Thunder—crash—thunder—crash—drum—rattle—a confused, though eloquent, running backward and forward of sounds, the rings flashing like lightning! Another crash—louder—a great deal of crossing hands—violent strides from one end of the instrument to the other—prodigious displays of strength on the part of the fair performer—a terrific shake! “What desperate exertion!” thought the General; “and all to produce a soulless noise.” Then followed a fearful banditti of octaves—another crash, louder and more prolonged than the rest; and she looked up with a triumphant smile—a smile conveying the same idea as the pause of an opera-dancer after a most wonderful pirouette.
“Do you keep a tuner in the house, my dear young lady?” inquired the General.
If a look could have annihilated, he would have crumbled into ashes; but he only returned it with admiration, thinking, “How astonishingly like her aunt, when she refused me the second time!”
“And that is fashionable music, Miss Montford? I have lived so long out of England, only hearing the music of Beethoven, and Mozart, and Mendelssohn, I was not aware that noise was substituted for power, and that execution had banished expression. Dear me!—why, the piano is vibrating at this moment! Poor thing! How long does a piano last you, Miss Montford?”
Isabel was losing her temper, when fortunately her aunt—still Miss Vere—came to the rescue. The lovers of thirty years past, would have met any where else as strangers. The once rounded and queen-like form of the elder Isabel was shorn of its grace and beauty; of all her attributes, of all her attractions, dignity only remained; and it was that high-bred, innate dignity which can never be acquired, and is never forgotten. She had not lost the eighth of an inch of her height, and her gray hair was braided in full folds over her fair but wrinkled brow. Isabel Montford looked so exactly what Isabel Vere had been, that General Gordon was sorely perplexed; Isabel Vere, if truth must be told, had taken extra pains with her dress; her niece had met the General the night before, and her likeness to her aunt had so recalled the past, that his promised visit to his old sweetheart (as he still called her) had fluttered and agitated her more than she thought it possible an interview with any man could do; she quarreled with her beautiful gray hair, she cast off her black velvet dress disdainfully, and put on a blue Moire antique. (She remembered how much the Captain—no, the General, once admired blue.) She was not a coquette; even gray hair at fifty-five does not cure coquetry where it has existed in all its strength; but, for the sake of her dear niece, she wished to look as well as possible. She wondered why she had so often refused “poor Gordon.” She had been all her life of too delicate a mind to be a husband-hunter, too well satisfied with her position to calculate how it could be improved, and yet, she did not hesitate to confess to herself that now, in the commencement of old age, however verdant it might be, she would have been happier, of more consequence, of more value, as a married woman. She had too much good sense, and good taste, to belong to the class of discontented females, consisting of husbandless and childless women, who seek to establish laws at war with the laws of the Almighty; so, if her heart did beat a little stiffly, and sundry passages passed through her brain in connection with her old adorer, and what the future might be—she may be forgiven, and will be, by those not strong-minded women who understand enough of the waywardness of human nature to know that, if young heads and old hearts are sometimes found together, so are young hearts and old heads. The young laugh to scorn the idea of Cupid and a crutch, but Cupid has strange vagaries, and at any moment can barb his crutch with the point of an arrow.
“The old people,” as Isabel Montford irreverently called them that evening, did not get on well together; they were in a great degree disappointed one with the other. They stood up to dance the minuet de la cour, and Isabel Vere languished and swam as she had never done before; but the General only wondered how stiff she had grown, and hoped that he was not as ill used by time as Mistress Isabel Vere had been. At first, Isabel Montford thought it “good fun” to see the antiquities bowing and curtseying, but she became interested in the lingering courtliness of the little scene, trembled lest her aunt should appear ridiculous, and then wondered how she could have refused such a man as General Gordon must have been.
Days and weeks flew fast; the General became a constant visitor in the square, and the heart of Isabel Vere had never beaten so loudly at twenty as it did at fifty-and-five; nothing, she thought, could be more natural than that the General should recall the days of his youth, and seek the friendship and companionship of her who had never married, while he—faithless man!—had been guilty of two wives during his “services in India.” It was impossible to tell which of the ladies he treated with the most attention. Isabel Montford took an especial delight in tormenting him, and he was cynical enough towards her at times. Although he frankly abused her piano-forte-playing, yet he evidently preferred it to the music Miss Vere practised so indefatigably to please him, or to the songs she sang, in a voice which from a high “soprano,” had been crushed by time into what might be considered a very singular “mezzo.” He somehow forgot how to find fault with Miss Montford’s dancing, and more than once became her partner in a quadrille. It was evident, that while the General was growing young, Miss Vere remained—“as she was!” Isabel Montford amused herself at his expense, but he did not—quick-sighted and man-of-the-world though he was—perceive it. At first he was remarkably fond of recalling and dating events, and dwelling upon the grace, and beauty, and interest, and advantage, of whatever was past and gone—much to the occasional pain of Isabel Vere, who, gentle-hearted as she was, would have consigned dates to the bottomless pit; latterly, however, he talked a good deal more of the present than of the past, and, greatly to the annoyance of younger men, fell into the duties of escort to both ladies,—accompanying them to places of public promenade and amusement.
On such occasions, Miss Isabel Vere looked either earnest or bashful—yes, positively bashful; and Miss Isabel Montford, brimful of as much mischief as a lady could delight in. At times, the General laid aside his cynical observations, together with his cane, which was not even replaced by an umbrella; to confess the truth, he had experienced several symptoms of heart disease, which, though they made him restless and uncomfortable, brought hopes and aspirations of life, rather than fears of death.
One morning, Isabel Montford and the General were alone in the salon where this little scene first opened:
“Our difference has never been settled yet,” she exclaimed, gaily; “you have never proved to me the superiority of the Old school over the New.”