THE DOWAGER'S LITTLE DINNER.
Lady Cecil was both surprised and annoyed when the dowager announced
Mr. O'Boyneville as one of the guests at her next little dinner.
"How could you ask that dreadful man, auntie?" she said.
"Because the dreadful man is a very distinguished person--in the law;
and as Mr. Horley, the Indian judge, dines with us next Wednesday, I
thought I could not do better than ask this Irish barrister. I know
those lawyer people like to meet one another; though goodness knows,
with salmon at half-a-crown a pound, and ducklings at eight shillings a
pair, I ought not to involve myself in the expense of dinner parties."
Cecil shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly as she seated herself
at her piano after this little discussion. It mattered so little to
her who came to her aunt's dinner parties. Imagine the indifference of
Lucy Ashton as to the guests who partook of the Lord Keeper's ponderous
banquets during that dreary interval in which Ravenswood was away. But
poor Cecil obeyed her aunt's orders, and did battle with the poulterer
for a reduction in the price of his ducklings, and went through all
manner of intricate calculations as to the difference between the
expense of lobster cutlets and fricandeau, or oyster patties and
chicken rissoles.
"I think Spickson makes his lobster cutlets smaller than ever this
year," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse, as she looked over the confectioner's
list of made-dishes; "and as to his fricandeaus, I am always on tenter
hooks for fear they shouldn't go decently round the table, and I can't
get that man Peters to calculate his spoonfuls; and if he's weak enough
to let people help themselves there's sure to be unfairness about the
truffles; though what any one can admire in truffles is one of the
mysteries I have never been able to fathom. As to dessert, Cecil, I
shall take the carriage into the City to-morrow morning, and get what I
want; for I've no notion of paying eightpence apiece in Covent Garden
for peaches that I can get in Thames Street for threepence."
On the appointed evening Cecil was the first to enter the drawing-room;
for the dowager had taken a siesta after luncheon, and was late at
her toilette. Dressed in some transparent fabric of pale-blue, with a
fluttering knot of ribbon here and there, and a turquoise cross upon
her neck, Lady Cecil looked very elegant, very pretty, with that
delicate loveliness which so rarely kindled into brilliancy, with that
patrician calm which so seldom warmed into animation. She looked at
the clock on the chimney-piece as she took a book from a cabinet where
a few of her aunt's choicest volumes were ranged on alternate shelves
with china teacups and quaint old Oriental monsters. "Only seven; and
the people are asked for half-past, which always means eight," she
thought, as she sank listlessly into a low chair near the open window.
She opened her book and tried to read. It was a volume of Shelley; and
the dreamy mysticism of the verse soothed her with its magic harmony.
The shadows of her life had been fading gradually away from her within
the last few months, but no sunshine had succeeded the darkness. She
was too gentle and womanly to be cynical; but an indifference to every
thing on earth--an indifference almost as profound as the dreary
_ennui_ of Hamlet--had come down upon her.
And yet she went to parties and danced quadrilles, and even waltzed
on occasions. To dance and to make merry while the ruthless serpent
gnaws at the heart is no new pastime. There is something pathetic in
the simplicity with which Lucy Aikin tells us how the great Elizabeth
went to a festival while her favourite--her Benjamin of favourites--the
brilliant Essex, languished under the burden of her dread displeasure;
while the imperious spirit of the Ruler was at war with the woman's
doting heart, and the most terrible struggle of her life was going
forward. There was dancing at my Lord Cobham's that night, and a masque
performed by women, and one of these ladies wooed the Queen to dance.
"Who are you?" asked the Sovereign. "My name is Affection," returned
the masquer. "_Affection_," said the Queen, "_is false!_" And _yet_ she
danced, remarks the historian with unconscious pathos.
It was only ten minutes after seven, and Cecil was quite absorbed in
the pages of Alastor, when the door was flung open with the stately
swing peculiar to the accomplished dairyman who did duty as butler on
the dowager's reception days, and the accomplished dairyman announced
with perfect distinctness, "Mr. O'Boyneville."
Accomplished as the dairyman was, he might have made a mess of any
other name; but the great barrister's appellation was "familiar in
his ear as household words;" and he had many "household words" with
his better half when the propensity for strong drinks, contracted in
the riotous days of his butlerhood, beguiled him from the domestic
shelter. He knew Mr. O'Boyneville, and had sat on juries in the courts
where that gentleman was mighty, and had been cajoled by the Irishman's
insidious eloquence and slap-dash mode of argument. He had laughed
over Mr. O'Boyneville's speeches and cross-examinations recorded in the
newspapers; and he ushered the barrister into the little drawing-room
in Dorset Square with all the respect due to so brilliant a luminary.
Cecil was very much annoyed by the Irishman's early arrival; but he was
her aunt's guest, and she was bound to receive him courteously. She
laid aside her book, and made the barrister a curtsy.
And the brilliant O'Boyneville--the man with whom cool impudence often
rose to the level of genius--that luminary before whom the lesser
lights of the bar waxed faint and pale, how did his familiarity with
feminine psychology, as exhibited in the witness box, serve him in the
dowager's drawing-room? Alas for Hibernian wit and Hibernian audacity!
for Mr. O'Boyneville could think of no more interesting subject of
remark at this moment than the fact that the day had been warm: and a
warm day in the last week of June is not exactly a notable phenomenon.
Lady Cecil agreed to the barrister's statement with regard to the
weather, and then went on to say that town was not so full as it had
been: and this is again not exactly a phenomenon in the last week of
June.
"I don't know about that, Lady Cecil," replied Mr. O'Boyneville. "If
you'd been in the Court of Common Pleas this morning you'd not have
thought London empty." And then there was a pause; for the barrister,
being more accustomed to browbeat and terrify the fair sex than to make
small-talk for their amusement, found himself brought to a standstill;
and Cecil did not like her aunt's guest well enough to make any
desperate conversational plunge.
He sat looking at her in silence; not with the bold stare of admiration
with which he was wont to take a feminine witness off her guard before
entrapping her into prevarication or perjury, but with a more earnest
gaze than he had ever fixed on any woman's face before.
"She reminds me of my mother," he thought; "and yet it's only a pale
shadow I can remember when I think of my mother. I was such a child
when she died."
Lady Cecil glanced at her aunt's new acquaintance as he sat opposite
to her. He was quite different from any one she ever had seen before;
and to her eyes--so accustomed to look upon the graceful perfection,
the harmonious elegance of high-bred youth, there was something almost
uncivilised in his aspect. He wore the high shirt-collars in which she
had seen him at the doctor's ball, the tight-fitting dress coat of a
departed age, a rusty black cravat, and boots of dubious symmetry. His
brown hair was thick and long; but the massive head had something
leonine in its character; the aquiline nose and large bright blue eyes
had that stamp of power which is so near akin to beauty. That brief
contemplation of Laurence O'Boyneville awakened Cecil Chudleigh to the
consciousness that the "dreadful man" to whom she so much objected was
not quite the kind of person to be despised.
"I dare say he is clever--in his own way," she thought; "but what could
have induced my aunt to ask him to dinner?"
She was spared the trouble of finding some new subject wherewith to
bridge the gulf of silence yawning so blankly between her and the
barrister, for the all-accomplished cow-keeper announced Mr. and Miss
Crawford; and wherever Flo went she put to flight the dull horror of
silence. The Crawfords had been invited to please Lady Cecil; "and
because Mr. Crawford is a nice sort of person to have, you know, my
dear," the dowager said to one of her confidantes; "for there is such
a rage about these painter people just now, and I assure you his place
at Kensington is a perfect palace, with marble pillars in the hall, and
old stained-glass windows, and carved oak panels, that he has picked
up at Antwerp; and I hear the prices he gets for his pictures are
_something fabulous_; but he's the dearest unaffected creature you ever
met; and if you like to come on Wednesday night between nine and ten,
you shall see him."
Flo greeted her dearest Cecil with enthusiasm, and saluted Mr.
O'Boyneville with the faintest indication of a curtsey as she swept
her silken skirts past him; and then, when she had shaken hands
with her dearest friend, she turned to look at the barrister with a
charming insolent little look, which seemed to express, "And what
outlandish creature are _you_, I wonder?" Of course Mr. Crawford knew
the great Q. C. Almost every male inhabitant of London was familiar
with that ponderous figure and defiant face. Few were the dwellers in
the mighty City who had not seen those big white hands waved in the
face of an opponent, or lifted in the denunciatory periods of virtuous
indignation. The painter began to talk to the barrister, and in a
moment the great Laurence was at his ease. He knew how to talk--with
men,--and there was no question within the regions of heaven or earth
too mighty for his audacity, too small for his powers of argument. He
would have talked to Herschel about the last discovery in the starry
system; and it is ten to one but in a mixed company he would have made
Herschel look foolish: he would have demonstrated before the face
of Newton that his theory of gravitation was a false one; he would
have offered for Mr. Paul Bedford's consideration new views upon the
subject of "Jolly Nose;" or if a question of tailoring had arisen in
an assembly of tailors, he would have proved to the satisfaction of
the company that he alone amongst them all had fully mastered the
science of cutting out a coat. Was it not his business to know every
thing, or to seem to know every thing? If any mad-brained counsel on
the opposite side had been pleased to set a flute or "recorder" before
him, would it not have been his duty to play a tune thereupon for the
edification of the court? There was no subject that he had not been
called upon to handle in the course of his legal career. He had pleaded
the cause of a musician whose copyright in a ballad had been assailed
on the ground of plagiarism, and--ignorant of a note of music--had
talked the jury into idiocy with a farrago of sounding nonsense such as
"the syncopated passage in the second bar of my client's composition,
gentlemen, is said to resemble the third bar of Mozart's sonato in C
minor; but to any one who is familiar with the first principles of
harmony, gentlemen, the introduction of the supertonic in place of
the subdominant must be a convincing proof of the falsehood of this
assertion: and if any thing were required to demonstrate the puerility
of the argument adopted by my learned friend on the other side, it
would be the group of semiquavers which concludes the phrase." He had
carried a French milliner triumphantly through all the intricacies
of an action against an aristocratic customer for the recovery of a
disputed account, and had demonstrated with crushing force the meanness
of the lady defendant, and the honesty of his client's charges. To the
lookers-on from the outer world his triumphs may have appeared easy. It
seemed as if he had only to elevate his voice with a certain emphasis,
and to look round the court with a certain self-assured smile, and lo,
his audience rejoiced and were merry. "The great question at issue,
gentlemen of the jury, is the question of '_trimmings_.' (Laughter.)
You have all of you heard, no doubt, of a leg of mutton and trimmings
(renewed laughter); but the trimmings in question are of far greater
value than the turnips of a Cincinnatus, or the potatoes of a Raleigh.
The question in point, gentlemen, if I may venture upon that play of
words which the great Samuel Johnson held in such detestation, is
a question _of_ point. The point-lace flounce, for which my client
charges one hundred and thirty-nine pounds fourteen and sixpence,
was, I am told, one of the rarest specimens of the workmanship of the
Beguines of Flanders. And who and what are these Beguines, gentlemen
of the jury, by whose patient fingers this delicate fabric was
manufactured? Were they common workwomen, to be recompensed at a common
rate? No, gentlemen of the jury, they were ladies--ladies of honourable
lineage and independent means, who of their own free will retired into
a Beguinage--a religious house, which was yet not a convent; and
there, free from the bondage of any formal vow, they devoted themselves
to the consolation of the poor and afflicted, and the manufacture
of that rare old lace which is now the proudest boast of our female
aristocracy. Why, gentlemen, the price demanded by my client is
something pitiful when we remember the circumstances under which that
point-lace was made--the taper fingers that have toiled to fashion
those intricate arabesques--the solitary tears that have bedewed the
fairy fabric."
And here it may be that the great O'Boyneville himself produced a
palpable tear on the end of his finger, and gazed at it for a moment
in absence of mind, as wondering what it was,--or seemed so to gaze,
while in reality his piercing eye shot towards the jury to see whether
they were laughing at him, or whether his rhodomontade had told. This
was the man who had found himself so ill at ease in the society of one
beautiful woman.
The dowager appeared presently.
"Oh, you too-punctual people!" exclaimed the lively Mrs.
MacClaverhouse. "You come to see an old woman who lives in lodgings,
and I dare say you expect every thing as well _réglé_ as if you were
going to dine at Mr. Horborough's palace in Park Lane. How do you do,
Florence my dear?--How d'ye do, Crawford? So you and Mr. O'Boyneville
are old friends? That's very nice; but I hope you're not going to talk
about texture and modelling _all_ the evening. Do you know we had a
couple of musical celebrities once at one of the General's dinners
in Portland Place, and they talked about harmony and composition all
dinner-time; and as they sat on opposite sides of the table, it was
_so_ agreeable for the rest of the company. 'Do you know what that
fellow Simpkins will do?' says Brown. 'Why, he'll use consecutive
fifths,--he's got them more than once in that last sonata of his.'
'God bless my soul!' cried Smith, 'I never thought much of him, but
I did not suppose he was capable of _that_.' And that's the way they
went on the whole evening. So, you dear Crawford, tell us as many nice
stories about your artist friends as you can--about their having their
furniture seized by sheriffs' officers, and taking their pig pictures
wet to that stupid pawnbroker, who rubs out a pig with his thumb; and
dying in sponging-houses; and stabbing their models in order to get the
proper contraction of the muscles; but please _don't_ be technical."
The Indian notability made his appearance presently, with a very
stately wife in brown velvet and carbuncles; a costume which Flo
declared reminded her of haunch-of-mutton and currant-jelly. To Mr.
O'Boyneville's escort this stately matron was intrusted; an elegant
young Belgian diplomatist, who spoke very little English, took charge
of Florence, while Mr. Crawford devoted himself to Cecil, and the
Judge of the Sudder Dewanee offered his arm to Mrs. MacClaverhouse,
whose brain was racked by doubts as to whether the salmon would go
comfortably round, or whether those two ninepenny lobsters ordered for
the sauce were equal to the eighteenpenny one which she had rejected,
suspecting sinister motives lurking in the mind of the fishmonger who
had recommended it. The dinner _à la Russe_ is a splendid institution
for the economical housekeeper, and might on some occasions be called a
dinner _à la ruse_; so artful are the manœuvres by which half-a-dozen
oyster-patties, or a few ounces of chicken and a handful of asparagus
tops, can be made to do duty for a course; so inexpensive are the
desserts, which consist chiefly of fossilised conserves and uneatable
bonbons, and which are of so indestructible a nature that they will
last a managing hostess as long as a chancery-suit.
The dinner went off well. Mrs. MacClaverhouse's little dinners were
almost always successful, in spite of those conflicting emotions which
agitated the heart of the hostess.
The Indian judge and the Irish barrister talked _shop_; and there
was a very animated discussion of a great international-law case,
the details of which had filled the columns of the _Times_ for the
last three weeks--a case in which masculine intelligence perceived
a thrilling interest, but which to the female mind appeared only a
hopeless complication of politics and ship-building. In so small a
party the conversation was tolerably general. Mr. Crawford entered
heartily into the ship-building case; and only Florence and the
elegant young diplomatist were confidential, chattering gaily in that
exquisite language which seems to have been invented in the interests
of coquetry. The gentlemen came to the drawing-room very soon after the
ladies had settled themselves in opposite corners: Florence and Cecil
on a cosy little sofa by the open window--a sofa just large enough to
accommodate their ample skirts; the dowager and the judge's wife on
easy-chairs near a ground-glass screen which concealed the empty grate.
Florence had so much intelligence of a peculiarly confidential nature
to impart to her friend, that she looked almost coldly on the elegant
young Belgian when he presented himself before her. It is very nice
for a young lady, whose French is undoubtedly Parisian, to discuss
Lamartine and De Vigny, Hugo and Chateaubriand--and such other Gallic
luminaries whose works a young lady may discuss--with an agreeable
companion; but Florence Crawford had made a conquest within the last
week, and was bright with all the radiance of a new triumph, and
unutterably eager to impart the tidings of her last success to Cecil.
"He has called on papa twice within the week, dear," said the animated
Flo in that confidential undertone which is the next thing to
whispering; "and papa says it is the most absurd thing in the world
to hear him ordering pictures: he has asked papa to paint him two.
And when he was asked if he had any special idea of his own about the
subject, he said no, but he wanted them to fit the recesses between
the windows of his billiard-room at Pevenshall--he has a place called
Pevenshall somewhere in that dreadful north; for he is rich--_à
millions_, you know--_tout ce qu'il y a de plus Manchester_. His father
and grandfather made all the money, and he is to spend it. I am sure
he would never have made any for himself. But papa has declined the
unfortunate young man's commission. Fancy one of papa's Cleopatras
stinging herself to death between the windows of a Manchester man's
billiard-room. There are men in Manchester who know art thoroughly,
papa says; and it is utterly absurd for a painter to turn up his nose
at the patronage of traders; for if you go into the galleries of those
dear old sleepy towns in Belgium, you'll find that the noblest works
of your Van Eycks and Hans what's-his-names were paid for by wealthy
citizens; and what a blessing the modern patrons don't insist on having
themselves painted, looking through cupboards, or riding on horseback,
in the corner of a picture. Imagine a Manchester man's head poking
through a hole in the sky in Mr. Millais' 'Vale of Rest,' or peering
out of a cupboard in a corner of Mr. Frith's 'Derby Day!' However, papa
has declined to paint anything for Mr. Lobyer; so the unfortunate young
man will have no excuse for calling on unorthodox occasions."
"But he must be a very stupid person, Florence. I cannot imagine your
taking any interest in him."
"Nor can I imagine myself tolerating his society for half-an-hour, if
he were not what he is," answered Flo blithely. "Don't I tell you that
he is the rich Mr. Lobyer? Even his name is horrible, you see--Lobyer!
He might make it a little better by tacking on some aristocratic
_prénom_. Vavasor Lobyer, or Plantagenet Lobyer, or something of that
kind, might sound almost tolerable. Yes, he is very stupid, Cecil;
but he seems rather a good young fellow; he laughs good-naturedly
when other people are laughing, and he gets on wonderfully with my
cockatoos. There seems to be an instinctive kind of sympathy between
him and cockatoos, and they allow him to rumple their feathers and
scratch their foreheads in the most amiable manner. You know what a
place the Fountains is, and how often _I_ sit in the conservatory that
leads to the painting-room, or else just outside papa's bay-window; so
of course when Mr. Lobyer came to talk about the pictures, he loitered
and hung about playing with the birds, and sniffing at the flowers in
that horrible fidgety manner peculiar to some young men, until papa
came out of the painting-room to tell me I had better go for a drive,
which meant that Mr. Lobyer was to take his departure. And I really
think, Cecil, that if I had not kept him at bay that unfortunate young
man would have made me an offer that very morning, after meeting me
rather less than half-a-dozen times."
"But, Florence, you surely would never marry such a person?"
"For goodness' sake, Cecil, don't call him a person! Haven't I always
told you that I meant to marry for money, and don't I tell you that
Mr. Lobyer is preposterously rich? I acknowledge that he is stupid and
ignorant--more Manchester than Manchester itself; but are there not
guardsmen with long pedigrees who are as boorish and ignorant as Mr.
Lobyer? I am not like those absurd girls who look in the glass and
fancy they are like the two beautiful Miss Gunnings, and have only to
show themselves in the park in order to captivate marquises and royal
dukes."
"And you would really marry for money, Flory?" said Cecil very sadly.
"Is there any thing so well worth marrying for? Who was that stupid old
legal person who said that knowledge is power? Why did he take bribes
and sell public offices if he thought that? Depend upon it, Cecil, that
money is power, and the only power worth wielding. Money is power,
and beauty, and grace, and fascination. Do you think Anne of Austria
fell in love with plain George Villiers? No, Cecil; she fell in love
with the Duke of Buckingham, and his white uncut velvet suit, and his
diamonds, and the jewels he dropped among her maids-of-honour, and all
the pageantry and splendour around and about him."
Was it of any use to reason with a young lady who talked like this?
Miss Crawford had enjoyed all those advantages of education which
fall to the share of middle-class damsels of the present day, and
the possession of which a century ago would have made a young lady a
phenomenon. She spoke French perfectly; she knew a little Italian, and
had read the _Promessi Sposi_, and could quote little bits of Dante
and Petrarch; she could read German, and quoted Goethe and Schiller on
occasions; she played brilliantly, and painted tolerably, and waltzed
exquisitely; but of that moral education which some mothers and fathers
bestow upon their children, Florence Crawford was utterly destitute.
She had brought herself up; and she prided herself on that high-bred
heartlessness, or affectation of heartlessness, which seemed one of the
most fashionable graces of her day. She had founded herself, as she
fancied, on the best models.
"Better to be Becky Sharpe than Amelia Sedley," she said "and the world
is full of Beckys and Amelias."
She could find a very tolerable excuse for herself and her companions.
"The men complain that we are fast and mercenary; that we talk slang,
and try to make rich marriages; and there are articles about us in the
fashionable newspapers, just as if we were a new variety in animal
creation, on view in Regent's Park. Do they ever stop to consider who
taught us to be what we are? Can the gentlemen, whose highest praise
of a woman is to say that she is jolly, and has no nonsense about her,
and sits square on her horse, wonder very much if we cultivate the only
accomplishments they admire?"
Cecil had often tried to remonstrate with her volatile friend, and
had as often found her efforts utterly thrown away. So to-night she
allowed Flo to devote herself to the Belgian _attaché_, and abandoned
herself to her own thoughts, only making a little pretence of joining
in the conversation now and then. Sometimes, while she listlessly
turned the leaves of an album, whose every leaf she knew by heart, Lady
Cecil glanced upward to the angle of the mantelpiece by which Laurence
O'Boyneville stood, in conversation with the judge and the painter;
for, however charming the society of lovely and accomplished woman may
be, men have an attraction for one another, in comparison with which
all feminine witchery is weak and futile.
Looking at the little group by the chimney-piece, Cecil saw that the
barrister had by far the largest share in the conversation. He was
very animated, and those large white hands, which were so eminently
useful to him in court, were considerably employed to illustrate his
discourse. That he was talking well she could see in the attentive
faces of his listeners, for Indian judges and popular painters do not
listen with any show of interest to a man who talks nonsense. Lady
Cecil began to think that after all there must be something a little
out of the common in this dreadful man.
The evening came to a close presently, and as he bent over Cecil to say
good-night, Mr. O'Boyneville's manner was very much out of the common.
"I have been talking to your aunt, Lady Cecil," he said, "and she tells
me you leave town early next week. I have asked permission to call on
you to-morrow, and Mrs. MacClaverhouse has given it. So it is not
good-bye, you see, but _au revoir_."
This was about the coolest speech which Cecil Chudleigh had ever had
addressed to her. She looked at Mr. O'Boyneville with an expression of
unmitigated astonishment, but he gave her hand a gripe that wounded the
slender fingers with the rings which adorned them, and departed.
"I've three hours' work to get through before I go to bed to-night,"
he said, as he went down stairs with the painter and his daughter; and
so he had. The first hansom that he encountered conveyed him to that
sepulchral mansion in Brunswick Square which he had chosen for his
habitation; not because he particularly liked Brunswick Square, but
because it was necessary for him to live somewhere.
He let himself into the gaunt stone hall with his latch-key, and
walked straight to the library at the back of this spacious mansion--a
gloomy chamber lined with law-books, and provided with that species
of furniture which may be seen exhibited by the merchants of Queen
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. This dismal apartment was the retreat
in which Mr. O'Boyneville spent the greater part of his home-life. He
very frequently took his dinner on the library table, with his plate
surrounded by papers, and an open brief propped up against his decanter
of Manzanilla.
To-night he found the red bag, which his clerk had brought from the
Temple, waiting for him on the table. He did not open it quite at
once. He did not pounce upon its contents as he had been wont to
do. He sat for some minutes leaning back in his chair, with a smile
upon his face--a dreamy smile, which was new to that eager, resolute
countenance, so well known to the legal world for its hawk-like glances
and insolent defiance.
"My own sweet darling!" he thought; "and I shall have a wife and a
home! Good Heavens! how many years of my life have I spent without ever
dreaming of any such happiness! And now--now--I wonder that I could
have lived so long as I have; I wonder that I could have lived without
_her_."
And then, after abandoning himself a little longer to this delicious
reverie, he roused himself with an effort, and opened his bag.
But as he took out the first handful of papers, he exclaimed with a
sigh,
"And yet, God knows, I wish I had never seen her. I went on so well
before, and my mind was free for my work; and now----"
He began to read, and in five minutes' time was as deeply absorbed in
his papers as if no such person as Cecil Chudleigh had existed. And
yet he loved her--with that foolish and unreasoning passion called love
at sight--with that love which, coming for the first time to a man of
his age, comes as surely for the last.