ATTRACTIONS.
There are various phases of hospitality on which people depend for
increase of social reputation and entertainment of their friends. One
lady sets great store by her dinners, the excellence of her cook, the
lighting and decorations of her table, the tact with which she selects
her guests. Another believes it impossible to equal her "breakfasts,"
why so called, I am at a loss to explain, since they take place after
luncheon. A third thinks this last-named meal forms the perfection of
friendly intercourse, while a fourth stands or falls by the agreeable
circle she gathers round her at afternoon tea. Mrs. Battersea affected
none of these. She piqued herself exclusively on her suppers; and to sup
with Mrs. Battersea after the Opera was to form one of a circle more
remarkable for gaiety, good-humour, and general recklessness, than for
wisdom, propriety of demeanour, or reputed respectability.
They were very pleasant, nevertheless, these little gatherings. She
understood so thoroughly how they should be constituted, the quantity of
guests, the quality of wines drank, and the dishes set on the table. You
had some difficulty in finding her house, no doubt, even if you went in
a hack-cab, for it lurked in those remoter regions of London which are
to Belgravia what Belgravia must once have been to Grosvenor Square.
She was a "settler," she said, and liked the wild, free life of the
borders. When the real respectables, dowager peeresses and those sort of
people, moved down to her, she would "up stick" and clear out farther
west! Meantime the little house looked very charming, even at half-past
twelve p.m. The delicate foliage of an acacia quivered in the light at
its door; your foot trod the street pavement indeed, but your nostrils
breathed the fragrance of hawthorn and hay-fields, not so very far off.
A flagged passage through ten feet of garden led you into a beautiful
little hall with tesselated pavement, globe lamps, statuettes,
flower-boxes, a fountain, and a cockatoo. On your senses stole the
heavy, subtle odour of incense, the soft strains of a self-playing
pianoforte, far off in some room up-stairs. You were sure to be
expected; no pompous auxiliary from Gunter's extorted your name, but the
smoothest and lightest-footed of butlers received your overcoat and
motioned you in silence towards a room, from the open door of which
floods of light streamed across the carpeted passage, whence you heard
the popping of corks, the _cliquetis d'assiettes_, the pleasant voices
of women, the soft ripple of talk and laughter within.
You had time for scarcely a glance at that group after Watteau, that
Leda in alabaster, the ormolu on velvet, the porcelain under glass, for,
brushing the deep, soft carpet, with step noiseless as your conductor's,
you entered an octagon room, brilliantly lighted, containing a round
table, on which flowers and fruit were grouped in tasteful profusion,
the whole set off by a circular lamp dependent from the ceiling, and so
shaded as to throw its glare on grapes, geraniums, roses, glass and
gold, table ornaments and china, glittering plate, and bubbling wine.
At this table were already seated some half-dozen noisy, pleasant
individuals, when Sir Henry arrived. His entrance was the signal for a
fresh burst of laughter, and a triumphant clapping of hands.
"You've won on both events, Kate," exclaimed Mrs. Battersea, making room
for the belated guest by her side. "It was even betting you wouldn't
come, Sir Henry. Kate shot us all round, and laid three to two you would
be here before the soup was cold!"
"They thought you had been made safe, Sir Henry," said the last-named
lady, whose specialty it was to speak very demurely and very distinctly.
"But I knew better. Now, don't talk till you've had something to eat."
He took her advice and glanced round the table while he sipped a clear
soup--brown, strong, and restorative as sherry.
There were only two people he didn't know, a man and a woman: the
former, stout, florid, bearded, deep-voiced, with the unmistakable
artist type, being indeed a sculptor of no mean celebrity; the latter,
wrinkled, faded, a snuff-taker, with false teeth and hair. She seemed
witty and agreeable, however, fruitful in anecdote, deadly in repartee,
with something of foreign buoyancy in manner.
She filled her glass, and emptied it too, pretty often. Sir Henry set
her down for an Englishwoman naturalised in Paris.
The rest consisted of Picard, to whom he had lately been introduced,
young Kilgarron, Frank Vanguard, and Mrs. Battersea's sister, the
enterprising Kate Cremorne.
What the former had been fifteen years ago, the latter lady was now:
hazel eyes, high colour, dazzling teeth, auburn hair, bright in manner,
dress, and appearance. The elder sister exhausted all appliances of the
toilet, to put the clock back those fifteen years and look like the
younger, but in vain; nevertheless, such was the difference of their
ages, that she regarded Kate less with a sister's jealousy than a
mother's indulgent affection.
"So you backed me in, Miss Kate?" said the baronet, touching her glass
lightly with his own, ere he drank a mouthful of champagne. "Knew I was
to be depended on, didn't you? Just like a great stupid cockchafer
blundering to the light. You're the light, you know, and I'm the
cockchafer."
"You must be pretty well singed by this time!" answered Kate, laughing.
"No; the others thought you wouldn't be allowed to get away; but I was
sure you would come directly if anybody told you _not_!"
Mrs. Battersea attacked him on the other side.
"Confess, Sir Henry, you haven't heard the last of this from a certain
lady whose name begins with an L. You _know_ you won't dare call at No.
40 for a week!"
"Why?" he asked simply, and emptied his glass.
"Why, indeed!" answered the other. "She looked as black as thunder, and
absolutely scowled at _me_. You _should_ have put her in the carriage, I
must say."
"He couldn't!" interrupted Picard; "because I did; and two people can't
perform that office unless they make a queen's cushion."
"Oh, indeed!" said Miss Kate. "I suppose you think you'd do quite as
well as Sir Henry. Not a bit of you. He's A 1 with the ladies. Haven't
you found that out in all your travels? Why the _young_ woman looked as
if she'd eat poor _me_, when I only bowed to him! I mean the pale girl
in a----Gracious! Captain Vanguard, if you like me tell me so, or, at
least, if you kick me under the table--don't kick so precious hard!"
"That was my daughter, Miss Kate," said Sir Henry, in perfect
good-humour, interpreting very correctly Frank's too strenuous warning
below the surface.
Kate got out of her difficulty gracefully enough.
"Your daughter!" she repeated. "And a very nice daughter too. How fond
she must be of you! I should, I know!"
Here Miss Cremorne exchanged glances with Vanguard, and Sir Henry felt a
vague uncomfortable consciousness that the society was too young for
him; relieved, however, by virtuous disapproval of Frank's promiscuous
intimacies, and a dawning conviction that, if there had ever been any
tendency to such an arrangement, he was well out of him for a
son-in-law.
The sculptor now produced a velvet case of cigarettes which was handed
round, and from which even the ladies did not disdain to take a few
whiffs of the most fragrant tobacco in the world: Kilgarron only asking
leave to indulge in a long strong Havanna, or "roofer," as he called
it,--urging that to offer a man a cigarette when he wanted a cigar, was
like giving him a slice of bread and butter when he asked for a
beefsteak!
"Nonsense!" argued Mrs. Battersea. "Half a loaf is better than no bread,
and half a frolic than no fun,--consequently, half a puff is better than
no smoke. What do _you_ say, Kate! That's your second cigarette
already."
The girl would have made a pretty picture, leaning back on the red
velvet cushion of a sofa to which she had now betaken herself, while
daintily holding the cigarette between her delicate fingers, she pursed
up the rosiest and most provoking mouth imaginable to emit a long thin
stream of aromatic smoke.
"What do I say?" she repeated, looking meaningly at Frank Vanguard.
"That I hate half-loaves, half-frolics, half-mouthfuls, half-measures in
_everything_! All or none, say I. Take it or let it alone!"
The foreign-looking woman tapped her snuff-box. "You're wrong," said
she. "Everything in life is a matter of compromise. Besides, on _your_
principle, my dear, you'd have all your eggs in one basket. Suppose you
drop it?"
"What a mess there would be in the basket!" observed the sculptor.
"They'd make an omelette _anyhow_," said Lord Kilgarron, mixing himself
a brandy-and-soda at the side-board.
"Besides, there are fresh ones laid every day," added Picard.
"With chickens in them," continued Mrs. Battersea, "if you'll only have
patience."
"And after all, one egg is very like another," murmured Sir Henry
somewhat hazily; "dress them how you please, there's generally a
suspicion about them, and the freshest are rather tasteless at their
best."
Frank said nothing; but thought of the eggs he had most valued in the
world, their basket, and its fate. Well, he had learned his lesson now.
He must make the most of a pretty painted egg he had chosen to-night,
from the shelf, indeed, rather than the nest, and must abide by his
selection, defying memory, prudence, common sense--defying even the
bright eyes, pleasant smiles, and winning whispers of Kate Cremorne.
A man who has lost the flower he values most is perhaps never so unhappy
as when he roams the garden to find a hundred others ready to be
gathered, as sweet, as bright, as blooming, lacking only the subtle,
special fragrance that was all in all to _him_. He is far less lonely in
the desert than in that bower of beauty, which the absence of his
rose--be she red, white, or yellow--has converted to a bare and dreary
waste. Young hearts are sadly impatient of sorrow. Like young horses
first put in harness, they are given to fret and bounce, and dash at any
distraction which serves to divert their thoughts from the collar and
the curb. Frank felt in no mood for self-communing to-night; but he was
well disposed to snatch at any gratification the hour could afford. As
the champagne mounted to his brain, Helen's pale, proud image faded into
distance, and Jin's black eyes seemed to chain him in their spells. Ere
long, he began to think he was a very lucky fellow after all, and
exchanged jest or repartee with Kate Cremorne, as if he had not a care
nor a sorrow in the world. That discriminating young person detected,
nevertheless, something hollow in all this merriment.
"His heart's not in the game," she whispered to her sister, as the whole
party took up a fresh position in the conservatory. "Something's gone
wrong with Frank; and I think we needn't ask him to Greenwich next
Sunday."
Henceforth she divided her smiles between the sculptor, whom she had
known from her childhood, and Picard, on whom she bestowed perhaps the
larger share, appreciating, as women do, a certain spice of the
adventurer, which he betrayed, without parading, in dress, manner,
gestures, even in the curl of his moustache, and the turn of his
well-shaped, sinewy, sunburnt hands.
Sir Henry fell to Mrs. Battersea, who encouraged him to drink more
champagne than is good for anybody after one in the morning; while
Frank, placidly smoking, suffered himself to be amused by the
foreign-looking Englishwoman, whose spirits seemed rather to increase
than diminish with the waning hours.
So the night wore on. It was already four o'clock in a bright summer
sunrise, when Sir Henry lighting a fresh cigar as he grappled to
Picard's offered arm with great good-will--expressed his intention of
walking home.
"Every yard of the way, my dear fellow. Does one all the good in the
world. Nothing like exercise. Never had gout, though I'm bred for it
both sides; and, faith, I've earned it, too! We used to live hard in my
early days. But I always took a deal of exercise--always. That is why
I'm pretty fresh on my legs now."
Picard assented, as younger men are bound to assent to such platitudes
from their elders; and Sir Henry, whose pedestrianism was indeed of an
exceedingly intermittent nature, puffed a volume of smoke in the rosy
face of morning, and proceeding with his reflections.
"Now, Frank and that heavy fellow have gone off together on the chance
of finding a cab. Much better have footed it like you and me. 'Gad, what
a lovely day it's going to be! And what a pleasant night we've had! I'm
not sure, though,"--here he turned round full on his companion--"I'm not
sure we make the most of our lives after all. Hang it! if I had to begin
again, I think I'd go in more for nature. Keep always out of doors, farm
more, shoot more--look after the poor, hunt the country, and never go
from home. I'm getting on now, and begin to understand the old Tartar
chief, who longed for the Land of Grass when he was dying--
"And I would I were back in Cauca-land,
To hear my herdsmen's horn;
And to watch the waggons and brown brood mares,
And the tents where I was born!"
Picard had never read Kingsley's stirring verses. "This old chap's very
drunk!" he thought; but having his own reasons for wishing to stand well
with Miss Hallaton's father, he "hardened him on," as he would have
called it, without remorse. "I don't think _you_ can complain, Sir
Henry," said he. "You've had the best of everything all your time, and
can give pounds of weight to most of the young ones still. You might
marry any woman in London to-morrow if you liked. I wonder you don't."
Sir Henry looked pleased.
"Marry!" he repeated. "Marry! I'm not sure that I wouldn't, only,
between you and me, my dear fellow, women in general are a very inferior
lot. They're delightful, I grant you, wholesale; but when you come to
the retail business, as the tradesmen say, there's great risk and very
little profit about the article. They don't wear well when you buy, and
if you want to sell, there's no market that I know of nearer than
Constantinople. I fancy the Turks understand the business; but I am
_not_ a Turk. Heaven forbid! Fancy a plurality of wives!"
"I'm not sure I should mind it!" laughed Picard--"with the Bosphorus at
one's door, of course."
"The Bosphorus wouldn't help you," said Sir Henry. "She'd come up again
if she wanted, you may depend, though you sank her forty fathom deep,
with a round-shot tied to her ankles. No; I think I understand the sex
thoroughly. In my own experience, I've found them perverse, wilful,
obstinate."
"Unselfish, at least," put in Picard.
"Unselfish!" exclaimed the other. "Not a bit of it! They're twice as
selfish as we are, and that's saying a good deal. A tyrant, indeed,
keeps them down, and so long as he remains perfectly unfeeling, the
thing works moderately well. But if they can get what you and I call a
good fellow to marry them, why he leads the life of a galley slave!
There was my poor brother Ralph--I do believe, sir, he died of
it--married a pig-headed idiot without two ideas, and she traded on his
kind heart till she wore it clean away. I argued the point with her
once. Fancy _arguing_ with a woman, and an ignorant one! 'What should
_you_ say,' I asked, 'if Ralph took you out partridge-shooting, we'll
suppose, and kept you for hours standing in wet turnips to load for him,
or carry a spare gun? Yet you have no scruple in making him accompany
you to parties, which he hates far more than you would the wet turnips,
and are not ashamed to speak very unkindly to him even if he _looks_
bored.' 'That's nothing to do with it,' she answered.--Such is a woman's
logic.--'I dare say _you_ wouldn't stand it; but then you've more
character than Ralph!' She's married a stock-jobber since. I'm happy to
say he bullies her like the devil, yet I do believe she likes him twice
as well as Ralph."
"But _you_ took warning, I hope, Sir Henry," said Picard, laughing in
his sleeve.
"They never tried that sort of thing with _me_," answered the baronet.
"Still, there's no certainty about the thing, and I fancy it's better
to let it alone. Besides, one's ideas vary about women in a regular
procession of decades. Up to ten, we're dependent on them; from ten to
twenty, we despise them; from twenty to thirty, we adore them; from
thirty to forty, we believe in them; from forty to fifty, we mistrust
them; from fifty to sixty, we avoid them; from sixty to seventy, we
tolerate them; and if we live any longer after that, why we become
dependent on them again."
Picard burst out laughing.
"A moral lesson!" he exclaimed, "and from one who has not neglected
practice in theory. Here we are at your own door, Sir Henry. I shall not
forget your maxims. Good night."
The other feeling for his latch-key, looked up where the blinds were
drawn over the windows of Helen's bed-chamber.
"There are exceptions," said he musingly, "and one good one is worth all
the others put together; and yet nine-tenths of our annoyances, and all
our sorrows, can generally be traced to a woman."
Picard sighed as he turned away. Men may rail as they will, but each has
a secret image of his own that he esteems a pearl of exceptional price,
an angel far above the common short-comings of humanity. Like the negro
with his fetish, he takes it out sometimes to blame and scold, no less
than plead with and adore, but he always puts it back reverently in its
place, to nestle in the warmest and most sacred corner of his heart.