University of Virginia Library

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

people would go sweltering about in such a glare for a cold
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

of this fair abode. Yet the grounds were still private
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,

from the junior partner, could scarce tell you, when it was
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

the music, “They who soar highest strike surest; the dove lies
in the falcon's bosom.”