CHAPTER XXXIII.—TELEMACHUS AND MENTOR.
The Opera-house was very full and proportionably hot on the evening when Coverdale and his wife visited it (it being the début of the since famous Signora Bettimartini), Alice, unused to London gaieties, and uneasy from the suspicions she could not contrive to banish, acquired a headache, which, when she went to bed, prevented her from falling asleep. Thus, being anxious to court without loss of time nature’s sweet restorer, of course she chose the most vexatious and exciting topic she could select as a subject of thought, and began to speculate on all the evidence she could call to mind in regard to her husband’s relations, past and present, towards Arabella Crofton, who, as the reader must have perceived, was just at that especial epoch poor little Mrs. Coverdale’s bête noire. The first circumstance she could recollect to form the initial link in her chain of evidence, was Harry’s inquiry about her when Alice casually mentioned her name during the halcyon days of their honeymoon. In this conversation, Harry had confessed to a previous acquaintance with Miss Crofton, and when pressed farther, added that he knew no good of her, or words to that effect. His manner, Alice remembered, was so peculiar that her curiosity had been at once excited, or as she mentally put it, that “naturally she felt her husband ought immediately to have told her everything about it—she had no concealments from him, she was sure.” Following up this train of thought, another instance of this unkind and unflattering want of confidence occurred to her—the mysterious epistle which he had received that very afternoon, which had annoyed him so much, and about which he had refused to afford her any explanation; and here a new idea flashed like an infernal inspiration across her brain—could that note be in any way connected with Miss Crofton’s arrival? “Yes! it must be so.” She remembered when they entered the drawing-room, and she had felt surprise at finding a stranger there, Harry seemed to take it as a matter of course: good reason why, he knew it previously—this hateful woman, this detestable creature, Arabella Crofton, had written to him privately, informing him of her arrival! Oh! she saw it all; and how she would try to wean his affections away from his poor wife—his poor, neglected, betrayed wife! and succeed most likely—men were such fickle, wicked things; and then it would break her heart, that there could be no question of and she should die in the course of a year—in six months, very likely, for she wasn’t at all strong though she had a colour—consumptive people always had brilliant complexions—think of her poor aunt Kitty! and Harry would be sorry when it was too late, perhaps. And so, drawing a vivid picture of her repentant husband grieving over her untimely decease, she cried herself to sleep, bedewing with her tears the “fickle, wicked thing,” calmly slumbering at her side; who straightway dreamed that, being out hunting, and riding a young thorough-bred, he had charged a brook, and that his horse, refusing it, had pitched him head foremost into its rapid waters.
A month soon elapsed—the London season was at its height. Everybody had been everywhere, and was going again; Grisi and Mario had arrived, recovered from sea-sickness and British catarrh, and “surpassed themselves” in their favourite characters. A mob of costly equipages jostled each other round Hyde Park every afternoon; carriage-horses, deprived of their sleep o’nights, began to grieve coachmen’s hearts by revealing the position of their ribs; young ladies from the Country danced away their roses and their embonpoint; men whose book for the Derby was at all “shy” trembled in their patent-leather boots; the glory of the lilacs in the squares had departed; water-carts made unpleasant canals of the principal thoroughfares; the Honourable Mrs. Windsor Soape had presented her youngest daughter at the last drawing-room, and tried without success to stuff her down the throats of several eligible eldest sons; Lady Close Shaver had inveigled an hundred and seventy unfortunates into her hot drawing-rooms, bored them with Signor Violini’s scientific rendering of Beethoven’s sonata in A B C minor, poisoned them with bad ice and worse Champagne, and turned them out to grass upon lobster salads, of which the principal feature was the unaccountable absence of lobster: these, and many other miseries, attendant on the “joys of our dancing days,” had been gladly suffered by the fanatical votaries of the Juggernaut of Fashion, and still the Coverdales lingered within the precincts of the modern Babylon. Lord Alfred Courtland having received a summons to join his family at Leghorn, had refused to obey it on the plea of ill health, backed by a physician’s opinion, which cost one guinea, and was worth——! Well, really, in this case it was worth something, for it saved Lord Alfred a lecture, and he disliked being lectured, even for his good—silly young man! so he stayed in town, doing as other folks did, and hoping thereby to become a man of fashion; but, as he only acted like other people, and did nothing very clever, or very foolish, or very wrong, he by no means succeeded in obtaining the reputation he coveted. With this consciousness of failure before his eyes, he one night lounged dismally out of his stall at the Opera, and was proceeding with dejected steps along the lobby, when he suddenly encountered Horace D’Almayne, better dressed and better pleased with himself than ever.
“Well met, my lord; I was just wishing for an agreeable companion,” was his complimentary salutation. “I am naturally a sociable animal; if you have no better employment, will you take pity on me for an hour or so?”
Deeply impressed with such unexpected condescension, and overcome by the transcendant cut of D’Almayne’s waistcoat, nothing remained for Lord Alfred but gratefully to consent; which he accordingly did. Linking his arm in that of his companion, D’Almayne continued:—
“You are looking triste, ennuyé; has Grisi developed a cold, or Cerito a corn? is it opera or ballet which has thus bored you?”
“Neither one nor the other,” was the reply; “though even operas cease to excite after one has grown accustomed to them.”
“Yes! that is true; except to an educated musician” (and D’Almayne looked as if he humbly trusted that he was equal to Mendelssohn, at the very least), “I can conceive they grow tedious; but,” he continued, “you should seek some more exciting amusement: mix in clever, witty society; do things—see things; in fact, enjoy life as a young man with such advantages of person and of station should do.”
“It may seem easy to you, who have achieved a reputation in the beau monde, and can command any society you please, to accomplish this; but it is the reverse of easy for a young man in these days, even if he have a handle to his name, to persuade people that he has anything in him; in fact I think a title stands rather in a young fellow’s way on entering London life; people have somehow taken to connect the ideas of a lord and a fool, until I believe they begin to think the terms synonymous!”