The catastrophe is a nuptial. On whose side?
SHAKSPEARE.
“Who do you think is coming here to-day?” said Lady Flamborough to her
two daughters, as she retired with them to her dressing-room, the party
dispersing after breakfast at Boreton Park.
The young ladies were well aware, from long experience of their
mother’s manner, that this could only apply to an unmarried, and yet a
marrying man, and Lady Caroline therefore promptly replied--
“I suppose, mamma, you mean Mr. Germain--Mr. Fitzalbert told me you
expected him.”
“Yes, my dear; I remember him a very pretty little boy when I last saw
him with his mother, soon after Mr. Germain’s death. It was a shocking
thing, to be sure, to be left an orphan so young; but the long minority
must have much improved his property, and there is nothing so desirable
in a young man as ready money for an outfit.”
“But, mamma,” said Lady Jane, “Major Sumner told me that he knew for
certain that Mr. Germain had spent all his ready money.”
“I don’t know,” replied Lady Flamborough rather sharply, “what right
Major Sumner has to tell you any thing; but I must tell you, the
encouragement you give to such a man must be very disadvantageous to
you.”
“Really, mamma, I am not aware of ever having given Major Sumner any
reason to suppose that I encouraged his attentions. Our neighbourhood
at dinner here is purely accidental. You might as well attack Caroline
for sitting next Mr. Fitzalbert.”
“That is quite a different case,” said Lady Flamborough. “Mr.
Fitzalbert is a privileged person, for he is known never to speak to a
girl, unless a dowager is the only alternative. But no young lady ought
ever to talk twice to a man who seems to take pleasure in her society,
unless she knows him to be eligible. And as for Major Sumner, he has
the most sighing swain-like manner I ever beheld. He asks you to drink
a glass of wine as if he were uttering a sentiment, and hands you to
dinner as if he were leading you to the altar.”
“Well, mamma,” answered Lady Jane, “you have often complained of my
inattention in not following your advice, but you will not have to
reproach me with disobedience, if you never enjoin any thing more
difficult than the avoiding Major Sumner; for, to tell you the truth,
he bores me uncommonly.”
“To be sure he does. I was certain you had too much good taste to like
him: but that wouldn’t stop that old gossip Lady Diana Griffin’s pen.
She was allowed to walk out alone to dinner yesterday, which of course
called her attention to who sat next whom; and whilst she reposed
in solitary state, with the vacant places for the absent Banquos
left on each side of her, I observed her eyes fixed across the table
upon the long chin of Major Sumner, which was much oftener protruded
perpendicularly over your plate than his own; and this morning, as
I went to breakfast, I saw six letters in her formidably legible
hand-writing waiting for stray franks.”
“But I think I can defy even her ingenuity to extract an incident out
of our dull dinner.”
“Perhaps so; but I cannot too often recommend caution to you both as to
encouraging disadvantageous danglers in a country-house. It is twice
as dangerous as a London season. There, some kind friend is sure to
bring one the first unpleasant remark hot from the club-window where
it was cooked, and one can take measures accordingly; but here, a
report is shuttlecocked backwards and forwards for six months before
one hears it, gaining fresh strength every time it passes through the
post-office, till at last a young lady is set down as behaving very
ill to some beggar who has been accidentally thrown in her way. It is
rather a dangerous experiment to get yourself talked about for the man
you really mean to marry. It is purely mischievous to be buzzed about
with an exceptionable. If it was for no other reason, that every
recorded flirtation, however transient, is, unjustly or not, reckoned
as a year added to a young lady’s age.”
“I dare say you are quite right, mamma,” said Lady Caroline, who
feeling that the lecture was now no longer confined to her sister,
thought it as well to come to her assistance, and at the same time,
confine the conversation to the specific charge; “but, with regard to
Major Sumner’s attention to Jane, you must recollect, that as soon as
ever Miss Luton began to play her eternal concerto, that identical
long chin, which you accuse of having hung perpendicularly over Jane’s
plate, was nailed to the sounding board; and there the Major sat in
fixed admiration, through all its endless rondos.”
“Ay,” answered Lady Flamborough, “that is a great mistake of poor Mrs.
Luton’s; she is one of the old school. That indiscriminating desire to
display a daughter’s talents, is justly out of date. Young ladies have
not fascination at their fingers’ ends, as mothers and music-masters
have long conspired to persuade the world. Besides, men, with all their
boasted superiority, are such vain weak creatures, that they are always
easier caught by admiration paid than demanded. You will be able to
find out what Mr. Germain’s tastes and pursuits are, and then it will
be time enough to display yours, if you find that they don’t clash.”
“But why, mamma, should you settle it at once, as a matter of course,
that there should be such reciprocal attraction between Mr. Germain and
me?” asked Lady Jane; “I never saw him, and he probably never heard of
me.”
“That’s the very reason,” answered Lady Flamborough, “that I expect
something to come of your present meeting. You will be for some time
boxed up here together. He has never been out in London; and, without
making you vain, there is not much here to distract his attention. If
this general election takes place, we shall probably see his friend
Mr. Oakley here, as his interest is the same as that of the Boretons.
He, from what I’ve heard, is more difficult to manage, but very
good-looking, and enormously rich. He would just suit Caroline: and his
property joins Lord Latimer’s--it would be the very thing for Louisa.”
“I doubt, mamma, whether Louisa would think it the very thing for her,
that her next neighbour, a gay young man, should settle at once into a
humdrum Benedict, and a brother-in-law into the bargain.”
“That puts me in mind,” returned Lady Flamborough, “to tell you how
much shocked I was the other day, to hear you, in a mixed society,
allude to Louisa’s flirtations; for though she only exacts so much
individual attention as is necessary to make up the sum of general
admiration, which, as a reigning beauty, is undoubtedly her due, yet it
is a subject upon which any young lady, and more particularly a sister,
had better affect utter unconsciousness. At the same time, if Mr.
Germain admires you, Jane, as I expect he will, make it obvious before
Louisa comes, for she certainly sometimes does seem to take a pleasure
in making a snatch at loosely hung chains.”
A summons to luncheon here interrupted the maternal lecture.
“What do you mean to do afterwards?” asked Lady Flamborough.
“Caroline is going to ride,” answered Lady Jane; “and I mean to walk
with Miss Luton through the park, as far as the north lodge.”
“The north lodge,” said Lady Flamborough, “just so; the road from
Goldsborough Park comes through the north lodge; and you never look
so well as when walking,” added she, casting first an approving glance
at the fine form of her daughter, and then rather an anxious one at
her pale cheek, on which the healthy hue of exercise would, no doubt,
effect improvement.
But this morning, the roses on Lady Jane’s cheek were doomed to bloom
unseen, for Germain intentionally protracted his arrival till dusk,
thinking the dressing-hour the most convenient opportunity for dropping
into the middle of a large party of people, among whom he knew hardly a
creature.
His youth and inexperience will sufficiently account for his
feeling a little shy before he was duly amalgamated; for the most
self-possessed can hardly help experiencing an uncomfortable sensation
of insufficiency, when endeavouring in vain to catch, as it is bandied
before him, the tone of a society to which he alone is strange.
As Germain stood for a moment with the handle of the drawing-room door
in his hand, before he could decide upon opening it, that act was
involuntarily accelerated, by hearing voices descending the stairs
behind him, and he found himself in a blaze of light; and, among a
confused mass of heads, distinguished his friend Fitzalbert, who,
advancing to meet him, presented him in due form to his hostess, Lady
Boreton. Her ladyship overloaded her new acquaintance with civilities;
she was excessively voluble, and it was difficult to remember much
of her communications: which arose more from the redundancy than the
paucity of matter they contained.
She introduced Germain in succession to each of her other guests, who
happened to pass near them, following up each presentation with a
little “aside,” meant to put her new visitor _au fait_ of the various
characters and pursuits of the motley assemblage. But either her
definitions were not distinct enough, or his faculties were too much
embarrassed to enable him to retain their separate identity; and
when Lady Boreton was summoned away to some new object of attention,
Germain retained only a confused consciousness, that there were among
the unknown faces, that surrounded him, captains that had been to the
North Pole; chemists, who could extract ice from caloric; transatlantic
travellers, and sedentary bookworms; some authors, who owned to
anonymous publications they had never written; and others, who were
suspected of those they denied; besides the usual quantum of young
ladies and gentlemen, who rested their claims to distinction upon the
traditionary deeds of their great-grandfathers.
One little man, in particular, whom he could not make out at all,
attracted Germain’s attention; he fidgetted about Lady Boreton whilst
she was talking to him, but she, instead of introducing and defining
him like the rest, only told him to ring the bell. When Germain was
left to himself, and therefore could attend to what was going on around
him, he saw this little man attempt in vain to insinuate himself into
two or three of the little groupes that were dotted about the room, and
uniformly repulsed in the same way as he had been by Lady Boreton. At
last he came up to Germain himself, who was standing alone, and asked
him if he had ever been in that part of the country before. Germain,
with true English reserve, felt half offended at what he thought an
impertinence in a person to whom he had not been introduced, and was
inclined to answer him shortly, when Fitzalbert coming up, shivering,
and saying rather sharply, “those doors haven’t an idea of shutting,”
the little man flew to shut them, and Germain was on the point of
asking his friend whether he was the culprit architect, when the
mystery was explained by Lady Boreton crying out, in the highest key
of her voice:--“Sir John, dinner is ready;” and then the little man,
having just shut one door, was seen sneaking out of the other with the
lady of the highest rank upon his arm.
Germain afterwards found that poor Sir John was considered a nonentity
alike by those who stood behind the chairs, and those who sat around
his table. Lady Boreton’s masculine mind comprehended equally political
principles and domestic details, whilst Sir John’s department was
confined to signing deeds and helping soup.
Germain having drawn back to allow those who assumed either precedence
on their own parts, or partiality on that of the ladies, to pass two
and two before him, followed among the mass of men who brought up
the rear, and would probably have been condemned to sit between two
strangers, had not Fitzalbert made him a sign to take a vacant place on
the other side of the lady whom he had escorted.
In availing himself of this hint, Germain had only time to cast a
transient glance at a finely-shaped profile, and a prettily turned
figure, when Fitzalbert interrupted his survey by saying, “Lady Jane,
you must allow me to make you acquainted with my friend, Mr. Germain.”
A slight acknowledgment was all that immediately followed this
fortuitous introduction, but it lighted up for a moment Lady
Flamborough’s watchful countenance, even though she was herself
suffering under a severe dose of one of the most unrelenting bores that
ever infested society.
“It is always as well here to know who one’s next neighbour is,”
continued Fitzalbert; “for this is not one of those snug parties where
one can do or say what one pleases without observation.”
“How do you mean?” asked Germain.
“Why, Lady Boreton encourages these literary poachers on the manors, or
rather _manners_ of high life; she gives a sort of right of free chase
to all cockney sportsmen to wing one’s follies in a double-barrelled
duodecimo, or hunt one’s eccentricities through a hot-pressed octavo.
Not that they are, generally speaking, very formidable shots--they
often bring down a different bird from the one they aimed at, and
sometimes shut their eyes and blaze away at the whole covey; which
last is, after all, the best way. Their coming here to pick out
individuals is needless trouble. Do you know the modern recipe for a
finished picture of fashionable life? Let a gentleman_ly_ man, with a
gentleman_ly_ style, take of foolscap paper a few quires; stuff them
well with high-sounding titles--dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies,
_ad libitum_. Then open the Peerage at random, pick a supposititious
author out of one page of it, and fix the imaginary characters upon
some of the rest; mix it all up with quantum suff. of puff, and the
book is in a second edition before ninety-nine readers out of a hundred
have found out the one is as little likely to have written, as the
others to have done what is attributed to them.”
“How then can Lady Boreton’s assistance be of any consequence in a
pursuit which seems as free as air?” asked Germain.
“Oh! here at least they have an opportunity of observing the cut of
one’s coat, and the colour of one’s hair. For instance: that young
gentleman opposite is a self-constituted definer of fashion, in which
character he has not only already recorded that a fork, not a knife,
should be the active agent in carrying food to the mouth, but has made
some more original discoveries, such as, that young ladies should be
dieted on the wings of boiled chickens, and fine gentlemen should quaff
nought but hock and soda-water; that roast beef is a vulgar horror, and
beer an abomination. I will secure his rejection of me upon his next
conscription of the fashionable world.--Some small beer, pray,” added
Fitzalbert, turning round to the servant, and speaking in a peculiarly
decided tone of voice. “So sensitive a soul must be much shocked at
much he hears and sees amongst great people ‘_en domestique_,’ as he
calls it; by which, don’t imagine he means ‘High Life below Stairs.’ I
hope, however, Lady Jane, that before he next hints a sketch of your
sister, Lady Latimer, he will have learnt that she has not red hair,
and does not habitually exclaim, ‘Good gracious!’”
Fitzalbert was in high spirits; and whilst he thus went rattling on,
necessarily engrossed so much of the attention of both Germain and
Lady Jane, that the neighbourhood of the two latter did not seem
likely to have the beneficial consequences at first anticipated by
Lady Flamborough; but the desired impression was nevertheless caught,
whether naturally from accidental affinity, or afterwards inoculated
during a long conversation with Lady Flamborough herself, certain
it is, that when Germain lighted his flat candlestick for bed, the
predominant feeling in his mind was, that Lady Jane Sydenham was a
remarkably nice girl.