Oh that I knew he were but in by the week!
How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek,
And wait the season, and observe the times,
And shape his service wholly to my behests.
SHAKSPEARE.
A similar concurrence of circumstances had brought up to the metropolis
most of the other individuals, in whom it is hoped the reader is
interested. Germain had not returned to Latimer, after having
accompanied his lordship to see his Derby horse. He was not yet quite
reconciled to the new footing upon which he must be prepared to
meet Lady Latimer; and as her treatment of him had left that feeling
of vague dissatisfaction which is exactly the state when any new
excitement is most welcome, he had been very much amused with all Lord
Latimer had let him into, of the mysteries of the training-stable: and
having been allowed to be present at a most satisfactory trial of the
Derby horse, he had eagerly accepted Lord Latimer’s offer to let him
stand half of his bets upon him; and upon coming to town, had backed
him himself to a large amount, and in his usual sanguine disposition,
began to reckon what he might win upon him as part of the available
funds of the season.
If he had ever thought much upon such a subject, he might sometimes
have been rather uneasy as to the state of his finances. The election,
though Lord Latimer and several others had literally fulfilled their
engagement of sending up all the votes they could influence, free of
expense to him, had nevertheless been a heavy drain upon his resources;
and there was more truth than Lady Flamborough had been willing to
believe in Major Sumner’s story, that he had forestalled much of his
ready money at Paris during his minority.
Among the few people already come to town upon his first arrival, he
found Lady Flamborough and her daughter, Lady Jane, who had been taken
up by her mother at Latimer on her way to town. This was a time of the
year peculiarly favourable to Lady Flamborough’s manœuvring--no bustle
or distraction, and her house really a resource to those who happened
accidentally to be in town. Amongst them, too, were such fine subjects
as young men driven up from hunting by the weather, when every thing
is frozen but their hearts--then such fine opportunities afforded to
ripen real flirtations, or give a colourable appearance to incipient
ones, by nightly parties in private boxes to the play. But though Lady
Flamborough did not on that account desist from her customary attempts
to attract all she could, yet the object of her particular pursuit
certainly was Germain. On this, however, as on former occasions, she
found her daughter by no means a ready assistant. Nature had gifted
Lady Jane with both delicacy and judgment, which were equally _de trop_
when she was desired to forward some of her mother’s schemes.
Upon her first introduction to Germain, she had been inclined to view
him with a favourable eye, as a pleasant, unaffected young man; and had
his attentions then been directed towards her, it is probable they
might not have been unwelcome: but she had seen him, as she had seen
many others, dazzled by the brilliancy of her sister’s beauty, and
forgetting every body else in his exclusive devotion to her. Though she
knew that this would end as she had seen more than one other affair of
the same kind, yet it prevented her from thinking any more about him
till they next met after the election at Latimer. There, the humorous
manner in which he had sometimes conspired with her to thwart Mr.
Starling, had established a sort of confidential understanding between
them; and though his still obvious attentions to her sister made her
view him in no other light than as an agreeable acquaintance, yet it
certainly was with pleasure she heard of his arrival in London--a
feeling that would have been more conspicuous in her welcome to him,
had she not been afraid of the inferences her mother would immediately
draw, and the schemes she would immediately found upon any reciprocal
cordiality at first meeting.
A few days afterwards, when at breakfast with her daughters, Lady
Flamborough said, “Pray, Jane, how long is it since you have taken a
dislike to Mr. Germain?”
“What makes you ask that, mamma? I am not conscious of any such
feeling.”
“Then I must say you were most pointedly rude to him last night.”
“Indeed! I listened to all his remarks most attentively, and answered
all his questions most categorically, even when I had rather have
listened to the play.”
“No; what I mean is, that when he offered to call the carriage and get
your shawl, you in the mean time accepted old Lord Chelsea’s arm, and
when Germain returned, he found you thus occupied.”
“Well but, mamma, if Mr. Germain, instead of being an easy _insouciant_
acquaintance, was the most captious of lovers, he never could be
jealous of old Lord Chelsea.”
“All I know is, when he came jumping up the stairs, he ran against Lord
Chelsea and nearly knocked him over, for the poor old lord is not very
steady upon his legs; and as soon as he saw who it was he was handing,
it was evident he was very much disappointed, and indeed so confused,
that you might have observed he huddled all our shawls upon you, and my
fur tippet into the bargain.”
“Well, but if I did discompose a young gentleman, I delighted an old
one. Poor Lord Chelsea! he is never so happy as when he is, as he
thinks, protecting a young lady; and with all the ridicule of his
tottering gallantry, he is really so good-natured, and what is no small
merit in an old beau, so uniformly cheerful, that I could never bear to
affront him by refusing his proffered assistance.”
“All this would be very well, if it was merely a matter of indifference
between the two: but I suppose you have no thoughts of marrying Lord
Chelsea?”
“Not exactly,” said Lady Jane, smiling.
“And I suppose you don’t mean to say the same of Mr. Germain?”
“Exactly, mamma.”
“And what, may I ask, is your objection to him?”
“That is not the question, my dear mamma. Even _you_ don’t mean me to
propose to him, and he doesn’t mean to propose to me.”
“But I think he does. Why did he fasten himself to the back of your
chair all the night, where he could not see a bit of the play, whilst
there were front places vacant? Or why is he in town at all now,
instead of being at Latimer? Indeed, even Fitzalbert said, that last
time he was there, he did all in his power to thwart Mr. Starling in
his attempts to make up to you--and I can assure you, I sometimes think
that all the attention he paid to Louisa arose from his liking to you.”
“That never occurred to me, certainly,” said Lady Jane; “but even if it
is the case, he ought to furnish me with some _double_ of himself, to
whom alone can I be obliged to acknowledge my sense of his favourable
opinion.”
“Well, I must say, I think it very ungrateful of you,” observed Lady
Flamborough, provoked at the apparent impossibility of bringing Lady
Jane seriously to the point. “Caroline shows much more good sense and
respect for my experience in these matters; and both of you know that
there is nothing I dislike so much as your making any advances to men;
therefore you might trust to my opinion. You may recollect, Jane, how
much I lectured you at Boreton against encouraging Major Sumner.”
Lady Jane could have replied, that there might have been other reasons
for this, besides the mere impropriety of the act; but she prudently
checked herself, and handed her mother her replenished tea-cup without
further reply, while Lady Flamborough continued.
“There’s Caroline, you see, succeeded in persuading Sir Gregory
Greenford not to return to Melton till after he had accompanied us to
the play last night. How did he take leave of you, my dear?--did he
mention any time for his return?”
“Oh, yes! he said he should see me on Monday if he was _alive_; for
that Fencer, and five other famous hunters, were for sale that day at
Tattersall’s.”
“Ay! then I suppose we shall have your brother Flamborough up too. I
am afraid it will be impossible ever to make any thing of him: he is
not the least improved in his taste since, as a little boy, he used
to steal the napkins that were laid for dinner, to make horse-cloths
for his poney, that he might ride round the field like a groom at
exercise. He is now near twenty, and if he would ever show himself in
good society, who knows but Miss Stedman, old Stedman’s only child
and heiress, who is coming out this year, might take a fancy to him?
And it would be very convenient, for certainly your poor father was
unaccountably careless, and left his property terribly embarrassed.”
The young ladies had nothing to say in defence of their brother, and
were perhaps not a little relieved that their mother’s schemes were no
longer exclusively confined to them: and the conversation dropped.
The winter passed over--the season advanced--and London rapidly filled.
The playhouses were no longer ‘the thing,’ and even the exclusive
attraction of the opera (that pet preserver of flirtations) was broken
in upon by engagements of various kinds. Parliament too had met, and
necessarily occupied both Germain and Oakley much. Not that they
entered into their duties by any means with equal avidity. Germain
executed the business of his constituents faithfully and punctually,
because he considered himself bound to do so; but it was by no means
an occupation of first-rate interest to him. He was always easily led,
and was unfortunately much _recherché_ in a very agreeable society, the
members of which always preferred a dinner to a debate, thinking that
they could not live without the one, but that they might vote without
the other. He therefore was in the frequent habit of _pairing_ till ten
o’clock--a practice founded on a compromise of conscience, which makes
a man satisfied at voting on a question of which he knows nothing,
provided one on the other side is equally ignorant. Upon his return, he
would attempt sometimes to force his attention to a speech for a couple
of hours, and wonder he did not understand the reply to an argument
which he had not heard.
Nor was this all: it was not only that he often felt distracted with
the recollections of the early and convivial part of the evening, but
the anticipation of the excitement with which it was to conclude,
often gave a sense of tedium to the course of a sometimes dull, always
unnecessarily protracted debate. When a man does not know whether,
before the night is over, a shake of the dice or a shuffle of the
cards may not, without any reason at all, make a difference to him
which he shall feel for years, he is not in the frame of mind most
favourable for digesting a train of abstruse reasoning in which he can
have no immediate interest. No possible combination of numbers that
the division can produce, will excite a care in one pre-occupied with
the simple difference between eleven and deuce-ace. And this it was, I
am sorry to own, which often made Germain’s parliamentary career less
interesting to him than he had anticipated.
Not so Oakley. To him the House was all in all. That it was a ready
excuse for avoiding that society which otherwise his situation in the
world might have forced upon him, was an additional recommendation
in his eyes. He entered into all its proceedings with an intense
interest to be expected from the singleness of his feelings. He had,
upon sundry occasions, taken part in its deliberations with credit to
himself. The earnest sincerity with which he spoke had never failed
to win attention, though some of his opinions were reckoned rather
extraordinary, or what in party slang is called _crotchetty_. The
excitement he here experienced, absorbed for the time that discontent,
with which his experience of the world had tainted him, and for the
moment he thus forgot the anguish and self-reproach caused by his own
conduct upon the occasion of his most recent disappointment--a feeling
which, however, never failed to accompany him upon his return home.