BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING.
The birds that flew over County Surrey on the
twelfth of June, 1835, looked down upon a scene of
which many a “lord of creation,” travelling only by
the roads, might well have envied them the seeing.
For, ever so merry let it be within the lordly parks of
England, the trees that look over the ring fence upon
the world without, keep their countenance—aristocrats
that they are! Round and round Beckton Park you
might have travelled that sunny day, and often within
arrow-shot of its hidden and fairy lawn, and never
suspected, but by the magnetic tremor in your veins,
that beautiful women were dancing near by, and “marvellous
proper men,” more or less enamored, looking
on—every pink and blue girdle a noose for a heart,
of course, and every gay waistcoat a victim venturing
near the trap (though this last is mentioned entirely
on my own responsibility).
But what have we to do with the unhappy exiles
without this pretty paradise! You are an invited
guest, dear reader. Pray walk in!
Did you ask about the Becktons? The Becktons
are people blessed with money and a very charming
acquaintance. That is enough to know about them.
Yet stay! Sir Thomas was knighted for his behavior
at some great crisis in India (for he made his fortune
in India)—and Lady Beckton is no great beauty, but
she has the mania of getting handsome people together,
and making them happier than belongs properly to
handsome people's destiny. And this, I think, must
suffice for a first introduction.
The lawn, as you see, has the long portico of the
house on one side of it, a bend of the river on two
other sides, and a thick shrubbery on the fourth.
The dancing-floor is in the centre, inlaid at the level
of the smooth sward, and it is just now vibrating to
the measured step of the mazurka—beautifully danced,
we must say!
And now let me point out to you the persons most
concerned in this gossip of mine.
First, the ladies.
Miss Blakeney—(and she was never called anything
but Miss Blakeney—never Kate, or Kitty, or Kathleen,
I mean, though her name was Catherine)—Miss
Blakeney is that very stylish, very striking, very
magnificent girl, I think I may say, with the white
chip hat and black feather. Nobody but Miss Blakeney
could venture to wear just the dress she is sporting,
but she must dash, though she is in half-mourning,
and, faith! there is nothing out of keeping, artistically
speaking, after all. A white dress embroidered
with black flowers, dazzling white shoulders turned
over with black lace, white neck and forehead (brilliantly
white), waved over and kissed by luxuriant black
ringlets (brilliantly black). And very white temples
with very black eyes, and very white eyelids with long
black lashes, and, since those dazzling white teeth
were without a contrast, there hung upon her neck a
black cross of ebony—and now we have put her in
black and white, where she will “stay put.” Scripta
verba manent, saith the cautionary proverb.
Here and there, you observe, there is a small Persian
carpet spread on the sward for those who like to
lounge and look at the dancers, and though a score of
people, at least, are availing themselves of this oriental
luxury, no one looks so modestly pretty, half-couched
on the richly-colored woof, as that simply dressed
blonde, with a straw hat in her lap, and her light
auburn curis taking their saucy will of her blue-veined
neck and shoulders. That lady's plain name is Mabel
Brown, and, like yourself, many persons have wished
to change it for her. She is half-married, indeed, to
several persons here present, for there is one consenting
party. Mais l'autre ne veut pas, as a French novelist
laments, it stating a similar dilemma. Meantime, Miss
Brown is the adopted sister of the black and white Miss
Blakeney.
One more exercise of my function of cicerone!
Lying upon the bank of the river, with his shoulder
against that fine oak, and apparently deeply absorbed
in the fate of the acorn-cups which he throws into the
current, you may survey the elegant person of Mr.
Lindsay Maud—a gentleman whom I wish you to take
for rather more than his outer seeming, since he will
show you at the first turn of his head, that he cares
nothing for your opinion, though entitled, as the
diplomatists phrase it, to your “high consideration.”
Mr. Maud is twenty-five, more or less—six feet, or
thereabouts. He has the sanguineous tint, rather
odd for so phlegmatic a person as he seems. His
nose is un petit peu rétroussè, his lips full, and his
smile easy and ready. His eyes are like the surface
of a very deep well. Curling brown hair, broad and
calm forehead, merry chin with a dimple in it, and
mouth expressive of great good humor, and quite
enough of fastidiousness. If this is not your beau
ideal, I am very sorry—but experience went to show
that Lindsay Maud was a very agreeable man, and
pleased generally where he undertook it.
And now, if you please, having done the honors, I
will take up the story en simple conteur.
The sky was beginning to blush about the sun's
going to bed, and the dancers and archers were pairing
off, couple by couple, to stroll and cool in the dim
shrubberies of Beckton Park. It was an hour to
breakfast, so called, for breakfast was to be served in
the darker edge of the twilight. With the aforenamed
oak-tree between him and the gay company,
Mr. Lindsay Maud beguiled his hunger (for hungry
he was), by reading a volume of that very clever novel,
“Le Pere Goriot,” and, chapter by chapter, he
“cocked up his ear,” as the story-books say, hoping
to hear the cheerful bell of the tower announce the
serving of the soup and champagne.
“Well, Sir Knight Faineant!” said Lady Beckton,
stepping in suddenly between his feet and the river
brink, “since when have you turned woman-hater,
and enrolled among the unavailables? Here have you
lain all day in the shade, with scores of nice girls
dancing on the other side of your hermit tree, and not
a sign of life—not a look even to see whether my
party, got up with so much pains, flourished or languished!
I'll cross you out of my little book, recreant!”
Maud was by this time on his feet, and he penitently
and respectfully kissed the fingers threateningly
held up to him—for the unpardonable sin in a single
man is to appear unamused, let alone failing to amuse
others—at a party sworn to be agreeable.
“I have but half an apology,” he said, “that of
knowing that your parties go swimmingly off, whether
I pull an oar or no; but I deserve not the less to be
crossed out of your book. Something ails me. I am
growing old, or my curiosity has burnt out, or I am
touched with some fatal lethargy. Upon my word I
would as lief listen to a Latin sermon as chat for the
next half hour with the prettiest girl at Beckton!
There's no inducement, my dear Lady Beckton!
I'm not a marrying man, you know, and flirtation—
flirtation is such tiresome repetition—endless reading
of prefaces, and never coming to the agreeable first
chapter. But I'll obey orders. Which is the destitute
woman? You shall see how I will redeem my damaged
reputation!”
But Lady Beckton, who seldom refused an offer
from a beau to make himself useful at her parties,
seemed hardly to listen to Maud's justification. She
placed her arm in his, and led him across the bridge
which spanned the river a little above, and they were
presently out of hearing in one of the cool and shaded
avenues of the park.
“A penny for your thought!” said Maud, after
walking at her side a few minutes in silence.
“It is a thought, certainly, in which pennies are
concerned,” replied Lady Beckton, “and that is why
I find any trouble in giving expression to it. It is
difficult enough to talk with gentlemen about love, but
that is easy to talking about money.”
“Yet they make a pretty tandem, money on the
lead!”
“Oh! are you there?” exclaimed Lady Beckton,
with a laugh; “I was beginning too far back, altogether!
My dear Lindsay, see how much better I
thought of you than you deserved! I was turning
over in my mind with great trepidation and embarrassment
how I should venture to talk to you about a money-and-love
match!”
“Indeed! for what happy man?”
“Toi même, mon ami!”
“Heavens! you quite take away my breath! Spare
yourself the overture, my dear Lady Beckton! I
agree! I am quite ready—sold from this hour if you
can produce a purchaser, and possession given immediately!”
“Now you go too fast; for I have not time to banter,
and I wish to see my way in earnest before I leave you.
Listen to me. I was talking you over with Beckton
this morning. I'll not trouble you with the discussion—it
would make you vain, perhaps. But we arrived
at this: Miss Blakeney would be a very good
match for you, and if you are inclined to make a demonstration
that way, why, we will do what we can to
make it plain sailing. Stay with us a week, for instance,
and we will keep the Blakeneys. It's a sweet
month for pairing, and you are an expeditions love-maker,
I know. Is it agreed?”
“You are quite serious!”
“Quite!”
“I'll go back with you to the bridge, kindest of
friends, and return and ramble here till the bell rings,
by myself. I'll find you at table, by-and-by, and express
my gratitude at least. Will that be time enough
for an answer?”
“Yes—but no ceremony with me! Stay and
ponder where you are! Au revoir! I must see after
my breakfast!”
And away tripped the kind-hearted Lady Beckton.
Maud resumed his walk. He was rather taken
aback. He knew Miss Blakeney but as a waltzing
partner, yet that should be but little matter; for he
had long ago made up his mind that, if he did not
marry rich, he could not marry at all.
Maud was poor—that is to say, he had all that an
angel would suppose necessary in this hungry and cold
world—assurance of food and clothing—in other words,
three hundred a year. He had had his unripe time
like other youths, in which he was ready to marry for
love and no money; but his timid advances at that
soft period had not been responsibly met by his first
course of sweethearts, and he had congratulated himself
and put a price on his heart accordingly. Meantime,
he thought, the world is a very entertaining
place, and the belonging to nobody in particular, has
its little advantages.
And very gayly sped on the second epoch of Mr.
Lindsay Maud's history. He lived in a country where,
to shine in a profession, requires the “audace, patience
et volonté de quoi renverser le monde,” and having turned
his ambition well about, like a strange coin that
might perhaps have passed current in other times, he
laid it away with romance and chivalry, and other
things suited only to the cabinets of the curious. He
was well born. He was well bred. He was a fair
candidate for the honors of a “gay man about town”
—that untaxed exempt—that guest by privilege—that
irresponsible denizen of high life, possessed of every
luxury on earth except matrimony and the pleasures
of payment. And, for a year or two, this was very
delightful. He had a half dozen of those charming
female friendships which, like other ephemera in this
changing world, must die or turn into something else
at the close of a season, and, if this makes the feelings
very hard, it makes the manners very soft; and Maud
was content with the compensation. If he felt, now
and then, that he was idling life away, he looked about
him and found countenance at least; for all his friends
were as idle, and there was an analogy to his condition
in nature (if need were to find one), for the butterfly
had his destiny like the bee, and was neither
pitied nor reproached that he was not a honey-maker.
But Maud was now in a third lustrum of his existence,
and it was tinted somewhat differently from the
rose-colored epochs precedent. The twilight of
satisfied curiosity had fallen imperceptibly around
him. The inner veils of society had one by one lifted,
and there could be nothing new for his eye in the
world to which he belonged.
A gay party, which was once to him as full of unattained
objects as the festal mysteries of Eleusinia to
a rustic worshipper of Ceres, was now as readable at
a glance as the stripes of a backgammon-board. He
knew every man's pretensions and chances, every woman's
expectations and defences. Not a damsel whose
defects he had not discovered, whose mind he had not
sounded, whose dowry he did not know. Not a beauty,
married or single, whose nightly game in society he
could not perfectly foretell; not an affection unoccupied
of which he could not put you down the cost of engaging
it in your favor, the chances of constancy, the
dangers of following or abandoning. He had no stake
in society, meantime, yet society itself was all his
world. He had no ambitions to further by its aid.
And until now, he had looked on matrimony as a
closed door—for he had neither property, nor profession
likely to secure it, and circumstances like these,
in the rank in which he moved, are comprehended
among the “any impediments.” To have his own
way, Maud would have accepted no invitations except
to dine with the beaux esprits, and he would have concentrated
the remainder of his leisure and attentions
upon one agreeable woman (at a time)—two selfishnesses
very attractive to a blasé, but not permitted to
any member of society short of a duke or a Crœsus.
And now, with a new leaf turning over in his dull
book of life—a morning of a new day breaking on
his increasing night—Lindsay Maud tightly screwed
his arms across his breast, and paced the darkening
avenue of Beckton Park. The difference between
figuring as a fortune-hunter, and having a fortune
hunted for him by others, he perfectly understood.
In old and aristocratic societies, where wealth is at
the same time so much more coveted and so much
more difficult to win, the eyes of “envy, malice, and
all uncharitableness,” are alike an omnipresent argus,
in their watch over the avenues to its acquisition. No
step, the slightest, the least suspicious, is ever taken
toward the hand of an heiress, or the attainment of
an inheritance, without awakening and counter-working
of these busy monsters; and, for a society-man,
better to be a gambler or seducer, better to have all
the fashionable vices ticketed on his name, than to
stand affiched as a fortune-hunter. If to have a fortune
cleverly put within reach by a powerful friend,
however, be a proportionate beatitude, blessed was
Maud. So thought he, at least, as the merry bell of
Beckton tower sent its summons through the woods,
and his revery gave place to thoughts of something
more substantial.
And thus far, oh adorable reader! (for I see what
unfathomable eyes are looking over my shoulder) thus
far, like an artist making a sketch, of which one part
is to be finished, I have dwelt a little on the touches
of my pencil. But, by those same unfathomable eyes
I know (for in those depths dwell imagination), that
if the remainder be done ever so lightly in outline,
even then there will be more than was needed for the
comprehension of the story. Thy ready and boundless
fancy, sweet lady, would supply it all. Given,
the characters and scene, what fair creature who has
loved, could fail to picture forth the sequel and its
more minute surroundings, with rapidity and truth
daguerreotypical?
Sketchily, then, touch we the unfinished dénouement
of our story.
The long saloon was already in glittering progress
wken Maud entered. The servants in their blue and
white liveries were gliding rapidly about with the terrestrial
nutriment for eyes celestial—to-wit, wines and
oysters.
Half blinded with the glare of the numberless
lights, he stood a moment at the door.
“Lady Beckton's compliments, and she has reserved
a seat for you!” said a footman approaching
him.
He glanced at the head of the table. The vacant
chair was near Lady Beckton and opposite Miss Blakeney.
“Is a vis-a-vis better for love-making than a
seat at the lady's ear?” thought Maud. But Lady
Beckton's tacties were to spare his ear and dazzle his
eye, without reference especially to the corresponding
impressions on the eyes and ear of the lady. And
she had the secondary object of avoiding any betrayal
of her designs till they were too far matured to be defeated
by publicity.
“Can you tell me, Mr. Maud,” said the sweet
voice of Mabel Brown as he drew his chair to the
table, “what is the secret of Lady Beckton's putting
you next me so pertinaciously?”
“A greater regard for my happiness than yours,
probably,” said Maud; “but why `pertinaciously?'
Has there been a skirmish for this particular chair?”
“No skirmish, but three attempts at seizure by
three of my admirers.”
“If they admire you more than I, they are fitter
companions for a tête-à-tête than a crowded party,”
said Maud. “I am as near a lover as I can be, and
be agreeable!”
To this Maud expected the gay retort due to a bagatelle
of gallantry; but the pretty Mabel was silent.
The soup disappeared and the entremets were served.
Maud was hungry, and he had sent a cutlet and a
glass of Johannisberg to the clamorous quarter before
he ventured to look toward his hostess.
He felt her eye upon him. A covert smile stole
through her lips as they exchanged glances.
“Yes?” she asked, with a meaning look.
“Yes!”
And in that dialogue of two monosyllables Lady
Beckton presumed that the hand and five thousand a
year of Miss Catherine Blakeney, were virtually made
over to Mr. Lindsay Maud. And her diplomacy
made play to that end without farther deliberation.
Very unconscious indeed that she was under the
eye of the man who had entered into a conspiracy to
become her husband, Miss Blakeney sat between a
guardsman and a diplomatist, carrying on the war in
her usual trenchant and triumphant fashion. She
looked exceedingly handsome—that Maud could not
but admit. With no intention of becoming responsible
for her manners, he would even have admired,
as he often had done, her skilful coquetries and adroit
displays of the beauty with which nature had endowed
her. She succeeded, Maud thought, in giving
both of her admirers the apparent preference (apparent
to themselves, that is to say), and considering her
vis-a-vis worth a chance shaft at least, she honored
that very attentive gentleman with such occasional
notice, as, under other circumstances, would have
been far from disagreeable. It might have worn a
better grace, however, coming from simple Miss
Blakeney. From the future Mrs. Lindsay Maud, he
could have wished those pretty inveiglements very
much reduced and modified.
At his side, the while, sweet Mabel Brown carried
on with him a conversation, which to the high tone
of merriment opposite, was like the intermitted murmur
of a brook heard in the pauses of merry instruments.
At the same time that nothing brilliant or
gay seemed to escape her notice, she toned her own
voice and flow of thought so winningly below the excitement
around her, that Maud, who was sensible of
every indication of superiority, could not but pay her
a silent tribute of admiration. “If this were but the
heiress!” he ejaculated inwardly. But Mabel Brown
was a dependant.
Coffee was served.
The door at the end of the long saloon was suddenly
thrown open, and as every eye turned to gaze
into the blazing ballroom, a march with the full power
of the band burst upon the ear.
The diplomatist who had been sitting at the side
of Miss Blakeney was a German, and a waltzer comme
il y en a peu. At the bidding of Lady Beckton, he
put his arm around the waist of the heiress, and bore
her away to the delicious music of Strauss, and, by
general consent, the entire floor was left to this pair
for a dozen circles. Miss Blakeney was passionately
fond of waltzing, and built for it, like a Baltimore
clipper for running close to the wind. If she had a
fault that her friends were afraid to jog her memory
about, it was the wearing her dresses a flounce too
short. Her feet and ankles were Fenella's own, while
her figure and breezy motion would have stolen Endymion
from Diana. She waltzed too well for a
lady—all but well enough for a premier danseuse de
l'opera. Lady Beckton was a shrewd woman, but
she made a mistake in crying “encore!” when this
single couple stopped from their admired pas de deux.
She thought Maud was just the man to be captivated
by that display. But the future Mrs. Lindsay Maud
must not have ankles for general admiration. Oh, no!
Maud wished to efface the feeling this exhibition
had caused by sharing in the excitement.
“Miss Brown,” he said, as two or three couples
went off, “permit me the happiness of one turn!”
and, scarce waiting for an answer, he raised his arm
to encircle her waist.
Mabel took his hands, and playfully laid them
across each other on his own breast in an attitude of
resignation.
“I never waltz,” she said. “But don't think me
a prude! I don't consider it wrong in those who
think it right.”
“But with this music tugging at your heels!” said
Maud, who did not care to express how much he admired
the delicacy of her distinction.
“Ah, with a husband or a brother, I should think
one could scarce resist bounding away; but I can
not—”
“Can not what?—can not take me for either?” interrupted
Maud, with an air of affected malice that
covered a very strong desire to ask the question in
earnest.
She turned her eyes suddenly upon him with a rapid
look of inquiry, and, slightly coloring, fixed her attention
silently on the waltzers.
Lady Beckton came, making her way through the
crowd. She touched Maud on the arm.
“`Hold hook and line!'—is it not?” she said, in a
whisper.
After an instant's hesitation, Maud answered,
“Yes!”—but pages, often, would not suffice to express
all that passes through the mind in “an instant's
hesitation.” All Lindsay Maud's prospects and circumstances
were reviewed in that moment; all his
many steps by which he had arrived at the conclusion
that marriage with him
must be a matter of
convenance
merely; all his put-down impulses and built-up resolutions;
all his regrets, consolations, and offsets; all
his better and worser feelings; all his former loves
(and in that connexion, strangely enough, Mabel
Brown); all his schemes, in short, for smothering his
pain in the sacrifice of his heart, and making the
most of the gain to his pocket, passed before him in
that half minute's review. But he said “Yes!”
The Blakeney carriage was dismissed that night,
with orders to bring certain dressing-maids and certain
sequents of that useful race, on the following
morning to Beckton Park, and the three persons who
composed the Blakeney party, an old aunt, Miss
Blakeney, and Mabel Brown, went quietly to bed under
the hospitable roof of Lady Beckton.
How describe (and what need of it, indeed!) a week
at an English country-house, with all its age of
chances for loving and hating, its eternity of opportunities
for all that hearts can have to regulate in this
shorthand life of ours? Let us come at once to the
closing day of this visit.
Maud lay late abed on the day that the Blakeneys
were to leave Beckton Park. Fixed from morning
till night in the firm resolution at which he had arrived
with so much trouble and self-control, he was
dreaming from night till morning of a felicity in
which Miss Blakeney had little share. He wished
the marriage could be all achieved in the signing of a
bond. He found that he had miscalculated his philosophy
in supposing that he could venture to loose
thought and revery upon the long-forbidden subject
of marriage. In all the scenes eternally being conjured
up to his fancy—scenes of domestic life—the
bringing of Miss Blakeney into the picture was an
after effort. Mabel Brown stole into it, spite of himself—the
sweetest and dearest feature of that enchanting
picture, in its first warm coloring by the heart.
But, day by day, he took the place assigned him by
Lady Beckton at the side of Miss Blakeney, riding,
driving, dining, strolling, with reference to being near
her only, and still scarce an hour could pass in which,
spite of all effort to the contrary, he did not betray
his passionate interest in Mabel Brown.
He arose and breakfasted. Lady Beckton and the
young ladies were bonneted and ready for a stroll in
the park woods, and her ladyship came and whispered
in Maud's ear, as he leaned over his coffee, that he
must join them presently, and that she had prepared
Miss Blakeney for an interview with him, which she
would arrange as they rambled.
“Take no refusal!” were her parting words as she
stepped out upon the verandah.
Maud strolled leisurely toward the rendezvous indicated
by Lady Beckton. He required all the time
he could get to confirm his resolutions and recover
his usual maintien of repose. With his mind made
up at last, and a face in which few would have read
the heart in fetters beneath, he jumped a wicker-fence,
and, by a cross path, brought the ladies in
view. They were walking separately, but as his footsteps
were heard, Lady Beckton slipped her arm into
Miss Brown's, and commenced apparently a very earnest
undertone of conversation. Miss Blakeney
turned. Her face glowed with excercise, and Maud
confessed to himself that he rarely had seen so beautiful
a woman.
“You are come in time, Mr. Maud,” she said, “for
something is going on between my companions from
which I am excluded.”
“En revanche, suppose we have our little exclusive
secret!” said Maud, offering his arm.
Miss Blakeney colored slightly, and consented to
obey the slight resistance of his arm by which they
fell behind. A silence of a few moments followed,
for if the proposed secret were a proposal of marriage,
it had been too bluntly approached. Maud felt
that he must once more return to indifferent topics,
and lead on the delicate subject at his lips with more
tact and preparation.
They rose a slight elevation in the walk which overlooked
the wilder confines of the park. A slight
smoke rose from a clump of trees, indicating an intrusion
of gipsies within, and the next instant, a deepmouthed
bark rang out before them, and the two ladies
came rushing back in violent terror, assailed at
every step of their flight by a powerful and infuriated
mastiff. Maud ran forward immediately, and succeeded
in driving the dog back to the tents; but on his
return he found only the terrified Mabel, who, leaning
against a tree, and partly recovered from her
breathless flight, was quietly awaiting him.
“Here is a change of partners as my heart would
have it!” thought Maud, as he drew her slight arm
within his own. “The transfer looks to me like the
interposition of my good angel, and I accept the
warning!”
And in words that needed no management to bring
them skilfully on—with the eloquence of a heart released
from fetters all but intolerable, and from a
threatened slavery for life—Lindsay Maud poured
out the fervent passion of his heart to Mabel Brown.
The crust of a selfish and artificial life broke up in
the tumult of that declaration, and he found himself
once more natural and true to the instincts and better
impulses of his character. He was met with the
trembling response that such pure love looks for
when it finds utterance, and without a thought of
worldly calculation, or a shadow of a scheme for their
means and manner of life, they exchanged promises
to which the subsequent ceremony of marriage was
but the formal seal.
And at the announcement of this termination to
her matrimonial schemes, Lady Beckton seemed
much more troubled than Miss Blakeney.
But Lady Beckton's disappointment was somewhat
modified when she discovered that Miss Blakeney had
long before secretly endowed her adopted sister Mabel
with the half of her fortune.
