A RECONNAISSANCE.
Violent tempests like that described in the last chapter do not pass
away without leaving a "ground swell" as it were, on the domestic
surface. Neither Mrs. Lascelles nor Miss Ross felt disposed to take
their usual drive in the open carriage for the purpose of shopping and
"leaving cards;" two functions that constitute the whole duty of women,
from three to six P.M. of every week-day, during the London season. The
principle of acquisitiveness inherent in the female breast, together
with an insatiable desire to see and to be seen, may account for the
shopping; but why society enjoins the penance of leaving cards surpasses
my comprehension altogether. Unmeaning, endless, and exceedingly
troublesome, this custom seems to produce no definite result, but to
fill the waste-paper basket with a multitude of other cards left in
return. To-day, however, the ladies at No. 40 resolved they would devote
their afternoon to refreshment and repose: a good luncheon, a
comfortable arm-chair, the newest novel, and a casual dropping in of
visitors to tea.
The luncheon was heavy, the arm-chair provocative of slumbers; so was
the novel; and Mrs. Lascelles, I am bound to admit, went fast asleep
over its pages; while Miss Ross stole softly up-stairs to read one
important little note, write another, and otherwise bring her schemes to
maturity.
In the mean time, a considerable bustle was going on in Messrs.
Tattersalls' celebrated emporium for the sale of horses--good, bad, and
indifferent. To use correct language, "The entire stud of a nobleman,
well known in Leicestershire," was being brought to the hammer; and a
very motley crowd of sportsmen, dandies, horse-dealers, lords, louts,
yeomen, yokels, and nondescripts were gathered round the auctioneer's
box in consequence. A well-bred chestnut horse, with magnificent
shoulders, and a white fore-leg, was the object of competition at the
moment Sir Henry Hallaton entered the yard; and, although he neither
wanted a hunter, nor could have afforded to buy this one even at its
reserved price, it was not in his power to refrain from elbowing his way
through the crowd, and stationing himself in perilous vicinity to the
hind-legs of the animal.
"Handsome--fast--up to great weight--with an European reputation! And
only two hundred bid for him!" said the voice of Fate from under an
exceedingly well-brushed and rather curly-brimmed hat; while the object
of these encomiums, whose restless eye and ear denoted excitement, if
not alarm, gave a stamp of his foot and a whisk of his tail that caused
considerable swaying, surging, and treading on toes in the encircling
crowd.
"Ten! Twenty!" continued the voice of Fate. "Thirty! Thank you, my lord.
Fifty! Two hundred and fifty bid for him. Run him down once more. Take
care!" And Sir Henry found himself jostled against his new friend
Picard, who, having made the last bid with an assumption of great
carelessness, seemed in danger of becoming the actual proprietor of this
desirable purchase.
"Make me a wheeler, I think," said he, as the horse was led back to the
stable, and another brought out to elicit a fresh burst of competition,
all the more lively, perhaps, that the Leicestershire nobleman had put
such a reserve price on his stud as precluded the sale of anything but a
hack he didn't like.
"Rather light for harness," observed Sir Henry, with a certain covert
approval of his friend's extravagance. "I suppose they _are_ to be
sold?" he added, on further reflection.
"I conclude so, of course," replied the other, though he well knew they
were _not_, and had been bidding pompously for some half-dozen with the
comfortable conviction that there was nothing to pay for his whistle.
"It's a long price," resumed the baronet, as he took Picard's arm to
saunter leisurely in the direction of Belgravia. "At least, it makes
them very dear when you come to match them. That's the worst of having
too good a team."
"Oh! I don't know," said Picard loftily. "I always find it cheapest, in
the long run, to drive the best horses, though I do have to give
thundering prices now and then, I admit. Still, things must begin to
look up for us soon. We Southern proprietors can't be always on the
shady side of the hedge; and we've had a rough time of it enough, in all
conscience."
They were already at the gate, and it appeared this "Southern
proprietor" had no intention of buying any more horses to-day.
Sir Henry hazarded a pertinent, or, as he himself considered it, an
_im_pertinent, inquiry.
"Have you much property," said he, "in the South? And do you get
anything from it?"
"Not, perhaps, what _you_ would call much, in actual value," answered
his companion; "but for extent, of course, unlimited." He waved his arm
as Robinson Crusoe might, while describing his circle:
"From the centre all round to the sea."
"But American property," he added, "is so difficult to define. Halloo!
here's our friend Vanguard."
That gentleman was indeed strolling leisurely into the yard, apparently
with no particular object, for he strolled out again willingly enough
at the invitation of his two friends.
"It's rather early for the park," observed Picard, as the three crossed
to the shady side of the street, "and too late for St. James's Street.
What shall we do with ourselves for the next half-hour?"
"Go and look at the Serpentine--see if it's still there," said Frank,
who seemed in unusually high spirits, though his manner was somewhat
restless. "If that bores you, there's always the British Museum. It's
cool, and, I've been told, very solitary."
"Too far off," answered Sir Henry, in perfect good faith. "No. I'll tell
you what. Let's go and ask Mrs. Lascelles to give us a cup of tea."
Frank started, and his heart thumped against a little note lying in his
waistcoat-pocket; but, though the thump was for Helen, the note was from
some one very different to that well-conducted young lady. Was he
disloyal enough, even now, to leap at the chance of seeing Miss Hallaton
just once more, and for the last time? If so, he was doomed to be
disappointed, and it served him right.
Picard, who carried no notes of any description in his pockets, and
whose heart seldom beat unless he walked fast up-hill, agreed willingly
to the baronet's proposition. He, too, entertained a vague sentiment of
admiration for Helen, capable of soon ripening into something warmer if
she had any fortune, and under such circumstances his game now was to
see as much of her as he could.
Thus it fell out, that these three gentlemen, arriving at Mrs.
Lascelles's door, found themselves face to face with Uncle Joseph, fresh
from the City, who had just rung the bell, and was utilising his time by
grinding a pair of thick soles fiercely against the scraper.
It would have amused a bystander to observe the effect produced on each
visitor by the footman's appearance and the information he tendered.
"Has Miss Hallaton been here?" said Sir Henry, whose position on the top
step gave him priority of speech with the doorkeeper.
"Called to leave a note after luncheon, Sir Henry, and I was to say
she'd a-gone out driving with Lady Sycamore, and wouldn't be home till
seven, if you came for her here."
Picard, pulling out a memorandum-book, muttered that "he had forgotten
an appointment at his Club," while Frank's face darkened, and he
smothered something between an oath and a sigh.
"Is Miss Ross at home?" then demanded Uncle Joseph, with the air of a
man who submits to an unnecessary formality in compliance with the
usages of society.
"Miss Ross had stepped out--oh! _not_ five minutes ago--the gentlemen
might almost have met her at the corner of the street."
Frank now seemed uneasy, looked at his watch, observed it was "rather
too late to call," and disappeared.
Uncle Joseph gasped. Did Miss Ross leave no message? For _him_, Mr.
Groves? Was the man quite sure?
The man _was_ quite sure, so far as he knew; should he ask the maid?
"D----n the maid!" I am sorry to say, was Uncle Joseph's reply, and
without further leave-taking he bustled off in a towering passion, while
Sir Henry and the footman, on the door-step, contemplated each other in
some amusement and no little surprise.
The baronet broke into a laugh.
"You soon clear off your visitors, James. Is Mrs. Lascelles at home to
_me_!"
"Certainly, sir! Yes, sir! In the boodore, sir!" answered James. "I'd
just taken in tea when you rang."
So Sir Henry found himself _tête-à-tête_ with the lady for whom, during
the foregoing winter, he had half-felt and half-professed a spurious
kind of attachment, and was conscious of an uncomfortable wish that he,
too, had made his escape with the others, or that it had never entered
his head to come to tea at all.
She was always gracious, just as she was always well-dressed. There is a
dignity and a decency of beauty, which nothing will induce a beautiful
woman to forego. It was a very cool and steady hand that Mrs. Lascelles
tendered to her vacillating admirer, while she bade him sit down, and
poured him out a cup of tea.
"I was on the point of writing to you," said she; "but you have saved me
the trouble. I wanted to see you, Sir Henry, very much. I have something
particular to say."
He bowed, and settled himself in a low easy-chair with his back to the
windows. No faded beauty of the other sex could have entertained a
greater objection than Sir Henry to flourishing "crow's-feet" and
wrinkles in the light of day.
"It's no wonder I'm here," was the smiling reply, "for I always want to
see you!"
"And without anything particular to say," she retorted, adding
hurriedly--"However, that's not the point. Sir Henry, you care for your
daughter?"
"More than for anything in the world!" was his grave rejoinder.
"I know it--I know it," she answered, and the colour deepened in her
cheek. "Well, now, men are blind as bats, I think, in all matters of
affection; but have you not lately noticed an alteration in Helen's
manner, spirits, in her very looks? Can't you see there's something
wrong with the girl? Can't you guess what it is?"
He looked startled, disturbed, distressed.
"Not the lungs, Mrs. Lascelles!" he exclaimed. "She runs up-stairs like
a lap-wing, and will waltz for twenty minutes together at a spin. There
can't be much amiss. Not her lungs, surely; nor her heart!"
Mrs. Lascelles laughed.
"Yes, her heart," she repeated, "though not in the sense _you_ mean. Not
anatomically, but sentimentally, I fear; which is sometimes almost as
bad."
He looked immensely relieved.
"Oh! she'll get over that," said he, putting more sugar in his tea.
"She's a sensible girl, Helen, with a good deal of self-respect, and
what I should call 'mind.' No whims, no fancies, in any way, and not the
least romantic."
"Like her papa," observed Mrs. Lascelles maliciously.
"I trust in heaven _not_!" he replied, with unusual energy. "Helen is as
much my superior in intellect as she is in moral qualities. She has
talent, energy, self-control, and self-denial; none of which, I fear,
can she inherit from _me_. Her sincerity, too, and trustfulness are like
a child's, and she is as fond of me now as she was at two years old. You
don't think she _really_ cares for anybody, do you, Mrs. Lascelles? It
might be a serious thing for her if she did, and I had rather everything
I have in the world went to ruin than that Helen should be made
unhappy."
"I do," answered Mrs. Lascelles. "I think she cares for Frank Vanguard."
"Confound him!" ejaculated Sir Henry, upsetting his tea-cup. "A
presuming young jackass! And not over steady, I'm afraid," he added,
reverting in his own mind to certain memories connected with supper,
cigarettes, champagne, three o'clock in the morning, and Kate Cremorne.
"Now that's so like a _man_!" said his hostess. "You want to keep your
treasure all to yourself, and are furious with everybody who agrees with
you in appreciating its value. Captain Vanguard is young, good-looking,
a gentleman, and not badly off. Why shouldn't your daughter like him,
and why shouldn't he like your daughter? Sir Henry, I needn't ask if you
believe in my inclination, do you also believe in my ability to serve
you?"
"Certainly," was the polite reply. "Nobody is half so clever, and,
besides, you are a perfect woman of the world."
"Will you be guided by my advice?"
"What do you propose?" was the natural answer to so comprehensive a
question.
"Get Helen out of town at once. Carry her off to Windsor. I can take
upon myself to offer you The Lilies. Uncle Joseph will lend the cottage
to me, or any of my friends, for as long as I like. Give her plenty of
amusement, but no dissipation. Early hours, a glass of port wine and a
biscuit every day at twelve, and don't let her stay out after sun-down.
In three weeks the girl will be in rude health, or I know nothing of a
woman's constitution and ailments."
"But what has all this to do with Captain Vanguard?" asked Sir Henry,
fixing in his mind, not without effort, the whole regimen, particularly
the port wine at twelve o'clock.
"Oh! blindest of baronets!" laughed Mrs. Lascelles. "Lady Sycamore, or
any other chaperon, would have seen it at once. Captain Vanguard is
quartered at Windsor. Helen is staying at The Lilies. The young people
meet every day. A mutual attachment, already, I firmly believe, in the
bud, comes to maturity. General _tableau_! You give your blessing, and
will become, I hope, more respectable as a father-in-law than you have
hitherto been in other relations of life."
"I'll do anything for Helen--anything!" said Sir Henry vehemently. "And
how can I thank you enough, Mrs. Lascelles, for your kindness and the
interest you take in my girl? You'll come down every Saturday, and stay
till Monday, to see how your prescription answers, of course?"
"Not the least of course," she replied. "Jin and I mean to take
ourselves off to Brighton by the end of the week. If the fine weather
lasts, we shall very likely go on to Dieppe."
This, then, was her kindly scheme: to get Miss Ross out of Frank
Vanguard's way to leave the coast clear for Helen; and then, having
settled matters to her own satisfaction, weigh Sir Henry deliberately
against Goldthred, and take whichever she considered most deserving of
herself.
Mrs. Lascelles never doubted her power over any one on whom she chose to
exert it, and believed that, like a spider, she need only spin her web
in order to surround the desired bluebottle inextricably with its toils.
In hers, as in similar cases, I imagine that to break boldly through the
meshes was the insect's best chance of turning the tables, and taking
the custodian herself into custody.
"Miss Ross goes with you?" asked Sir Henry meditatively, though I
believe he was thinking less of that black-eyed syren than of his
daughter.
"Miss Ross goes with me, undoubtedly," was the answer, spoken rather
sharply, and in some little displeasure. "Have you any objection? Can't
you bear to part with her even for so short a period? You see, I know
all about _that_, too."
Sir Henry never seemed to have any sense of shame. He couldn't have
blushed to save his life. To this callousness he owed many of his
successes, and almost all his scrapes.
He smiled pleasantly. "You know all about everything, I believe," said
he; "and you _think_ you know all about _me_. But you don't, and I
don't; and nobody does, I fancy. I'm so different from what I feel sure
I was intended to be, that I sometimes suspect, like the Irishman, they
'changed me at nurse.' Only, if I _were_ somebody else, that wouldn't
account for it, after all, would it? These are puzzling speculations;
but I know I _could_ have been a better and a very different man. It's
not my fault."
"Whose, then?" she asked, bending her blue eyes on him with an
expression of interest extremely dangerous for a man at any age.
He scarcely marked it. He was searching out the truth for once from the
depths--not very profound--of his world-worn heart, and had forgotten
during the moment that false and fleeting woman-worship which had so
weakened and deteriorated his nature. Looking back along the path of
life on which, as in some idolatrous grove, his every step had been
marked by a soulless image of brass, or stucco, or marble, reared only
to be defaced and overthrown, he was scarcely conscious of that lovely
living companion, listening with all the attention of curiosity and
self-interest to his retrospections.
"Yours!" he answered--("Now it's coming," she thought)--"Yours! Not
individually, but collectively, as of that sex which seems to be the
natural bane of ours. If I could begin again, I would forswear female
society altogether. I should be a better, and certainly a happier man.
As it is, my life has been wasted in looking for something I always
failed to find. Did you ever see Grantley Berkeley's book? There it is
on the table. I dare say you've never looked into it. Read it, if you
want to find poetry in sport. He seems to entertain a gentle, kindly
feeling for every living creature, wild or tame. He tells a story of one
of his hounds--Champion or Challenger, if I remember right--that used to
detach itself from the pack on hunting mornings, and come to its
mistress's pony-chaise for a morsel of biscuit and a caress. Ever
afterwards, when drafted into another county, the faithful, true-hearted
dog would break away, and gallop up to every open carriage that arrived
at the meet, returning from each succeeding disappointment with a
sadder expression on his wise, honest face--a more piteous look in his
meek, brown, wistful eyes. I've been like poor Champion or Challenger.
So often, I've thought I had found my heart's desire at last! Then I
strained every nerve to win, and _did_ win, too; only to learn, over and
over again, that she had not deceived me half so deeply as I had
deceived myself. Shall I confess that the woman who, in my whole life,
has approached nearest the ideal of my heart, was one whom my reason, my
experience, and my moral sense, deteriorated though it is, convicted as
the vilest and the worst?"
Few people had ever seen Sir Henry in earnest. Certainly not Mrs.
Lascelles; and she was almost frightened.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "After such an experience, you'll surely
never try again?"
He seemed to wake up from a dream. The ruling passion was not to be
controlled; and habit, stronger than nature, impelled him, though for
the hundredth time, to recommence the old story in the old familiar
strain.
"Just once more," he said, drawing his chair nearer the frail
spider-legged tea-table that constituted the only barrier between them.
"It's hard if a man seeks all his life without finding his object at
last. Mrs. Lascelles, may I not say----"
In another moment she might have had the satisfaction of hearing, and
perhaps repelling, a fervent declaration of attachment; but, at this
juncture, the door of the boudoir was thrown open, and the announcement
of "Lady Clearwell!" by James in person, ushered in an exceedingly
courteous and sprightly personage, all smiles and rustle, who called
Mrs. Lascelles "Rose," took her by both hands, and, with a distant bow
to Sir Henry, dropped on the sofa as if she meant to make herself
perfectly at home.
Such interruptions are almost a matter of course. There was nothing for
it but to take up his hat and make his bow.
It may be that Sir Henry, walking soberly down-stairs, reflected, not
without gratitude, how such little _contretemps_ constitute the great
charm and safeguard of society in general.
Lady Clearwell stayed till nearly seven. As her carriage rolled away,
Mrs. Lascelles looked wistfully at the clock, and called over the
banisters to James:
"I'm not at home to anybody _now_, except Mr. Goldthred."
But Mr. Goldthred never came.