Everybody has his ambition: one sighs for the Woolsack, another for the Hunt Cup; somebody longs to be First Minister, somebody else pines to be first dancer; one man plumes himself on a new fish-sauce, another on a fresh reform bill; A. thirsts to get a single brief, B. for the time when he shall be worried with no briefs at all; C. sets his hopes on being the acrobat at Cremorne, D. on being the acrobat of the Tuileries; fat bacon is Hodge the hedger's summum bonum, and Johannisberg pur is mine; Empedocles thinks notoriety everything, and Diogenes thinks quiet everything—each has his own reading of ambition, and Lady Marabout had hers; the Duchess of Doncaster thirsted for the Garter for her husband, Lady Elmers's pride was to possess the smallest terrier that ever took daisy tea and was carried in a monkey-muff, her Grace of Amandine slaved night and day to bring her party in and throw the ministry out. Lady Marabout sighed but for one thing—to win the Pet Eligible of the season, and give éclat for once to one phase of her chaperone's existence.
Things were nicely in train. Goodwood was beginning to bite at that very handsome fly the Hon. Val, and promised to be hooked and landed without much difficulty before long, and placed, hopelessly for him, triumphantly for her, in the lime-basket of matrimony. Things were beautifully in train, and Lady Marabout was for once flattering herself she should float pleasantly through an unruffled and successful season, when Carruthers poured the one drop of amari aliquid into her champagne-cup by his suggestion of Cardonnel's doom. And then Lady Marabout begun to worry.
She who could not endure to see a fly hurt or a flower pulled needlessly, had nothing for it but to worry for Cardonnel's destiny, and puzzle over the divided duties which Carruthers had hinted to her. To reject the one man because he was not well off did seem to her conscience, uncomfortably awakened by Phil's innuendoes, something more mercenary than she quite liked to look at; yet to throw over the other, future Duke of Doncaster, the eligible, the darling, the yearned-for of all May Fair and Belgravia, seemed nothing short of madness to inculcate to Valencia; a positive treason to that poor absent, trusting, "dearest Adeliza," who, after the visions epistolarily spread out before her, would utterly refuse to be comforted if Goodwood any way failed to become her son-in-law, and, moreover, the heaviest blow to Lady Marabout herself that the merciless axe of that brutal headsman Contretemps could deal her.
"I do not know really what to do or what to advise," would Lady Marabout say to herself over and over again (so disturbed by her onerous burden of responsibilities that she would let Despréaux arrange the most outrageous coiffures, and, never noticing them, go out to dinner with emeralds on blue velvet, or something as shocking to feminine nerves in her temporary aberration), forgetting one very great point, which, remembered, would have saved her all trouble, that nobody asked her to do anything, and not a soul requested her advice. "But Goodwood is decidedly won, and Goodwood must not be lost; in our position we owe something to society," she would invariably conclude these mental debates; which last phase, being of a vagueness and obscure application that might have matched it with any Queen's speech or electional address upon record, was a mysterious balm to Lady Marabout's soul, and spoke volumes to her, if a trifle hazy to you and to me.
But Lady Marabout, if she was a little bit of a sophist, had not worn her eye-glass all these years without being keen-sighted on some subjects, and, though perfectly satisfied with her niece's conduct with Goodwood, saw certain symptoms which made her tremble lest the detrimental Lancer should have won greater odds than the eligible Marquis.
"Arthur Cardonnel is excessively handsome! Such very good style! Isn't it a pity they're all so poor! His father played away everything—literally everything. The sons have no more to marry upon, any one of them, than if they were three crossing-sweepers," said her ladyship, carelessly, driving home from St. Paul's one Sunday morning.
And, watching the effect of her stray arrow, she had beheld an actual flush on the beauty's fair, impassive cheek, and had positively heard a smothered sigh from an admirably brought-up heart, no more given ordinarily to such weaknesses than the diamond-studded heart pendent from her bracelet, the belle's heart and the bracelet's heart being both formed alike, to fetch their price, and bid to do no more:—power of volition would have been as inconvenient in, and interfered as greatly with, the sale of one as of the other.
"She does like him!" sighed Lady Marabout over that Sabbath's luncheon wines. "It's always my fate—always; and Goodwood, never won before, will be thrown—actually thrown—away, as if he were the younger son of a Nobody!" which horrible waste was so terrible to her imagination that Lady Marabout could positively have shed tears at the bare prospect, and might have shed them, too, if the Hon. Val, the butler, two footmen, and a page had not inconveniently happened to be in the room at the time, so that she was driven to restrain her feelings and drink some Amontillado instead. Lady Marabout is not the first person by a good many who has had to smile over sherry with a breaking heart. Ah! lips have quivered as they laughed over Chambertin, and trembled as they touched the bowl of a champagne-glass. Wine has assisted at many a joyous festa enough, but some that has been drunk in gayety has caught gleams, in the eyes of the drinkers, of salt water brighter than its brightest sparkles: water that no other eyes can see. Because we may drink Badminton laughingly when the gaze of Society the Non-Sympathetic is on us, do you think we must never have tasted any more bitter dregs? Va-t'en, bécasse! where have you lived! Nero does not always fiddle while Rome is burning from utter heartlessness, believe me, but rather—sometimes, perhaps—because his heart is aching!
"Goodwood will propose to-night, I fancy, he is so very attentive," thought Lady Marabout, sitting with her sister chaperones on the cosy causeuses of a mansion in Carlton Terrace, at one of the last balls of the departing season. "I never saw dear Valencia look better, and certainly her waltzing is——Ah! good evening, Major Cardonnel! Very warm to-night, is it not? I shall be so glad when I am down again at Fernditton. Town, in the first week of July, is really not habitable."
And she furled her fan, and smiled on him with her pleasant eyes, and couldn't help wishing he hadn't been on the Marchioness Rondeletia's visiting list, he was such a detrimental, and he was ten times handsomer than Goodwood!