Belchamber’s first feeling was that it was a judgment on him for having
allowed his mind to wander to worldly frivolities and thoughts of
personal amusement. Certainly he had been brought up with a round turn.
His next was one of bewilderment as to what it behoved him to do under
the circumstances. Ought he to let his mother or Lord Firth know what he
had seen? He recoiled with all the force of schoolboy traditions from
the idea of telling tales. Had Arthur recognised him? he wondered, and
would he come to the rendezvous at the club next day, even supposing
that he got his message? He had been on his way to call on his
grandmother, and, as he omitted to give the driver any fresh
instructions, he presently found himself at Sunborough House. Having
ascertained from the porter that the duchess was out, he was turning
away when he saw some one signalling to him from one of the ground-floor
windows, and Claude came running bareheaded down the steps.
‘My dear old boy! this _is_ nice,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea you were in
town. I saw you from the window of my room. Come in and have some tea,
and I’ll tell them to let us know when grandmamma comes in.’
Sainty was drawn affectionately into a large room near the front-door,
which Claude explained was his peculiar sanctum. ‘It used just to be a
sort of waiting-room, and was much wasted, so I got the Pompier to let
me have it for mine. That bell rings from his study, so he can get at me
whenever he wants me.’
It was a pleasant room, with two high windows draped with some sombre,
respectable, woollen fabric. Its original furniture consisted of a
large writing-table with a gallery, and a set of green leather chairs,
two high-backed mahogany bookcases with brass lattice-work in their
doors, and several good old engravings on the walls, the duke’s father,
mother, and grandfather, after Lawrence, Mesdames Taglioni, and Fanny
Ellsler, Count d’Orsay, the Queen on horseback, and the Duke of
Wellington. On this severe ground Claude had, so to speak, embroidered a
fantasia of more modern objects--little tables, low easy-chairs,
cigarette-cases, a vase or two of flowers, several books, reviews, and
paper-knives, and a vast quantity of signed and framed photographs of
all shapes and sizes. With the exception of an eminent man or two, and a
few sleek young peers, they all represented beautiful ladies--ladies
looking over their shoulders, with their hands behind their backs,
ladies with sheaves of lilies and baskets of flowers, ladies looking out
of paper-mullioned windows wreathed in sham ivy, ladies with children in
lace frocks, ladies in ball dress, court dress, fancy dress, or simply
what may be called photographic dress, consisting of the sitter’s best
low-necked gown and a hat, a combination which no one could be expected
to believe was ever worn outside the studio. Three large official
dispatch-boxes with paper tags hanging out of their ends stood on the
writing-table, and a receptacle like a good-sized dog-basket bulged with
letters for the post.
His cousin was so cordial and affectionate, did the honours of his
official residence with such charming grace, that Sainty felt impelled
rather against his will to tell him of his late encounter. Perhaps if
circumstances had not thrown him so immediately in his way, he might not
have selected Claude as his confidant; but he desperately needed help
and counsel, and here was some one ready with both, some one whom to
tell would have none of the grave, official importance of a report to
Lady Charmington or his uncle. Warmed by tea and his cousin’s
enthusiastic welcome, he had not been ten minutes in the room before he
had confided to its occupant all his uneasiness and its latest cause.
‘Really! Arthur _is_ an ass!’ was Claude’s comment. ‘What strikes me
first of all is the infernal imprudence of the whole thing. Why can’t he
go and see the lady quietly, instead of flourishing about Piccadilly in
a hansom with her at five o’clock in the afternoon? He’s just as likely
as not to meet grandmamma or your uncle as any one else, and then all
the fat will be in the fire.’
There was a ring of very genuine annoyance in Claude’s voice; and
Sainty, though he smiled at the aspect of the matter that so
characteristically presented itself to Morland as the important one,
felt that he had not brought his troubles to an indifferent or
unsympathetic person.
‘But who do you suppose it is?’ he asked, ‘and where can Arthur have
made her acquaintance? Perhaps it may not be--what I fear; but she
looked rather--well, rather----’
‘Yes,’ said Claude, laughing; ‘I should say it was ten to one she _was_
“rather.”’
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ cried Sainty. ‘It was bad enough when I
thought he was only neglecting his work, and just idling and amusing
himself; but this makes it all much more serious. But Claude, can’t you
help? Can you not guess who it might be?’
‘Oh, it might be any one of a dozen people,’ said Claude indifferently.
‘It doesn’t so much matter _who_ it is,’ he added; ‘the great thing is
to try and get him not to make a fool of himself. You know, dear Saint,
it is useless to expect the high moral view from _me_. What you want is
that Arthur shan’t go and do anything idiotic, isn’t it? Well, I’m much
more likely to prevent his giving the whole show away than you are,
ain’t I? You leave it to me; I’ll see what can be done.’
It was on the tip of Sainty’s tongue to say that the eye which Claude
had promised him at Belchamber to keep on Arthur, could not have been
peculiarly vigilant; but he did not wish to alienate the one person who
might perhaps help him, so he expressed gratitude and a confidence he
did not wholly feel; and just then a footman came in to say that ‘’Er
grace had come in, but was dining out, and must rest before dressing,
and she ‘oped Lord Belchamber would come to luncheon next day.’
‘By the way, yes,’ said Claude, when the man had left them. ‘To-night is
the dinner at the French Embassy, and then there is the ball at
What’s-their-names, and grandmamma must shed her day-skin and give the
new one time to harden.’
‘What do you _call_ her, Claude?’ asked Sainty. ‘I never feel as if I
_could_ call her “grandmamma.”’
‘Oh, I never call her that to her face, _bien entendu_. It was a
dreadful question at first. I couldn’t call her Hélo as her stepsons do;
but I’ve hit on a lovely plan. I call her ‘Grace,’ suggesting
facetiously ‘Your grace,’ do you see? and it sounds like a cross between
a Christian name and a sort of compliment, grace personified, that kind
of business. Well, good-night, old chap, if you must go. Don’t worry
about the little blessing; you had much better let me see what I can do.
Right you are. And for the Lord’s sake, don’t say a word to your uncle
or any of ’em.’
‘Don’t worry,’ that was still the burthen of such very various
counsellors, as Gerald Newby and Claude Morland, and more or less the
line his mother took, who was again so unlike either of them; and
meanwhile he was expected to stand by and see Arthur drifting to ruin
under his eyes. However, he so far obeyed Claude’s injunctions as to say
nothing to Lord Firth on the subject, when they presently dined
together, though his principal object in coming to town had been to ask
his advice.
‘Have you seen Arthur?’ his uncle asked in the course of dinner, and
Sainty only said, ‘I called at Monkton’s and at his lodgings, but I
didn’t find him.’
‘It was a rum idea of your mother’s, letting him come to London, but it
seems to be working, and so does he. I’ve asked him once or twice to
come and dine, but he hardly ever comes. He says the evening is one of
the best times he has for work.’
Sainty had but little chance of private talk with Claude the next day,
when he lunched at Sunborough House. His cousin drew him gently to a
window when he arrived, while the numerous chance guests were awaiting
the appearance of their hostess.
‘I’ve thought of who it very likely was,’ he said, with engaging
frankness. ‘If it’s the person I think, she’s a good girl, and won’t do
him any harm. You know you can’t expect to keep Arthur away from women;
the important thing is that he shouldn’t get into bad hands, and I’ll
drop him a hint to be more careful and not to go and _afficher_ himself.
Hush! here’s our respectable ancestress. Well, Grace, here’s your _good_
boy come to see you, to make a change from your bad one.’
Sainty never knew whether it was circumstances or design that made it
impossible for him to get another word alone with Claude. He did not
feel that Morland’s help would be exactly of the kind or in the
direction that he wanted, and he was more than ever anxious to see his
brother himself, and try and find out just how much was wrong. He went
early in the afternoon to a club in St. James’s Street, of which he had
lately become a member, so as to be sure not to miss Arthur if he should
come there. To his surprise, the porter handed him a letter as he went
in, which proved to be a note from Lady Eccleston asking him to dine the
same evening. He thought it would be pleasant to accept, but decided to
keep it till he had found out if Arthur had any plans for the evening;
so he put it into his pocket, and turned into a room on the ground
floor, where some of the latest publications were displayed on a long
table.
A group of young men who were laughing uproariously over a book desisted
rather suddenly on his entrance, as one of them, in whom he recognised
the young stockbroker Pryor, looked towards him and whispered something
to the rest. They faced round and stared at him much as sheep look at a
dog, while Austin Pryor came forward holding out his right hand, with
the book still in his left.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘how odd you should come in just this minute! Have you
seen this book of your friend Parsons’? It’s only out to-day, and they
say you can’t get a copy for love or money. Wasn’t he that untidy chap
with a fishy eye who was at your coming of age last year? I’m blowed if
he hasn’t gone and stuck the whole show into his book, only he’s made
your brother the hero instead of you, he’s turned you into a girl, a
great heiress with rather jimmy health and a cork leg, who’s in love
with the villain. But the rest of us are there, even down to poor little
me. Your mother, your uncle--oh! and the duchess--he’s touched the old
duchess off to the life, even to the colour of the gowns she wore at
dinner. Well--he’s made his fortune. They say he’s been offered ten
thousand for his next book, if he’ll only guarantee two well-known
people bein’ in it. It’s better biz than the House; here am I come away
at three-thirty; absolutely nothing doing, I give you my word. I haven’t
made a fiver this account. Here--would you like the book? I’ve got to go
out, and some one’ll grab it like a shot if you don’t lay hold of it.’
The other youths seemed to have melted away during this speech, so that
when Mr. Pryor, convinced that he had made himself most agreeable,
handed him the fortunate novel of the season, and hurried away to gossip
about it in as many drawing-rooms as he could work in before
dressing-time, Sainty found himself alone with the book in his hand. He
sat down to wait for Arthur, and began turning over the pages.
So it was for this that Parsons had wanted to come to Belchamber. Now he
understood. As Pryor had said, they were all drawn to the life. ‘Well,
it doesn’t demand much imagination to write a book in that way,’ he
thought. Presently he came to the passage about the young don, and found
he was smiling in spite of himself at Newby’s happy confidence that the
character could by no possibility have been drawn from him. The portrait
was one-sided and most malevolent, but quite unmistakable. A year ago he
would have been beyond words indignant at this ill-natured caricature
of his friend and hero. Now he could not repress a faint feeling of
amusement. What had happened to him in the meanwhile, he wondered; he
felt ashamed of his want of loyalty. ‘Lord Arthur Chambers askin’ for
you, m’lud,’ a discreet club waiter murmured in his ear; and he
remembered with a start that in life as in Ned Parsons’ story, the
protagonist of the moment was not himself but his younger brother.
‘Infernally thirsty weather,’ Arthur remarked, as he dropped gracefully
into a chair. ‘May I have a whisky and soda?--thanks.’ Then to the
waiter, without allowing Sainty time to answer, ‘A large whisky and
soda, please, with some ice and a slice of lemon. Well, old chap,’ he
continued, turning again to his brother as the man departed, ‘and what’s
brought you to town?’
‘You,’ answered Sainty severely.
‘O God! old man, not a jaw,’ Arthur pleaded wearily; ‘it’s too hot’
‘Did you see me yesterday?’ Sainty asked suddenly.
‘No, old boy--where?’ said Arthur, with slightly awakened interest.
‘About five o’clock, in Piccadilly. You were in a hansom.’
Arthur flushed crimson all over his handsome face. ‘The devil!’ he said
simply, in a manner which told more plainly than words that he had _not_
seen his brother.
‘Think of the imprudence of it,’ Sainty remonstrated (quoting Claude,
rather to his own surprise; it was not in the least what he had meant to
say). ‘You might just as likely have met Uncle Cor as me, or some one
who knew you, and might have written to mother.’ He did not like to name
Lady Eccleston, who was the person he had in his mind.
‘I wasn’t doing anything I was ashamed of,’ Arthur answered doggedly.
Then there was a little pause, during which the waiter reappeared with a
long clanking tumbler, and the brothers sat and looked at one another
gloomily.
‘Well?’ asked the younger, as he sipped his refreshment.
‘Do you often drink between meals?’ Sainty asked. ‘Are there none of the
stereotyped bad habits that you haven’t contracted yet?’
‘An occasional whisky and soda when one’s thirsty doesn’t make a man an
habitual drunkard----’
After a second pause, ‘I suppose you want to know who it was?’ Arthur
suggested, with another blush.
‘I don’t know that I do,’ Sainty answered. ‘It was evident enough the
sort of person----’
But Arthur cut him short. ‘I won’t hear a word against her,’ he said
hotly. ‘Of course she’s an actress, and that’s enough to make people say
deuced ill-natured things; but she’s as good a girl----’
‘Do you mean to say----’ Sainty was beginning, when Arthur suddenly
melted, leaned forward, and laid an affectionate hand on his.
‘Look here, old man,’ he said, ‘of course I don’t mean that she’s
immaculate; but she’s told me a lot about herself, and I’m sure she’s
more sinned against than sinning, you know, and all that. And I’m
awfully in love with her; you may as well know it first as last. And I
can’t stand hearing her talked about as if she was just a common woman.
What are you doing to-night? I’ve persuaded her to come to supper with
me, and asked some of her pals; will you come to the theatre with me and
see her act, and come and meet her at supper? You’ll see for yourself
how awfully respectable and jolly and all that she is.’
Sainty’s mind flew to the little note in his pocket; he would much
rather have dined with the Ecclestons, but perhaps it was his duty to go
and inspect the syren who had captured his brother, and he was not
without curiosity as to a side of life with regard to which he was as
ignorant as a girl. ‘How can I help him,’ he thought, ‘if I know no more
of his life and temptations than mother does?’ And he shuddered to think
of the light in which Lady Charmington would view his acceptance of the
proffered supper-party.
‘You had better dine here with me first,’ he said resignedly; ‘Uncle Cor
is dining out.’
Arthur was so delighted at the ease with which he had brought his
brother into line with his plans, and so excited by the anticipation of
the evening’s amusement, that Sainty found it impossible to get anything
out of him as to the extent to which he had been neglecting his work.
All mere prosaic questions of that sort seemed to the enamoured swain so
entirely trivial that Sainty himself began to wonder why he attached
such undue importance to them. Under the influence of what seemed almost
like an unselfish passion, Arthur appeared so much more amiable than
usual, that he, who had come to lecture, came perilously near remaining
to sympathise. He learned that the lady of the hansom was Miss Cynthia
de Vere, who was performing in a piece called ‘_Africa Limited, or the
Day of All Jeers_,’ a really rattling piece, in which she was perfectly
ripping, that she had a not very important _rôle_, as far as words went,
which was of course due to professional jealousies, but she was on the
stage nearly all the time, and wore some ‘clinking’ costumes.
‘By the way,’ Sainty inquired, just as Arthur was about to leave him,
‘how did you come to meet Miss de Vere?’
‘Oh, Claude introduced me to her, one of the few good things I owe him.’
‘Claude!’ Sainty bounded. He could only gasp, as the full measure of his
cousin’s duplicity forced itself upon him.
‘You needn’t think the worse of her on that account,’ Arthur said. ‘She
doesn’t like our slimy cousin; she told me so. She says he’s a bad lot,
and so he is. Between you and me, I think he’s behaved badly to her in
some way. She said she’d no cause to love him, but of course I couldn’t
_ask_ her anything about it. Tata, old chap; see you later. I must go
and tell a certain person you’re coming; she’ll be awfully pleased.’
_Africa Limited_ was one of the first of those musical farces which have
revolutionised the English stage; it had a great quantity of characters,
and no particular plot. The first act took place in England, the second
in what was supposed to be Algeria, and was represented by a mixture of
the tropics and a pantomime transformation scene. There were any number
of songs and dances, that could be introduced or omitted at will, and
the time of day was morning, sunset, limelight, or back to high noon,
with bewildering rapidity, and a total disregard of the ordinary
sequence of the hours. There were a pair of serious and lyrical lovers,
who discoursed sentimental ballads and duets; a pair of secondary
lovers, more facetious and less sentimental; an excruciatingly funny
comic man from the halls, who assumed every kind of disguise for no
particular reason; a barbarous potentate, who turned out to be Irish,
and the comic man’s long lost grandfather; several dancers of
_pas-seuls_, and last, but not least, a number of extremely handsome
young ladies, who did not seem to have much connection with the story,
but who turned up in the most unlikely places, always gorgeously
dressed, and had each three sentences to say in the course of the
evening. It was one of this frolic band whom Arthur shyly indicated to
his brother as Miss Cynthia de Vere, and in whom Sainty without much
difficulty recognised the damsel he had seen in Piccadilly. Across the
footlights and out of the pitiless sunshine of a summer day, she made a
striking and picturesque appearance enough. She smiled affably at the
brothers, and at several other acquaintances in the stalls and boxes,
and took a most perfunctory interest in what was going on upon the
stage.
A rather _recherché_ dandyism was at that moment the correct style for
young men about town, and Arthur was got up to kill, with a vast expanse
of shirt-front illuminated by a single jewel, white kid gloves, and a
cane, his fair curls cropped, flattened, and darkened as near to the
accepted model as nature would allow, and his face very pink and solemn
over his high collar. He went out between the acts ‘to smoke a
cigarette,’ and returned with a new buttonhole and a peculiarly fatuous
smile never produced by tobacco.
As they drove to the restaurant where they were to sup, he obliged
Sainty with a catalogue _raisonné_ of the guests. ‘Charley Hunter’s
coming, and Agnes Baines, the girl next but two to Cynthia, because
Charley’s awfully mashed on her; Mabel Hodgson, that handsome girl at
the other corner from Cynthia; and I had to ask that little cad Harry
Atides, because he won’t let her go anywhere without him; they say he
beats her. Cynthia has such an awfully good heart; she asked me to ask
her, because she has such a dull life. I don’t see why she stays with
that little beast. Then there is Elise Balbullier, the French
girl--she’s awfully amusing and clever; Clara Bingham, one of the chorus
girls--she’s a pal of Cynthia’s; and Colonel Hoby--he knows all the
girls, and they like him, and he chaffs ’em, don’t you know.’
Some of us not yet in our dotage can remember when it was by no means an
easy thing to find a place in London whereat to sup; but about the time
that pieces of the type of _Africa Limited_ came into fashion, the
play-going public discovered that it was unequal to the intellectual
effort of witnessing them without the support of two dinners, and the
first house of entertainment to cater for this new need was the Hotel
and Restaurant Fritz, so called after its enterprising manager.
Everything was on a scale of hitherto unprecedented luxury and
proportionate expense; the waiters, of every conceivable nationality,
wore short jackets and white aprons like those in a French café. A real
chef directed an army of myrmidons in the adjoining kitchen. There were
shaded electric lights, and little vases of flowers on the tables, among
which dignified head-waiters walked like dethroned potentates in
irreproachable evening dress, while a string-band made conversation
appear a superfluity. A negro in a fez made Turkish coffee at a sort of
altar in the midst, and the decorations suggested the saloon of the most
expensive Atlantic liner.
The brothers had to struggle to the cloak-room through a crowd of all
ages and sexes, the women with fresh powder on their noses pulling out
their crushed laces, the men settling their ties and stroking their back
hair. Among these latter they suddenly found themselves face to face
with Claude. Arthur pushed past him with a sulky nod. Claude jerked his
head after him. ‘So you’ve got hold of the culprit,’ he said; ‘is it all
right? have you got anything satisfactory out of him?’
‘I have got the most surprising things out of him,’ answered Sainty
witheringly, looking his cousin straight in the eye.
Claude did not seem to notice. ‘I’m waiting for Lady Deans and Lady
Dalsany,’ he said. ‘Women take such an infernal time prinking. Have you
seen your cousin Trafford? He’s supposed to be supping with us, or
rather we with him; but what are _you_ doing in this unlikely place?’
‘Oh, _I_’m supping in quite a different _monde_,’ said Sainty in a low
vibrating voice, which he tried to keep very steady and sarcastic; ‘my
brother has invited me to meet the girl of his heart. I really must
offer you my sincerest thanks for the admirable way you’ve looked after
him for me.’ He was swelling with righteous indignation and a
consciousness of having driven a nail of incisive bitterness through the
counterfeit coin of his cousin’s sympathy, as he rejoined Arthur and
delivered up his hat to the attendant.
Possibly with some touch of quite new prudence born of his conversation
with Sainty, but much more probably with a view to doing proper honour
to his fair guest, Arthur had retained a private room, rather, as it
appeared, to the disappointment of the ladies, who had looked forward to
seeing and being seen in the big restaurant, but immensely to the relief
of his elder brother. The table was profusely decked with long trails of
smilax and a quantity of those florists’ roses that are all of one size
and shape and colour, and seem to have been manufactured by the dozen,
ready packed in cardboard boxes, having no more suggestion about them of
growth by any natural process than the little red silk shades on the
electric lights.
Miss de Vere, resplendent in green velvet, with a vast number of diamond
ornaments, hearts, stars, crescents, arrows, and even frogs and spiders,
pinned into the front of her gown, sat on Arthur’s right and between
the two brothers. She just touched a string of pearls at her throat,
smiling archly on her host, as she took her seat. Long afterwards,
Sainty had the opportunity of verifying his surmise that it was a
present from that open-handed youth, when, in settling his brother’s
outstanding liabilities, he came across it in Messrs. Rumond & Diby’s
little account in company with the claret jug that had figured on the
occasion of his own majority.
Seen at close quarters, the fair Cynthia was a little coarse looking,
and it seemed to Sainty that a person to whom the art of painting her
face must be professionally familiar, ought to have acquired more
delicacy of touch. Her eyes were very large, and what the French call _à
fleur de tête_; her lips were too full, too red, and seemed to show too
much of their linings; and her teeth, which had flashed so brilliantly
across the footlights, were less dazzling on a nearer inspection. Her
figure and carriage were superb, but her hands, though unnaturally
whitened, were not pretty, and her nails were ill-cared for and perhaps
a little bitten. She was extremely gracious to Sainty, and evidently
anxious to impress him with her _tenue_ and the elegance of her manners.
‘I met Lady Deans in the cloakroom,’ she began; ‘isn’t she a handsome
woman? I _do_ admire her. Isn’t it odd, her Christian name’s Vere, and
so’s my surname? and we’re both so tall. Some one once said we might be
sisters, but of course that’s nonsense. I know she’s a great deal better
lookin’ than me.’
‘It had not occurred to me that you were alike----’ Sainty was
beginning, but Arthur cut in. ‘Rats,’ he said. ‘You know she isn’t a
patch on you,’ for which gallant speech he was rewarded by a rap on the
knuckles from his enslaver’s fork. Though he gazed enraptured in her
face, she paid him very little attention, and continued to address her
conversation to Sainty.
‘We had a little supper at my place last night; I wish I’d known you
were in town; your brother was there. Oh, all very quiet, of course;
only a little soup, and lobster cutlets, and nothing else hot but the
fowls; a few little things in aspic, and some plover’s eggs, that’s all;
but we were very jolly. Straddles came, the famous _comique_, and sang
some of his songs and made us roar; and one or two other people sang,
and then we cleared away the furniture and had some dancing. We kept it
up till four o’clock. I declare I’m quite sleepy; ain’t you, Clara?’
Miss Bingham, a little, heavily painted black and red lady, replied from
the other end of the table that she couldn’t keep her eyes open. ‘Lor!
we did have fun, though,’ she said; ‘how was the poor piano this
morning, after those boys pouring the champagne into it?’
‘Oh, don’t speak of it,’ said Miss de Vere. ‘You know that lovely new
drapery I’d got for it, plush and Liberty silk; they completely ruined
it. I was really cross. I don’t see any fun in spoiling people’s
things.’
‘What a shame!’ said Arthur. ‘May I give you a new one?’
‘No, naughty boy, don’t you be extravagant. Why didn’t _you_ come?’ she
added, turning to Miss Hodgson, the beautiful statuesque lady who sat on
Arthur’s left with a fixed smile on her lovely mouth that recalled the
hairdresser’s window. She was eating a good deal, but not adding much to
the conversation. Thus appealed to, she glanced towards the little
Greek, still with the same amiable absence of expression, and nodded
gently.
‘Do you mean I wouldn’t let you go?’ snarled Mr. Atides.
‘Oh no,’ she cooed.
‘Then why the devil didn’t you go? _I_ don’t know----’
‘_Petit monstre_,’ murmured Miss Balbullier to Sainty. ‘_Est-il
insupportable! V’là longtemps que je l’aurais planté là si j’etais
Mabel._ ‘Oby, what is “planted there” in English?’
‘Chuck ‘im, give ‘im the mitten,’ promptly responded that gallant
officer.
Sainty wondered just what kind of weird irregular regiment could once
have been commanded by this blue-nosed veteran, with his dyed moustache
and damp grizzled curls; his hands and eyes were so much older than
anything else about him, as to give an uncanny suggestion of magic, as
of some imperfectly transformed Faust.
‘_Tiens! la mitaine?_ I ignore the phrase,’ said mademoiselle.
Mr. Atides continued to growl into his plate with a very evil
expression, like a dog over a bone, and Agnes Baines, a very pretty fair
girl with a pronounced Cockney accent pursued an eager conversation
across him with Miss Bingham, as though he were an empty chair.
‘’E’s given ’er a tiara,’ Sainty heard her say; ‘none of your little
‘undred-pounders, a real fine one with big stones in it.’
‘Isn’t Agnes vulgar?’ Cynthia murmured to him, very impressive and
supercilious from the heights of her superior gentility. ‘She’s had so
few advantages, poor girl! but she is pretty, don’t you think?’
‘They say he’s goin’ to marry ’er,’ Miss Baines continued.
‘Your English girls are so kveer,’ the French lady remarked to Sainty;
‘zay sink of nozzing but gettin’ married. To me zat seem so sorrrdid,’
As Mademoiselle Elise was credited with having already ruined three
young men during the brief period of her sojourn on these shores,
without any thought of ceremonial formalities, this sentiment was
perhaps not so disinterestedly high-minded as it sounded.
Charley Hunter, who had been vainly trying to attract Miss Baines’
attention--though perhaps more of her conversation was addressed to him
than he realised--and gnawing his beardless lips at the ill success of
his manœuvres, here turned his back squarely on her and addressed
himself to Arthur.
‘They say they’re going to raise the standard; isn’t it beastly? as if
the damned exams. weren’t hard enough as it is.’
‘My little feller from Aldershot says they are going to make ’em so
stiff that none of you Johnnies will be able to pass unless you jolly
well buck up,’ remarked Miss Bingham cheerfully.
‘I hope you will use your influence with my brother to make him work,’
Sainty said, turning to Cynthia; ‘it’s very important he should pass.’
‘He’s a bad boy,’ said Miss de Vere playfully, ‘but I’m always at him
not to be so idle.’
This speech being greeted with derisive laughter by some of the company,
the lady indignantly demanded if they didn’t believe her.
‘There were no exams. in my day,’ cried Colonel Hoby, ‘and damn me if I
think they turned out less good officers than the damned spindle-shanked
round-shouldered crew of short-sighted asses you have in the army
nowadays. They ought to be parsons.’
‘Hear, hear! Fieldmarshal,’ said Arthur. ‘I wish we had you in Pall
Mall; there’d be a lot more good fellows in the army than there are, if
you were Commander-in-chief.’
Sainty was growing weak with the effort of trying to find something
agreeable to say to either of his neighbours. He was oppressed with a
sense of the dreariness of the whole function. He had come prepared to
be a little shocked, but half hoping for a touch of reckless gaiety. If
this was the sort of entertainment Tannhäuser found in the Venusberg, he
thought the pilgrimage to Rome must have been an exhilarating change. He
found himself almost wishing for the young men who had poured champagne
into Miss de Vere’s piano, to lend some semblance of liveliness to the
proceedings. With its banal unimaginative luxury and sordid second-rate
chatter, this one excursion of his into Bohemia was as dull as one of
his mother’s religious dinner-parties. And to think that it was for the
privilege of frequenting this sort of society that dozens of young men
of Arthur’s stamp ruined themselves yearly, on the very threshold of
life! Uncle Cor might not be very exciting, but he surely was better
company than Atides or Colonel Hoby. But then Sainty was
constitutionally unfitted to give its due importance to love’s young
dream.