3. CHAPTER III.
The afternoon had, meantime, been wearing on,
and at six the “breakfast” was announced. The
tents beneath which the tables were spread were in
different parts of the grounds, and the guests had
made up their own parties. Each sped to his rendezvous,
and as the last loiterers disappeared from
the lawn, a gentleman in a claret coat and a brown
study, found himself stopping to let a lady pass who
had obeying the summons as tardily as himself. In
a white chip hat, Hairbault's last, a few lilies of the
valley laid among her raven curls beneath, a simple
white robe, the chef-d'œuvre of Victotine in style and
tournure, Lady Ravelgold would have been the belle
of the fête, but for her daughter.
“Well emerged from Lothbury!” she said, courtesying,
with a slight flush over her features, but immediately
taking his arm; “I have lost my party, and
meeting you is opportune. Where shall we breakfast?”
There was a small tent standing invitingly open on
the opposite side of the lawn, and by the fainter rattle
of soup-spoons from that quarter, it promised to be
less crowded than the others. The junior partner
would willingly have declined the proffered honor, but
he saw at a glance that there was no escape, and submitted
with a grace.
“You know very few people here,” said his fair
creditor, taking the bread from her napkin.
“Your ladyship and one other.”
“Ah, we shall have dancing by-and-by, and I must
introduce you to my daughter. By the way, have
you no name from your mother's side? `Firkins'
sounds so very odd. Give me some prettier word to
drink in this champagne.”
“What do you think of Tremlet?”
“Too effeminate for your severe style of beauty—
but it will do. Mr. Tremlet, your health! Will you
give me a little of the paté before you? Pray, if it
is not indiscreet, how comes that classic profile, and
more surprising still, that distinguished look of yours,
to have found no gayer destiny than the signing of
`Firkins and Co.' to notes of hand? Though I thought
you became your den in Lothbury, upon my honor you
look more at home here.”
And Lady Ravengold fixed her superb eyes upon
the beautiful features of her companion, wondering
partly why he did not speak, and partly why she had
not observed before that he was incomparably the
handsomest creature she had ever seen.
“I can regret no vocation,” he answered after a
moment, “which procures me an acquaintance with
your ladyship's family.”
“There is an arriére pensée in that formal speech,
Mr. Tremlet. You are insincere. I am the only
one in my family whom you know, and what pleasure
have you taken in my acquaintance? And, now
I think of it, there is a mystery about you, which, but
for the noble truth written so legibly on your features,
I should be afraid to fathom. Why have you suffered
me to over-draw my credit so enormously, and without
a shadow of a protest?”
When Lady Ravelgold had disburdened her heart
of this direct question, she turned half round and
looked her companion in the face with an intense
interest, which produced upon her own features an
expression of earnestness very uncommon upon their
pale and impassive lines. She was one of those persons
of little thought, who care nothing for causes or
consequences, so that the present difficulty is removed,
or the present hour provided with its wings; but the
repeated relief she had received from the young banker,
when total ruin would have been the consequence of
his refusal, and his marked coldness in his manner to
her, had stimulated the utmost curiosity of which she
was capable. Her vanity, founded upon her high rank
and great renown as a beauty, would have agreed that
he might be willing to get her into his power at that
price, had he been less agreeable in his own person,
or more eager in his manner. But she had wanted
money sufficiently to know, that thirty thousand pounds
are not a bagatelle, and her brain was busy till she discovered
the equivalent he sought for it. Meantime
her fear that he would turn out to be a lover, grew
rapidly into a fear that he would not.
Lady Ravelgold had been the wife of a dissolute
earl, who had died, leaving his estate inextricably involved.
With no male heir to the title or property,
and no very near relation, the beautiful widow shut
her eyes to the difficulties by which she was surrounded,
and at the first decent moment after the
death of her lord, she had re-entered the gay society
of which she had been the bright and particular star,
and never dreamed either of diminishing her establishment,
or of calculating her possible income. The
first heavy draft she had made upon the house of
Firkins and Co., her husband's bankers, had been returned
with a statement of the Ravelgold debt and
credit on their books, by which it appeared that Lord
Ravelgold had overdrawn four or five thousand pounds
before his death, and that from some legal difficulties,
nothing could be realized from the securities given
on his estates. This bad news arrived on the morning
of a fête to be given by the Russian ambassador, at
which her only child. Lady Imogen, was to make her
debùt in society. With the facility of disposition
which was peculiar to her, Lady Ravelgold thrust the
papers into her drawer, and determining to visit her
banker on the following morning, threw the matter
entirely from her mind and made preparations for the
ball. With the Russian government the house of
Firkins and Co. had long carried on very extensive
fiscal transactions, and in obedience to instructions
from the emperor, regular invitations for the embassy
fêtes were sent to the bankers, accepted occasionally
by the junior partner only, who was generally supposed
to be a natural son of old Firkins. Out of the
banking-house he was known as Mr. Tremlet, and it
was by this name, which was presumed to be his
mother's, that he was casually introduced to Lady
Imogen on the night of the fête, while she was separated
from her mother in the dancing-room. The consequence
was a sudden, deep, ineffaceable passion in
the bosom of the young banker, checked and silenced,
but never lessened or chilled by the recollection of
the obstacle of his birth. The impression of his subdued
manner, his worshipping, yet most respectful
tones, and the bright soul that breathed through his
handsome features with his unusual excitement, was,
to say the least, favorable upon Lady Imogen, and they
parted on the night of the fête, mutually aware of each
other's preference.
On the following morning Lady Ravelgold made
her proposed visit to the city; and inquiring for Mr.
Firkins, was shown in as usual to the junior partner,
to whom the colloquial business of the concern had
long been intrusted. To her surprise she found no
difficulty in obtaining the sum of money which had
been refused her on the preceding day—a result which
she attributed to her powers of persuasion, or to some
new turn in the affairs of the estate; and for two years
these visits had been repeated at intervals of three or
four months, with the same success, though not with
the same delusion as to the cause. She had discovered
that the estate was worse than nothing, and the
junior partner cared little to prolong his têtes-à-têtes
with her, and, up to the visit with which this tale
opened, she had looked to every succeeding one with
increased fear and doubt.
During these two years, Tremlet had seen Lady
Imogen occasionally at balls and public places, and
every look they exchanged wove more strongly between
them the subtle threads of love. Once or twice
she had endeavored to interest her mother in conversation
on the subject, with the intention of making
a confidence of her feelings; but Lady Ravengold,
when not anxious, was giddy with her own success,
and the unfamiliar name never rested a moment on her
ear. With this explanation to render the tale intelligible,
“let us,” as the French say, “return to our
muttons.”
Of the conversation between Tremlet and her mother,
Lady Imogen was an unobserved and astonished
witness. The tent which they had entered was large,
with a buffet in the centre, and a circular table waited
on by servants within the ring; and, just concealed
by the drapery around the pole, sat Lady Imogen
with a party of her friends, discussing very seriously
the threatened fashion of tight sleeves. She had half
risen, when her mother entered, to offer her a seat by
her side, but the sight of Tremlet, who immediately
followed, had checked the words upon her lip, and to
her surprise they seated themselves on the side that
was wholly unoccupied, and conversed in a tone inaudible
to all but themselves. Not aware that her
lover knew Lady Ravelgold, she supposed that they
might have been casually introduced, till the earnest
ness of her mother's manner, and a certain ease between
them in the little courtesies of the table, assured
her that this could not be their first interview. Tremlet's
face was turned from her, and she could not
judge whether he was equally interested; but she
had been so accustomed to consider her mother as
irresistible when she chose to please, that she supposed
it of course; and very soon the heightened color of
Lady Ravelgold, and the unwavering look of mingled
admiration and curiosity which she bent upon the
handsome face of her companion, left no doubt in her
mind that her reserved and exclusive lover was in the
dangerous toils of a rival whose power she knew.
From the mortal pangs of a first jealousy, Heaven send
thee deliverance, fair Lady Imogen!
“We shall find our account in the advances on
your ladyship's credit;” said Tremlet, in reply to the
direct question that was put to him. “Meantime
permit me to admire the courage with which you look
so disagreeable a subject in the face.”
“For `disagreeable subject,' read `Mr. Tremlet.'
I show my temerity more in that. Apropos of faces,
yours would become the new fashion of cravat. The
men at Crockford's slip the ends through a ring of
their lady-love's, if they chance to have one—thus!”
and untying the loose knot of his black satin cravat,
Lady Ravelgold slipped over the ends a diamond of
small value, conspicuously set in pearls.
“The men at Crockford's,” said Tremlet, hesitating
to commit the rudeness of removing the ring,
“are not of my school of manners. If I had been so
fortunate as to inspire a lady with a preference for me,
I should not advertise it on my cravat.”
“But suppose the lady were proud of her preference
as dames were of the devotion of their knights in the
days of chivalry—would you not wear her favor as
conspicuously as they?”
A flush of mingled embarrassment and surprise
shot over the forehead of Tremlet, and he was turning
the ring with his fingers, when Lady Imogen, attempting
to pass out of the tent, was stopped by her
mother.
“Imogen, my daughter! this is Mr. Tremlet. Lady
Imogen Ravelgold, Mr. Tremlet!”
The cold and scarce perceptible bow which the
wounded girl gave to her lover, betrayed no previous
acquaintance to the careless Lady Ravelgold. Without
giving a second thought to her daughter, she held
her glass for some champagne to a passing servant,
and as Lady Imogen and her friends crossed the lawn
to the dancing-tent, she resumed the conversation
which they had interrupted; while Tremlet, with his
heart brooding on the altered look he had received,
listened and replied almost unconsciously; yet from
this very circumstance, in a manner which was interpreted
by his companion as the embarrassment of a
timid and long-repressed passion for herself.
While Lady Ravelgold and the junior partner were
thus playing at cross purposes over their champagne
and bons-bons, Grisi and Lablanche were singing a
duet from I Puritani, to a full audience in the saloon;
the drinking young men sat over their wine at the
nearly-deserted tables; Lady Imogen and her friends
waltzed to Collinet's band, and the artisans were busy
below the lawn, erecting the machinery for the fireworks.
Meantime every alley and avenue, grot and
labyrinth, had been dimly illuminated with colored
lamps, showing like vari-colored glow-worms amid
the foliage and shells; and if the bright scenery of
Rose-Eden had been lovely by day, it was fay-land
and witchery by night. Fatal impulse of our nature,
that these approaches to paradise in the “delight of
the eye,” stir only in our bosoms the passions upon
which law and holy writ have put ban and bridle!
“Shall we stroll down this alley of crimson lamps?”
said Lady Ravelgold, crossing the lawn from the tent
where their coffee had been brought to them, and putting
her slender arm far into that of her now pale and
silent companion.
A lady in a white dress stood at the entrance of that
crimson avenue, as Tremlet and his passionate admirer
disappeared beneath the closing lines of the
long perspective, and, remaining a moment gazing
through the unbroken twinkle of the confusing lamps,
she pressed her hand hard upon her forehead, drew
up her form as if struggling with some irrepressible
feeling, and in another moment was whirling in the
waltz with Lord Ernest Fitzantelope, whose mother
wrote a complimentary paragraph about their performance
for the next Saturday's Court Journal.
The bugle sounded, and the band played a march
upon the lawn. From the breakfast tents, from the
coffee-rooms, from the dance, from the card-tables,
poured all who wished to witness the marvels that lie
in saltpetre. Gentlemen who stood in a tender attitude
in the darkness, held themselves ready to lean the
other way when the rockets blazed up, and mammas
who were encouraging flirtations with eligibles, whispered
a caution on the same subject to their less experienced
daughters.
Up sped the missiles, round spun the wheels, fair
burned the pagodas, swift flew the fire-doves off and
back again on their wires, and softly floated down
through the dewy atmosphere of that May night the
lambent and many-colored stars, flung burning from
the exploded rockets. Device followed device, and
Lady Imogen almost forgot, in her child's delight at
the spectacle, that she had taken into her bosom a
green serpent, whose folds were closing like suffocation
about her heart.
The finalè was to consist of a new light, invented
by the pyrotechnist, promised to Lady Roseberry to
be several degrees brighter than the sun—comparatively
with the quantity of matter. Before this last
flourish came a pause; and while all the world were
murmuring love and applause around her, Lady
Imogen, with her eyes fixed on an indefinite point in
the darkness, took advantage of the cessation of light
to feed her serpent with thoughts of passionate and
uncontrollable pain. A French attaché, Phillipiste to
the very tips of his mustache, addressed to her ear,
meantime, the compliments he had found most effective
in the Chaussée d'Antin.
The light burst suddenly from a hundred blazing
points, clear, dazzling, intense—illuminating, as by
the instantaneous burst of day, the farthest corner of
Rose-Eden. And Monsieur Mangepoire, with a
French contempt for English fireworks, took advantage
of the first ray to look into Lady Imogen's eyes.
“Mais, Miladi!” was his immediate exclamation,
after following their direction with a glance, “ce n'est
qu'un tableau vivant, cela! Help, gentlemen! Elle
s'évanôuit. Some salts! Misericorde! Mon Dieu!
Mon Dieu!” And Lady Imogen Ravelgold was carried
fainting to Lady Roseberry's chamber.
In a small opening at the end of a long avenue of
lilacs, extended from the lawn in the direction of
Lady Imogen's fixed and unconscious gaze, was presented,
by the unexpected illumination, the tableau
vivant, seen by her ladyship and Monsieur Mangepoire
at the same instant—a gentleman drawn up to
his fallest height, with his arms folded, and a lady
kneeling on the ground at his feet with her arms
stretched up to his bosom.
