit to an end. "I don't know how to thank you," said he to Miss Patty, "for your kindness to my children. I hope you will forgive me for bringing them."
Miss Patty heartily assured him that there was nothing to forgive, and that she hoped he would bring them again. She had gathered from the artless utterances of Harold and Wilfred an idea of their home life, which made her feel compassionately towards them.
As for Miss Polly, she was in the highest spirits. Mr. Jawler and Signor Valli, both stars of considerable magnitude in the musical world, had shone for her with unclouded lustre. It had been, she thought, a highly successful afternoon. So also thought Harold and Wilfred. And perhaps these were the only three persons who had enjoyed themselves thoroughly and unaffectedly.
CHAPTER XIV.
The London season proceeded with its usual accumulation of engagements, its usual breathless chase after half-hours that have got too long a start ever to be recaptured, its usual fleeting satisfactions and abiding disappointments, its snubs, sneers, smiles, follies, falsehoods, and flirtations. The rushing current of fashionable life in London carried little May Cheffington on its surface, together with many brazen vessels of a very different kind. Constance Hadlow observed half-enviously to her friend that she was thoroughly "in the swim," a phrase which May found singularly inappropriate in her own case, feeling that there was no more question of a swim than in shooting Niagara! To her, especially, the whirl of society was confusing, phantasmagoric, and unreal. All the faces were new to her, most of the names awoke no associations in her mind. On the other hand, this peculiar inexperience gave freshness to her impressions and keenness to her insight. She had none of those social traditions which, nine times out of ten, supply the place of private judgment. She found her impression of many personages startlingly at variance with the label which the world had agreed to affix to them. It is possible to be at once simple and shrewd, just as it is possible to be both rusé and dull-witted.
May's simplicity was not of the blundering thick-skinned type; and her ingenuous freshness was admired by a great many persons, among whom was Mrs. Griffin. Far from being offended by May's moral indignation against those who accepted the hospitality of vulgar people, and then ridiculed them for being vulgar, Mrs. Griffin entirely approved her sentiments. Mrs. Griffin herself deplored, as she often said, "the servility towards mere money, which was degrading the tone of society." And whenever any new instance of it came to her knowledge, she would shake her head, and exclaim, softly, "Oh, Mammon, Mammon!" But this did not, of course, apply to her daughter the duchess, who sometimes went to the Aaronssohns'. Her daughter was so very great a lady as to be above ordinary restrictions. Other people worshipped Mammon; the duchess only patronized Mammon—which was, surely, a very different thing!
Aunt Pauline, however, derived no gratification from May's unconventional frankness. It was, on the contrary, a source of constant anxiety to her; and she felt daily more and more that it would be a relief to get May off her hands. Introducing her niece into society—even although the niece was a pretty girl, and a Cheffington to boot—had not proved so pleasing a task as she had anticipated. There was, to her thinking, a strange perversity in the girl's character, which made her callous where she should be sensitive, and sensitive where she might well be indifferent. For instance, she showed culpable coolness about her great-uncle Castlecombe and his family, and provoking warmth about her Oldchester friends. Not that May was apt to speak much of her life in Oldchester. In the natural course of things she would have talked freely and eagerly about her dear granny; but very soon after her arrival in London, her affectionate loquacity on this subject received a check. Aunt Pauline had hinted, with her usual mild politeness, that it would be desirable not to speak of Mrs. Dobbs before Smithson or any of the servants. Seeing the startled look in May's eyes, and the indignant flush on May's cheeks, her aunt added diplomatically, "Your father would not like it, May. I am trying to carry out his expressed wishes. That ought to be enough for you."