While they are driving to Cadogan-place, let us cast a retrospective glance at the fortunes of the authoress of Gleams and Glooms, to whose soirée they are wending.
Hester Mason had achieved a part of her ambition: she held a salon in London. How she contrived and maintained that, would take long to narrate in detail, as it was only by steady perseverance and admirable ingenuity she succeeded. On first eloping with Sir Chetsom, she had the tact never once to mention a settlement; indeed when he, in a moment of tenderness, alluded to the subject, she playfully put her hand upon his mouth and said,—"Oh, don't begin to talk of money, or I shall think you have bought me. You are not going to leave me, are you?"
"Leave you, Hester?"
"Yes, leave me. It looks like it. I am poor I know; but rich in your love. Make me independent, and you will think it no hardship for me to be left; it is always so with men!"
A sigh followed this. Sir Chetsom was ravished; the dupe was fooled to the top of his bent. Hester marked the effect, and from that moment knew her power. From that moment he denied her nothing. The time would come, she foresaw, when he would be completely her slave, and that was the time to make conditions.
Meanwhile, she impressed him with the notion of the necessity for their liaison being hidden from the world. If people did not respect her, they would not envy him. If she were not something more than his mistress, he would be not better than the common herd of men who have their "follies." Appearances should be preserved for all sakes. Sir Chetsom admitted the truth of this, reserving to himself the privilege of disclosing his secret at the club, by intelligible hints and half-confidences.
He had given her a house; he had brought there the nucleus of a literary and artistic society. Hester received every Wednesday evening, and as her parties had a certain piquancy, they were well attended. The great difficulty was to get women. That is always the stumbling-block of an equivocal position. Men are willing enough to go anywhere, if they are amused, and to ask no questions, or at least to affect no prudery. With women, the case is wholly different. Accordingly, with what untiring perseverance do women in equivocal positions manœuvre to obtain the presence of virtuous women at their houses! How they pet them, how full of delicate attentions and substantial kindness! What cajoleries, what adroit insinuations, what flattering prospects they set forth to dazzle their "dear friends"! What twaddle they will listen to for hours, with the eagerness of curious interest; what confidences accept! It is one of the most amusing scenes in the comedy of society to witness the grateful attentions of a woman who is not "received," to those of her female acquaintance who shut their eyes to her real position, or are ignorant of it. You see a pretty, lively, clever, graceful, dashing woman of the world exerting all her coquetries to cajole some ugly, stupid, awkward, under-bred woman whose "countenance" she wants. She imagines that the presence of a few "modest women," no matter what their unattractiveness, will give her salon an air comme il faut. But it deceives no one. It only renders her salon a little less agreeable.
Hester managed, as others manage, to collect a few complaisant woman, and a man or two old enough, stupid enough, and respectable enough to keep them in countenance; and she had a salon.
Sir Chetsom Chetsom was rich and lavish. Without asking for it, Hester contrived to have almost everything she wished for. His vanity, at first only tickled by the conquest, was now always alive to the maintenance of that conquest. She made him feel that his position was insecure: it was done delicately, but it was done. To the dread of being left by her in favour of another, was soon added the dread of losing her for her own sake. He had become accustomed to her. She amused him, occupied him, captivated him. When she pouted, he was in despair; when she caressed him, he was in raptures. The old boy was alternately alarmed at her perception of the difference in their ages, and flattered at the conviction that, in spite of that difference, she really loved him. She was always playing upon two themes. First theme.—Why should I waste my youth and love upon a selfish old monster? Second theme.—How infinitely preferable is the love of a man who has seen the world, and lost the first illusions of youth, to the capricious tenderness of a boy!
Give those themes to a clever woman, and imagine the variations she would play upon them!