Kate Coventry: An Autobiography

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

"Unfeeling," muttered Frank, biting his lip, and looking really annoyed. "O Miss Coventry! O Kate! give me an opportunity of explaining all."

"Explain nothing," was my reply; "we understand each other perfectly.
It is time for me to go in and dress."

So I marched into the house, and left him looking foolish—if Frank ever could look foolish—on the doorstep. As I hurried along the passages I encountered Lady Scapegrace.

"What's the matter, Kate?" said she, following me into my room; "you look as if something had happened. No bad news, I trust, from Aunt Deborah?"

I burst into tears. Kindness always overcomes me completely, and then
I make a fool of myself.

"Nothing's the matter," I sobbed out; "only I'm tired and nervous,
Lady Scapegrace, and I want to dress."

My hostess slipped quietly out of the room, and presently returned with some sal volatile and water: she made me drink it every drop.

"I must have a talk to you, Kate," said she, "but not now; the dinner-bell will ring in ten minutes." And she too hurried away to perform her toilette.

As I get older I take to moralizing, and I am afraid I waste a good deal of valuable time in speculating on the thoughts, ideas, and, so to speak, the inner life of my neighbours. It is curious to observe a large, well-dressed party seated at dinner, all apparently frank and open as the day, full of fun and good humour, saying whatever comes uppermost, and to all outward seeming laying bare every crevice and cranny of their hearts, and then to reflect that each one of the throng has a separate life, entirely distinct from that which he or she parades before the public, cherished perhaps with a miser's care or endured with a martyr's fortitude. Sir Guy, sitting at the bottom of his table, drinking rather more wine than usual—perhaps because it was Sunday, and the enforced decencies of the day had somewhat damped his spirits—looked a jovial, thoughtless, merry country gentleman, somewhat slang, it may be, not to say vulgar, but still open-hearted, joyous, and hospitable. Was there no skeleton in Sir Guy's mental cupboard? Were there no phantoms that would rise up, like Banquo's ghost, to their seat, unbidden, at his board? While he smacked his great lips over those bumpers of dark red Burgundy, had he quite forgotten the days of old—the friends he had pledged and made fools of—the kind hearts he had loved and betrayed? Did he ever think of Damocles and the hanging sword? Could he summon courage to look into the future, or fortitude even to think of the past? Sir Guy's was a strong, healthy, sensuous nature, in which the physical far outweighed the intellectual; and yet I verily believe his conscience sometimes nearly drove him mad.

Then there was my lady, sitting at the top of her table, the very picture of a courteous, affable, well-bred hostess; perhaps, if anything, a little too placid and immovable in her outward demeanour. Who would have guessed at the wild and stormy passions that could rage beneath so calm a surface? Who would suppose that stately, reserved, majestic-looking woman had the recklessness of a brigand and the caprices of a child? A physiognomist might have marked the traces of strong feelings in her deepened eyes and the lines about her mouth—damages done by the hurricane, that years of calm can never repair; but there had been a page or two in Lady Scapegrace's life that, with all his acuteness, would have astonished Lavater himself. Then there was Miss Molasses, the pink of propriety and "what-would-mamma-say" young ladyism—cold as a statue, and, as old Chaucer says, "upright as a bolt," but all the time over head and ears in love with Frank Lovell, and ready to do anything he asked her at a moment's notice. There was Frank himself, gay and débonnair: outwardly the lightest-hearted man in the company; inwardly, I have reason to know, tormented with misgivings and stung by self-reproach. Playing a double game—attached to one woman and courting another, despising himself thoroughly the while; hemmed in by difficulties and loaded with debt, hampered by a bad book on "The Two Thousand," and playing hide-and-seek even now with the Jews—Frank's real existence was very different from the one he showed his friends. So with the rest of the party. Old Mrs. Molasses was bothered by her maid; Mr. Lumley puzzled by his beetles; his wife involved in a thousand schemes of mischief-making, which kept her in perpetual hot water: all, even honest Cousin John, were sedulously hiding their real thoughts from their companions; all were playing the game with counters, of which indeed they were lavish enough; but had you asked for a bit of sterling coin, fresh from the Mint and stamped with the impress of truth, they would have buttoned their pockets closer than ever—ay, though you had been bankrupt and penniless, they would have seen you further first, and then they wouldn't.