 | People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction |  |
BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING.
The birds that flew over County Surrey on the twelfth of
June, 1845, 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
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,
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 curls
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
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 afore-named 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 Perc Goriot,” and, chapter by chapter, he
cocked up his car,” 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
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' a sweet month for pairing, and you are an
expeditious 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
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
upon 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—
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
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
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 the 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
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 when 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 tactics 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 eyes 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
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 ball-room,
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.
breezy motion would have stolen Endymion from Diana. She
waltzed too well for a lady—all but well enough for a premiére
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 cannot—”
“Cannot what?—cannot 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 convenience 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,
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 bonnetted 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 towards 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
earnest undertone of conversation. Miss Blakeney turned. Her
face glowed with exercise, 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 ascended 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 deep-mouthed 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
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.
| People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction | |