Loe raamatut: «Red as a Rose is She: A Novel», lehekülg 9

CHAPTER XIV

"I am afraid that their names will not convey much idea to your minds, as you do not know our part of the world, but you may have met some of them in London: Sir Charles and Lady Bolton; Mr. and Mrs. Tredegar; Mr., Mrs., and Miss Annesley; the Misses Denzil (by-the-by, you saw them at the bazaar yesterday); and two or three stray men."

This remark is addressed by Miss Blessington to her two friends on the afternoon following the bazaar, and contains a list of the guests expected at dinner at Felton that evening.

"So there's to be a party?" says Esther, from a window recess, where, hidden by a drooped curtain, she has been lying perdue up to the present moment, deeply buried in the unwonted luxury of a French novel.

Constance gives a little start. "I did not know that you were there! Yes; there are a few people coming to dine!"

"Don't you like parties?" asks Miss De Grey, half turning round her head, and a coquettish little lace morning cap, in the direction whence Esther's voice proceeds.

"I – I – think so; I hardly know."

"I suppose that you have only just left the schoolroom?"

Esther laughs. "I can hardly be said to have left it, for I was never in it."

"Did you never have a governess, do you mean? What a fortunate person!"

"Never."

"I am not sure that the other alternative, going to school, is not worse."

"I never went to school."

"Is it possible? Do you mean (raising herself, and opening her eyes) that you have never had any education at all?"

"I suppose not," answers Esther, reluctantly; regretting having made an admission which evidently tells so much against her.

"How very odd!"

"What's very odd?" asks her brother, who, with St. John, lounges in from the billiard-room, where they have been knocking the balls about and getting tired of one another.

"Miss Craven has just been telling us that she has had no education," answers Constance, in her even voice – perhaps not sorry of an opportunity to let Gerard know his protégée's deficiencies. "I am sure (civilly) that we should never have found it out if she had not told us."

The protégée droops her black eyes in mortification over her book, in which she has already found several things that amuse, several things that startle, and several other things that profoundly puzzle her innocent mind.

How unnecessary to make the admission of her own illiterateness, and how needless for Constance to be in such a hurry to repeat the confession!

"What an awful sensation it must be being such an ignoramus!" says Gerard's voice, low and laughing, as he sits down on the window-seat beside her. "What does it feel like?"

She looks up with a re-assured smile.

"At all events," continues he, glancing at her book, "you are doing your best to supply your deficiencies, however late in life."

She colours a little, and involuntarily puts her hand over the title.

"What is it? May I see?"

She hesitates, and her other hand goes hastily to its fellow's help; then, changing her mind, she offers the book boldly to him.

He looks at the title, and a slightly shocked expression dawns on his features: men are always shocked that women should read about the things that they do.

"Where did you get this?" (quickly).

"I climbed up the ladder in the library; pleasant books always rise to top shelves, as the cream rises to the top of the milk."

"Will you oblige me by putting it back where you took it from?"

"When I have read it? Of course."

"Before you have read it."

"Why should I?" (rather snappishly).

"Why should you," he repeats, impatiently – not much fonder of opposition than are most of his masterful sex. "Why, because it is not a fit book for a – a child like you to read."

"A child like me!" (sitting bolt up and reddening). "Do you know what age I am?"

"I have not an idea; forty, perhaps."

She laughs.

"Don't you know that all women are children till they are twenty-one; and you are particularly childish for your age."

"I am, am I?"

"Child or no child, this is a book that no modest woman ought to read."

"But that all modest men may, with pleasure and profit for themselves," rejoins she, ironically. "Well, when I have finished it I shall be better able to tell you whether I agree with you or not."

"Do you mean to say that, after what I have told you, you are still bent on reading it?" he asks, astonishment and displeasure fighting together for the mastery in his voice.

"Certainly!" (looking rather frightened, but speaking with a sort of timid bravado). "Do you suppose that Eve would have cared to taste the apple if it had been specially recommended to her notice as a particularly good, juicy Ribstone pippin? Give it me, please!"

"Take it!" he says, throwing it with hasty impoliteness into her lap. "Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest every word of it; and since you have a taste for such literature, I can lend you a dozen more like it."

So speaking, he rises abruptly, and leaves her side and the room at almost the same moment.

When he is gone, finding that the rest of the company have likewise slipped away in different directions, Esther relieves her feelings by flinging the disputed volume on the floor; sits for a quarter of an hour staring uncertainly at it; then, pocketing her pride, picks it up, sneaks off with it to the library, and, climbing the high, steep ladder, deposits it in the hole whence she had ravished it, between two of its fellows, as agreeably lax and delicately indelicate as itself. Half an hour later, passing through the hall, she sees the door of Gerard's sanctum ajar, and hears some one walking to and fro within. To one so praise-loving, the temptation to trumpet forth her own excellence is irresistible. She knocks timidly.

"Come in!"

"I don't want to come in," she answers, standing in beautiful, bashful awkwardness in the aperture.

"Is there anything that I can do for you?" he asks, advancing towards her, looking slightly surprised.

"No, nothing; I – I – only came to tell you that I had put —it back."

At the end of her sentence her eyes, downcast at first, raise themselves to his with the innocent, eager expectancy of a child that waits for approbation of some infantile good action.

"You have, have you?" he cries, joyfully, catching both her hands; "and was it because I asked you?"

"I don't know for what other reason," she answers, unwillingly.

"And have not read a word more of it?"

"Not a word."

"Not even looked at the end?"

"No."

"Well, you are a good child!"

"Child! child!– always child!" she cries, puckering up her low forehead into the semblance of a frown. "I have a good mind to go and fetch it down again!"

"A good old woman, then! a good old lady! – which is best? which is most respectful? Don't go!" (seeing that she is about to withdraw.)

"It is dressing-time!"

"Not for half an hour yet," pulling her gently in, and closing the door.

"See!" she says, half embarrassed by this tête-à-tête that she has herself invited, holding up a bunch of scarlet geraniums that she has lately reft from one of the garden's dazzling squares – "I have been stealing! I hope Sir Thomas won't prosecute me; but as a new dress is with me a biennial occurrence, these are the only contributions I can make to the evening's festivity."

"Red, of course!" he answers, smiling. "I never saw you that you had not something red or yellow about you. But why scarlet geraniums? Don't you know that the least imaginable shake (suiting the action to the word, and gently jogging the hand that holds the flowers) – there!" as a little scarlet shower confirms his prognostications.

She stoops to pick up the scattered blossoms.

"If I had some gum, I would drop a little into the centre of each flower; that keeps the petals quite firm; I have often done it at home," she says, kneeling on one knee, and looking up gravely for advice and assistance into his friendly, dark face: "but I have no gum."

"Haven't you? I have – somebody has" (ringing the bell). "Please sit down" (drawing an armchair forwards for her). "This is Constance's chair: and don't look as if you were racking your brains for a decent excuse to get away from the only comfortable room in the house."

She obeys, and her eyes wander curiously round. Pipes, whips, saloon pistols, prints of Derby winners; photographs of Nilsson tricked out in water-weeds as "Ophelia;" of Patti gazing up, as "Marguerite," into Mario's fortunate eyes; a table strewn with books – two or three yellow-paper backed, with enticing Gallic titles, similar to the one she has just so heroically foregone. Looking up from these latter, she involuntarily catches his eye.

"You are thinking that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," he says, laughing rather consciously; "but I assure you that it is not so. The gander is not nearly such a delicate bird, and takes much stronger seasoning."

The gum arrives. She holds the flowers, while he with a paint-brush delicately insinuates one drop into the scarlet heart of each. Their heads are bent so close together that his crisp brown locks brush against the silk-smooth sweep of hers.

"Gently, gently!" cries Esther, pleasantly excited by the consciousness of doing something rather hors de règle in that prim household, in having this impromptu tête-à-tête with its heir – "not so much! the least soupçon imaginable – there! does not it look like a sticky dewdrop?"

"These people that are coming ought to be very much flattered by the efforts you are making in their honour," says Gerard, half jealously.

"Are they worth making efforts for?"

"You must tell me that to-morrow."

"Who will take me in to dinner, do you think?" she asks, confidentially, looking up at him with childish inquisitiveness.

"I have not an idea; but make your mind easy; it won't be Sir Thomas or me."

"Hardly; but I am sorry that you do not know who it will be, as you might have told me what to talk about."

"Do you always get up your subject beforehand, like Belinda Denzil, out of the Saturday or Echoes of the Clubs?"

"Oh no! but – "

"St. John! St. John!" shouts Sir Thomas, banging a swing-door, behind him, and coming heavy-footed through the hall.

"It's Sir Thomas!" says Esther growing suddenly pale: and if she had said, and had had reason to say, "It's the Devil!" she could not have made the communication in a more tragic whisper: then, not waiting for any advice as to her conduct, snatching up her bouquet, she flies as if shot from a crossbow, out of the window and into the garden.

Was not it Lord Chesterfield who said that the guests at a dinner party should never be less than the Graces or more than the Muses? Kant preferred the Grace number, and had daily two friends, never more, to dine with him. The guests at the Felton banquet greatly exceed the Chesterfieldian limits. Those who have come only to dinner have been bemoaning themselves heavily, as they came along, on the hardship of being forced away from garden and croquet-ground, and obliged to drive three, four, five miles bare-necked and bare-backed – and a woman nowadays in full dress is verily and indeed bare-necked and bare-backed – through the mellow crimson evening.

To even these grumblers, however, destiny now appears kinder – now, I say, that the too candid daylight is shut out, that the amber champagne —

 
"With beaded bubbles winking at the brim – "
 

is creaming gently in every glass, and the entrées are making their savoury rounds.

Esther has fallen to the lot of one of the stray men of whom Miss Blessington spoke – a man who, when bidden to dinner, complies with the letter of his invitation, and dines chiefly and firstly; looks upon the lady whom he escorts to the social board as a mere adjunct – an agreeable or disagreeable one, as the case may be, but as merely an adjunct, as the flowers in the vases, or the silver Cupids that uphold the fruit baskets. In the intervals of the courses he has no objection to being amused: it is too much exertion to be very amusing himself, but he is not unwilling to smile and lend an indulgent ear to his companion's prattle, so as that prattle does not infringe upon the succulent programme that he has, by diligent study of the menu, laid out for himself.

Baffled on her left hand, Miss Craven turns to her right, to be baffled there also. Not that this right-hand neighbour labours under any excessive gourmandise– he is willing, on the contrary, that the unknown, black-eyed innocent and the turtle cutlet should share and share alike in his regards; but ere a quarter of an hour their conversation has come to a shipwreck. In it he takes too much for granted: as, for example, that she has been to London this season; that she has seen Faed's last picture; that she has been at Lady – 's ball; that, by having seen both, she is in a position to judge of the comparative merits of Mademoiselle Nilsson's and Madame Carvalho's rendering of "Marguerite." Tired at length of saying, "I was not there," "I have not seen it," "I never heard of her," she relapses into a mortified silence; thinking, what an impostor must I be to have thrust myself in among all these fine people – I, who cannot even catch their jargon for five minutes!

Foiled in her own little conversational ventures, she tries to listen to other people's. In vain: if, above the general hum, she catches the beginning of one sentence, it is immediately joined on to the end of another. As well, listening to the sultry buzz of a swarm of bees, might one try to distinguish each separate voice. But the dumb show, at least, is left her: the waggling heads, the moving jaws – poor jaws, that have to talk and eat both at once! To put a history to each of these heads – to pick out characters by watching the delicate shades of difference with which each person sits; says, "No, thank you;" laughs – this is not unamusing. Yes, to study the faces, and find similitudes for them: one nut-cracker; several flowers; one plum-pudding; one horse, one vulture, one door-knocker. She is puzzled to find a resemblance for all; for Belinda Denzil, for instance, who, virginally clad in white muslin, that seems to mock her thirty celibate years, is apparently forcing the suave yet weary De Grey into an up-hill, one-sided flirtation. No man has hired Belinda, and it is, with her, the eleventh hour. What fowl, or fish, or quadruped, or article of furniture is she most like? Before Esther can decide this point quite to her mind, the signal of retirement is given, and each maid and wife rises obedient and vanishes.

It is the general complaint in the Felton neighbourhood that at that house the men sit unfashionably, wearisomely long over their wine. Sir Thomas belongs to that excellent school that in their hearts regret the good old days, when a man never rejoined the ladies without seeing double their real number. Half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hour and a quarter have passed. Several girls are beginning to yawn behind their fans; the Misses De Grey are driving heavily through a long duet, with never a squire to turn over the leaves (in the wrong place) for them. The door opens, and a fat, bald head appears; the most uninteresting always come first, but, like Noah's dove, he is the harbinger of better things. Five minutes more, and the room is as full of broadcloth as of silk and satin. The younger men are still hovering about uncertainly, unfixed as yet in their minds as to which elaborate fair one they shall come to final anchor by.

The epicure, now that there is nothing to eat, casts his eyes round in search of the finest woman and the comfortablest chair to be found in the great gilded room. Both requisites he finds united in Esther's neighbourhood. Accordingly he is moving towards her, when his attention is happily arrested by a remark that he overhears as to the best method of dressing beccaficos. Instantly Miss Craven's white, silky shoulders and red-pouted lips go out of his head. White shoulders and red lips are good things in their way, but what are they to beccaficos! Esther draws a long breath of relief. What an escape! In a minute more suspense is ended, and the low armchair beside her is occupied by the person for whom it was intended – for whom, indeed, she has been slyly keeping it half-covered by her dress.

"Well! and how are you getting on?" says Gerard, asking a silly question for want of a wiser one occurring to him, and looking rather affectionate.

St. John is not in the very least degree elevated; but it is useless to deny that the best and fondest of men are still fonder after dinner than before: it must be a very, very deep love that cannot be a little deepened by champagne.

"Better than I thought I should be a few seconds ago, when that odious gourmand seemed to be steering this way," she answers, not taking any great trouble to hide her pleasure in his neighbourhood.

"Poor devil! he must not come to you for a character, I see."

"I could forgive a man most sins," she says, rather viciously, "but I never could forgive him the making me feel in his estimation I stood on a lower level than red mullet and ortolans."

"Well, you know, they are very good things," answers Gerard, chiefly to tease her, but partly also because he really thinks so. "Don't look so disgusted," he continues, laughing. "I was afraid you were bored at dinner: you looked absent; I tried to catch your eye once or twice, but you would not let me."

"I was not bored," she answers, simply; "I was quite happy. You see I did not know who was who, and I amused myself pairing the people: I find that I paired them all wrong, though."

"Gave every man his neighbour's wife, did you? I dare say that some of them would not have objected to the arrangement."

"I married that old man" (indicating with the slightest possible motion of her head the persons alluded to) "to that old woman; I wish it was not ill-manners to point. They both looked so red and pursy and consequential, as if they had been telling each other for the last thirty years what swells they were!"

"Which old man to which old woman? Oh! I see."

"They are rather like one another, too," she continues, gravely; "and you know people say that, however unlike they may be at starting, merely by dint of living together, man and wife grow alike."

"Do they?" he says, a transient thought flashing through his mind as to whether, after twenty years of wedlock, that blooming peach face would have gained any likeness to his hard, mahogany one. "But how did you find out your mistake?"

"He put down her cup for her so politely just now, that I knew he could not be her husband."

He looks amused. "You are rather young to be so severe upon wedded bliss."

"Was I severe?" she asks, naïvely; "I did not know it; but, you know, a man may be fond of his wife, may be kind to her, but can hardly be said to be polite: politeness implies distance."

"Does it?" he says, involuntarily drawing his chair closer to hers, and leaning forward under pretence of looking at the flowers that make a scarlet fire in her hair. "By-the-by, how does the gum answer?"

She forgets to reply to his harmless question, while her eyes fall troubled, half-frightened: the eyes that cannot, without a theft upon a third person, give him back his tender looks – the eyes in whose pupils Brandon is to see himself reflected for the next forty, fifty, sixty years.

There is a little stir and flutter among the company: Belinda Denzil moving to the piano; a music-stool screwed up and down; gloves taken off; then a polite hush, infringed only by a country gentleman in the distance saying something rather loud about guano, while Belinda informs her assembled friends in a faint soprano that "He will return; she knows he will." She has made the same asseveration any time the last ten years; but he has not returned yet, and her relatives begin to be afraid that he never will.

During the song Gerard falls into a reverie. At the end, coming out of it, he asks with an abrupt change of subject: "What did you say the name of your place was?"

"Glan-yr-Afon."

"Glan Ravvon?" (following her pronunciation.)

"Yes; you would never guess that it was sounded Glan Ravvon if you were to see it written: it is spelt quite differently."

"What does it mean? or does it mean anything?"

"It means 'Bank of the River;' so called, because it is not near the bank of any river."

"What part of the world is it in? – Europe, Asia, Africa, America, or the Polynesian Islands?"

"It is three miles from Naullan, if you are any the wiser."

"Naullan! Naullan!" he repeats, as if trying to overtake a recollection that eludes him. "Of course it does: why I was at Naullan once."

"Were you?" (eagerly.) "When?"

"Two years ago; no, three. I was staying in the neighbourhood with some people for fishing. No doubt you know them – the Fitz-Maurices?"

Esther's countenance falls a little. "I – I – have heard of them," she says, uncertainly.

"Why, they must be neighbours of yours."

"They are rather beyond a drive, I think," she replies, doubtfully.

"If you are three miles from Naullan, and they are only four, I don't see how that can be."

She does not answer for a moment, but only furls and unfurls her fan uneasily; then, looking up with a sudden, honest impulse, speaks, colouring up to the eyes the while. "Why should I be ashamed of what there is no reason to be ashamed of? They are within calling distance, and I do know them in a way; that is to say, Lady Fitz-Maurice bows to me whenever she recollects that she knows me; but, you see, they are great people, and we are small ones."

He looks thoroughly annoyed. The idea that the woman of his choice is by her own confession not exactly on his own level, grates upon his pride.

"Nonsense!" he says, brusquely, "one gentleman is as good as another, all the world over; and it must be the same with ladies."

"St. John, you are wanted to make up a rubber," interrupts Constance, sweeping up to them, resplendent but severe, in green satin and seaweed, like a nineteenth century Nereid, if such an anachronism could exist.

"Am I?" looking rather sulky, and not offering to move.

"We have got one already, but Sir Charles and Mrs. Annesley wish for another.'

"Let them play double-dummy!" settling himself resolutely in his chair, and looking defiantly at her out of his quick, cross eyes.

"Absurd!"

"If you are so anxious to oblige them, why cannot you take a hand yourself?"

"You know how I detest cards!"

"And you know how I detest Mrs. Annesley." (Mrs. Annesley is the vulture of Esther's lively imagination.)

Too dignified to descend to wrangling, Miss Blessington desists, and moves away, casting only one small glance of suppressed resentment at the innocent cause of Mr. Gerard's contumacy.

"How could you be so disobliging?" cries Esther, reproachfully, in childish irritation with him at having drawn her into undeserved disgrace.

"Why shouldn't I?" he asks, placidly. "Believe me, it is the worst plan possible to encourage the idea that you are good-natured among your own people; it subjects you to endless impositions. For the last thirty years I have been struggling to establish a character for never doing what I am asked; would you have me undo all my work at one blow?"

"St. John is impracticable," says Constance, returning from her fruitless quest, and stooping over the card-table her golden head and the sea-tang twisted with careless care about it. "You must accept of me as his substitute, please; he is good-naturedly devoting himself to my little friend. Did you happen to notice her, Lady Bolton? She is really looking quite pretty to-night. She does not know anybody, poor child! and he was afraid she might feel neglected."