At this critical juncture, and ere the General had time to explain the strategy by which Bahawdar Bang’s manœuvre was defeated, he and his party had been swept onward with the tide to where a doorway stemmed the crowd into a mass of struggling confusion. Lappets and feathers waved to and fro like a grove of poplars in a breeze; fans were broken, and soft cheeks scratched against epaulettes and such accoutrements of war; here and there a pair of moustaches towered above the surface, like the yards of some tall bark in a storm; whilst ever and anon a heavy dowager, like some plunging seventy-four that answers not her helm, came surging through the mass with the sheer force of that specific gravity which is not to be denied. As the state-rooms are reached, the crowd becomes more dense and the heat insufferable. A red cord, stretched tightly the whole length of the room, offers an insuperable barrier to the impetuous, and compels the panting company to defile in due order of precedence—“first come first served” being here, as elsewhere, the prevailing maxim. And now, people being obliged to stand still, make the best of it, and begin to talk, their remarks being as original and interesting as those of a well-dressed crowd usually are. “Wawt a crush—aw”—says Captain Lacquers, skilfully warding off from Blanche the whole person of a stout naval officer, and sighing to think of the tarnish his beloved hessians have sustained by being trodden on—“there’s Lady Crane and the Miss Cranes—that’s Rebecca, the youngest, she’s going to be presented, poor girl!—aw—she’s painfully ugly, Miss Kettering—aw—makes me ill to look at her.” Poor Rebecca! she’s not pretty, at least in a court dress, and is dreadfully frightened besides. She knows the rich Miss Kettering by sight, and admires her honestly, and envies her too, and would give anything to change places with her now, for she has a slight tendresse for good-looking, unmeaning Lacquers. Take comfort, Rebecca, you will hardly condescend to speak to him, when you go through the same dread ordeal next year, in this very place, as Marchioness Ermindale. The Marquis is looking out for a young wife, and has seen you already, walking early, in shabby gloves, with your governess, and has made up his mind, and will marry you out of hand before the end of the season. So you will be the richest peeress in England, and have a good-looking, good-humoured, honest-hearted husband, very little over forty; and you will do pretty much what you like, and never go with your back to the horses any more; only you don’t know it, nor has it anything to do with our story, except to prove that the lottery is not, invariably, “all blanks and no prizes”—that a quiet, unassuming, lady-like girl has fully as good a chance of winning the game as any of your fashionable beauties—your dashing young ladies, with their pictures in print-books, and their names in the clubs, and their engagements a dozen deep, and their heart-broken lovers in scores—men who can well afford to be lovers, seeing that their resources will not admit of their becoming husbands. Such a suitor is Captain Lacquers to the generality of his lady-loves, though he means honestly enough as regards Blanche, and would like to marry her and her Three per Cents, to-morrow. Misguided dandy! what chance has he against such a rival as D’Orville? Even if there were no Frank Hardingstone, and Cousin Charlie were never to come back, he is but on a par with Sir Ascot, Lord Mount Helicon, and a hundred others—there is not a toss of a halfpenny for choice between them. Nevertheless, he has great confidence in his own fascinations, and not being troubled with diffidence, is only waiting for an opportunity to lay himself, his uniform, and his debts at the heiress’s feet.
The Major, meanwhile, whom Lady Mount Helicon thinks “charming,” and of whom she is persuaded she has made a conquest, pioneers a way for Blanche and her chaperon through the glittering throng. “It is very formidable, Miss Kettering,” says he, pitying the obvious nervousness of the young girl, “but it’s soon over, like a visit to the dentist. You know what to do, and the Queen is so kind and so gracious, it’s not half so alarming when you are really before her; now, go on; that’s the grand vizier; keep close to Lady Mount Helicon; and mind, don’t turn your back to any of the royalties. I shall be in the gallery to get your carriage after it’s over. I shall be so anxious to know how you get through it.”
“Thank you, Major D’Orville,” replied poor Blanche, with an upward glance of gratitude that made her violet eyes look deeper and lovelier than ever; and she sailed on, with a very respectable assumption of fortitude, but inwardly wishing that she could sink into the earth, or, at least, remain with kind, protecting Major D’Orville and Uncle Baldwin, and those gentlemen whose duty did not bring them into the immediate presence of their sovereign.
These worthies, having nothing better to do, began to beguile the time by admiring each other’s uniforms, criticising the appearance of the company, and such vague impertinences as go by the name of general conversation. Lacquers, who had just caught the turn of his hessians at a favourable point of view, was more than usually communicative. “Heard of Bolter?” says he, addressing the public in general, and amongst others a first cousin of that injured man. “Taken his wife back again—aw—soft, I should say—fact is, she and Fopples couldn’t get on; Frank kicked at the poodle directly he got to the railway station; he swore he would only take the parrot, and they quarrelled there. I don’t believe they went abroad at all, at least not together. Seen the poodle? Nice dog; they’ve got him in Green Street; very like Frank; believe he was jealous of him!” A general laugh greeted the hussar’s witticism, and the cousin being, as usual, not on the best of terms with his relation, enjoyed the joke more than any one else. Major D’Orville alone has neither listened to the story nor caught the point. Blanche’s pleading, grateful eyes haunt him still. He feels that the more he likes her, the less he would wish to marry her. “She is worthy of a better fate,” he thinks, “than to be linked to a broken-down roué.” And as is often the case, the charm of beauty in another brings forcibly to his mind the only face he ever really loved; and the Major sighs as he wishes he could begin life again, on totally different principles from those he has all along adopted. Well, it is too late now. The game must be played out, and he proceeds to cement his alliance with the General by asking him to lunch with him at his club “after this thing’s over.”
“We’ll all go together,” exclaimed Lacquers, who had been meditating the very same move against his prospective uncle-in-law, only he couldn’t hit the right pronunciation of a déjeuner à la fourchette, the term in which he was anxious to couch his invitation.
“Not a member, sir,” says the General, with a well-pleased smile at the invitation; “cross-questioned by the waiter, kicked out by the committee—what?—only belong to ‘The Chelsea and Noodles’—don’t approve of clubs in the abstract—all very well whilst one’s a bachelor—eh? D—d selfish and all that—wife moping in a two-storied house at Bayswater—husband swaggering in a Louis Quatorze drawing-room in Pall Mall. Can’t dine at home to-day, my love; where’s the latch-key? Promised to have a mutton-chop at the club with an old brother-officer. Wife dines on chicken broth with her children, and has a poached egg at her tea. Husband begins with oysters and ends with a pint of claret, by himself too—we all know who the old brother-officer is—lives in the Edgeware Road!—how d’ye mean?” Lacquers goes off with a horse-laugh; he enjoys the joke amazingly; it is just suited to his comprehension. “Then we’ll meet in an hour from now,” says he, as the crowd, surging in, breaks up their little conclave; “should like to show you our pictures—aw—fond of high art, you know—and our staircase, Arabian, you know, with the ornaments quite Mosaic. A-diavolo!” And pleased with what he believes to be his real Spanish farewell, our dandy-linguist elbows his way up to Lady Ormolu, and gladdens that panting peeress with the pearls and rubies of his intellectual conversation.
All this time Blanche is nearing the ordeal. If she thought the crowd too dense before, what would she not give now to bury herself in its sheltering ranks? An ample duchess is before her with a red-haired daughter, but everywhere around her there is room to breathe, and walk, and to be seen. Through an open door she catches a glimpse of the Presence and the stately circle before whom she must pass. Good-natured royalties, of both sexes, stand smiling and bowing, and striving to put frightened subjects at their ease, and carrying their kind hearts on their handsome open countenances; but they are all whirling round and round to Blanche, and she cannot tell uniforms from satin gowns, epaulettes from ostrich plumes, old from young. It strikes her that there is something ridiculous in the way that a central figure performs its backward movement, and the horrid conviction comes upon her that she will have to go through the same ceremony before all those royal eyes, and think of her train, her feathers, her curtsey, and her escape, all at one and the same agonising moment. A foreign diplomatist makes a complimentary remark in French, addressed to his neighbour, a tall, soldier-like German with nankeen moustaches. The German unbends for an instant that frigid air of military reserve which has of late years usurped the place of what we used to consider foreign volubility and politeness—he stoops to reply in a whisper, but soon recovers himself, stiffer and straighter than before.
Neither the compliment nor its reception serves to reassure Blanche. In vain she endeavours to peep past the duchess’s ample figure, and see how the red-haired daughter pulls through. The duchess rejoices in substantial materials, both of dress and fabric, so Blanche can see nothing. Another moment, and she hears her own name and Lady Mount Helicon’s pronounced in a whisper, every syllable of which thrills upon her nerves like a musket-shot. She reaches the door—she catches a glimpse of a tall, handsome young man with a blue ribbon, and a formidable-looking phalanx of princes, princesses, foreign ambassadors, and English courtiers, in a receding circle, of which she feels she is about to become the centre. Blanche would like to cry, but she is in the Presence now, and we follow her no farther. It would not become us to enlarge upon the majesty which commands reverence for the queen, or the beauty which wins homage for the woman; to speak of her as do her servants, her household, her nobility, or all who are personally known to her, would entail such language of devoted affection as in our case might be termed flattery and adulation. To hurrah and throw our hats up for her, with the fervent loyalty of an English mob—to cheer with the whole impulse of every stout English heart, and the energy of good English lungs, is more in accordance with our position and our habits, and so “Hip, hip, hip—God save the Queen.”
“Oh, dear! if I’d only known,” said Blanche, some two hours afterwards, as Rosine was brushing her hair, and taking out the costly ostrich plumes and the string of pearls, “I needn’t have been so frightened after all! So good, so kind, so considerate, I shouldn’t the least mind being presented every day!”