AT MRS. MANDALAY'S ROOMS.
Mrs. Mandalay's rooms were crowded, for Mrs. Mandalay's patrons
included all the varieties of London society--the noble, the rich, the
clever, the dull, the openly vicious, the moderately virtuous, the
audaciously disreputable, masked and unmasked; the outsiders who came
from curiosity; the initiated who came from habit; dissolute youth,
frivolous old age, men and boys who came because they thought this, and
only this, was life: to rub shoulders with a motley mob, to move in an
atmosphere of ribald jokes and foolish laughter, air charged with the
electricity of potential bloodshed, since at any moment the ribald jest
might lead to the insensate challenge; to drink deep of adulterated
wines, fired with the alcohol that inspires evil passions and kills
thought. These were the diversions that men and women sought at Mrs.
Mandalay's; and it was into this witch's cauldron that William Thornton
plunged his daughter, reckless of whom she met or what she saw and
heard, for it was an axiom in his blighting philosophy that the more a
young woman knew of the world she lived in, the more likely she was to
steer a safe course between its shoals and quicksands.
Antonia looked with amazement upon the tawdry spectacle--dominos,
diamonds, splendour, and shabbiness, impudent faces plastered with
white and red, beauty still fresh and young, boys still at the
University, old men fitter for the hospital than for the drawing-room.
Was _this_ the dazzling scene she had longed for sometimes in the
toilsome evenings, when her tired hand sank on the foolscap page, and
in the pause of the squeaking quill she heard the clock ticking on
the stairs and the cinders crumbling in the grate? She had longed for
lighted rooms and joyous company, for the concerts, and dances, and
dinners, and suppers she read about in the _Daily Journal_; but the
scenes her imagination had conjured up were as different from this as
paradise from pandemonium.
Dancing was difficult in such a crowd, but there was a country dance
going on to the music of an orchestra of fiddles and French horns,
stationed in a gallery over one end of the room. The music was a
_pot-pourri_ of favourite melodies in the "Beggar's Opera," and the
strongly marked tunes beat upon Antonia's brain as she and her father
stood against the wall near the entrance doors, watching the crowd.
A master of the ceremonies came to ask her if she would dance. Her
father answered for her, somewhat curtly. No, the young lady had only
looked in to see what Mrs. Mandalay's rooms were like.
"Mrs. Mandalay's rooms are too good to be made a show for country
cousins," the man answered impudently, after a flying glance at
Thornton's threadbare suit; "and Miss has too pretty a figure under her
domino to shirk a dance."
"Be good enough to leave us to ourselves, sir. Our tickets have been
paid for; and we have a right to consume this polluted atmosphere
without having to suffer impertinence."
"Oh, if you come to that, sir, I carry a sword, and will swallow no
insult from a beggarly parson; and there are plenty of handsome women
pining for partners."
He edged off as he spoke, and was safe amongst the crowd before he
finished his sentence.
"Let's go home, sir," said Antonia. "I never could have pictured such
an odious place."
"'Tis one of the most fashionable assemblies in London, child."
"Then I wonder at the taste of Londoners. Pray, sir, let's go home. I
should never have teased you to bring me here had I known 'twas like
this; but you have at least cured me of the desire to come again--or to
visit any place that resembles this."
"You are pettish and over-fastidious. I came here for your amusement,
and you may stay here for mine. I can't waste coach hire because you
are capricious. I must have something for my money. Do you stay here
quietly, while I circulate and find a friend or two."
"Oh, father, don't leave me among this rabble! I shall die of disgust
if any one speaks to me--like that vulgar wretch just now."
"Tush, Tonia, there are no women-eaters here; and you have brains
enough to know how to answer any impudent jackanapes in London."
He was gone before she could say anything more. She had hated to be
there even with her father at her side. It was agony to stand there
alone, fanning herself with the trumpery Spanish fan that had been
sent her with the domino. She was not shy as other women are on their
first appearance in an assembly. She had been trained to despise her
fellow-creatures, and had an inborn pride that would have supported her
anywhere. But the scene gave her a feeling of loathing that she had
never known before. The people seemed to her of an unknown race. Their
features, their air exhaled wickedness. "The sons of Belial, flown
with insolence and wine." She hated herself for being there, hated her
father for bringing her there.
They had come very late, when the assembly was at its worst, or at its
best, according to one's point of view. The modish people, who vowed
they detested the rooms, and only looked in to see who was there, were
elbowing their way among fat citizens and their wives from Dowgate, and
rich merchants from Clapham Common; while the more striking figures in
the crowd belonged obviously to the purlieus of Covent Garden and the
paved courts near Long Acre.
Tonia watched them till, in spite of her aversion, she began to grow
interested in the masks and the faces. The faces told their own story;
but the masks had a more piquant attraction, suggesting mystery. She
began to notice couples who were obviously lovers, and to imagine a
romance here and there. Her eyes passed over the disreputable painted
faces, and fixed on the young and beautiful, secure in pride of
birth, the assurance of superiority. She caught furtive glances, the
lingering clasp of hands, the smile that promised, the whisper that
pleaded. Romance and mystery enough here to fill more volumes than
Richardson had published. And then among the people who came in late,
talked loud, and did not dance, there were such satins and brocades,
velvet and lace, feathers and jewels, as neither the theatres nor her
dreams had ever shown her. She was woman enough to look at these with
pleasure, in spite of her masculine education.
She had forgotten how long she had been standing there when her father
came back, smelling of brandy, and accompanied by a man whom she had
been watching some minutes before, one of the late arrivals, who looked
young at a distance, but old, or at best middle-aged, when he came near
her. She had seen him surrounded by a bevy of women, who hung about him
with an eager appreciation which would have been an excuse for vanity
in a Solomon.
The new-comer's suit of mouse-coloured velvet was plainer than anybody
else's, but his air and figure would have given distinction to a
beggar's rags, and there needed not the star and ribbon half hidden
under the lapel of his coat to tell her that he was a personage.
"My friend and patron, Lord Kilrush, desires to make your acquaintance,
Antonia," her father said with his grand air.
She had heard of Lord Kilrush, an Irish peer, with an immense territory
on the Shannon and on the Atlantic which he never visited; a man of
supreme distinction in a world where the cut of a coat and the pedigree
of a horse count for more than any moral attributes. While he had all
the dignity of a large landowner, the bulk of his fortune was derived
from his mother, who was the only child of an East Indian factor, "rich
with the spoil of plundered provinces."
Antonia had been watching the modish women's manoeuvres long enough to
be able to sink to the exact depth and rise with the assured grace of a
fashionable curtsey. The perfect lips under the light lace of her mask
relaxed in a grave smile, parting just enough to show the glitter of
pearly teeth between two lines of carmine. Her flashing eyes and lovely
mouth gave Kilrush assurance of beauty. It would have taken the nose of
a Socrates, or a complexion pitted with the smallpox, to mar the effect
of such eyes and such lips.
"Pray allow me to escort you through the rooms, and to get you a cup
of chocolate, madam," he said, offering his arm. "Your father tells me
that 'tis your first visit to this notorious scene. Mrs. Mandalay's
chocolate is as famous as her company, and of a better quality--for it
is innocent of base mixtures."
"Go with his lordship, Tonia," said her father, answering her
questioning look; "you must be sick to death of standing here."
"Oh, I have amused myself somehow," she said. "It is like a comedy at
the theatres--I can read stories in the people's faces."
She took Kilrush's arm with an easy air that astonished him.
"Then you like the Mandalay room?" he said, as he made a path through
the crowd, people giving way to him almost as if to a royal personage.
He was known here as he was known in all pleasure places for a leader
and a master spirit. It suited him to live in a country where he had
no political influence. He had never been known to interest himself
about any serious question in life. Early in his career, when his wife
ran away with his bosom friend, his only comment was that she always
came to the breakfast-table with a slovenly head, and it was best for
both that they should part. He ran his rapier through his friend's left
lung early one morning in the fields behind Montague House; but he told
his intimates that it was not because he hated the scoundrel who had
relieved him of an incubus, but because it would have been ungenteel to
let him live.
He conducted Antonia through the suite of rooms that comprised "Mrs.
Mandalay's." There were two or three little side-rooms where people
sat in corners and talked confidentially, as they do in such places to
this day. The confidences may have been a shade more audacious then, an
incipient intrigue more daringly conducted, but it was the same and
the same--a married woman who despised her husband; a married man who
detested his wife; a young lady of fashion playing high stakes for a
coronet, and baulked or ruined at the game. Antonia glanced from one
group to the other as if she knew all about them. To be a student of
Voltaire is not to think too well of one's fellow-creatures. She had
read Fielding too, and knew that women were fools and men reprobates.
She had wept over Richardson's Clarissa, and knew that there had
once been a virtuous woman, or that a dry-as-dust printer's elderly
imagination had conceived such a creature.
One room was set apart for light refreshments, coffee and chocolate,
negus and cakes; and here Kilrush found a little table in a corner,
and seated her at it. The crowd in this room was so dense that it
created a solitude. They were walled in by brocaded sacques and the
backs of velvet coats, and could talk to each other without fear of
being overheard. This was so much pleasanter than standing against a
wall staring at strange faces that Antonia began to think she liked
Mrs. Mandalay's. She took off her mask, unconscious that an adept
in coquetry would have maintained the mystery of her loveliness a
little longer. Kilrush was content to worship her for the perfection
of her mouth, the half-seen beauty of her eyes. She flung off the
little velvet _loup_, and gave him the effulgence of her face, with an
unconsciousness of power that dazzled him more than her beauty.
"I was nearly suffocated," she said.
He was silent in a transport of admiration. Her face had an exotic
charm. It was too brilliant for native growth. The South glowed in the
lustre of her eyes and in the sheen of her raven hair. He had seen
such faces in Italy. The towers and cupolas, the church bells, the
market women's parti-coloured stalls, the lounging boatmen and clear
white light of the Isola Bella came back to him as he looked at her.
He had spent an autumn in the Borromean Palaces, a visitor to the lord
of those delicious isles, and he had seen faces like hers, and had
worshipped them, in the heyday of youth, when he was on his grand tour.
He remembered having heard that Thornton had married a lovely Italian
girl, whom he had stolen from her home in Lombardy, while he was
travelling as bear-leader to an India merchant's son.
Antonia sipped her chocolate with a composure that startled him.
Women--except the most experienced--were apt to be fluttered by his
lightest attentions; yet this girl, who had never seen him till
to-night, accepted his homage with a supreme unconcern, or indeed
seemed unconscious of it. Her innocent assurance amused him. No rustic
lass serving at an inn had ever received his compliments without a
blush, for he had an air of always meaning more than he said.
"Your father told me he had reared you in seclusion, madam," he said,
"and I take it this is your first glimpse of our gay world."
"My first and last," she replied. "I do not love your gay world. I
did wrong to tease my father to bring me here. I imagined a scene so
different."
"Tell me what your fancy depicted."
"Larger rooms, fewer people, more space and air--a _fête champêtre_
by Watteau within doors; dancers who danced for love of dancing, and
who were all young, not old wrinkled men and fat women; not painted
grimacing faces, and an atmosphere cloudy with hair-powder."
"But is not this better than to sit in your lodgings and mope over
books?"
"I never mope over books; they are my friends and companions."
"What, in the bloom of youth, when you should be dancing every night,
gadding from one pleasure to another all day long? Books are the
friends of old age. I shall take to books myself when I grow old."
Tonia's dark brows elevated themselves unconsciously, and her eyes
expressed wonder. Was he not old enough already for books and
retirement? The man of seven and forty saw the look and interpreted it.
"She knows I am old enough to be her father," he thought, "and that is
the reason of her _sang froid_. Women of the world know that mine is
the dangerous age--the age when a man who can love loves desperately,
when concentration of purpose takes the place of youthful energy."
They sat in silence for a few minutes while she finished her chocolate,
and while he summed up the situation. Then she rose hastily.
"I have been keeping you from your friends," she said.
"Oh, I have no friends here."
"Why, everybody was becking and bowing to you."
"I am on becking and bowing terms with everybody; but most of us hate
each other. Let me get you some more chocolate."
"No, thank you. I must go back to my father."
They had not far to go. Thornton was at a table on the other side of
the room, drinking punch with one of his patrons in the book trade, a
junior partner who was frivolous enough to look in at Mrs. Mandalay's.
"Miss Thornton is so unkind as to fleer at our solemnities," said
Kilrush, "and swears she will never come here again."
"I told her she was a fool to wish to come," answered Thornton. "Your
lordship has been uncommonly civil to take care of her. What the devil
should a Grub Street hack's daughter do here? She has never had a
dancing-lesson in her life."
"She ought to begin to-morrow. Serise would glory in such a pupil. Give
her but the knack of a minuet, and she would show young peeresses how
to move like queens, or like a swan gliding on the current."
"Oh, pray, my lord, don't flatter her. She has not the art to
_riposter_, and she may think you mean what you say."
* * * * *
Kilrush went with them to the street, where his chairmen were waiting
to carry him to St. James's Square, or to whatever gambling-house
he might prefer to the solitude of his ancestral mansion. He wanted
to send Antonia home in his chair, but Thornton declined the favour
laughingly.
"Your chairmen would leave your service to-morrow if you sent them to
such a shabby neighbourhood," he said, taking his daughter on his arm.
"We shall find a hackney coach on the stand."