A MORNING AT THE EXHIBITION.
Paul Brion was wakened from his sleep next morning by the sound of Mrs.
Duff-Scott's carriage wheels and prancing horses, and sauntering to
his sitting-room window about ten minutes later, had the satisfaction
of seeing his young neighbours step into the distinguished vehicle and
drive away. There was Elizabeth reposing by her chaperon's side, as
serene as a princess who had never set foot on common earth; and there
were Patty and Eleanor, smiling and animated, lovelier than their wont,
if that could be, nestling under the shadow of two tall men-servants
in irreproachable liveries, with cockades upon their hats. It was a
pretty sight, but it spoiled his appetite for his breakfast. He could
no longer pretend that he was thankful for the fruition of his desires
on their behalf. He could only feel that they were gone, and that he
was left behind--that a great gulf had suddenly opened between them and
him and the humble and happy circumstances of yesterday, with no bridge
across it that he could walk over.
The girls, for their part, practically forgot him, and enjoyed the
difference between to-day and yesterday in the most worldly and
womanly manner. The sensation of bowling along the streets in a
perfectly-appointed carriage was as delicious to them as it is to most
of us who are too poor to indulge in it as a habit; for the time being
it answered all the purposes of happiness as thoroughly as if they had
never had any higher ambition than to cut a dash. They went shopping
with the fairy godmother before they went to the Exhibition, and that,
too, was absorbingly delightful--both to Elizabeth, who went in with
Mrs. Duff-Scott to assist her in her purchases, and to the younger
sisters, who reposed majestically in the carriage at the door. Patty's
quick eyes caught sight of Mrs. Aarons and a pair of her long-nosed
children walking on the pavement, and she cheerfully owned herself a
snob and gloried in it. It gave her unspeakable satisfaction, she said,
to sit there and look down upon Mrs. Aarons.
As they passed the Melbourne Club on their way to the Exhibition, the
coachman was hailed by the elder of two gentlemen who were sauntering
down the steps, and they were introduced for the first time to the
fairy godmother's husband. Major Duff-Scott, an ex-officer of dragoons
and a late prominent public man of his colony (he was prominent
still, but for his social, and not his official qualifications), was
a well-dressed and well-preserved old gentleman, who, having sown a
large and miscellaneous crop of wild oats in the course of a long
career, had been rewarded with great wealth and all the privileges
of the highest respectability. He had been a prodigal, but he had
enjoyed it--never knowing the bitterness of either hunger or husks.
He had tasted dry bread at times, as a matter of course, but only
just enough of it to give a proper relish to the abundant cakes and
ale that were his portion; and the proverb which says you cannot eat
your cake and have it was a perfectly dead letter in his case. He had
been eating his all his life, and he had got it still. In person he
was the most gentle-looking little man imaginable--about half the size
of his imposing wife, thin and spare, and with a little stoop in his
shoulders; but there was an alertness in his step and a brightness in
his eye, twinkling remotely between the shadow of his hat brim and a
bulging mass of white moustache that covered all the lower part of
his small face, which had suggestions of youth and vigour about them
that were lacking in the figure and physiognomy of the young man at
his side. When he came up to the carriage door to be introduced to his
wife's _protégées_, whom he greeted with as much cordiality as Mrs.
Duff-Scott could have desired, they did not know why it was that they
so immediately lost the sense of awe with which they had contemplated
the approach of a person destined to have so formidable a relation to
themselves. They shook hands with him, they made modest replies to his
polite inquiries, they looked beyond his ostensible person to the eyes
that looked at them; and then their three grave faces relaxed, and in
half a minute were brimming over with smiles. They felt at home with
Major Duff-Scott at once.
"Come, come," said the fairy godmother rather impatiently, when
something like a fine aroma of badinage was beginning to perfume
the conversation, "you must not stop us now. We want to have a long
morning. You can join us at the Exhibition presently, if you like,
and bring Mr. Westmoreland." She indicated the young man who had
been talking to her while her spouse made the acquaintance of her
companions, and who happened to be one of the three husbands whom she
had selected for those young ladies. He was the richest of them all,
and the most stupid, and therefore he seemed to be cut out for Patty,
who, being so intellectual and so enterprising, would not only make
a good use of his money, but would make the best that was to be made
of _him_. "My dears," she said, turning towards the girls, "let me
introduce Mr. Westmoreland to you. Mr. Westmoreland, Miss King--Miss
Eleanor King--Miss _Patty_ King."
The heavy young man made a heavy bow to each, and then stared straight
at Eleanor, and studied her with calm attention until the carriage bore
her from his sight. She, with her tender blue eyes and her yellow hair,
and her skin like the petals of a blush rose, was what he was pleased
to call, in speaking of her a little later to a confidential friend,
the "girl for him." Of Patty he took no notice whatever.
Mrs. Duff-Scott, on her way to Carlton, stopped to speak to an
acquaintance who was driving in an opposite direction, and by the time
she reached the Exhibition, she found that her husband's hansom had
arrived before her, and that he and Mr. Westmoreland were waiting at
the entrance to offer their services as escort to the party. The major
was the best of husbands, but he was not in the habit of paying her
these small attentions; and Mr. Westmoreland had never been known,
within her memory of him, to put himself to so much trouble for a
lady's convenience. Wherefore the fairy godmother smiled upon them
both, and felt that the Fates were altogether propitious to her little
schemes. They walked up the pathway in a group, fell necessarily into
single file in the narrow passage where they received and returned
their tickets, and collected in a group again under the great dome,
where they stood to look round on the twenty acres of covered space
heaped with the treasures of those nations which Victoria welcomed in
great letters on the walls. Mrs. Duff-Scott hooked her gold-rimmed
glasses over her nose, and pointed out to her husband wherein the
building was deficient, and wherein superfluous, in its internal
arrangements and decorations. In her opinion--which placed the matter
beyond discussion--the symbolical groups over the arches were all out
of drawing, the colouring of the whole place vulgar to a degree, and
the painted clouds inside the cupola enough to make one sick. The
major endorsed her criticisms, perfunctorily, with amused little nods,
glancing hither and thither in the directions she desired. "Ah, my
dear," said he, "you mustn't expect everybody to have such good taste
as yours." Mr. Westmoreland seemed to have exhausted the Exhibition,
for his part; he had seen it all the day before, he explained, and he
did not see what there was to make a fuss about. With the exception
of some mysteries in the basement, into which he darkly hinted a
desire to initiate the major presently, it had nothing about it to
interest a man who, like him, had just returned from Europe and had
seen the Paris affair. But to our girls it was an enchanted palace of
delights--far exceeding their most extravagant anticipations. They
gave no verbal expression to their sentiments, but they looked at each
other with faces full of exalted emotion, and tacitly agreed that they
were perfectly satisfied. The fascination of the place, as a storehouse
of genuine samples of the treasures of that great world which they
had never seen, laid hold of them with a grip that left a lasting
impression. Even the _rococo_ magnificence of the architecture and its
adornments, which Mrs. Duff-Scott, enlightened by a large experience,
despised, affected their untrained imaginations with all the force of
the highest artistic sublimity. A longing took possession of them all
at the same moment to steal back to-morrow--next day--as soon as they
were free again to follow their own devices--and wander about the great
and wonderful labyrinth by themselves and revel unobserved in their
secret enthusiasms.
However, they enjoyed themselves to-day beyond all expectation. After
skimming the cream of the many sensations offered to them, sauntering
up and down and round and round through the larger thoroughfares in
a straggling group, the little party, fixing upon their place of
rendezvous and lunching arrangements, paired themselves for a closer
inspection of such works of art as they were severally inclined to.
Mrs. Duff-Scott kept Patty by her side, partly because Mr. Westmoreland
did not seem to want her, and partly because the girl was such an
interesting companion, being wholly absorbed in what she had come
to see, and full of intelligent appreciation of everything that was
pointed out to her; and this pair went a-hunting in the wildernesses of
miscellaneous pottery for such unique and precious "bits" as might be
secured, on the early bird principle, for Mrs. Duff-Scott's collection.
Very soon that lady's card was hanging round the necks of all sorts of
quaint vessels that she had greedily pounced upon (and which further
researches proved to be relatively unworthy of notice) in her anxiety
to outwit and frustrate the birds that would come round presently;
while Patty was having her first lesson in china, and showing herself a
delightfully precocious pupil. Mr. Westmoreland confined his attentions
exclusively to Eleanor, who by-and-bye found herself interested in
being made so much of, and even inclined to be a little frivolous. She
did not know whether to take him as a joke or in earnest, but either
way he was amusing. He strolled heavily along by her side for awhile
in the wake of Mrs. Duff-Scott and Patty, paying no attention to the
dazzling wares around him, but a great deal to his companion. He kept
turning his head to gaze at her, with solemn, ruminating eyes, until at
last, tired of pretending she did not notice it, she looked back at him
and laughed. This seemed to put him at his ease with her at once.
"What are you laughing at?" he asked, with more animation than she
thought him capable of.
"Nothing," said she.
"Oh, but you were laughing at something. What was it? Was it because I
was staring at you?"
"Well, you _do_ stare," she admitted.
"I can't help it. No one could help staring at you."
"Why? Am I such a curiosity?"
"You know why. Don't pretend you don't."
She blushed at this, making herself look prettier than ever; it was not
in her to pretend she didn't know--nor yet to pretend that his crude
flattery displeased her.
"A cat may look at a king," he remarked, his heavy face quite lit up
with his enjoyment of his own delicate raillery.
"O yes, certainly," she retorted. "But you see I am not a king, and you
are not a cat."
"'Pon my word, you're awfully sharp," he rejoined, admiringly. And
he laughed over this little joke at intervals for several minutes.
Then by degrees they dropped away from their party, and went straying
up and down the nave _tête-à-tête_ amongst the crowd, looking at the
exhibits and not much understanding what they looked at; and they
carried on their conversation in much the same style as they began it,
with, I grieve to say, considerable mutual enjoyment. By-and-bye Mr.
Westmoreland took his young companion to the German tent, where the
Hanau jewels were, by way of giving her the greatest treat he could
think of. He betted her sixpence that he could tell her which necklace
she liked the best, and he showed her the several articles (worth
some thousands of pounds) which he should have selected for his wife,
had he had a wife--declaring in the same breath that they were very
poor things in comparison with such and such other things that he had
seen elsewhere. Then they strolled along the gallery, glancing at the
pictures as they went, Eleanor making mental notes for future study,
but finding herself unable to study anything in Mr. Westmoreland's
company. And then suddenly came a tall figure towards them--a
gentlemanly man with a brown face and a red moustache--at sight of whom
she gave a a little start of delighted recognition.
"Hullo!" cried Mr. Westmoreland, "there's old Yelverton, I do declare.
He _said_ he'd come over to have a look at the Exhibition."
Old Yelverton was no other than "Elizabeth's young man."