THE LITTLE DINNER AT HAMPTON, WITH MUSIC ON THE WATER.
In the course of the little dinner in the Hampton tea-room, Sir George
would not only not sit down till the rest of the party were seated, but
he would supersede a regular waiter to wait upon his companions. It
might have been for the peculiar satisfaction of waiting on Lady Bell,
but certainly he did not confine his cares to that quarter of the table.
He, the finest gentleman in the room, but that was saying little, did
the whole waiting. He changed plates and placed glasses, and brought
round sauces, so neatly and so comically, with such cleverness, taste,
and devotion, making amends to everybody, as it were, for all his
previous shortcomings—not caring, though his own meal were cold, or
though he had not a meal at all—that it was hard, before so patent a
proof, not to think him unselfish as well as delightful.
“Upon my word,” mumbled Lady Sundon, with her mouth full of cutlet, “Sir
George is the charmingest man going—he beats the women out and out, even
you, Lady Bell. I don’t wonder that nobody can say nay to him.”
Mrs. Lascelles did not appear so bent on redeeming her character; she
still made wry faces and turned up her nose at the pickled walnuts and
the cherry pie.
But Lady Bell was in her element. “I wonder if there are any cows here,”
she cried, peeping out of the window behind her. “If there had been such
a Whitefoot as we have at Summerhill, I might have run out and milked
her and whipped you a syllabub in no time. Yes, I can whip syllabubs,
Mrs. Lascelles, you need not look incredulous, and strain gooseberry
fool too, only this is not the season of the year for gooseberries.”
“Ain’t it?” inquired Mrs. Lascelles with languid innocence.
“Gracious, madam! did you not know that we hadn’t gooseberries in
February?” questioned Lady Sundon, staring goggle-eyed at this curious
piece of ignorance.
Lady Bell went on without paying any heed to Mrs. Lascelles’
affectation. “If my Mrs. Sundon or Master Charles were here they would
bear out my story.”
“By bribery and corruption, only too excusable in such a court,” argued
Sir George. “But who may Master Charles be when he is at home? An
overgrown baby, as his name would imply, or a wild man of the woods, eh,
Lady Bell?” asked Sir George with privileged freedom, while preparing to
make his own dinner, like the most frugal of hermits, on bread and milk.
“No, don’t press any grosser fare upon me,” he waved off the eagerness
of his friends to repay his benefits. “I do enjoy an Arcadian meal at
times, when I have not only the felicity of being in Arcady, but of
being with nymphs in Arcady,” Sir George bowed, with his hand on his
heart.
“It is fine to have the command of such language,” said Lady Sundon,
holding up her hands.
“But about this Master Charles,” Sir George returned to the subject;
“can he, after partaking of such syllabubs and gooseberry fools, be
still a ruddy youth, with great hands and feet?”
Lady Bell laughed, blushed, and winced a little for her friend. Beside
Sir George Master Charles would appear ruddy, and his Lumley-bought
gloves and boots did not tend to diminish the natural size of his hands
and feet; but where was the harm—in the ruddiness especially, unless she
had learnt to despise rude health, like the Misses Sundon? They had been
putting severe restraint on themselves, that they might not taste more
than a morsel, after being hours on the water, not so much to bear Sir
George company, for they had not foreseen his temperance, as to display
their own ethereal appetites.
Harry Fane had watched Lady Bell narrowly. “She is not only of the world
worldly, she is as heartless as the others,” was his scornful
conclusion. “She is ashamed of the mere recollection of some poor
befooled country fellow, whatever he may be, better than this mocking
jackanapes; but what does it matter to me?”
“A penny for your thoughts, Harry,” cried Lady Sundon, “or if you won’t
give us them, propose a toast, do something for the good of the
company.”
“I drink to you, then, cousin, since you have started the idea,” replied
Captain Fane, so soberly that it was almost gloomily, after he found
that he could not escape, and that the attention of the party was
directed to him.
“A plague on the lad! to give an old married woman who might be his
mother,” remonstrated Lady Sundon, “but if you are all so kind, thanks
to you,” and Lady Sundon beamed radiantly on the raised glasses.
“Now, Lady Bell, I’m ready for Master Charles,” suggested Sir George,
holding up his glass of milk.
“Nothing of the kind,” said Lady Bell, getting nettled. “At least Master
Charles is not a milksop; supposing you will pledge in no better, you
must pledge yourself, Sir George. I give ‘Sir George Waring,’ and I
couple my toast with a sentiment: ‘May we persevere in and profit by
simplicity.’”
“I respond to your toast with the humblest gratitude, and I drink your
sentiment with all the pleasure in life, for have I not profited by
simplicity already this day?” rejoined Sir George, with perfect
good-humour, looking not a whit annoyed, but rather gratified, by Lady
Bell’s poor little wit being spent upon him—a cheerful nonchalance which
put Lady Bell to shame.
Affronted with herself, Lady Bell began hastily to talk of the
cockle-shells which had been found by the bushel under one of the floors
of Somerset House; and that led to a discussion of the exchange which
the Queen had made in giving up Somerset House for Buckingham House.
The discussion paved the way for Mrs. Lascelles descanting on the
petition of the maids of honour that they might get a compensation in
lieu of supper, which was worth seventy pounds more salary.
When the party went back to the boat, the day was terminating in the
rosiest sunset which ever breathed of spring, youth, and promise.
“I vow we must be in Arcady,” repeated Sir George. With all his pretence
at fine language, he had just the tiniest spark of the soul of a lover
of nature. Yet the glow which blushed on the water and shone on all the
faces, and was only the brighter and the gladder for the chill bleakness
of winter scarcely forsaken, awoke some small response even in his
artificial nature.
As for Captain Fane, he sat with his cap in his hand, letting the breeze
blow in his hair, looking down the river towards the open sea, wishing
he were away in his ship. Life was bad enough on ship-board sometimes,
in the depths of tyranny, ignorance, profanity, and mutiny; but there
the mass of men, even at their worst, were toilsome men in rough
earnest. There, in the night-watches, a man could be alone with sea and
sky, until he forgot the very existence of heartless fine ladies and
expert actors of fine gentlemen.
“We want only music to make the hour complete,” said Sir George. “Lady
Bell, might I beg—?”
Lady Bell hesitated, then yielding to the spirit of the hour, commenced
to sing an air from the popular opera.
Sir George struck in with a mellow second, singing being one of this
fine gentleman’s accomplishments, as well as playing on the flute and
the flageolet.
The song was warmly applauded by all save Captain Fane. Even Lady Sundon
praised, while she frankly admitted that she did not comprehend a word
of the jargon, “but nevertheless do let us have some more of it.”
“We shall have these boats following us, Lady Sundon,” objected Harry
Fane, looking round sharply from where he was steering, and indicating,
among the work-a-day barges, two boats filled with company, that had
been attracted like themselves to a row on the river by a day borrowed
from April and set in the end of February. These boats had already been
drawn into the wake of the first by the singing.
“What though the boats do follow, they ain’t going to run us down,”
stout Lady Sundon made light of the demur; “you are becoming quite a
kill-joy, Harry Fane.”
It was an extraordinary sensation for Lady Bell to have the propriety of
her behaviour doubted by a man—a sailor—before these pinks of fashion,
Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles, who had been contributing to put Lady
Bell at her ease.
She disliked the ruggedness of Captain Fane as much as she liked the
suavity of Sir George, which no sauciness of hers could disturb, for she
had been saucy in substituting Sir George’s own name as a toast which he
might drink in milk.
Lady Bell looked Harry Fane in the face and challenged Sir George to
accompany her in something which Lady Sundon would approve—“Begone, dull
care,” or “Pray Goody, cease,” a challenge which Sir George accepted,
nothing loth.
But before the first song was concluded, one of the boats in the rear
shot across the bow of the Sundons’ boat, and three or four excited men,
in white vests and rich coats like Sir George’s, threatened to upset
both of the craft as they gesticulated violently, while they shouted—
“Heyday! Waring, hold on! What little opera-girl have you got there?
Here, pitch her over to us, that she may tip us a stave. We’ve been
dining at Kew, and we’ll engage to troll, among us, as good an
accompaniment as you can contrive with your single pipe, sweet though it
be.”
“Hold off! Annesley, Gower; mind what you’re about. You’re absurdly
wrong, I tell you, and if you don’t set yourselves right, by heavens!
I’ll have to take the correcting of you into my own hands,” called back
Sir George, frowning blackly for once in his life.
“It is true, confound him!” cried one of the strange gentlemen, letting
his boat fall off. “He’s in other company; yonder is Mrs. Lascelles—who
would have thought it?—and there is an avenging fury of a naval officer
porting helm. Good afternoon, Sir George, good afternoon to you,”
dropped more faintly over the water.
But Lady Bell had shrunk into herself abashed, recalled to her senses,
and deeply wounded alike in her self-respect and her pride.
Not all the solicitations and excuses of Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles
could make Lady Bell immediately forget the indignity to which she had
exposed herself, or forgive them for promoting the exposure, though she
was silent on her feelings, and as willing as the others to welcome a
diversion.
The day was so complete in its spring character, that at sundown a
little cloud of midges seemed to start into life and hover in the air.
“How short their day is!” said Lady Bell regretfully for the ephemera.
“I know they are only creatures of a day, but to come and go so soon,—if
they had waited for a few more months, they might have danced through a
few more hours, and not been pinched by so sharp a death. Who knows?”
“My dear creature,—forgive me; my best Lady Bell,” Sir George corrected
himself, “the midges have been highly honoured, even before you
condescended to pity them. They have more than served their
purpose,—they have helped to furnish an illusion for us, that this
February day by the calendar, is in the merry month of May by our
experience, and that Hampton is Arcady. Now, here we are past Chelsea,
fast coming back to the coarse dissipation of the garish town and the
cold winds of March; what should remain to the midges, but to be swept
aside with the illusion?”
Lady Bell turned away her head and shut her eyes for a moment, she did
not wish to see even the midges swept aside. She did not like the
philosophy of which she and hers formed always the centre. She had not
consented to view life as a rainbow-hued but hollow mockery, a mere
series of convenient, spangled illusions.