“Oh dear!” ejaculated the hostess, almost in the new arrival’s hearing, but made amends for her discourtesy by a very effusive greeting. She introduced “Miss Giles—Egidia, you know;” with a flourish as one with whom she was on deeply intimate terms, casting at the same time a pathetic, imploring look in the latter’s direction, as much as to ask her not to discount her statement. Then more people came in. The room was filling.
“Don’t go,” she whispered to Egidia, more as an appeal than a civility, and the good-natured authoress stayed and watched her, and studied her.
She saw that dim notions of Madame Récamier to be emulated and a salon to be held prevailed in the mind of the lady whom she had dubbed the Muse of Newcastle. Such culture, such an atmosphere of literary gossip as is current in many a second-class literary centre in London, flourished here, and Mrs. Elles led the inferior revels with aplomb and discrimination. She manœuvred her guests very cleverly, on the whole, and talked much and well—with the slight tendency to exaggerate which Egidia had already noticed in her. Like many restless, excitable people, she did not seem able to both talk and look at a person at the same time, and her restless eyes were continually directed towards the door, as if expecting and dreading a fresh arrival.
About half-past five the mystery was solved; a tall, well set-up woman of fifty walked in, bonnetless, who seemed to know nearly everybody and shook hands with all the painful effect of a bone-crushing machine, as Egidia experienced when “my aunt, Mrs. Poynder,” was introduced to her. The stout lady then took a tiny seat near Miss Drummond, and Egidia was much diverted by her loudly-spoken comments on her niece’s guests. She was a woman to whom a whisper was obviously an impossible operation.
“And which is Fibby’s grand London authoress she’s so set up with?” she was heard to ask. “Fibby mumbles names so that I haven’t a notion which it is! Oh, deary me, here’s the Newcastle poet. I’m sure he has no call to stoop as he comes in; he needn’t think he’s tall enough to graze the lintel.... But I would dearly like to cut his hair for him.... Po-uttry! No! po-uttry I can’t stand ... why, if a man’s got anything to say, can’t he say it straight without so much ado?” The Newcastle poet, who wore his hair nearly as long as poets do in London, shook hands and presented a slim, green volume to Mrs. Elles.
“You must write ‘Phœbe Elles’ in it!” his hostess said, imperiously, and led him to a side table, where, with many a dedicatory flourish, he did as she required. Then she introduced him to Egidia, with the air of one introducing Theocritus and Sappho.
“And do you kill the lovers?” she asked, alluding, presumably, to characters in the volume she held. “How relentless of you!” She added to her guests, “I had the privilege of reading it in the proof, you know.”
“Ah! I had to kill them,” he murmured, plaintively, “sooner than let them know the sad satiety of love.”
“My goodness!” Mrs. Poynder muttered.
The conversation, appallingly immoral as it was, yet seemed to interest the good lady, for she drew nearer and formed a chorus to the very modern discussion that ensued between the poet and Egidia and her niece, of which London and London literary society was the theme. The epigrams that were flying about she visibly and audibly pooh-poohed. “Give me Newcastle!” she murmured at intervals, and “You, a mere lad, too!” was elicited from her by any world-weary extravagance of the poet’s. He was in self-defence; driven to incidentally mention his age—quite a respectable age, as it appeared. Mrs. Elles was not to be outdone—