 | People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction |  |
LADY RAVELGOLD.
1. CHAPTER I.
With diamonds? or to be smothered quick
With cassia, or be shot to death with pearls?”
Duchess of Malfy.
But two honest women!—One I read of once!”
Rule a Wife.
It was what is called by people on the continent a “London
day.” A thin, grey mist drizzled down through the smoke which
darkened the long cavern of Fleet street; the sidewalks were
slippery and clammy; the drays slid from side to side on the
greasy pavement, creating a perpetual clamor among the lighter
carriages with which they came in contact; the porters wondered
that “gemmen” would carry their umbrellas up when there was
no rain, and the gentlemen wondered that porters should be permitted
on the sidewalks; there were passengers in box-coats,
though it was the first of May, and beggars with bare breasts,
though it was chilly as November; the boys were looking wistfully
into the hosier's windows who were generally at the pastry-cook's;
and there were persons who wished to know the time,
atmosphere.
It was twelve o'clock, and a plain chariot, with a simple crest
on the panels, slowly picked its way through the choked and disputed
thoroughfare east of Temple Bar. The smart glazed hat
of the coachman, the well-fitted drab greatcoat and gaiters of the
footman, and the sort of half-submissive, half-contemptuous look
on both their faces (implying that they were bound to drive to the
devil if it were miladi's orders, but that the rabble of Fleet
street was a leetle too vulgar for their contact), expressed very
plainly that the lady within was a denizen of a more privileged
quarter, but had chosen a rainy day for some compulsory visit to
“the city.”
At the rate of perhaps a mile an hour, the well-groomed night-horses
(a pair of smart, hardy, twelve-mile cabs, all bottom, but
little style, kept for night-work and forced journeys) had threaded
the tortuous entrails of London, and had arrived at the arch of a
dark court in Throgmorton street. The coachman put his
wheels snug against the edge of the sidewalk, to avoid being
crushed by the passing drays, and settled his many-caped benjamin
about him; while the footman spread his umbrella, and
making a balustrade of his arm for his mistress's assistance, a
closely-veiled lady descended, and disappeared up the wet and ill-paved
avenue.
The green-baize door of Firkins and Co. opened on its silent
hinges and admitted the mysterious visiter, who, inquiring of the
nearest clerk if the junior partner were in, was shown to a small
inner room containing a desk, two chairs, a coal fire, and a young
gentleman. The last article of furniture rose on the lady's
entrance, and, as she threw off her veil, he made a low bow, with
and, pushing aside the door-check, they were left alone.
There was that forced complaisance in the lady's manner, on
her first entrance, which produced the slightest possible elevation
of a very scornful lip owned by the junior partner; but the lady was
only forty-five, highborn, and very handsome, and, as she looked
at the fine specimen of nature's nobility, who met her with a look
as proud and yet as gentle as her own, the smoke of Fleet street
passed away from her memory, and she became natural and even
gracious. The effect upon the junior partner was simply that of
removing from his breast the shade of her first impression.
“I have brought you,” said his visiter, drawing a card from
her reticule, “an invitatlon to the “Duchess of Hautaigle's ball.
She sent me half a dozen to fill up for what she calls `ornamentals'—and
I am sure I shall scarce find another who comes so
decidedly under her Grace's category.”
The fair speaker had delivered this pretty speech in the
sweetest and best-bred tone of St. James's, looking the while at
the toe of the small brodequin which she held up to the fire—
perhaps thinking only of drying it. As she concluded her sentence,
she turned to her companion for an answer, and was surprised
at the impassive politeness of his bow of acknowledgment.
“I regret that I shall not be able to avail myself of your ladyship's
kindness,” said the junior partner, in the same well-enunciated
tone of courtesy.
“Then,” replied the lady with a smile, “Lord Augustus
Fitz-Moi, who looks at himself all dinner-time in a spoon, will be
the Apollo of the hour. What a pity such a handsome creature
should be so vain!—By-the-way, Mr. Firkins, you live without
a looking-glass, I see.”
“Your ladyship reminds me that this is merely a place of
business. May I ask at once what errand has procured me the
honor of a visit on so unpleasant a day?”
A slight flush brightened the cheek and forehead of the beautiful
woman, as she compressed her lips, and forced herself to say
with affected ease, “The want of five hundred pounds.”
The junior partner paused an instant, while the lady tapped
with her boot upon the fender in ill-dissembled anxiety, and then,
turning to his desk, he filled up the check without remark, presented
it, and took his hat to wait on her to the carriage. A
gleam of relief and pleasure shot over her countenance as she
closed her small jewelled hand over it, followed immediately by a
look of embarrassed inquiry into the face of the unquestioning
banker.
“I am in your debt already.”
“Thirty thousand pounds, madam!”
“And for this you think the securities on the estate of Rockland—”
“Are worth nothing, madam! But it rains. I regret that
your ladyship's carriage cannot come to the door. In the old-fashioned
days of sedan-chairs, now, the dark courts of Lothbury
must have been more attractive. By-the-way, talking of Lothbury,
there is Lady Roseberry's féte champétre next week. If
you should chance to have a spare card—”
“Twenty, if you like—I am too happy—really, Mr. Firkins—”
“It's on the fifteenth; I shall have the honor of seeing your
ladyship there! Good-morning! Home, coachman!”
“Does this man love me?” was Lady Ravelgold's first thought,
as she sank back in her returning chariot. “Yet no! he was
have stayed too, for there is something about him of a mark that
I like. Ay, and he must have seen it—a lighter encouragement
has been interpreted more readily. Five hundred pounds!—
really five hundred pounds! And thirty thousand at the back of
it! What does he mean? Heavens! if he should be deeper
than I thought! If he should wish to involve me first!”
And spite of the horror with which the thought was met in the
mind of Lady Ravelgold, the blush over her forehead died away
into a half smile and a brighter tint in her lips; and, as the carriage
wound slowly on through the confused press of Fleet street
and the Strand, the image of the handsome and haughty young
banker shut her eyes from all sounds without, and she was at her
own door in Grosvenor square before she had changed position,
or wandered half a moment from the subject of those busy
dreams.
2. CHAPTER II.
The morning of the fifteenth of May seemed to have been appointed
by all the flowers as a jubilee of perfume and bloom.
The birds had been invited, and sang in the summer with a welcome
as full-throated as a prima donna singing down the tenor in
a duet; the most laggard buds turned out their hearts to the sunshine,
and promised leaves on the morrow; and that portion of
London that had been invited to Lady Roseberry's fête, thought
it a very fine day! That portion which was not, wondered how
dinner!
At about half past two, a very elegant dark-green cab without
a crest, and with a servant in whose slight figure and plain blue
livery there was not a fault, whirled out at the gate of the
Regent's Park, and took its way up the well-watered road leading
to Hampstead. The gentlemen whom it passed or met turned to
admire the performance of the dark-grey horse, and the ladies
looked after the cab as if they could see the handsome occupant
once more through its leather back. Whether by conspiracy
among the coach-makers, or by an aristocracy of taste, the
degree of elegance, in a turn-out attained by the cab just described,
is usually confined to the acquaintances of Lady —;
that list being understood to enumerate all “the nice young
men” of the West End, beside the guardsmen. (The ton of the
latter, in all matters that affect the style of the regiment, is
looked after by the club and the colonel.) The junior Firkins
seemed an exception to this exclusive rule. No “nice man”
could come from Lothbury, and he did not visit Lady —; but
his horse was faultless, and when he turned into the gate of Rose-Eden,
the policeman at the porter's lodge, though he did not
know him, thought it unnecessary to ask for his name. Away he
spattered up the hilly avenue, and, giving the reins to his groom
at the end of a green arbor leading to the reception-lawn, he
walked in and made his bow to Lady Roseberry, who remarked,
“How very handsome! Who can he be?”—and the junior
partner walked on and disappeared down an avenue of laburnums.
Ah! but Rose-Eden looked a Paradise that day! Hundreds
had passed across the close-shaven lawn, with a bow to the lady-mistress
enough for Milton's pair, so lost were they in the green labyrinths
of hill and dale. Some had descended through heavily-shaded
paths to a fancy-dairy, built over a fountain in the bottom of a
cool dell; and here, amid her milk-pans of old and costly china,
the prettiest maid in the country round pattered about upon a
floor of Dutch tiles, and served her visitors with creams and ices
—already, as it were, adapted to fashionable comprehension.
Some had strayed to the ornamental cottages in the skirts of the
flower-garden—poetical abodes, built from a picturesque drawing,
with imitation roughness; thatch, lattice-window, and low paling,
all complete, and inhabited by superannuated dependents of Lord
Roseberry, whose only duties were to look like patriarchs, and
give tea and new cream-cheese to visitors on fête-days. Some
had gone to see the silver and gold pheasants in their wire-houses,
stately aristocrats of the game tribe, who carry their
finely-pencilled feathers like “Marmalet Madarus,” strutting in
hoop and farthingale. Some had gone to the kennels, to see
setters and pointers, hounds and terriers, lodged like gentlemen,
each breed in its own apartment—the puppies, as elsewhere,
treated with most attention. Some were in the flower-garden,
some in the green-houses, some in the graperies, aviaries, and
grottoes; and, at the side of a bright sparkling fountain, in the
recesses of a fir-grove, with her foot upon its marble lip, and one
hand on the shoulder of a small Cupid who archly made a
drinking-cup of his wing, and caught the bright water as it fell,
stood Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the loveliest girl of nineteen that
prayed night and morning within the parish of May Fair, listening
to very passionate language from the young banker of
Lothbury.
A bugle on the lawn rang a recall. From every alley, and by
every path, poured in the gay multitude, and the smooth sward
looked like a plateau of animated flowers, waked by magic from a
broidery on green velvet. Ah! the beautiful demi-toilettes!—so
difficult to attain, yet, when attained, the dress most modest,
most captivating, most worthy the divine grace of woman. Those
airy hats, sheltering from the sun, yet not enviously concealing a
feature or a ringlet that a painter would draw for his exhibition-picture!
Those summery and shapeless robes, covering the
person more to show its outline better, and provoke more the
worship, which, like all worship, is made more adoring by mystery!
Those complexions which but betray their transparency
in the sun; lips in which the blood is translucent when between
you and the light; cheeks finer-grained than alabaster, yet as cool
in their virgin purity as a tint in the dark corner of a Ruysdel:
the human race was at less perfection in Athens in the days of
Lais—in Egypt in the days of Cleopatra—than that day on the
lawn of Rose-Eden.
Cart-loads of ribands, of every gay color, had been laced
through the trees in all directions; and amid every variety of
foliage, and every shade of green, the tulip-tints shone vivid and
brilliant, like an American forest after the first frost. From the
left edge of the lawn, the ground suddenly sunk into a dell, shaped
like an amphitheatre, with a level platform at its bottom, and all
around, above and below, thickened a shady wood. The music of
a delicious band stole up from the recesses of a grove, draped in
an orchestra and green-room on the lower side, and, while the
audience disposed themselves in the shade of the upper grove, a
company of players and dancing-girls commenced their theatricals.
Imogen Ravelgold, who was separated, by a pine tree only,
finished, what was the plot of the play.
The recall-bugle sounded again, and the band wound away
from the lawn, playing a gay march. Followed Lady Roseberry
and her suite of gentlemen, followed dames and their daughters,
followed all who wished to see the flight of my lord's falcons. By
a narrow path and a wicket-gate, the long music-guided train
stole out upon an open hill-side, looking down on a verdant and
spreading meadow. The band played at a short distance behind
the gay groups of spectators, and it was a pretty picture to look
down upon the splendidly-dressed falconer and his men, holding
their fierce birds upon their wrists, in their hoods and jesses, a
foreground of old chivalry and romance; while far beyond extended,
like a sea over the horizon, the smoke-clad pinnacles of
busy and every-day London. There are such contrasts for the
rich!
The scarlet hood was taken from the trustiest falcon, and a dove,
confined, at first, with a string, was thrown up and brought back to
excite his attention. As he fixed his eyes upon him, the frightened
victim was let loose, and the falcon flung off; away skimmed the
dove in a low flight over the meadow, and up to the very zenith
in circles of amazing swiftness and power, sped the exulting falcon,
apparently forgetful of his prey, and bound for the eye of the sun
with his strong wings and his liberty. The falconer's whistle
and cry were heard; the dove circled round the edge of the meadow
in his wavy flight; and down, with the speed of lightning,
shot the falcon, striking his prey dead to the earth before the
eye could settle on his form. As the proud bird stood upon
his victim, looking around with a lifted crest and fierce eye, Lady
Imogen Ravelgold heard, in a voice of which her heart knew
in the falcon's bosom.”
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 was obeying the summons as tardily as
himself. In a white chip hat, Hairbault's last, a few lilies of the
valley laid among the raven curls beneath, a simple white robe,
the chef-d'æuvre of Victorine in style and tournure, Lady Ravelgold
would have been the belle of the fête, but for her daughter.
“Well emerged from Lothbury!” she said, courtseying, 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 opposide
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 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 Ravelgold 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
incomparibly 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
face, with an intense interest which produced amid 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 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
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 début 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 promised
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
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 tète-à-tètes 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 Ravelgold, 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
themselves. Not aware that her lover knew Lady Ravelgold, she
supposed that they might have been casually introduced, till the
earnestness 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
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 Lablache 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 artizans were busy below the
lawn, erecting the machinery for the fireworks. Meantime every
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 “daylight 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
Ravegold, 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 disagreeable 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
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 finale was to consist of a new light, invented by the pyro-technist,
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 attachè,
Phillipiste to the very tips of his mustache, addressed to her
ear, meantime, the compliments he had found most effective in
the Chaussèe 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,
at the same instant—a gentleman drawn up to his fullest
height, with his arms folded, and a lady kneeling on the ground
at his feet with her arms stretched up to his bosom.
4. CHAPTER IV.
A little after two o'clock on the following Wednesday,
Tremlet's cabriolet stopped near the perron of Willis's rooms in
King street, and while he sent up his card to the lady patronesses
for his ticket to that night's Almack's, he busied himself in looking
into the crowd of carriages about him, and reading on the
faces of their fair occupants the hope and anxiety to which they
were a prey till John the footman brought them tickets or despair.
Drawn up on the opposite side of the street, stood a family-carriage
of the old style, covered with half the arms of the herald's office,
and containing a fat dowager and three very over-dressed daughters.
Watching them, to see the effect of their application, stood
upon the sidewalk three or four young men from the neighboring
club-house, and at the moment Tremlet was observing these circumstances,
a foreign britsçka, containing a beautiful woman, of a
reputation better understood than expressed in the conclave above
stairs, flew round the corner of St. James's street, and very nearly
drove into the open mouth of the junior partner's cabriolet.
“I will bet you a Ukraine colt against this fine bay of yours,”
said the Russian secretary of legation, advancing from the group
of dandies to Tremlet, “that miladi, yonder, with all the best
blood of England in her own and her daughters' red faces, gets
no tickets this morning.”
“I'll take a bet upon the lady who has nearly extinguished
me, if you like,” answered Tremlet, gazing with admiration at
the calm, delicate, child-like looking creature, who sat before him
in the britsçka.
“No!” said the secretary, “for Almack's is a republic of
beauty, and she'll be voted in without either blood or virtue.
Par exémple, Lady Ravelgold's voucher is good here, though she
does study tableaux in Lothbury—eh, Tremlet?”
Totally unaware of the unlucky discovery by the fireworks at
Lady Roseberry's fête, Tremlet colored and was inclined to take
the insinuation as an affront; but a laugh from the dandies drew
off his companion's attention, and he observed the dowager's footman
standing at her coach window with his empty hands held up
in most expressive negation, while the three young ladies within
sat aghast, in all the agonies of disappointed hopes. The lumbering
carriage got into motion—its ineffective blazonry paled by
the mortified blush of its occupants—and, as the junior partner
drove away, philosophizing on the arbitrary opinions and unprovoked
insults of polite society, the britsçka shot by, showing him,
as he leaned forward, a lovely woman who bent on him the most
dangerous eyes in London, and an Almack's ticket lying on the
unoccupied cushion beside her.
The white relievo upon the pale blue wall of Almack's showed
every crack in its stucco flowers, and the faded chaperons who
had defects of a similar description to conceal, took warning of the
walls, and retreated to the friendlier dimness of the tea-room.
Collinet was beginning the second set of quadrilles, and among
the fairest of the surpassingly beautiful women who were moving
to his heavenly music, was Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the lovelier
roses in her cheek. Her lady-mother divided her thoughts between
what this could mean, and whether Mr. Tremlet would
come to the ball; and when, presently after, in the dos-a-dos,
she forgot to look at her daughter, on seeing that gentleman enter,
she lost a very good opportunity for a guess at the cause of Lady
Imogen's paleness.
To the pure and true eye that appreciates the divinity of the
form after which woman is made, it would have been a glorious
feast to have seen the perfection of shape, color, motion, and
countenance, shown that night on the bright floor of Almack's.
For the young and beautiful girls whose envied destiny is to commence
their woman's history in this exclusive hall, there exists aids
to beauty known to no other class or nation. Perpetual vigilance
over every limb from the cradle up; physical education of a perfection,
discipline, and judgment, pursued only at great expense
and under great responsibility; moral education of the highest
kind, habitual consciousness of rank, exclusive contact with elegance
and luxury, and a freedom of intellectual culture which
breathes a soul through the face before passion has touched it with
a line or a shade—these are some of the circumstances which make
Almack's the eynosure of the world for adorable and radiant
beauty.
There were three ladies who had come to Almack's with a
definite object that night, each of whom was destined to be surprised
and foiled: Lady Ravelgold, who feared that she had been
abrupt with the inexperienced banker, but trusted to find him
softened by a day or two's reflection; Mrs. St. Leger, the lady of
the britsçka, who had ordered supper for two on her arrival at
home from her morning's drive, and intended to have the company
street; and Lady Imogen Ravelgold, as will appear in the
sequel.
Tremlet stood in the entrance from the tea-room, a moment,
gathering courage to walk alone into such a dazzling scene, and
then, having caught a glimpse of the glossy lines of Lady Imogen's
head at the farthest end of the room, he was advancing toward
her, when he was addressed by a lady who leaned against one of
the slender columns of the orchestra. After a sweetly-phrased
apology for having nearly knocked out his brains that morning
with her horses' fore feet, Mrs. St. Leger took his arm, and
walking deliberately two or three times up and down the room,
took possession, at last, of a banquette on the highest range, so far
from any other person, that it would have been a marked rudeness
to have left her alone. Tremlet took his seat by her with
this instinctive feeling, trusting that some of her acquaintances
would soon approach, and give him a fair excuse to leave her;
but he soon became amused with her piquant style of conversation,
and, not aware of being observed, fell into the attitude of
a pleased and earnest listener.
Lady Ravelgold's feelings during this petit entretien, were of a
very positive description. She had an instinctive knowledge, and
consequently a jealous dislike of Mrs. St. Leger's character;
and, still under the delusion that the young banker's liberality
was prompted by a secret passion for herself, she saw her credit
in the city and her hold upon the affections of Tremlet, (for whom
she had really conceived a violent affection,) melting away in
every smile of the dangerous woman who engrossed him. As she
looked around for a friend, to whose ear she might communicate
some of the suffocating poison in her own heart, Lady Imogen
the heart of the pure-minded girl, went this second proof of her
lover's corrupt principle and conduct. Unwilling to believe even
her own eyes, on the night of Lady Roseberry's fête, she had summoned
resolution on the road home to ask an explanation of her
mother. Embarrassed by the abrupt question, Lady Ravelgold
felt obliged to make a partial confidence of the state of her pecuniary
affairs; and, to clear herself, she represented Tremlet as
having taken advantage of her obligations to him, to push a dishonorable
suit. The scene disclosed by the sudden blaze of the
fireworks being thus simply explained, Lady Imogen determined
at once to give up Tremlet's acquaintance altogether; a resolution
which his open flirtation with a woman of Mrs. St. Leger's
character served to confirm. She had, however, one errand with
him, prompted by her filial feelings, and favored by an accidental
circumstance which will appear.
“Do you believe in animal magnetism?” asked Mrs. St.
Leger, “for by the fixedness of Lady Ravelgold's eyes in this
quarter, something is going to happen to one of us.”
The next moment the Russian secretary approached and took
his seat by Mrs. St. Leger, and with diplomatic address contrived
to convey to Tremlet's ear that Lady Ravelgold wished to speak
with him. The banker rose, but the quick wit of his companion
comprehended the manœuvre.
“Ah! I see how it is,” she said, “but stay—you'll sup with
me to-night. Promise me—parole d'honneur!”
“Parole!” answered Tremlet, making his way out between
the seats, half pleased and half embarrassed.
“As for you, Monsieur le Secretaire,' said Mrs. St. Leger,
you conspire against me?”
While the Russian was making his peace, Tremlet crossed over
to Lady Ravelgold; but, astonished at the change in Lady
Imogen, he soon broke in abruptly upon her mother's conversation,
to ask her to dance. She accepted his hand for a quadrille;
but as they walked down the room in search of a vis-à-vis,
she complained of heat, and asked timidly if he would take her to
the tea-room.
“Mr. Tremlet,” she said, fixing her eyes upon the cup of tea
which he had given her, and which she found some difficulty in
holding, “I have come here to-night to communicate to you
some important information, to ask a favor, and to break off an
acquaintance which has lasted too long.”
Lady Imogen stopped, for the blood had fled from her lips, and
she was compelled to ask his arm for a support. She drew herself
up to her fullest height the next moment, looked at Tremlet,
who stood in speechless astonishment, and with a strong effort,
commenced again in a low, firm tone—
“I have been acquainted with you some time, sir, and have
never inquired, nor knew more than your name, up to this day.
I suffered myself to be pleased too blindly—”
“Dear Lady Imogen!”
“Stay a moment, sir! I will proceed directly to my business.
I received this morning a letter from the senior partner of a mercantile
house in the city, with which you are connected. It is
written on the supposition that I have some interest in you, and
informs me that you are not, as you yourself suppose, the son of
the gentleman who writes the letter.
“Madam!”
“That gentleman, sir, as you know, never was married. He
informs me, that, in the course of many financial visits to St.
Petersburgh, he formed a friendship with Count Manteuffel, then
minister of finance to the emperor, whose tragical end, in consequence
of his extensive defalcations, is well known. In brief, sir,
you were his child, and were taken by this English banker, and
carefully educated as his own, in happy ignorance, as he imagined,
of your father's misfortunes and mournful death.”
Tremlet leaned against the wall, unable to reply to this
astounding intelligence, and Lady Imogen went on.
“Your title and estates have been restored to you at the
request of your kind benefactor, and you are now the heir to a
princely fortune, and a count of the Russian empire. Here is
the letter, sir, which is of no value to me now. Mr. Tremlet!
one word more, sir.”
Lady Imogen gasped for breath.
“In return, sir, for much interest given you heretofore—in
return, sir, for this information—”
“Speak, dear Lady Imogen!”
“Spare my mother!”
“Mrs. St. Leger's carriage stops the way!” shouted a servant
at that moment, at the top of the stairs; and, as if there were a
spell in the sound to nerve her resolution anew, Lady Imogen
Ravelgold shook the tears from her eyes, bowed coldly to Tremlet,
and passed out into the dressing-room.
“If you please, sir,” said a servant, approaching the amazed
banker, “Mrs. St. Leger waits for you in her carriage.”
“Will you come home and sup with us?” said Lady Ravelgold
at the same instant, joining him in the tea-room.
“I shall be only too happy, Lady Ravelgold.”
The bold coachman of Mrs. St. Leger continued to “stop the
way,” spite of policemen and infuriated footmen, for some fifteen
minutes. At the end of that time Mr. Tremlet appeared,
handing down Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who walked to
their chariot, which was a few steps behind; and very much to
Mrs. St. Leger's astonishment, the handsome banker sprang past
her horses' heads a minute after, jumped into his cabriolet, which
stood on the opposite side of the street, and drove after the
vanishing chariot as if his life depended on overtaking it. Still
Mrs. St. Leger's carriage “stopped the way.” But, in a few
minutes after, the same footman who had summoned Tremlet in
vain, returned with the Russian secretary, doomed in blessed unconsciousness
to play the pis aller at her tête-à-tête supper in
Spring Gardens.
5. CHAPTER V.
If Lady Ravelgold showed beautiful by the uncompromising
light and in the ornamental hall of Almack's, she was radiant as
she came through the mirror door of her own love-contrived and
beauty-breathing boudoir. Tremlet had been shown into this recess
of luxury and elegance on his arrival, and Lady Ravelgold
and her daughter, who preceded her by a minute or two, had
gone to their chambers, the first to make some slight changes in
her toilet, and the latter (entirely ignorant of her lover's presence
in the house), to be alone with a heart never before in such painful
need of self-abandonment and solitude.
Tremlet looked about him in the enchanted room in which he
found himself alone, and, spite of the prepossessed agitation of his
feelings, the voluptuous beauty of every object had the effect to
divert and tranquillize him. The light was profuse, but it came
softened through the thinnest alabaster; and, while every object
in the room was distinctly and minutely visible, the effect of
moonlight was not more soft and dreamy. The general form of
the boudoir was an oval, but, within the pilasters of folded silk
with their cornices of gold, lay crypts containing copies, exquisitely
done in marble, of the most graceful statues of antiquity,
one of which scemed, by the curtain drawn quite aside and a
small antique lamp burning near it, to be the divinity of the
place—the Greek Antinous, with his drooped head and full,
smooth limbs, the most passionate and life-like representation of
voluptuous beauty that intoxicates the slumberous air of Italy.
Opposite this, another niche contained a few books, whose retreating
shelves swung on a secret door, and, as it stood half open, the
nodding head of a snowy magnolia leaned through, as if pouring
from the lips of its broad chalice the mingled odors of the unseen
conservatory it betrayed. The first sketch in crayons of a portrait
of Lady Ravelgold by young Lawrence, stood against the
wall, with the frame half buried in a satin ottoman; and, as
Tremlet stood before it, admiring the clear, classic outline of the
head and bust, and wondering in what chamber of his brain the
gifted artist had found the beautiful drapery in which he had
drawn her, the dim light glanced faintly on the left, and the
broad mirror by which he had entered swung again on its silver
hinges, and admitted the very presentment of what he gazed on.
Lady Ravelgold had removed the jewels from her hair, and the
robe of wrought lace, which she had worn that night over a boddice
of this she had thrown upon her shoulders a flowing wrapper of
purple velvet, made open after the Persian fashion, with a short
and large sleeve, and embroidered richly with gold upon the
skirts. Her admirable figure, gracefully defined by the satin
petticoat and boddice, showed against the gorgeous purple as it
flowed back in her advancing motion, with a relief which would
have waked the very soul of Titian; her complexion was dazzling
and faultless in the flattering light of her own rooms; and there
are those who will read this who know how the circumstances
which surround a woman—luxury, elegance, taste, or the opposite
of these—enhance or dim, beyond help or calculation, even
the highest order of woman's beauty.
Lady Ravelgold held a bracelet in her hand as she came in.
“In my own house,” she said, holding the glittering jewel to
Tremlet, “I have a fancy for the style antique. Tasseline, my
maid, has gone to bed, and you must do the devoirs of a knight,
or an abigail, and loop up this Tyrian sleeve. Stay—first look
at the model—that small statue of Cytheris, yonder! Not the
shoulder—for you are to swear mine is prettier—but the clasp.
Fasten it like that. So! Now take me for a Grecian nymph
the rest of the evening.”
“Lady Ravelgold!”
“Hermione or Agläe, if you please! But let us ring for
supper!”
As the bell sounded, a superb South American trulian darted in
from the conservatory, and, spreading his gorgeous black and gold
wings a moment over the alabaster shoulder of Lady Ravelgold, as
if he took a pleasure in prolonging the first touch as he alighted,
turned his large liquid eye fiercely on Tremlet.
“Thus it is,” said Lady Ravelgold, “we forget our old
favorites in our new. See how jealous he is!”
“Supper is served, miladi!” said a servant entering.
“A hand to each, then, for the present,” she said, putting one
into Tremlet's, and holding up the trulian with the other. “He
who behaves best shall drink first with me.”
“I beg your ladyship's pardon,” said Tremlet, drawing back,
and looking at the servant, who immediately left the room. “Let
us understand each other! Does Lady Imogen sup with us to-night?”
“Lady Imogen has retired,” said her mother in some surprise.
“Then, madam, will you be seated one moment and listen to
me?”
Lady Ravelgold sat down on the nearest ottoman, with the air
of a person too high bred to be taken by surprise, but the color
deepened to crimson in the centre of her cheek, and the bird on
her hand betrayed by one of his gurgling notes that he was held
more tightly than pleased him. With a calm and decisive tone,
Tremlet went through the explanation given in the previous parts
of this narration. He declared his love for Lady Imogen, his
hopes (while he had doubts of his birth) that Lady Ravelgold's
increasing obligations and embarrassments and his own wealth
might weigh against his disadvantages; and now, his honorable
descent being established, and his rank entitling him to propose
for her hand, he called upon Lady Ravelgold to redeem her obligations
to him by an immediate explanation to her daughter of
his conduct toward herself, and by lending her whole influence to
the success of his suit.
Five minutes are brief time to change a lover into a son-in-law;
and Lady Ravegold, as we have seen in the course of this
and sat silent, for a while, after Tremlet had concluded: but the
case was a very clear one. Ruin and mortification were in one
scale, mortification and prosperity in the other. She rose, pale
but decided, and requesting Monsieur le Comte Manteuffel to
await her a few minutes, ascended to her daughter's chamber.
“If you please, sir,” said a servant, entering in about half an
hour, “miladi and Lady Imogen beg that you will join them in
the supper-room.”
6. CHAPTER VI.
The spirit of beauty, if it haunt in such artificial atmospheres
as Belgrave square, might have been pleased to sit invisibly on
the vacant side of Lady Ravelgold's table. Tremlet had been
shown in by the servant to a small apartment, built like a belvidere
over the garden, half boudoir in its character, yet intended
as a supper-room, and, at the long window (opening forth upon
descending terraces laden with flowers, and just now flooded with
the light of a glorious moon) stood Lady Imogen, with her glossy
head laid against the casement, and the palm of her left hand
pressed close upon her heart. If those two lights—the moon
faintly shed off from the divine curve of her temple, and the
stained rose-lamp pouring its mellow tint full on the heavenly
shape and whiteness of her shoulder and neck—if those two
lights, I say, could have been skilfully managed, Mr. Lawrence!
what a picture you might have made of Lady Imogen Ravelgold!
“Imogen, my daughter! Mr. Tremlet!” said her mother as
he entered.
Without changing her position, she gave him the hand she had
been pressing on her heart.
“Mr. Tremlet!” said Lady Ravelgold, evidently entering into
her daughter's embarrassment, “trouble yourself to come to the
table and give me a bit of this pheasant. Imogen, George waits
to give you some champagne.”
“Can you forgive me?” said the beautiful girl, before turning
to betray her blushing cheek and suffused eyes to her mother.
Tremlet stopped as if to pluck a leaf from the verbena at her
feet, and passed his lips over the slight fingers he held.
“Pretty trulian!” murmured Lady Ravelgold to her bird, as
he stood on the edge of her champagne-glass, and curving his
superb neck nearly double, contrived to drink from the sparkling
brim—“pretty trulian! you will be merry after this! What
ancient Sybarite, think you, Mr. Tremlet, inhabits the body of
this bright bird? Look up, mignon, and tell us if you were
Hylas or Alcibiades! Is the pheasant good, Mr. Tremlet?”
“Too good to come from Hades, miladi. Is it true that you
have your table supplied from Crockford's?”
“Tout bonnement! I make it a principle to avoid all great
anxieties, and I can trust nobody but Ude. He sends my dinners
quite hot, and, if there is a particular dish of game, he drives
round at the hour and gives it the last turn in my own kitchen.
I should die to be responsible for my dinners. I don't know how
people get on that have no grand artiste. Pray, Mr. Tremlet
(I beg pardon—Monsieur le Comte, perhaps I should say?”)
“No, no, I implore you! `Tremlet' has been spoken too
musically to be so soon forgotten. Tremlet or Charles, which
you will!”
Lady Ravelgold put her hand in his, and looked from his face
obtained a victory over herself. Shrinking immediately, however,
from anything like sentiment (with the nervous dread of
pathos so peculiar to the English), she threw off her trulian, that
made a circle and alighted on the emerald bracelet of Lady Imogen,
and rang the bell for coffce.
“I flatter myself, Mr. Tremlet,” she said, “that I have made
a new application of the homœopathic philosophy. Hahnemann,
they say, cures fevers by aggravating the disease; and when I
cannot sleep, I drink coffee. J'en suis passablement fiere! You
did not know I was a philosopher?”
“No, indeed!”
“Well, take some of this spiced mocha. I got it of the
Turkish ambassador, to whom I made beaux yeux on purpose.
Stop! you shall have it in the little tinsel cups he sent me.
George, bring those filagree things! Now, Mr. Tremlet, imagine
yourself in the serail du Bosphore—Imogen and I two lovely Circassians,
par example! Is it not delicious? Talking of Bosphorus,
nobody was classical enough to understand the device in my
coiffure to-night.”
“What was it?” asked Tremlet, absently, gazing while he
spoke, with eyes of envy at the trulian, who was whetting his bill,
backward and forward, on the clear bright lips of Lady Imogen.
“Do you think my profile Grecian?” asked Lady Ravelgold.
“Perfectly!”
“And my hair is coiffed à la Gree?”
“Most becomingly.”
“But still you won't see my golden grasshopper! Do you
happen to know, sir, that, to wear the golden grasshopper, was the
birthright of an Athenian? I saw it in a book. Well! I had to
George Heriot, mean, by telling me that its legs should be black?
—`All Greeks have black legs,' said he, yawning in his stupid
way. What did he mean, Mr. Tremlet?”
“`Greeks' and blacklegs are convertible terms. He thought
you were more au fait of the slang dictionary. Will you permit
me to coax my beautiful rival from your hand, Lady Imogen?”
She smiled, and put forward her wrist, with a bend of its slender
and alabaster lines which would have drawn a sigh from
Praxiteles. The trulian glanced his fiery eyes from his mistress's
face to Tremlet's, and, as the strange hand was put out to
take him from his emerald perch, he flew with the quickness of
lightning into the face of her lover, and buried the sharp beak in
his lip. The blood followed copiously, and Lady Imogen, startled
from her timidity, sprang from her chair and pressed her
hands one after the other upon the wound, in passionate and girlish
abandonment. Lady Ravelgold hurried to her dressing-room
for something to staunch the wound, and, left alone with
the divine creature who hung over him, Tremlet drew her to
his bosom and pressed his cheek long and closely to hers, while to
his lips, as if to keep in life, clung her own crimsoned and trembling
fingers.
“Imogen!” said Lady Ravelgold, entering, “take him to the
fountain in the garden and wash the wound; then put on this
bit of gold-beater's skin. I will come to you when I have locked
up the trulian. Is it painful, Mr. Tremlet?”
Tremlet could not trust his voice to answer, but, with his arm
still around Lady Imogen, he descended by the terrace of flowers
to the fountain.
They sat upon the edge of the marble basin, and the moonlight
a rain of silver. Lady Imogen had recovered from her fright,
and buried her face in her hands, remembering into what her
feelings had betrayed her; and Tremlet, sometimes listening to
the clear bell-like music of the descending water, sometimes
uttering the broken sentences which are most eloquent in love, sat
out the hours till the stars began to pale, undisturbed by Lady
Ravelgold, who, on the upper stair of the terrace, read by a small
lamp, which, in the calm of that heavenly summer night, burned
unflickeringly in the open air.
It was broad daylight when Tremlet, on foot, sauntered slowly
past Hyde park corner on his way to the Albany. The lamps
were still struggling with the brightening approach to sunrise, the
cabmen and their horses slept on the stand by the Green Park,
and, with cheerful faces, the laborers went to their work, and with
haggard faces the night-birds of dissipation crept wearily home.
The well-ground dust lay in confused heel-marks on the sidewalk,
a little dampened by the night-dew; the atmosphere in the street
was clear, as it never is after the stir of day commences; a
dandy, stealing out from Crockford's, crossed Piccadilly, lifting
up his head to draw in long breaths of the cool air, after the closeness
of over-lighted rooms and excitement; and Tremlet, marking
none of these things, was making his way through a line of
carriages slowly drawing up to take off their wearied masters
from a prolonged fête at Devonshire house, when a rude hand
clapped him on the shoulder.
“Monsieur Tremlet!”
“Ah, Baron! bien bon jour!”
“Bien rencontrè, Monsieur! You have insulted a lady tonight,
Leger, sir, is without a natural protector, and you have taken
advantage of her position to insult her—grossly, Mr. Tremlet,
grossly!”
Tremlet looked at the Russian during this extraordinary address,
and saw that he was evidently excited with wine. He
drew him aside into Berkeley street, and in the calmest manner
attempted to explain what was not very clear to himself. He
had totally forgotten Mrs. St. Leger. The diplomat, though
quite beyond himself with his excitement, had sufficient perception
left to see the weak point of his statement; and, infuriated
with the placid manner in which he attempted to excuse himself,
suddenly struck his glove into his face, and turned upon his heel.
They had been observed by a policeman, and, at the moment that
Tremlet, recovering from his astonishment, sprang forward to
resent the blow, the grey-coated guardian of the place laid his
hand upon his collar and detained him till the baron had disappeared.
More than once, on his way to the Albany, Tremlet surprised
himself forgetting both the baron and the insult, and feeding his
heart in delicious abandonment with the dreams of his new happiness.
He reached his rooms and threw himself on the bed,
forcing from his mind, with a strong effort, the presence of Lady
Imogen, and trying to look calmly on the unpleasant circumstance
before him. A quarrel, which, the day before, he would have
looked upon merely as an inconvenience, or which, under the insult
of a blow, he would have eagerly sought, became now an
almost insupportable evil. When he reflected on the subject
of the dispute—a contention about a woman of doubtful reputation
taking place in the same hour with a first avowal from the
in his fortunes, which he had as yet scarcely found time to realize
—on the consequences to her who was so newly dear to him, and
on all he might lose, now that life had become invaluable—his
thoughts were almost too painful to bear. How seldom do men
play with an equal stake in the game of taking life, and how
strange it is that equality of weapons is the only comparison made
necessary by the laws of honor!
Tremlet was not long the man to be undecided. He rose,
after an hour's reflection, and wrote as follows:—
“Baron: Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence of
this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in which our
position is false. I find myself, since last night, the accepted
lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master of estates and
title as a Count of the Russian empire. Under the etourdissement
of such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, perhaps my forgetfulness
of the lady, in whose cause you are so interested, admits
of indulgence. At any rate, I am so newly in love with
life, that I am willing to suppose, for an hour, that had you known
these circumstances, you would have taken a different view of the
offence in question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in
your power till then to make me the reparation necessary to
my honor. Yours, etc.,
There was a bridal on the following Monday at St. George's
church, and the Russian secretary stood behind the bridegroom.
Lady Ravelgold had never been seen so pale, but her face was
clear of all painful feeling; and it was observed by one who knew
of her daughter, a singular and undefinable elevation. As
the carriages with their white favors turned into Bond street, on
their way back to Belgrave square, the cortége was checked by
the press of vehicles, and the Russian, who accompanied Lady
Ravelgold in her chariot, found himself opposite the open britsçka
of a lady who fixed her glass full upon him without recognising a
feature of his face.
“I am afraid you have affronted Mrs. St. Leger, Baron!” said
Lady Ravelgold.
“Or I should not have been here!” said the Russian; and, as
they drove up Piccadilly, he had just time, between Bond street
and Milton Crescent, to tell her ladyship the foregone chapter of
this story.
The trulian, on that day, was fed with wedding-cake, and the
wound on Mr. Tremlet's lip was not cured by letting alone.
| People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction | |