DISTRACTIONS.
Mrs. Lascelles, like many of her sex, entertained a high opinion of her
own medical skill in all ailments of mind or body. If your finger ached
she would produce an absurd little box, the size of a Geneva watch, from
which, with an infinitesimal gold spoon, like a bodkin, she proceeded to
give you a strong dose, consisting of two white atoms not so large as
pins' heads, dissolved in a glass of pure water, which they neither
flavoured nor coloured, nor otherwise affected in the least. Repeating
this elfin discipline two or three times with the utmost gravity, she
would have been exceedingly mortified, and almost offended, if you had
not declared yourself better forthwith. And it is but fair to say that I
never heard of any one being worse for the prescriptions she dispensed
with such confidence and liberality.
But if the pain was in your heart this general practitioner buckled on
her armour with yet greater alacrity, and confronted the enemy on a far
more vigorous system of tactics. She refrained indeed, wisely enough,
from prematurely assaulting his stronghold, but attacked his outworks
one by one with unflinching determination, so that the citadel, deprived
on all sides of its supports, wavered, collapsed, and surrendered at
discretion.
One of the most powerful engines with which she battered, so to speak,
the obstinate fortresses garrisoned by such tried veterans as Memory,
Pique, and Disappointment, was a "little gaiety," by which Mrs.
Lascelles understood a round of London amusements and continual change
of scene. "Sympathy, my dear," she would say, with a comical little sigh
and shake of her dainty head, "sympathy from those who have felt sorrow,
and going about--to good places, of course--with dancing, you know, and
plenty of partners, will cure anything. _Anything!_ I assure you, for
I've tried it; except, perhaps, a broken neck!"
In pursuance, then, of this extremely plausible theory, it was not long
after the events described in the last chapter, that Miss Hallaton found
herself sitting next Mrs. Lascelles in a box at the Opera, hoping, no
doubt, for that distraction from sorrow which I fear is seldom found in
music, mirth, or gaiety; but which is rarely sought in vain by the
pillow of suffering, in the house of mourning, under any roof or in any
situation where we can lend a willing hand at the great cable of
brotherly love and unselfish effort, which alone hauls the ship's
company into port at last.
It seems to me that sights and sounds of beauty serve but to add a cruel
poison to the sting; whereas honest, unremitting toil, provides us a
certain opiate; and active charity towards others draws gradually the
venom from our wound.
Helen had suffered acutely. The girl's pride was humbled to the dust,
and even that infliction was not the worst. Her gods had deceived her,
and her idols proved to be but clay. Frank Vanguard's conduct was more
than fickle, more than heartless; it seemed actually brutal and unmanly!
Since her reply to the letter in which he asked her to become his wife,
he had never been near her, had held no communication with her family
nor herself, but had avoided them all with a persistence insulting as it
was unaccountable.
Whatever reasons he might have, she felt his conduct was utterly
inexcusable, and Helen endured that bitterest of all punishments, the
conviction not only that her love was without return, but that she had
bestowed it on an unworthy object; had misconceived the very nature,
mistaken the very identity of him whom she once felt proud to know so
thoroughly, whom she imagined no one thus knew but herself.
"I thought him so different!" In that simple sentence--said by how many,
and how bitterly!--lurked all the sorrow, all the humiliation, all the
despair. The man she loved had never really existed. She must teach
herself to forget this dream, this delusion, as if it had never been.
With woman's fortitude of endurance, woman's decency of courage, Helen
fought her battle, hid her wounds, and swallowed her tears, but the
struggle told on her severely. Sir Henry, cursing late hours and hot
rooms, talked of taking his daughter back to the country. Even Jin's
heart smote her when she marked the pale face, the drooping gestures,
the sad, weary looks; while Mrs. Lascelles, insisting on her own
treatment of a malady she was persuaded she alone could cure, took every
opportunity of administering amusement in large doses, and esteemed no
part of her regimen more efficacious than these long hours of heat,
glare, noise, imprisonment, and musical stupefaction, spent at the
Italian Opera.
So Helen, watching the business of the stage with eyes from which the
tears would _not_ keep back, while those thrilling strains rose and fell
in the outcry of remorseful passion, or the wail of hopeless, yet
undying love, wondered vaguely why there should be all this sorrow upon
earth, springing, apparently, from the purest and most elevated
instincts of the human heart. She forgot that a time would come
hereafter, perhaps on this side the grave, when the misery that was
eating into her own young life must seem no less unreasonable, no less
unreal, than that of the harmonious lady yonder, in pearls and white
satin, who would take her place at supper in an hour, with spirits and
appetite unimpaired by the breaking heart that, flying mellifluously to
her lips in this intricate _cavatina_, brought down on her a rainbow
shower of bouquets, followed by a thunderstorm of applause. "That _is_
singing!" said Miss Ross, from the back of the box, drawing a long
breath of intense enjoyment, the enjoyment of the artist who appreciates
as well as admires. "Rose, why didn't I bring a bouquet? I'd throw my
head at her if it would take off!"
Mrs. Lascelles laughed, and made a sign signifying "Hush!" while Miss
Ross whispered over Helen's shoulder--"Isn't it _too_ delightful, dear?
In my opinion music's the only thing worth living for!"
Helen, who esteemed nothing much worth living for at that moment,
responded with modified enthusiasm, and turned languidly to the stage.
Just then the box-door opened; and she knew, though he was behind her,
and had not spoken a syllable, that it admitted Frank Vanguard!
He couldn't keep away! Of course he would not have allowed that any part
of this crowded house held for him the slightest attraction.
Fidgetting in the stalls, and getting Helen's well-remembered profile
within range of his opera-glasses, it was only natural he should tell
himself she could never be more to him than a humiliating memory, a
cause of gratitude for his narrow escape. It was also natural that he
should take his good manners severely to task for negligence, in not
having called lately on Mrs. Lascelles, and should scout the notion of
being kept out of her box by anybody in the world, man or woman! So,
looking paler than usual, and, for once in his life, almost pompous in
his embarrassment, he tapped at the door, and found himself stumbling
over a delicate little satin-shod foot, belonging to Miss Ross, of whose
presence, to do him justice, till he made this ungainly entrance, he had
not the slightest suspicion!
"It's a good omen!" thought that quaint and speculative young person,
while _her_ heart too was beating faster than common. "I shall trip you
up at last, sir; and what a fall I'll give you!" But she reflected also
that they would probably go down together; and there was something not
unpleasant in the apprehension.
Frank recovered himself sufficiently to greet Mrs. Lascelles with
customary politeness, and made Helen a ceremonious bow, without offering
to shake hands. She construed the omission into a studied and gratuitous
slight.
So the poor girl turned once more to the stage, leaning her cheek on her
hand, and wondering sadly, almost humbly, what she had done to be so
punished, tried to interest herself in the progress of the opera.
A tenor, swelling in black velvet, was expressing intense adoration of
some object unknown, possibly the great chandelier, at which he trilled
and quavered with unflagging persistency--lifting to it eyes, eye-brows,
chest, and shoulders, rising on his toes, as if, like the skylark
soaring and singing towards the light, he would fain project himself,
his voice, his trunk-breeches, and his dearest affections, right through
the roof!
Nor did he seem in the slightest degree influenced by suspicion or
dismay, though the stage, becoming gradually darkened, filled rapidly
with assassins, all wearing black cloaks, black masks, black gloves,
brandishing poniards, and bursting forth--as was extremely natural in a
band of paid murderers stealing on their victim--into a magnificent and
deafening chorus, such as caused the very curls of the Conductor to
vibrate on his head, while he waved his baton to and fro in spasmodic
frenzy, the crisis of a musical delirium.
It was Jin's opportunity. From her dark corner those black eyes flashed
like lamps, while she murmured, under cover of the ophicleide and the
big drum:
"You've never been to see us, Captain Vanguard. Rose has missed you
sadly, and--and--so have I."
A vacant chair stood by her own, so close, that her gown partly covered
its cushion. There was obvious invitation in her gesture, while she
removed the intrusive fold, and Frank dropped willingly enough into that
vacant seat.
Wounded, sore, reckless, angry with one woman, he was in a mood to
render the attractions of such another as Miss Ross extremely dangerous.
His attention being taken off his own grievances, the cessation of pain
was in itself delightful; and I fear he had too little generosity to
forbear the petty triumph of showing Miss Hallaton that others could
care for him even if she did not. Besides, the act of flirting with such
a professor as Jin in the dark corner of an opera-box, however
dangerous, was, in itself, no unpleasant pastime; so, while Helen, cold
and sick at heart, suffered herself to be deafened by chorus and
orchestra, Frank, to use his own expression, "went in a perisher, and
made tremendous running with Miss Ross!"
She was an experienced angler, so perfect in the art that being in
earnest rather increased her skill than otherwise. The popularity of our
Italian Opera is not entirely due to its music, the best and the highest
paid for in Europe. Its boxes form also a convenient territory for the
prosecution of those skirmishes, which would become actual warfare but
for the nature of the ground on which they take place. There are fair
and dazzling visions, there are soft, sad sounds--most intoxicating when
softest and saddest. There is bright glare on others, semi-obscurity for
ourselves. There are sympathy, juxta-position, a common object of
interest, a necessity for whispers, and a propriety in absolute silence,
which is in itself the strongest possible stimulant to conversation.
Above all, there is a certain sentiment of isolation, the result of
being shut up together for a definite period, that renders people
mutually attractive; just as no man alive can accompany a woman,
however ugly, for a long sea voyage, and not fall in love with her to a
certainty.
"You don't, and you _know_ you don't!" whispered Jin, in answer to some
wild remark of Frank's, drowned for all ears but her own in an
outrageous crash of brass instruments. "Though, mind, I won't have you
fancy for a moment that I lump you in with the others, tie you all up in
a bunch, and label you 'poison.' No, I shall not give you my poor
gardenia. You'll take it on to Lady Clearwell's, I dare say. But it will
never get any farther than the first pretty woman you dance with. Water!
Pooh! It would wither, poor thing, and much you'd care for it, then!
Well, if you _really_ promise----No. I won't. I never did in my life,
and I won't begin! You needn't move, it's only Goldie. Now _that's_ a
faithful admirer, if you like!"
It was indeed none other but this devoted swain, who, meekly entering,
and paying homage stiffly enough to Mrs. Lascelles, seated himself
between that lady and Helen, but afforded the former far the largest
share of his attention and indisputable remarks on things in general.
The mistress of the box could not be said to be disappointed, though she
wished it was somebody else, for her glasses were even now fixed on that
somebody's drooping aristocratic old head, a dozen feet below her. Why
did he not come up? She owed him the less grudge for this neglect, that
she had a strong conviction Sir Henry Hallaton was fast asleep in his
stall.
Mrs. Lascelles stifled a sigh.
"It's up-hill work--very!" she said to her own heart. "And I'm making
this other poor fellow sadly wretched. He's like the people one reads
about in a novel. He never complains. I wish he would! I wish he'd scold
me well, and tell me what a beast I am!"
Touching his arm with her fan, while she made some trifling observation,
it cut her to the quick to observe how his face brightened up, like a
dog's at the voice of its master; and for the first time Mrs. Lascelles
found herself entertaining a vague suspicion that it might be unwise as
well as unfeeling to throw away so much confiding adoration, to barter a
reality that would last her lifetime, for a mere fancy, less tangible
and less permanent than a dream. So, with half-a-dozen kind words,
meaning nothing, she lifted this simple young man to the seventh heaven
of transport, reaping, from her own act, the quiet satisfaction that
follows such deeds of benevolence and common humanity.
Meanwhile, Frank had risen to go. Carefully abstaining from the
slightest glance in Miss Hallaton's direction, he took an exceedingly
affectionate leave of Miss Ross, and resumed his stall, which was next
to that of Sir Henry, fastening a gardenia, with some little pretension,
in his button-hole.
"Been on the war-path," thought Sir Henry, waking up from a doze and
observing this lately-won decoration. "Quick work. Taken a scalp
already, and hanging it on his belt." Then he remembered his own
daughter was in the house, and meditated grimly on the deadly penalties
he would exact from any man who should be so rash as to trifle with
Helen; consoled, however, by the reflection that she was the last girl
in the world to yield even so light a trophy as a flower to one who had
not earned it in honourable and legitimate warfare.
"What's the attraction, Jin?" asked Mrs. Lascelles, with something of
irritation in her tone. "You've never taken your glasses off one spot in
the stalls for the last ten minutes! Will you share the object amongst
us, or must you keep it all to yourself?"
Miss Ross was never at a loss.
"It's the tower of Babel, dear," she answered, good humouredly, "before
the confusion of tongues. Did you ever see such a head! There, two rows
behind Sir Henry Hallaton. The woman in pink, with all those beads
wound round her, bangles on her arms, and, I do believe, a fish-bone
through her nose! I can see it, I'm sure, when she turns this way!" Thus
Jin, with her glasses in her lap, with mirth and mischief in her eyes,
to all appearance with no sentiment but ridicule in her heart.
Miss Ross deserved credit, I think, for unscrupulous invention and
readiness of resource, also for the quickness with which she pounced on
the woman in pink, a respectable matron, whose head-gear, modelled after
that of a notorious Parisian impropriety, was simply such as she saw
worn by ladies of her own station and repute every night of her life.
Jin would have studied this apparition perhaps more attentively, but
that her whole soul was projecting itself, as it were, through her
glasses, towards Frank Vanguard and his gardenia. She did not regret
giving it him now. She was falling horribly in love with him. How she
would have hated Helen, she thought, but that she could afford to pity
her!
I have said this enthusiast _really_ enjoyed an opera, loving _fine_
even more dearly than _pretty_ music.
Deferring, therefore, till to-morrow the laying of plans, calculation of
chances, that laborious train of reflection in which she knew too well
she must collect the resources of her head to attain the desire of her
heart, she sat back in her chair, and abandoned herself to one of those
dreams which are perhaps the most ecstatic of all visions vouchsafed to
us poor children of clay.
To repose unobserved in a corner, to drink in sounds of more than mortal
sweetness, on which the soul, linked to one dear image, like Paolo in
the arms of Francesca, floats away, away through the realms of space,
into the fabulous regions of unchanging, unadulterated love,--is not
this a happiness to which the joy of fruition, the content of security,
must seem sadly tame and insipid, to which the "sober certainty of
waking bliss" is but vulgar reality, clogging the wings of impossible
romance?
And now the performance drew to a close. The tenor had sung his _aria_
of triumphant villany, and his _solo_ of despairing remorse. The
_basso_, having cursed through the whole gamut in exceedingly correct
time, had fallen on his knees at the foot-lights, tearing a white wig,
after the approved pattern of King Lear. Priests, soldiers, friars,
courtiers, townsmen, stately nobles, and smiling peasant-girls, thronged
the entire depth of the stage, while above the motley crowd waved and
flaunted symbols of religion, spoils of warfare, and the banner of
France. The _prima donna_, venting shriek on shriek, with surprising
shrillness and rapidity, had died in convulsions of unusual energy, and
even repeated her demise, after an enthusiastic _encore_; the orchestra,
becoming louder, fiercer, faster, with each successive bar, had worked
up to the grand deafening and discordant crash, which is esteemed a
worthy _finale_ to all great compositions, and the curtain hovering to a
fall, glasses were cased, white shoulders cloaked, both on and off the
stage all acting was over, and the audience rose to go away.
Let us follow Mrs. Lascelles and her party, escorted only by the
constant Goldthred, as they leave their box to attain the stairs, the
crush-room, the carriage, and eventually the street.
We shall not need to hurry--their progress, gaining about a yard a
minute, is slow and deliberate as a funeral. At the lowest step of the
whole flight, Helen is aware of Frank Vanguard making his way through
the crush, apparently with the intention of joining their party. In her
distress, looking wildly round for help, she catches sight of her
father's grizzled head above the surface; and, meeting his eye,
telegraphs for assistance. Sir Henry, whose redeeming point is the care
he takes of his daughter, makes no cessation of edging, sliding,
bowing, and begging pardon, till he reaches her side, and thus places
himself in a false position as regards the ladies he has lately left.
They cling to him with annoying persistence, and he condemns himself,
very forcibly too, though below his breath, more than once for having a
daughter "out," and yet choosing to know such women as Mrs. Battersea
and her sister, Kate Cremorne. He must not introduce them to Mrs.
Lascelles, as they obviously wish; he _will_ not introduce them to
Helen, though they would like this too; and how can he ignore them
completely, when he is engaged to supper this very night at their house?
With all his careless selfishness, it annoyed Sir Henry exceedingly to
be guilty of a rudeness or unkindness towards any one, and he formed
more good resolutions to avoid doubtful society for the future in the
half-dozen paces he waded through that stream of muslin four feet deep,
and all the colours of the rainbow, than he had made, and broken, in his
whole life before.
Ere he could accost Helen, however, assistance arrived from an
unexpected quarter. Picard, who was just as sure to be at the Opera as
any one of the fiddles in the orchestra, recognised his
fellow-travellers from Windsor with a profound and enthusiastic bow,
followed by a smiling approach, in which his teeth, his whiskers, his
grin, and his stealthy yet confident demeanour, proclaimed the "tiger"
of social life, not wanting in some of the attributes belonging to his
nobler namesake, the terror of the jungle.
In another stride he would have offered his arm to Helen, but Mrs.
Lascelles, warned by Sir Henry's eye, interposed, and seeing no other
way of saving her charge, with a devotion almost maternal, cast off from
Goldthred and seized it herself.
"Take care of Helen!" she whispered in the latter's ear, while the
flowers in her wreath brushed his very cheek. "This man mustn't take
her--you understand! Come to-morrow to luncheon."
The whisper and its purport made him quite happy; Mrs. Lascelles had
also the satisfaction of observing something like displeasure cloud Sir
Henry's eyes as they rested on herself and her _impromptu_ cavalier.
"If he's cross it shows he _cares_," was her first thought. "Ah! he'll
never care like the _other one_,"--her second, and that which remained
longest in her mind.
The "other one," in the mean time, walked meekly on towards the carriage
with Helen tucked under his elbow, thus freeing Sir Henry from his
embarrassment, and leaving him at leisure to devote his attentions to
Mrs. Battersea, who was, indeed, by no means inclined to let him off.
Mrs. Lascelles followed on the arm of Picard, who behaved as well as he
could, though he would rather have taken Helen; these were succeeded by
Jin and Frank Vanguard, apparently very well pleased with each other and
thoroughly disposed to accept the situation.
I know not what Frank whispered, but gather that it was something
complimentary by his companion's answer.
"We're not the only ones!" said Jin, looking up from under a scarlet
hood, like a bewitching gipsy.
"How do you mean?" asked Frank, innocently enough.
"Don't you see your old love and Mr. Goldthred?" was the reply. "Confess
now--honour! You _did_ care for her once!"
"A little, perhaps," he answered lightly, though his lip quivered, and
she saw it.
"But you don't now?" she pursued, leaning towards him with a gesture of
confiding tenderness impossible to resist.
"You _know_ I don't," he answered, and pressed the arm that rested on
his own, gently but firmly to his heart.
She broke into one of those rare smiles by which, on occasion, she knew
how to rivet her work so securely.
"It's a case, I'm sure!" she exclaimed. "They'll be a very happy couple,
and I can wish her joy _now_ with all my heart!"