"Really, ladies, I--er--should--er--esteem it an honour, but my powers
here are limited, and--"
"Rubbish!"
"You'll pardon me?"
"I say--rubbish, Denville."
"Mamma, will you hold your tongue?"
"No, miss; if it comes to that, I won't! Speaking like that to your own
mother, who's always working for you as I am, right out here on the open
cliff, where goodness knows who mayn't--"
"Mother, be silent!"
"Silent, indeed!"
"Ladies, ladies, you'll pardon me. I say my powers here are--er--very
limited."
"Yes, I know all about that, but you must get invitations for mamma and
me for the next Assembly."
"I'll try, Miss Dean, but--you'll pardon me--"
"There, don't shilly-shally with him, Betsy; it's all business. Look
here, Denville, the day the invitations come there'll be five guineas
wrapped up in silver paper under the chayny shepherdess on my
droring-room mantelpiece, if you'll just call and look under."
"Really, Mrs Dean, you--you shock me. I could not think of--er--
really--er--I will try my best."
"That you will, I know, Mr Denville. Don't take any notice of mamma I
hope Miss Denville and Mrs Burnett are well."
"In the best of health, Miss Dean, I thank you. I will--er--do my best.
A lovely morning, Mrs Dean. Your humble servant. Miss Cora, yours.
Good-morning."
"A nasty old humbug; but he'll have the invitations sent," said Mrs
Dean, a big, well-developed, well-preserved woman of fifty, with bright
dark eyes that glistened and shone like pebbles polished by the constant
attrition of the blinking lids.
"I wish you would not be so horridly coarse, mother; and if you don't
drop that `Betsy' we shall quarrel," said the younger lady, who bore a
sufficient likeness to the elder for anyone to have stamped them mother
and daughter, though the latter was wanting in her parent's hardness of
outline, being a magnificent specimen of womanly beauty. Dark and
thoroughly classic of feature, large-eyed, full-lipped, perhaps rather
too highly coloured, but this was carried off by the luxuriant black
hair, worn in large ringlets flowing down either side of the rounded
cheeks they half concealed, by her well-arched black brows and long dark
lashes, which shaded her great swimming eyes. Her figure was perfect,
and she was in full possession of the ripest womanly beauty, as she
walked slowly and with haughty carriage along the cliff, beside the
elder dame.
Both ladies were dressed in the very height of the fashion, with
enormous wide-spreading open bonnets, heavy with ostrich plumes,
tightly-fitting dresses, with broad waistbands well up under the arms,
loose scarves, long gloves and reticules ornamented with huge bows of
the stiffest silk, like Brobdingnagian butterflies.
"Horrid, coarse indeed! I suppose I mustn't open my mouth next," said
the elder lady.
"It would be just as well not," said the younger, "when we are out."
"Then I shall open it as wide as I like, ma'am, and when I like, so now
then, Betsy."
"As you please; only if you do, I shall go home, and I shall not go to
Assembly or ball with you. It was your wish that I should be Cora."
"No, it wasn't. I wanted Coral, or Coralie, miss."
"And I preferred Cora," said the younger lady with languid hauteur, as
if she were practising a part, "and you are always blurting out Betsy."
"Blurting! There's a way to speak to your poor mother, who has made the
lady of you that you are. Carriages and diamonds, and grand dinners,
and--"
"The smell of the orange peel, and the candles, and the memory of the
theatre tacked on to me. `Actress!' you can see every fine madam we
pass say with her eyes, as she draws her skirt aside and turns from me
as if I polluted the cliff. I've a deal to be proud of," cried the
younger woman fiercely. "For heaven's sake, hold your tongue!"
"Don't go on like that, Betsy--Cora, I mean, my dear. Let 'em sneer.
If your poor, dear, dead father did keep a show--well, there, don't bite
me, Bet--Cora--_theatre_, and make his money, it's nothing to them, and
you'll make a marriage yet, as'll surprise some of 'em if you plays your
cards proper!"
"Mother!"
"Say mamma, my dear, now; and do smooth down, my beauty. There, there,
there! I didn't mean to upset you. There's Lord Carboro' coming.
Don't let him see we've been quarrelling again. I don't know, though,"
she added softly, as she noticed her child's heightened colour and
heaving bosom; "it do make you look so 'andsome, my dear."
"Pish!"
"It do, really. What a beauty you are, Cora. I don't wonder at the
fools going mad after you and toasting you--as may be a countess if you
like."
"Turn down here," said Cora abruptly. "I don't want to see Carboro'."
"But he made me a sign, my dear; with his eyeglass, dear."
"Let him make a hundred," cried Cora angrily. "He is not going to play
with me. Why, he's hanging about after that chit of Denville's."
"Tchah! Cora dear. I wouldn't be jealous of a washed-out doll of a
thing like that. Half-starved paupers; and with the disgrace of that
horrid murder sticking all over their house."
"Jealous!" cried Cora, with a contemptuous laugh; "jealous of her! Not
likely, mother; but I mean to make that old idiot smart if he thinks he
is going to play fast and loose with me. Come along."
Without noticing the approaching figure, she turned up the next street,
veiling her beautiful eyes once more with their long lashes, and gliding
over the pavement with her magnificent figure full of soft undulations
that the grotesque fashion of the dress of the day could not hide.
"Oh, Cora, my darling," said her mother, "how can you be so mad and
obstinate!--throwing away your chances like that."
"Chances? What do you mean?" cried the beauty.
"Why, you know, my dear. He has never married yet; and he's so rich,
and there's his title."
"And are we so poor that we are to humble ourselves and beg because that
man has a title?"
"But it is such a title, Betsy," whispered the elder woman.
"And he is so old, and withered, and gouty, and is obliged to drive
himself out in a ridiculous donkey-chaise."
"Now, what does that matter, dear?"
"Not much to you, seemingly."
"Now, my lovely, don't--don't. To think that I might live to see my
gal, Betsy Dean, a real countess, and such a one as there ain't anywhere
at court, and she flying in my face and turning her back upon her
chances."
"Mother, do you want to put me in a rage."
"Not in the street, dear; but do--do--turn back!"
"I shall not."
"Then I know the reason why," cried the elder woman.
"What do you mean?"
"You're thinking of that nasty, poverty-stricken, brown-faced fiddler of
a fellow, who hasn't even the decency to get himself shaved. I declare
he looks more like a Jew than a Christian."
"You mean to make me angry, mother."
"I don't care if I do. There, I say it's a sin and a shame. A real
Earl--a real live Lord as good as proposing to you, and you, you great
silly soft goose, sighing and whining after a penniless pauper who won't
even look at you. Oh! the fools gals are!"
Cora Dean's lips were more scarlet than before, and her beautiful eyes
flashed ominously, but she said nothing.
"Going silly after a fellow like that, who's for ever hanging about
after Denville's gal. Oh! I hav'n't patience."
She said no more, for her daughter walked so fast that she became short
of breath.
"Egad! Juno's put out," said James, Earl of Carboro', peer of the
realm, speaking in a high-pitched voice, and then applying one glove to
his very red lips, as if he were uneasy there. "What a magnificent
figure, though! She's devilish handsome, she is, egad! It's just as
well, perhaps. I won't follow her. I'll go on the pier. Let her come
round if she likes, and if she doesn't--why, demme, I don't care if she
doesn't--now that--"
He smacked his lips, and shook his head, and then drew himself up,
rearranging his quaint beaver hat that came down fore and aft, curled up
tightly at the sides, and spread out widely at the flat top. He gave
his ancient body a bit of a writhe, and then raised his gold eyeglass to
gaze at the pier, towards which people seemed to be hastening.
"Eh? Egad, why, what's the matter? Somebody gone overboard? I'll go
and see. No, I won't; I'll sit down and wait. I shall soon know. It's
deuced hot. Those railings are not safe."
He settled himself on the first seat on the cliff, and, giving the wide
watered-silk ribbon a shake, used his broad and square gold-rimmed
eyeglass once more, gazing through it at the long, old-fashioned pier
that ran down into the sea, amongst whose piles the bright waves that
washed the chalky shore of fashionable Saltinville were playing, while
an unusual bustle was observable in the little crowd of loungers that
clustered on the long low erection.
Meanwhile the Master of the Ceremonies of the fashionable seaside resort
honoured of royalty had continued his course towards the pier.
The trouble at his house seemed to be forgotten, and in the pursuit of
his profession to serve and be observed--gentleman-in-waiting on
society--he looked to-day a tall, rather slight man, with nut-brown
hair, carefully curled and slightly suggestive of having been grown
elsewhere, closely-shaven face of rather careworn aspect, but delicate
and refined. He was a decidedly handsome, elderly man, made ridiculous
by a mincing dancing-master deportment, an assumed simpering smile, and
a costume in the highest fashion of George the Third's day. His hat has
been already described, for it was evidently moulded on the same block
as my Lord Carboro's, and the rest of the description will do for the
costume of both--in fact, with allowances for varieties of colour and
tint, for that of most of the gentlemen who flit in and out in the
varied scenes of this story of old seaside life.
His thin, but shapely legs were in the tightest of pantaloons, over
which were a glossy pair of Hessian boots with silken tassels where they
met the knee. An extremely tight tail coat of a dark bottle green was
buttoned over his breast, leaving exposed a goodly portion of a buff
waistcoat below the bottom buttons, while the coat collar rose up like a
protecting erection, as high as the wearer's ears, and touched and
threatened to tilt forward the curly brimmed hat. Two tiny points of a
shirt collar appeared above the sides of an enormous stock which rigidly
prisoned the neck; a delicate projection of cambric frilling rose from
the breast; the hands were tightly gloved, one holding a riding-whip,
the top of which was furnished with a broad-rimmed square eyeglass; and
beneath the buff vest hung, suspended by a broad, black watered-silk
ribbon, a huge bunch of gold seals and keys, one of the former being an
enormous three-tabled topaz, which turned in its setting at the wearer's
will.
Such was the aspect of the Master of the Ceremonies in morning costume--
the man whose services were sought by every new arrival for introduction
to the Assembly Room and to the fashionable society of the day--the man
who, by unwritten canons of the fashionable world, must needs be
consulted for every important fete or dance, and whose offerings from
supplicants--he scorned to call them clients--were supposed to yield him
a goodly income, and doubtless would do so, did the season happen to be
long, and society at Saltinville in force.
Parting from the ladies he had met, he passed on with a feeble smirk,
growing more decided, his step more mincing, to bow to some lady, a
proceeding calling for grace and ease. The raising and replacing of the
hat was ever elaborate, so was the kissing of the tips of the gloves to
the horsemen who cantered by. There was quite a kingly dignity full of
benevolence in the nods bestowed here and there upon fishers and boatmen
in dingy flannel trousers rising to the arm-pits, trousers that looked
as if they would have stood alone. Then there was an encounter with a
brace of beaux, a halt, the raising and replacing of their hats, and the
snuff-box of the Master of the Ceremonies flashed in the bright autumn
sunshine as it was offered to each in turn, and pinches were taken of
the highly-scented Prince's Mixture out of the historical prince's
present--a solid golden, deeply-chased, and massive box. Then there was
a loud snuffling noise; three expirations of three breaths in a loud
"Hah!" three snappings of three fingers and three thumbs, the withdrawal
of three bandanna silk, gold, and scarlet handkerchiefs, to flip away a
little snuff from three shirt frills; then the snuff-box flashed and
glistened as it was held behind the Master of the Ceremonies, with his
gold-mounted whip; three hats were raised again and replaced, their
wearers having mutually decided that the day was charming, and Sir Harry
Payne, officer of dragoons in mufti, like his chosen companion, Sir
Matthew Bray, went one way to "ogle the gyurls," the Master of
Ceremonies the other to reach the pier.
Everyone knew him; everyone sought and returned his bow. Fashion's high
priest, the ruler of the destinies of many in the season, he was not the
man to slight, and the gatekeeper drew back, hat in hand, and the
bandmaster bowed low, as with pointed toes, graceful carriage, snuff-box
in one hand, eyeglass and whip for the horse he never rode in the other,
Stuart Denville walked behind the mask he wore, mincing, and bowing, and
condescending, past the groups that dotted the breezy resort.
Half-way down the pier, but almost always hat in hand, and the set smile
deepening the lines about his well-cut mouth, he became aware of some
excitement towards the end.
There was a shriek and then a babble of voices talking, cries for a
boat, and a rush to the side, where a lady, who had arrived in a
bath-chair, pushed by a tall footman in mourning livery, surmounted by a
huge braided half-moon hat, was gesticulating wildly and going to and
fro, now fanning herself with a monstrous black fan, now closing it with
a snap, and tapping lady bystanders with it on the shoulder or arm.
"He'll be drowned. I'm sure he'll be drowned. Why is there no boatman?
Why is there no help? Oh, here is dear Mr Denville. Oh! Mr
Denville, help, help, help!"
Here the lady half turned round, and made with each cry of "help!" a
backward step towards the Master of the Ceremonies, who had not
accelerated his pace a whit, for fear of losing grace, and who was only
just in time--the lady managed that--to catch her as she half leaned
against his arm.
"Dear Lady Drelincourt, what terrible accident has befallen us here?"
"My darling!" murmured the lady. "Save him, oh, save him, or I shall
die!"
Volume One, Chapter X.