BETWEEN CUP AND LIP.
Never in her life, perhaps, had Helen enjoyed anything so much as her
afternoon's journey to London with Mrs. Lascelles. The smiling landscape
on either side the railroad looked fairer, brighter, more like _home_
than ever, when seen under a glow of celestial light radiating from a
happy heart. For her, that seemed a glory, shining direct from paradise,
which was to her companion but a glare of heat and discomfort, dazzling,
scorching--worse, unbecoming in the extreme.
"It's good for the country, my dear, that's a comfort; but I'm sure it's
fatal to one's complexion," said Mrs. Lascelles, vainly endeavouring to
combine the shelter of a blind with the draught from an open window at
forty miles an hour. "If they're to make hay when the sun shines, now's
their time. How provoking! We shall have him in here. I _told_ the guard
we wanted this carriage to ourselves. Dear Helen, can't you look as if
you'd got the mumps?"
But dear Helen was possibly not desirous of assuming so disfiguring a
malady, for the unwelcome passenger put his head into their compartment,
and, being a man of the world, sued in _formâ pauperis_ for an
accommodation to which he was entitled by the purchase of his
first-class ticket. He did _not_ say, "I have as good a right here as
you, having paid my fare;" but, lifting his hat, stepped quietly in with
a smiling apology for disturbing them. "The train is so full," said he,
"I cannot find room even second class. I hope I shall not be much in
your way."
We all know how readily the sex are disarmed by cool audacity veiled
under a respectful manner. The "odious creature" became "a pleasant
gentleman-like man" on the spot, and Picard--for it was none other--so
ingratiated himself with the ladies that, when he left them at
Paddington, they burst forth simultaneously in praise of his appearance,
his manners, his whiskers, his white hat, everything that was his.
"Must be a foreigner," declared Helen. "He's so well-bred!"
This, I have observed, is a favourite feminine fallacy, not to be
exploded but by much continental travel in mixed society.
"Must be _somebody_!" chimed in Mrs. Lascelles. "I am sure I know his
face. I think he drives a drag. I declare, Helen, I'll bow to him if I
meet him anywhere about."
"So will I," said Helen; and forgot his existence forthwith.
Was she not even now in the same town with Frank Vanguard--treading the
same pavement, breathing the same air (and smoke)?
"We'll have one turn for health in the Park," said Mrs. Lascelles, as
the two ladies seated themselves in her open carriage. "You know you're
in my charge to-day, Helen; and I mean to bring you out in what your
papa calls the 'best possible form.' To-night, dear, I'm determined you
shall win all your engagements!"
So her stout and florid coachman, shaving the kerbstone to an inch,
turned under the Marble Arch at a liberal twelve miles an hour, which
subsided into three before he reached Grosvenor Gate, and so, losing his
identity in a double column of carriages, brilliant and glittering as
his own, commenced the performance of that imposing function--grand,
deliberate, and funereal--which is solemnised every lawful day in Hyde
Park between six and half-past seven p.m. Barouches, sociables,
tax-carts, Victorias, every kind of wheeled conveyance, were wedged
three-deep in the road. All the chairs on the footway were occupied, and
the path was blocked with walkers to the rails. Mounted policemen,
making themselves ubiquitous, pranced about and gesticulated with
unusual vehemence. Those on foot ferried passengers across the drive at
intervals, majestically rebuking for that purpose the horse and his
rider, the charioteer, and the foaming, highly-bitted animal he
controlled.
It was once said of London by a visitor, I believe, from Dublin, that
"you could not see the town for the houses." Here, in this high tide of
humanity, you could not see the people for the crowd.
"Not a soul in the Park!" observed Mrs. Lascelles, languidly scanning
the myriads that surrounded her.
"I can't think where they get to," said Helen. "Nobody ever seems to
come here that one knows."
But a vivid blush rose to her temples while she spoke. So becoming was
its effect, that a young man, leaning against the rails, extricating his
intellect for a moment out of vacancy, exclaimed to his companion:
"_Caramba!_ Jack!"--he had once been at Gibraltar for a week, and piqued
himself on swearing in Spanish--"_Caramba!_ Jack! what a good-looking
girl! Who is she?"
And Jack, never at a loss, detailed her private history forthwith,
identifying her as the daughter of a foreign minister, and furnishing
his friend with a jaw-breaking German name, impracticable to pronounce,
even had it been possible to remember. But the origin of this young
lady's confusion occupied a position far beyond these pedestrian
admirers, and was, indeed, none other than Frank Vanguard, taking the
air on a very desirable hack amongst several equestrians of the season,
but so partitioned off from Helen by dandies, dowagers, peers,
commoners, and servants in livery, to say nothing of an iron railing,
that, for all gratification to be obtained from his society, he might as
well have been the other side of the Serpentine.
He saw her, though, that was some comfort. So did Mrs. Lascelles,
confirming thereby into certainty the suspicions she entertained that
Helen cherished a real affection for this captivating dragoon.
"She's a dear girl," thought that quick-sighted lady; "and Jin shall not
interfere with her. He's tolerably well off. They might both do worse;
and Sir Henry would like it. Home, John!"
So, although Frank sent his hack along as fast as our police-regulations
permit, in order to catch a glimpse of his charmer while she left the
Park at Albert Gate, he was rewarded only with a back view of Mrs.
Lascelles's carriage, ornamented by a boy and a basket taking a free
passage to their next destination.
"Never mind," thought the rider. "I can't miss seeing her to-night at
Battledore House. We'll put it all right in the tea-room. I _think_
she'll say, 'Yes.' Why shouldn't she? My darling, I'll make you as happy
as ever I can."
I wonder if the hack thought his master's caress at this moment was
bestowed entirely for his own sake. He shook his dainty head as if he
did, rolling his shoulders, and rising into one or two managed gambols,
as he bore Frank homewards at a canter.
To meet one's lady-love at an exceedingly smart ball with the desperate
intention of proposing to her then and there, ought to be excitement
enough, in all conscience, for any one day; but, during the London
season, people cram a week's work into twenty-four hours, and Frank had
yet a good deal to do before he could find himself in that tea-room at
Battledore House, to which he looked forward so longingly, and with the
recesses of which his previous experience, I fear, had rendered him
unjustifiably familiar.
A protracted mess-dinner to meet an illustrious personage must first be
gone through. It would be impossible to leave the barracks till that
personage gave the signal for breaking up; and although a London ball is
the latest of all festive gatherings, Frank, I think, was the only
individual present, at an early hour of the morning, who felt anything
but regret when the guest, who had thus honoured them, taking a kind and
cordial farewell of his entertainers, announced himself ready to depart.
"If I can get there by two," thought the young officer, "I may catch her
before she leaves. It's just my luck to have tumbled into this d----d
thing, when I wanted to be elsewhere!"
Thus, you see, does one man undervalue privileges which another perhaps
esteems the height of human felicity. Of all Thackeray's keen touches,
there are none keener than that in which Lord Steyne says, "Everybody
wants what they haven't got. 'Gad, I dined with the King yesterday, and
we'd boiled mutton and turnips!"
"We're late, Frank," said young Lord Kilgarron. "Jump into my brougham.
It will get us there quicker than a cab. Battledore House, Tom. Drive
like blazes!" The last to a smart lad in livery, who obeyed this
injunction to the letter, as Lord Kilgarron leaped lightly in after his
friend, and banged to the door.
"I _must_ go," added his lordship. "She's my aunt, you know. What's the
_use_ of an aunt, Frank? I get very little good out of mine. Now a
_grandmother's_ a decent kind of relationship. Mine gave me the very
mare we're driving--half-sister to Termagant. She's a rum 'un, I can
tell you!"
"A fast one, I see," remarked Frank, with much composure, considering
they were now whirling past the lamps at a gallop.
"Is it fast?" demanded his companion, exultingly. "Wouldn't she have won
the Garrison Cup at the Curragh last year, as sure as ever she was
saddled, only the fools ran the race at a walk, and never began at all
till the finish!"
Lord Kilgarron was a thorough Irishman, devoted to sport, reckless of
danger, and possessing the knack, indigenous to his countrymen, of
hitting off graphic description by a happy blunder.
"She can go," he added, "and she can stay. That mare, sir, would gallop
for a week. Faith, an' she's running off now!"
She was, indeed! The Termagant blood, roused by contradiction and an
injudicious pull at that side of her mouth which had not been rendered
callous in training, rose to boiling pitch. Irritation, resentment, and
fear of subsequent punishment, combined to madden her. A frantic rise at
her collar, a plunge, a lift of her shapely quarters, that only the
strongest of kicking-straps prevented from dissevering the whole
connection, and the mare was fairly out of her driver's hands, and
swinging down Piccadilly with a brougham and two dandies behind her,
almost as fast as she ever swept across the Curragh of Kildare.
"This is too good to last long," observed Frank, as, shaving a
lamp-post, they slued across the street, almost into the panels of a
stationary cab, causing its driver to swear hideously in the vulgar
tone. "But it is the only chance of being in time!"
"We'll pull through, well enough, bar lepping!" answered the other, a
touch of the brogue rising under excitement with mellow fluency to his
lips. "Ye done it now, by the vestment!" he added, while half-sister to
Termagant, cannoning from the broad wheel of an early vegetable waggon,
against which she cut her shoulder to the bone, lost her foothold, and
fell with a crash on the slippery pavement, bursting every strap and
buckle of her harness, smashing into fragments lamps, shafts, and
splash-board, to bring the whole carriage, with its contents, atop of
her in headlong confusion. "Hurt, Kil?" demanded Frank, rising from the
footway, on which he had gone a shooter through the swinging door, over
the entire person of his friend.
"Landed on my head!" answered Kilgarron, as esteeming the fact a
sufficient assurance of safety. "Where's Tom?"
"Here, my lord," replied that invincible functionary, with a cut on his
pate that, to use his master's expression, would have "bothered an
Irishman." "I've got your lordship a cab." Tom having indeed hailed one
of these peripatetic vehicles while in the act of regaining his feet to
secure the mare from destructive struggles by kneeling on her head.
In such a thoroughfare as Piccadilly, assistance is to be found even at
two in the morning. Ere long the mare was again on her legs, at least on
three of them. The brougham was being towed, like a dismasted wreck,
into port; and the two passengers, having obtained clean water and the
use of a clothes-brush in a chemist's shop, alighted from their cab at
the door of Battledore House, "not a ha'porth the worse," as Kilgarron
said, "an' fit to take the floor with the best of them!"
This young nobleman was proud of his dancing, pluming himself especially
on a strict attention to time, which he called "humouring the tune."
But these untoward incidents befalling guests who were too late at any
rate, brought their arrival to a period when most others were departing,
and the ball seemed nearly over. Passing hastily through the crowd that
always clusters about an awning, and hurrying up the cloth-covered steps
with unseemly precipitancy, Frank became aware of his ill-luck when he
heard the fatal announcement, "Lady Sycamore's carriage stops the way!
Lady Sycamore coming out!"
Lady Sycamore was Helen's aunt and occasional chaperon. The Miss Planes,
her ladyship's daughters, without pretension to beauty, were large,
healthy, fresh-looking girls, of the dairy-maid style. Their mamma,
wisely resolving that, whatever charms they did possess should be
deteriorated as little as possible by bad air and want of sleep,
invariably withdrew her charges from ball, drum, or concert at the
earliest hour she could gather them under her wing.
Frank, entering the cloak-room to leave his paletot, found himself face
to face with Helen coming into the hall.
For the first hour or two that night, Miss Hallaton had reaped a very
fair harvest of admiration. Those who arrived later, and to whom she was
pointed out as a beauty of the season, opined she was too pale, wanted
freshness, brightness, and wore a very saddened expression for so young
a girl. Lord Jericho, who danced his first quadrille with her, thought
Miss Hallaton, without exception, the pleasantest company he ever came
across, and held forth next day at luncheon in praise of her beauty,
wit, manners, originality, and good nature, till his sisters, the ladies
Ruth and Rebecca Jordan, hated the very sound of her name. Whereas, Vere
Vacuous (of the Foreign Office, with an inordinate opinion of the
last-named individual), who took her to tea, considered Miss Hallaton
"classical, perhaps--statuesque rather. All very well as long as she
don't open her mouth; but dull, he should say; probably quite
uneducated. Provincial; yes, that described her, he thought. Great want
of animation, and much too pale!"
This last accusation he must have retracted could he have seen the blush
that reddened Helen's cheek, when, coming suddenly out of the cloak-room
on the person she had been expecting the whole evening, she almost
butted her head into the tie of his neckcloth ere she could start back
and take him calmly by the hand.
Frank never saw it. How should he? Neither of these young people quite
understood all that was going on in the other's heart; and yet both were
prepared to take the fatal plunge, and pass the rest of their lives
together in the same element. Captain Vanguard, wonderful to relate,
felt almost shy, and found himself strangely unobservant of everything
but a beating in his temples, and a queer sensation about his diaphragm.
Of course he would have denied it, but his own colour rose higher than
usual, while Lady Sycamore, a portly person with vast scope for the
laces, jewels, and other ornaments which decorated her before and
behind, accosted him with exceeding graciousness, wondering volubly why
he came so late? Then he had to exchange friendly greetings with the
Miss Planes, each of whom considered him an eligible partner for a
waltz, a cotillion, or a lifetime. At the last moment too, Goldthred,
who had a happy knack of committing ill-timed civilities, and such
little social blunders, coming down-stairs unoccupied, pounced on Miss
Hallaton to put her into the carriage, thinking, no doubt, he was
fulfilling his duty to everybody's satisfaction, and Frank was forced to
offer his arm to Lady Sycamore.
It was too provoking! Poor Helen could have cried; but, goaded to
desperation, the moment Goldthred released her by the carriage-door, she
contrived to drop her fan with so much energy, that it fell clattering
on the steps at Frank Vanguard's feet.
He accepted the opportunity readily enough, and while he put it into
her hand, their heads came very near together, under the inspection only
of an approving linkman--more than half drunk.
"Did you get my note?" she whispered, quick as lightning.
"No."
"It's waiting for you. Thanks! Captain Vanguard. Good-night," and
disappearing in the gloomy vaults of the family coach, she rolled off
through the darkness, leaving him standing on the steps at Battledore
House,
"With a ghost-seer's look when the ghost disappears."
"I hope your honour's enjoyed your ball," said the linkman.
Frank started. He had never been up-stairs, nor even made his bow to
Lady Shuttlecock. What had he to do with the ball?
Nevertheless, he put his hand in his pocket and gave the linkman
half-a-crown.