A PARTY ON THE WATER.
Captain Fane, young wiseacre as he was, reckoned foolishly with little
knowledge of the world, and less knowledge of woman’s nature, that the
next time he met Lady Bell he should take up the acquaintance at the
very point at which he had left it off, on the lucky hit of his
introducing the ladies to the galleries of science and art.
Far from it, every incident, every influence was different. _Dramatis
personæ_ had entered on the scene who were as new as they were
distasteful to Harry Fane; but they were not new to Lady Bell, and they
and their fellows were possessed of long established claims on her
regard.
True, some weeks had passed, during which Captain Fane had been before
his chiefs of the Admiralty, and kept hard at work on his professional
business; but a few weeks were nothing, in Harry Fane’s estimation, to
warrant this transformation.
When Captain Fane employed his next disengaged morning, in repairing to
his cousin’s house in Cleveland Court, he found a gay company marshalled
there, about to take advantage of an unusually fine February day to have
a party on the water.
“Well come, Harry!” cried hearty Lady Sundon; “we only lacked a naval
man to sit in the end of our barge.”
“We shall be glad to avail ourselves of your experience, sir,” Lady
Bell, whose party it was specially, was polite enough to say; but it was
said carelessly, and she did not wait for an answer, as both her ears
were monopolized.
The one ear was filled with the whispers of an affected, lisping woman,
into whose affectation and lisp there could yet be infused such a
judiciously-mixed spice of wit and scandal as very often rendered her
whispers irresistible to their hearers.
Lady Bell’s remaining ear was kept fixed by the honeyed sharpness of
tongue of a long, lazy, handsome man, in the lingering exquisiteness of
costume of a purple-velvet coat and breeches and white silk stockings,
double vest—one white, the other jonquil colour—two watch guards, a
solitaire, diamond buckles, and a little hat.
Beside this full-fledged, fine-hued gentleman, Captain Fane, in his
plain blue and white uniform, looked a very sober, and, in his present
humour, a somewhat gruff bird; but Harry took up his gold-laced hat on
the amount of encouragement he received, and went with the company.
He was the more induced to join the party because he was all at once
seized with a burning wish and necessity to ascertain the precise terms
on which Lady Bell Trevor stood with two of her companions.
Partial and superficial as Captain Fane’s acquaintance with the
fashionable world was, the pair were too marked for him not to have a
chance of being familiar with their antecedents.
Sir George Waring and Mrs. Lascelles were connected by more than an
accidental association, though they had escaped the ignominy of a
miserable bond of union. The owners of the names were continually to be
seen together at the same gay parties, some of which were of a debatable
character.
It was well understood that the couple were fast allies, though the
nature of the alliance remained a mystery. Was it friendship among the
heartless, as there is honour among thieves? Lady Bell honestly believed
so.
Was it true, as some said, that Sir George had bought over Mrs.
Lascelles by a large debt won from her at piquet, to back him in all his
endless idle schemes and intrigues, and to play into his hand in the
fickle, evil aims of the life at once of a Sir Fribble and a Lovelace?
Did the solution lie in an unauthorised, low-toned love between the
wickedly good-natured pair, who, with the wisdom of the serpent, held
the passion in check, and preserved their cool, careless mask, trusting
faintly that death might one day interpose in their behalf, and remove
Mrs. Lascelles’s husband, or waiting deliberately till the love rooted
in ashes and fed on malignant vapours, should be surely and for ever
extinguished?
As for Mrs. Lascelles’s husband, he played no prominent part in the
drama, and put in no claim for sympathy. He was as basely indifferent as
the others; he simply tolerated his wife, and accorded her his
protection, so long as she did not outrage it.
In reality there was no public scandal concerning these people; but
Harry Fane could not endure to see Lady Bell Trevor with them, on
intimate terms, and she was still seated between the two in the barge.
Mrs. Lascelles wriggled as a serpent wriggles its glossy spots, and shot
forth unholy green fire, dragon-like, on the right of Lady Bell.
On the left lounged Sir George, as a splendid sleek tiger steps
stealthily before it springs, and even when it is too gorged and not
greedy enough to spring, bites in wanton playfulness.
Lady Bell was so ignorant of the true nature of such persons, that she
stopped short with admiring their orange and sable glories; she was
tickled and taken with, rather than repelled, by the green fire of Mrs.
Lascelles’s brilliant scandal, and the playful biting of Sir George’s
half-caressing, highly cultivated cynicism,—something altogether
different from Harry Fane’s wholesome, blustering criticism.
In addition to Lady Bell’s ignorance, her perceptions were slightly
warped, so that she was disposed to be but too lenient to the hole
whence she herself had been dug, and the pit from which she had been
drawn.
The barge swept along, among other and less ornamental barges laden with
hay, coals, sheep, and pigs, past wharfs and piers, under bridges, below
balconies and projecting stories of buildings, by gables of houses—until
it left stone and lime behind, and reached green banks and lawns, though
the trees still stretched brown, gnarled, or drooping boughs, sharp and
unclothed, against the blue of the sky. There was just the dimly sweet,
green budding of a fine February to tell that spring was at hand.
Lady Bell smiled brightly and chatted freely with her chosen companions.
Captain Fane had no resource but to fume secretly, and seek, as he
steered, to be contented with the companionship of the Sundons. There
was one safeguard in Lady Sundon’s irrepressible good fellowship, which
was restrained by no extreme delicacy or humility, that it combated
successfully her instinctive homage to rank and fashion, and prevented
her from being left entirely out of any group in her vicinity.
Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles’s blandness,—the great quality on which
they prided themselves, in the absence of all higher qualities,—might
not have remained unalloyed with insolence. The gentleman and lady might
have rebuffed what they regarded as offensive intrusion in Lady Sundon’s
freedom of speech, seeing that the pair attached themselves to the
Sundons solely on Lady Bell’s account. But dear, delightful, naïve
little Lady Bell had her weaknesses, which her friends were quick enough
to perceive and respect in time. One of these weaknesses was, that she
would not submit to see snubbing administered in her presence to the
hospitable country baronet’s wife and her absurdly gawky step-daughters,
with whom she had the misfortune to be domiciled in town.
Neither would the froward goddess consent at present to be rescued, to
quit these Sundons and put herself under the guardianship of Mrs.
Lascelles, who, if she and Sir George had got their will, would have had
Lady Bell, without delay, cut the whole connection, even so far as her
dear Mrs. Sundon.
Mrs. Sundon was a true woman of quality, and of the world, indeed, but
she had abandoned her sphere, and might live to turn queen’s evidence
against her old world, any day. She was blue, stuck up, and tiresomely
virtuous for a young woman. Lady Bell spoilt herself by quoting and
aping this model.
But Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles must set to work cautiously in doing
their benevolent “possible” to cure Lady Bell of this and other defects.
Rome was not built in one day, and neither in one day would a wilful
girl’s rampant staunchness and warm-heartedness be converted into a
conveniently faithless and lukewarm state of the affections.
In the meantime, Lady Sundon had insisted on drawing everybody’s
attention to Chelsea, because she had once assisted at a “whim” there,
when she had gone over Chelsea Hospital.
The building had, at this time, its wounded soldiers who had been
disabled at Bunker’s Hill, and some of whom Captain Fane had brought
home in his frigate.
There was a little talk of the engagement, in which the general company
joined. It was notable that Sir George, who was a carpet knight, treated
the resistance as a sorry trifle, and always called the men who had
instituted it, “rebels.” But Captain Fane, who had seen service, and
fought stoutly against the very men, merely named them “provincials,”
and stated plainly that they were right, when they declared that they
had not lost the battle, since, though they were driven out of the
entrenchments, they had succeeded in no less an achievement than that of
blockading the English army.
Lady Bell inquired with interest after Captain Fane’s own adventures, of
which he was specially unwilling to speak in such a company. But he told
what some of his messmates had done under fire: how they had been lying
waiting their turn from the surgeons, when red-hot shot had passed once
and again through the cockpit; notwithstanding, it had spared the
_Thunderbomb’s_ lads, though it was only for them to be lodged, by his
Majesty’s and the country’s kindness, in the other hospital, Greenwich.
“I suppose the dear timber-toes prefer their beef salt and their tobacco
stale for the sake of old associations,” suggested Sir George mincingly.
“Then, I’m sure it is no kindness to deny them their sweet tastes,”
followed up Mrs. Lascelles. “There need not be these rows about the
Lords of the Admiralty helping themselves to the funds. The Lords of the
Admiralty are always helping themselves to something, worse than the
Lords of the Treasury,—but both lords must live. Oh, forgive me, Captain
Fane, and don’t look so fierce. I dare say it is the shore that
demoralises your friends.”
“I dare say it is, madam, if they are demoralised, which I, their
servant, have no business to take for granted,” replied Captain Fane
angrily.