RESTLESS NIGHT.
The hysterical affection of the praiseworthy antipolygamist having
taken place late in the evening, may be said to have broken up the
party. Mrs. General Gudgeon, who, when the catastrophe occurred, was
more or less asleep over the same book of prints to which she had
devoted herself on her first arrival, originated, as she witnessed the
confusion, a faint idea--(all this lady’s ideas, and they were not
many, were of a dim and hazy character, so that a good impression of her
thoughts--if we may be allowed the term--was a rarity hardly to be met
with)--that her better half was in some way connected with the matter;
and knowing that dining out usually “produced an effect upon him” (as
she delicately and indefinitely phrased it), she forthwith instituted
an inquiry after her carriage, and that “vehicle for the transmission of
heavy bodies” being reported in readiness, she issued marching orders,
and as soon as the honourable and gallant officer could be got upon his
legs, took him in tow, and in his company departed.
The Dackerels hastened to follow this example, the maternal Dackerel
having come in for her share of the General’s “good things,” and
appearing much inclined to “trump” Miss MacSalvo’s hysterics with a
fainting fit; J. D. D., with a face even longer than usual, supported
her retiring footsteps. He had been warming his chilly spirit in the
sunshine of the widow’s smiles, till, in the possibility of some
day calling that delicate creature his own, the outline of a new and
fascinating destiny had been traced upon the foolscap paper of his
imagination; but the doom was still upon him, and in the calls of filial
piety he recognised a fresh postponement even of this last forlorn hope.
Frere had shaken hands with Rose, apologised for not being able to
lunch with them the next day--a thing which nobody had asked him to
do--and, having set the butler and both the tall footmen to look for
his cotton umbrella, and put on consecutively two wrong greatcoats, was
about to walk home, when Mr. James Rasper interfered; he would drive his
friend home--anywhere--everywhere--so that he would but accompany him.
He wanted to show him his cab; he wished to learn his opinion of his
horse--in short, he would not be denied; and Frere, beginning to think
his friendship a worse alternative than his animosity, was forced to
consent, which he did thus--
“Well, yes, if you like. I shall get home sooner, that’s one comfort;
and I’ve got three hours’ work to do before I can go to bed. Is this
your trap? The brute won’t kick, will he? Ugh! what an awkward thing to
get into. I believe I’ve broken my shin. Go ahead! Mind you steer clear
of the lamp-posts. I can’t think why people ride when they’ve got legs
to walk with.”
Bracy waited patiently to hand Miss MacSalvo downstairs, which he did
with much gravity and decorum, lamenting the disgraceful conduct of
General Gudgeon, of whom he remarked, with a portentous shake of the
head, that “he greatly feared he was not a man of a sober or edifying
frame of mind,” which observation was certainly true as far as the
sobriety was concerned.
Whether Jemima of the sour countenance had, in arranging Frere’s bed,
imparted somewhat of the angularity of her own nature to the feathers,
or whether the events of the evening had excited that part of his system
in regard to the existence whereof he indulged in a very bigotry of
scepticism, namely, his nerves, certain it is that when (having read
Hindostanee till daylight peeped in upon his studies) he went to bed he
did _not_ follow his usual system of dropping asleep almost as soon
as he had laid his head upon his pillow; neither could he apply his
ordinary remedy for insomnolency, for when he tried to concentrate his
attention on some difficult sentence in his Hindostanee, or to solve
mentally an abstruse mathematical problem, a figure in white muslin
obscured the Asiatic characters or entangled itself inextricably with
rectangular triangles, so that the wished-for Q. E. D. could never
be arrived at. Frere had never thought Rose Arundel pretty till that
night--one reason for which might have been that he had never thought
about her appearance at all; but now, all of a sudden, the recollection
of her animated face as, carried away by the impulse of the moment, she
had begun to tell him how she admired his noble conduct, occurred to
him, and all its good points flashed upon him and haunted and oppressed
him. The smooth, broad forehead--he had observed that before, and
decided it to be a good forehead in a practical point of view--i.e.> a
capacious knowledge-box; but now he felt that it was something more,
and the mysterious attribute of beauty forced itself upon his notice and
flung its charm around him. Then her eyes--those deep, earnest, truthful
eyes--seemed yet to gaze at him, with a bright expression of interest
sparkling through their softness. He could not, try as he pleased,
banish the recollection of those eyes; as he lay and thought they came
across him, and bewitched him like a spell. And her mouth--what a world
of eloquence was there even in its silence; there might be traced the
same firmness and resolution which marked the haughty curl of Lewis’s
short upper lip; but the pride and sternness were wanting, and in their
place a chastened, pensive expression seemed to afford a guarantee that
the strength of character thus indicated could alone be aroused in a
good cause; but the true expression of that mouth was to be discovered
only when a smile, suggestive of every softer, brighter trait of woman’s
nature, revealed the little pearl-like teeth. All this seemed to have
come upon Frere like a sudden inspiration; he could not banish it
from his recollection, and the more he reflected upon it, the less he
understood it. And so he tossed and tumbled about, restless alike in
mind and body, till at last, just as the clock struck six, he fell into
a doze. But sleep afforded him no refuge from his tormentress. Rose,
changed and yet the same, haunted his dreams; but a halo appeared to
surround her--she had acquired a character of sanctity in his eyes.
Never again could he inadvertently address her as “sir,” and he would as
soon have thought of connecting the idea of a “good fellow” with one of
Raphael’s Madonnas as with Rose Arundel. At half-past seven Jemima--a
very chronometer for punctuality--knocked at his door, and receiving no
answer, _sans cérémonie_ walked in, to see what might be the matter; and
finding her master rather snoring than otherwise, invaded his slumbers
by exclaiming in a shrill voice--
“It ain’t of much use me getting out of my blessed bed with the rhumatiz
in the small o’ my back to bring your hot-water by halfpast seven, if
you lay there snoring like a hog, Master Richard, and won’t answer a
body when they call you;” to which appeal she received the somewhat
inconsequent reply--
“Well, suppose I wouldn’t let him shoot me, there’s nothing very fine in
that, Rose.”
“Listen to him,” exclaimed Jemima, aghast; “lor’ a mussy! I hope he
ain’t a wandering, or took to the drink. Master Richard, will ye please
to wake and talk like a Christian, and not go frightening a body out of
their wits,” she continued in a tone of voice as of an agitated sea-mew.
“Eh, what? oh, is that you, Jemima? I was so sound asleep; go away and
I’ll get up directly,” muttered Frere, becoming conscious of those usual
colloquial antipodes, “his room and his company.” But Jemima had been
flurried and rendered anxious on his account, first by his silence, next
by his incoherent address, and now finding her alarm had been without
foundation, her better feelings turned sour, and having her master at
an advantage, seeing that he could not rise till she should please to
convey herself away, she gave vent to her acidulated sentiments in the
following harangue--
“Yes, it’s all very well to say ‘go away,’ as if you was speaking to
a dog, after frightening people out of their wits by talking gibberish
about shooting and fine roses; but I see how it is, you’re a taking to
evil courses, a staying out here till one o’clock in the morning, for I
heard ye a comin’ in, lying awake with the rhumatiz in the small o’
my back, drinking and smoking cigars, which spiles the teeth and
hundermines the hintellects, and accounts for being non compo Mondays
the next morning; but I’ve lived with you and yours thirty year and odd,
and I ain’t a-going to see you rack-and-ruining of your constitution
without a-speaking up to tell you of it, for all your looking black
at the woman that nursed you when yer was an hinocent babby, all
onconscious of sich goings on.”
“My good woman, don’t talk such rubbish, but go away and let me get my
things on,” returned Frere in a species of apologetic growl.
“Rubbish indeed!” continued Jemima in a violent falsetto, her temper
being thoroughly aroused by the contemptuous epithet applied to her
unappreciated homily; “that’s all the thanks one gets for one’s good
advice, is it? but I don’t care. I’ve lived with you, man and boy, nigh
half my life, which, like the grass of the field, is three score years
and ten come Michaelmas twelvemonth, and I’m not a-going to see you take
to evil courses without lifting up my voice as a deacon set on a hill to
warn you against ’em, which is what your blessed mother would have done
only too gladly if she wasn’t an angel in the family vault, where we
must all go when our time comes; smoking filthy cigars and stopping out
till one o’clock in the morning, indeed!” and muttering these words over
and over to herself, as a sort of _refrain_, Jemima hobbled out of the
room with more stoutness and alacrity than could have been expected from
her antiquated appearance. Relieved from the incubus of her presence,
Frere rose and proceeded to dress himself; but the nightmare that had
oppressed him, whether sleeping or waking, haunted him still.
In vain he tried to shave himself; the vision in white muslin came
between his face and the looking-glass and occasioned him to cut his
chin. At his frugal breakfast it was with him again, and strange to
say, took away his appetite; it went out with him to his scientific
institution, and weakened his perceptions, and absorbed his attention,
and dulled his memory, till even the most positive resolved nebulæ swam
in a mist before him, and the mountains of the moon, which had lately
developed a new crater, might have been the _bona fide_ productions of
that planet instead of merely her African godchildren, for aught that
he could have stated to the contrary. He got through his morning’s work
somehow, and then the vision prompted him to call at Lady Lombard’s,
and gave him no peace till he started for the goodly mansion of that
hospitable widow, which he did in such an unusually agitated frame of
mind, that for the first time in the memory of man he forgot his cotton
umbrella; he hurried wildly through the streets, overthrowing little
children and reversing apple-women, not to mention an insane attempt to
constitute himself a member of the “happy family,” by dashing violently
against the wires of their cage, which contains all kinds of strange
animals except a Richard Frere, or a _Podiccps Cornutus_, till at last
he reached the locality in which Lady Lombard’s house was situated.
And here a new and unaccountable crotchet took possession of his
brain. Frere, who since he could run alone and express his sentiments
intelligibly in his native tongue had never known what bashfulness
meant, was seized with a sudden attack of that uncomfortable sensation,
the extinguisher of so many would-be shining lights of humanity, who
but for that “flooring” quality would have published such books and made
such speeches that the hair of society at large, upraised with wonder
and admiration, must have stood on end through all time, “like quills
upon the fretful porcupine.” So violent was this attack of shyness that,
after having hurried from his office as though life and death hung upon
his speed, he could not make up his mind whether to pay the projected
visit or not, and actually strolled up and down, passing and repassing
the door some half-dozen times before he ventured to knock at it; nay,
to such an extent had this mysterious “_timor panico_” seized upon
him, that when the plush-clad “man mountain” appeared in answer to his
summons he merely left his card, and inquiring meekly how the ladies
were, posted off at, if anything, a more rapid pace than that at which
he had walked on his way thither.
Then ere he had proceeded the length of a street came the reaction,
under the influence of which he not unjustly stigmatised himself as
an egregious fool, and but for very shame would fain have retraced his
steps. He could not, however, make up any credible excuse for facing the
noble footman a second time, so as the next best thing to seeing Rose,
he found his way to Park Crescent and called upon Lewis, to whom he
related how he felt so restless and fidgety that he was persuaded he
must be about to develop a feverish cold, or some analogous abomination.
Having engaged Lewis to accompany him on the following evening to
a lecture at the Palaeontological on “The Relations of the Earlier
Zoophytes,” whoever they might be, he was about to depart, when, as he
reached the hall, a carriage, with a splendid pair of greys, dashed up
to the door, and a pretty little brunette with sparkling black eyes,
a brilliant complexion, and a bonnet the colour of raspberry
ice, descended, and passing Frere with a glance half saucy, half
contemptuous, ran upstairs as if she were an _habituée_ of the house.
This was Emily, Countess Portici, Loid Bellefield’s younger sister, who,
having at nineteen run away with an Italian nobleman, for love of his
black eyes and ivory complexion, had ere she was five-and-twenty grown
heartily sick of them and of Italy, and discovered some good reason to
quit that land of uncomfortable splendour to enjoy the gaieties of a
London spring, leaving her picturesque husband to console himself
as best he might during her absence. She possessed very high spirits
without any vast amount of judgment to counterbalance them, and her
present frame of mind was that of a school-girl rejoicing in a holiday,
into which she was determined to cram as much pleasure, fun, and frolic
as an unlimited capacity for enjoyment would enable her to undergo. On
the strength of her position as a married woman, she constituted
herself Annie’s chaperon on all occasions when the vigilance of Minerva
Livingstone could be eluded; and as that Gorgon of the nineteenth
century was not so young as she had been, and found late hours tend
to reduce her stamina and degrade the dignity of ill temper to the
ignominious level of mere peevishness, she unwillingly allowed the
Countess Portici to act as her substitute and escort Annie to such
evening entertainments as from their nature threatened to invade the
hours dedicated by Minerva to repose. There was much similarity of
feature and of manner between the Countess and her brother Charles
Leicester, only that Charley’s languid drawl was in Emily replaced by a
sparkling vivacity, which, together with a certain selfish good-nature
that led her to promote the enjoyment of others on every occasion in
which it did not come in contact with her own, was sufficient to render
her a general favourite. Annie was no exception to this rule; and always
delighted to escape from the petrifying influence of Minerva, eagerly
seconded all her lively cousin’s schemes for her amusement.
The object of the Countess’s visit on the present occasion was to secure
Annie for the following evening, when they were to dine together, and
were afterwards to be escorted to the Opera by Lord Bellefield, where
they were to hear a new soprano with a voice three notes higher than
that of anybody else, which notes might by a mild and easy figure of
speech be not inaptly termed bank-notes, seeing that by their exercise
the fair cantatrice had realised the satisfactory sum of thirty thousand
pounds.
The Countess’s scheme happening to fit in very nicely with the views of
the elders, as the General dined out, and Minerva was nursing a cold,
which must have reduced the temperature of her blood to some frightful
figure below zero, the project met with no more opposition than, from
the constitution of Miss Livingstone’s mind, was inevitable. And thus it
came about that on the following day Emily called for Annie, and the two
girls (for the matron was a very _girlish_ specimen of five-and-twenty)
drove round the park together, and then retired to Emily’s boudoir and
“talked confidence” till it was time to dress. Annie’s revelations
did not go much more than skin-deep, and related chiefly to anxieties
concerning papa and difficulties with Aunt Martha, who was “so tiresome
about things, and never would let anybody love her,” and then branched
off to a retrospective sketch of the preliminary difficulties which had
obstructed Charley Leicester’s wedding, ending by a detailed account
of the ceremony itself, and Annie’s hopes and fears as to the ultimate
result of the bridegroom’s good resolutions.
Emily, on the contrary, plunged at once _in médias res_, and related
how all last winter she had been rendered wretched by “Alessandro’s”
attentions to the Marchese Giulia di B------ani (she revealed the blank
in an agitated whisper), and what all her particular friends had said
to her on the subject, and how she had jointly and severally replied to
them that the dignity of her sex supported her; whence, warming with
her subject, she went on to state how she in her turn had supported this
dignity by repulsing the advances of Captain Augustus (familiarly and
affectionately reduced, for colloquial purposes, into Gus) Travers,
who, having been her first love, and retired _vice_ Alessandro Conte de
Portici promoted to the rank of husband, considered that it was again
his innings, and had diligently sought to become platonically her third
love and disputed the post of _cavalier servente_ with all and sundry,
in spite of which constancy and devotion she had persevered in her
repulsiveness until, between her cruelty and a reckless indifference to
malaria, poor Gus was attacked with a brain fever, and then of course
when he grew a little better she could not continue unkind to him,
for she might have had his life to answer for, and that was a serious
consideration; and so by degrees he took to coming to the Palazzo
Portici constantly and went about to places with her, and somehow she
got accustomed to him, and Alessandro did not seem to mind, and poor Gus
always behaved very well, and only asked to be allowed the privilege of
her friendship, and everybody did the same sort of thing--“It’s their
way over there, you know, Annie dear;” till at last Belle-field came,
and he had never been able to endure Gus because he was so handsome,
poor fellow, so Bellefield made a great fuss and said all sorts
of shocking things, and set Alessandro at her; and worse than all,
quarrelled with Gus and wanted to horsewhip him, and it almost came to a
duel, only she wrote Gus a little note, imploring him not to fight, but
to go away and forget her; and he had done the first directly, and she
dared say he had done the second, for she’d never seen him since, which
of course she was very glad of. And here she heaved a deep sigh and
caressed a comic and unnatural transalpine poodle, which by reason of
its flowing locks looked like an animated carriage mat, as though it
had been a pet lamb, the sole prop of some heart-broken and dishevelled
shepherdess, to which picture of pastoral pathos did Emily, Countess di
Portici, then and there mentally assimilate herself.
And to all this history of loves, and hates, and platonic friendships,
whatever they might be, simple innocent Annie listened with much
interest and more perplexity. She had a vague notion that Emily had
behaved foolishly, if not wrongly; but she was very fond of her cousin,
who, from the difference in their respective ages, had acquired a
degree of ascendency over her which their natural characters scarcely
warranted. Then Annie’s deep ignorance of foreign manners and customs
threw a mist of uncertainty around the whole affair, beneath the shadow
of which she was able to put the most charitable construction on Emily’s
conduct without “stultifying her moral sense” (to speak as a logician);
still she felt called upon to give her cousin a little good advice in
regard to striving entirely to forget, and scrupulously to avoid for the
future, the too fascinating Gus, for which Emily kissed her and called
her a dear, silly, little prude; then twining their arms round each
other’s taper waists, the girls descended to the dining-room, united
for the time being, literally and figuratively, by the closest bonds
of amity and affection. Standing rather in awe of her brother, Emily
conducted herself during the meal with so much gravity and decorum that
she quite threw a shade over Annie’s usual lightheartedness, and by the
time they reached their opera box a more sombre trio (not even excepting
the soprano, the tenor, and the baritone, of whom the first two were
prepared to be poisoned, and the third to stab himself on their marble
tomb before the evening should be over) could not have been found
beneath the roof of Her Majesty’s theatre.
Between the acts of the opera a divertissement was introduced, in which
a _danseuse_, who had acquired an Italian reputation, but who was as
yet unknown in England, was to make her first appearance. Emily was
conversing volubly about her various merits, when a fashionably-dressed
young man with delicate features, a profusion of dark waving curls,
and a pair of the most interesting little black moustachios imaginable,
lounged into one of the stalls and began lazily to scrutinise the
company through a richly-mounted opera-glass. He was undeniably
handsome, but the expression of his face was disagreeable, and his
whole demeanour blasé and puppyish in the extreme. As he entered,
Annie perceived her cousin to give a violent start, and, as she met her
glance, to colour slightly; then, evidently unwilling to attract her
brother’s notice, she made a successful effort to recover herself, and
appeared completely absorbed in the terpsi-chorean prodigies of the
new opera-dancer. Just at the conclusion of the divertissement some one
knocked at the door of the box, and on Lord Bellefield’s opening it,
Annie heard a man’s voice say, in a hurried manner, “Can your Lordship
allow me two minutes’ conversation? My business is of the utmost
importance.” Lord Bellefield replied in the affirmative and quitted the
box, closing the door behind him. As he did so, Emily, laying her finger
on her cousin’s arm, said in a hurried whisper: “Annie, do you see that
gentleman in the fourth row of stalls, the sixth from this end? That’s
Gus; isn’t he handsome, poor fellow? Ah!” she continued, as the object
of her scrutiny suddenly brought his opera-glass to bear upon their box,
“he has made me out, and he does not know that Bellefield is here. Oh! I
hope he won’t think of coming up!”
As she spoke, Gus, having become aware of her presence, made an
almost imperceptible sign of recognition, and in the same quiet manner
telegraphed an entreaty to be allowed to join her; upon which Emily
frowned and shook her head by way of prohibition, favouring Gus
afterwards with a pensive smile, to show that her refusal proceeded less
from choice than from necessity. Almost as she did so Lord Bellefield
returned, looking annoyed and anxious. “I am obliged to leave you for
half-an-hour,” he said, “but you will be perfectly safe here, and I
shall return in plenty of time to escort you home. You may depend upon
my coming to fetch you.” And almost before he finished speaking he had
quitted the box and was gone.
Confused and half-frightened at his sudden departure, Annie remained for
a minute or two with her eyes fixed on the door through which he had
as it were vanished; when she again glanced towards the stage the stall
lately occupied by Augustus Travers was vacant.