'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES.'
Lady Lesbia ate no luncheon that day. She went to her own room and had a
cup of tea to steady her nerves, and sent to ask Lady Kirkbank to go to
her as soon as she had finished luncheon. Lady Kirkbank's luncheon was a
serious business, a substantial leisurely meal with which she fortified
herself for the day's work. It enabled her to endure all the fatigues of
visits and park, and to be airily indifferent to the charms of dinner;
for Lady Kirkbank was not one of those matrons who with advanced years
take to _gourmandise_ as a kind of fine art. She gave good dinners,
because she knew people would not come to Arlington Street to eat bad
ones; but she was not a person who lived only to dine. At luncheon she
gave her healthy appetite full scope, and ate like a ploughman.
She found Lesbia in her white muslin dressing-gown, with cheeks as pale
as the gown she wore. She was sitting in an easy chair, with a low
tea-table at her side, and the two bills were in the tray among the
tea-things.
'Have you any idea how much I owe Seraphine and Cabochon?' she asked,
looking up despairingly at Lady Kirkbank.
'What, have they sent in their bills already?'
'Already! I wish they had sent them before. I should have known how
deeply I was getting into debt.'
'Are they very heavy?'
'They are dreadful! I owe over two thousand pounds. How can I tell Lady
Maulevrier that? Two thousand one hundred pounds! It is awful.'
'There are women in London who would think very little of owing twice as
much,' said Lady Kirkbank, in a comforting tone, though the fact,
seriously considered, could hardly afford comfort. 'Your grandmother
said you were to have _carte blanche_. She may think that you have been
just a little extravagant; but she can hardly be angry with you for
having taken her at her word. Two thousand pounds! Yes, it certainly is
rather stiff.'
'Seraphine is a cheat!' exclaimed Lesbia, angrily. 'Her prices are
positively exorbitant!'
'My dear child, you must not say that. Seraphine is positively moderate
in comparison with the new people.'
'And Mr. Cabochon, too. The idea of his charging me three hundred
guineas for re-setting those stupid old amethysts.'
'My dear, you _would_ have diamonds mixed with them,' said Lady
Kirkbank, reproachfully.
Lesbia turned away her head with an impatient sigh. She remembered
perfectly that it was Lady Kirkbank who had persuaded her to order the
diamond setting; but there was no use in talking about it now. The thing
was done. She was two thousand pounds in debt--two thousand pounds to
these two people only--and there were ever so many shops at which she
had accounts--glovers, bootmakers, habit-makers, the tailor who made her
Newmarket coats and cloth gowns, the stationer who supplied her with
note-paper of every variety, monogrammed, floral; sporting, illuminated
with this or that device, the follies of the passing hour, hatched by
penniless Invention in a garret, pandering to the vanities of the idle.
'I must write to my grandmother by this afternoon's post,' said Lesbia,
with a heavy sigh.
'Impossible. We have to be at the Ranelagh by four o'clock. Smithson
and some other men are to meet us there. I have promised to drive Mrs.
Mostyn down. You had better begin to dress.'
'But I ought to write to-day. I had better ask for this money at once,
and have done with it. Two thousand pounds! I feel as if I were a thief.
You say my grandmother is not a rich woman?'
'Not rich as the world goes nowadays. Nobody is rich now, except your
commercial magnates, like Smithson. Great peers, unless their money is
in London ground-rents, are great paupers. To own land is to be
destitute. I don't suppose two thousand pounds will break your
grandmother's bank; but of course it is a large sum to ask for at the
end of two months; especially as she sent you a good deal of money while
we were at Cannes. If you were engaged--about to make a really good
match--you could ask for the money as a matter of course; but as it is,
although you have been tremendously admired, from a practical point of
view you are a failure.'
A failure. It was a hard word, but Lesbia felt it was true. She, the
reigning beauty, the cynosure of every eye, had made no conquest worth
talking about, except Mr. Smithson.
'Don't tell your grandmother anything about the bills for a week or
two,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly. 'The creatures can wait for their
money. Give yourself time to think.'
'I will,' answered Lesbia, dolefully.
'And now make haste, and get ready for the Ranelagh. My love, your eyes
are dreadfully heavy. You _must_ use a little belladonna. I'll send
Rilboche to you.'
And for the first time in her life, Lesbia, too depressed to argue the
point, consented to have her eyes doctored by Rilboche.
She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner
party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went
home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz
in a balcony with Mr. Smithson, a balcony banked round with hot-house
flowers which were beginning to droop a little in the chilly morning
air, just as beauty drooped under the searching eye of day.
Lesbia put the bills in her desk, and gave herself time to think, as
Lady Kirkbank advised her. But the thinking progress resulted in very
little good. All the thought of which she was capable would not reduce
the totals of those two dreadful accounts. And every day brought some
fresh bill. The stationer, the bootmaker, the glover, the perfumer,
people who had courted Lady Lesbia's custom with an air which implied
that the honour of serving fashionable beauty was the first
consideration, and the question of payment quite a minor point--these
now began to ask for their money in the most prosaic way. Every straw
added to Lesbia's burden; and her heart grew heavier with every post.
'One can see the season is waning when these people begin to pester
with their accounts,' said Lady Kirkbank, who always talked of tradesmen
as if they were her natural enemies.
Lesbia accepted this explanation of the avalanche of bills, and never
suspected Lady Kirkbank's influence in the matter. It happened, however,
that the chaperon, having her own reasons for wishing to bring Mr.
Smithson's suit to a successful issue, had told Seraphine and the other
people to send in their bills immediately. Lady Lesbia would be leaving
London in a week or so, she informed these purveyors, and would like to
settle everything before she went away.
Mr. Smithson appeared in Arlington Street almost every day, and was full
of schemes for new pleasures--or pleasures as nearly new as the world of
fashion can afford. He was particularly desirous that Sir George and
Lady Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berkshire place
during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was
a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to
riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they
were apt to talk somewhat slightingly of his antecedents.
Lady Kirkbank felt that this invitation was a turning point, and that if
Lesbia went to stay at Rood Hall, her acceptance of Mr. Smithson was a
certainty. She would see him at his place in Berkshire in the most
flattering aspect; his surroundings as lord of the manor, and owner of
one of the finest old places in the county, would lend dignity to his
insignificance. Lesbia at first expressed a strong disinclination to go
to Rood Hall. There would be a most unpleasant feeling in stopping at
the house of a man whom she had refused, she told Lady Kirkbank.
'My dear, Mr. Smithson has forgiven you,' answered her chaperon. 'He is
the soul of good nature.'
'One would think he was accustomed to be refused,' said Lesbia. 'I don't
want to go to Rood Hall, but I don't want to spoil your Henley week.
Could not I run down to Grasmere for a week, with Kibble to take care of
me, and see dear grandmother? I could tell her about those dreadful
bills.'
'Bury yourself at Grasmere in the height of the season! Not to be
thought of! Besides, Lady Maulevrier objected before to the idea of your
travelling alone with Kibble. No! if you can't make up your mind to go
to Rood Hall, George and I must make up our minds to stay away. But it
will be rather hard lines; for that Henley week is quite the jolliest
thing in the summer.'
'Then I'll go,' said Lesbia, with a resigned air. 'Not for worlds would
I deprive you and Sir George of a pleasure.'
In her heart of hearts she rather wished to see Rood Hall. She was
curious to behold the extent and magnitude of Mr. Smithson's
possessions. She had seen his Italian villa in Park Lane, the perfection
of modern art, modern skill, modern taste, reviving the old eternally
beautiful forms, recreating the Pitti Palace--the homes of the
Medici--the halls of dead and gone Doges--and now she was told that Rood
Hall--a genuine old English manor-house, in perfect preservation--was
even more interesting than the villa in Park Lane. At Rood Hall there
were ideal stables and farm, hot-houses without number, rose gardens,
lawns, the river, and a deer park.
So the invitation was accepted, and Mr. Smithson immediately laid
himself at Lesbia's feet, as it were, with regard to all other
invitations for the Henley festival. Whom should he ask to meet
her?--whom would she have?
'You are very good,' she said, 'but I have really no wish to be
consulted. I am not a royal personage, remember. I could not presume to
dictate.'
'But I wish you to dictate. I wish you to be imperious in the expression
of your wishes.'
'Lady Kirkbank has a better right than I, if anybody is to be
consulted,' said Lesbia, modestly.
'Lady Kirkbank is an old dear, who gets on delightfully with everybody.
But you are more sensitive. Your comfort might be marred by an obnoxious
presence. I will ask nobody whom you do not like--who is not thoroughly
_simpatico_. Have you no particular friends of your own choosing whom
you would like me to ask?'
Lesbia confessed that she had no such friends. She liked everybody
tolerably; but she had not a talent for friendship. Perhaps it was
because in the London season one was too busy to make friends.
'I can fancy two girls getting quite attached to each other, out of the
season,' she said, 'but in May and June life is all a rush and a
scramble----'
'And one has no time to gather wayside flowers of friendship,'
interjected Mr. Smithson. 'Still, if there are no people for whom you
have an especial liking, there _must_ be people whom you detest.'
Lesbia owned that it was so. Detestation came of itself, naturally.
'Then let me be sure I do not ask any of your pet aversions,' said Mr.
Smithson. 'You met Mr. Plantagenet Parsons, the theatrical critic, at my
house. Shall we have him?'
'I like all amusing people.'
'And Horace Meander, the poet. Shall we have him? He is brimful of
conceits and affectations, but he's a tremendous joke.'
'Mr. Meander is charming.'
'Suppose we ask Mostyn and his wife? Her scraps of science are rather
good fun.'
'I haven't the faintest objection to the Mostyns,' replied Lesbia. 'But
who are "we"?'
'We are you and I, for the nonce. The invitations will be issued
ostensibly by me, but they will really emanate from you.'
'I am to be the shadow behind the throne,' said Lesbia. 'How
delightful!'
'I would rather you were the sovereign ruler, on the throne,' answered
Smithson, tenderly. 'That throne shall be empty till you fill it.'
'Please go on with your list of people,' said Lesbia, checking this gush
of sentiment.
She began to feel somehow that she was drifting from all her moorings,
that in accepting this invitation to Rood Hall she was allowing herself
to be ensnared into an alliance about which she was still doubtful. If
anything better had appeared in the prospect of her life--if any
worthier suitor had come forward, she would have whistled Mr. Smithson
down the wind; but no worthier suitor had offered himself. It was
Smithson or nothing. If she did not accept Smithson, she would go back
to Fellside heavily burdened with debt, and an obvious failure. She
would have run the gauntlet of a London season without definite result;
and this, to a young woman so impressed with her own transcendent
merits, was a most humiliating state of things.
Other people's names were suggested by Mr. Smithson and approved by
Lesbia, and a house party of about fourteen in all was made up. Mr.
Smithson's steam launch would comfortably accommodate that number. He
had a couple of barges for chance visitors, and kept an open table on
board them during the regatta.
The visit arranged, the next question was gowns. Lesbia had gowns enough
to have stocked a draper's shop; but then, as she and Lady Kirkbank
deplored, the difficulty was that she had worn them all, some as many as
three or four times. They were doubtless all marked and known. Some of
them had been described in the society papers. At Henley she would be
expected to wear something distinctly new, to introduce some new fashion
of gown or hat or parasol. No matter how ugly the new thing might be, so
long as it was startling; no matter how eccentric, provided it was
original.
'What am I to do?' asked Lesbia, despairingly.
'There is only one thing that can be done. We must go instantly to
Seraphine and insist upon her inventing something. If she has no idea
ready she must telegraph Worth and get him to send something over. Your
old things will do very well for Rood Hall. You have no end of pretty
gowns for morning and evening; but you must be original on the race
days. Your gowns will be in all the papers.'
'But I shall be only getting deeper into debt,' said Lesbia, with a
sigh.
'That can't be helped. If you go into society you must be properly
dressed. We'll go to Clanricarde Place directly after luncheon, and see
what that old harpy has to show us.'
Lesbia had a rather uncomfortable feeling about facing the fair
Seraphine, without being able to give her a cheque upon account of that
dreadful bill. She had quite accepted Lady Kirkbank's idea that bills
never need be discharged in full, and that the true system of finance
was to give an occasional cheque on account, as a sop to Cerberus. True,
that while Cerberus fattened on the sops the bill seemed always growing;
and the final crash, when Cerberus grew savage and sops could be no more
accepted, was too awful to be thought about.
Lesbia entered Seraphine's Louis-seize drawing-room with a faint
expectation of unpleasantness; but after a little whispering between
Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker, the latter came to Lesbia smiling
graciously, and seemingly full of eagerness for new orders.
'Miladi says you want something of the most original--_tant soit peu
risqué_--for 'Enley,' she said. 'Let us see now,' and she tapped her
forehead with a gold thimble which nobody had ever seen her use, but
which looked respectable. 'There is ze dresses that Chaumont wear in zis
new play, _Une Faute dans le Passé_. Yes, zere is the watare dress--a
boating party at Bougival, a toilet of the most new, striking,
_écrasant_, what you English call a "screamer."'
'What a genius you are, Fifine,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, rapturously.
'The _Faute dans le Passé_ was only produced last week. No one will have
thought of copying Chaumont's gowns yet awhile. The idea is an
inspiration.'
'What is the boating costume like?' asked Lady Lesbia, faintly.
'An exquisite combination of simplicity with _élan_,' answered the
dressmaker. 'A skin-tight indigo silk Jersey bodice, closely studded
with dark blue beads, a flounced petticoat of indigo and amber foulard,
an amber scarf drawn tightly round the hips, and a dark blue toque with
a large bunch of amber poppies. Tan-coloured mousquetaire gloves, and
Hessian boots of tan-coloured kid.'
'Hessian boots!' ejaculated Lesbia.
'But, yes, Miladi. The petticoat is somewhat short, you comprehend, to
escape the damp of the deck, and, after all, Hessians are much less
indelicate than silk stockings, legs _à cru_, as one may say.'
'Lesbia, you will look enchanting in yellow Hessians,' said Lady
Kirkbank, 'Let the dress be put in hand instantly, Seraphine.'
Lesbia was inclined to remonstrate. She did not admire the description
of the costume, she would rather have something less outrageous.
'Outrageous! It is only original,' exclaimed her chaperon. 'If Chaumont
wears it you may be sure it is perfect.'
'But on the stage, by gaslight, in the midst of unrealities,' argued
Lesbia. 'That makes such a difference.'
'My dear, there is no difference nowadays between the stage and the
drawing-room. Whatever Chaumont wears you may wear. And now let us think
of the second day. I think as your first costume is to be nautical, and
rather masculine, your second should be somewhat languishing and
_vaporeux_. Creamy Indian muslin, wild flowers, a large Leghorn hat.'
'And what will Miladi herself wear?' asked the French woman of Lady
Kirkbank. 'She must have something of new.'
'No, at my age, it doesn't matter. I shall wear one of my cotton frocks,
and my Dunstable hat.'
Lesbia shuddered, for Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle
at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter
to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to
her own fresh young beauty Lady Kirkbank was admirable.
They drove down to Rood Hall early next week, Sir George conveying them
in his drag, with a change of horses at Maidenhead. The weather was
peerless; the country exquisite, approached from London. How different
that river landscape looks to the eyes of the traveller returning from
the wild West of England, the wooded gorges of Cornwall and Devon, the
Tamar and the Dart. Then how small and poor and mean seems silvery
Thames, gliding peacefully between his willowy bank, singing his lullaby
to the whispering sedges; a poor little river, a flat commonplace
landscape, says the traveller, fresh from moorland and tor, from the
rocky shore of the Atlantic, the deep clefts of the great, red hills.
To Lesbia's eyes the placid stream and the green pastures, breathing
odours of meadow-sweet and clover, seemed passing lovely. She was
pleased with her own hat and parasol too, which made her graciously
disposed towards the landscape; and the last packet of gloves from North
Audley Street fitted without a wrinkle. The glovemaker was beginning to
understand her hand, which was a study for a sculptor, but which had its
little peculiarities.
Nor was she ill-disposed to Mr. Smithson, who had come up to town by an
early train, in order to lunch in Arlington Street and go back by coach,
seated just behind Lady Lesbia, who had the box seat beside Sir George.
The drive was delightful. It was a few minutes after five when the coach
drove past the picturesque old gate-house into Mr. Smithson's Park, and
Rood Hall lay on the low ground in front of them, with its back to the
river. It was an old red brick house in the Tudor style, with an
advanced porch, and four projecting wings, three stories high, with
picturesque spire roofs overtopping the main building. Around the house
ran a boldly-carved stone parapet, bearing the herons and bulrushes
which were the cognisance of the noble race for which the mansion was
built. Numerous projecting mullioned windows broke up the line of the
park front. Lesbia was fain to own that Rood Hall was even better than
Park Lane. In London Mr. Smithson had created a palace; but it was a new
palace, which still had a faint flavour of bricks and mortar, and which
was apt to remind the spectator of that wonderful erection of Aladdin,
the famous Parvenu of Eastern story. Here, in Berkshire, Mr. Smithson
had dropped into a nest which had been kept warm for him for three
centuries, aired and beautified by generations of a noble race which had
obligingly decayed and dwindled in order to make room for Mr. Smithson.
Here the Parvenu had bought a home mellowed by the slow growth of years,
touched into poetic beauty by the chastening fingers of time. His artist
friends told him that every brick in the red walls was 'precious,' a
mystery of colour which only a painter could fitly understand and value.
Here he had bought associations, he had bought history. He had bought
the dust of Elizabeth's senators, the bones of her court beauties. The
coffins in the Mausoleum yonder in the ferny depths of the Park, the
village church just outside the gates--these had all gone with the
property.
Lesbia went up the grand staircase, through the long corridors, in a
dream of wonder. Brought up at Fellside, in that new part of the
Westmoreland house which had been built by her grandmother and had no
history, she felt thrilled by the sober splendour of this fine old
manorial mansion. All was sound and substantial, as if created
yesterday, so well preserved had been the goods and chattels of the
noble race; and yet all wore such unmistakeable marks of age. The deep
rich colouring of the wainscot, the faded hues of the tapestry, the
draperies of costliest velvet and brocade, were all sobered by the
passing of years.
Mr. Smithson had shown his good taste in having kept all things as Sir
Hubert Heronville, the last of his race, had left them; and the
Heronvilles had been one of those grand old Tory races which change
nothing of the past.
Lady Lesbia's bedroom was the State chamber, which had been occupied by
kings and queens in days of yore. That grandiose four-poster, with the
carved ebony columns, cut velvet curtains, and plumes of ostrich
feathers, had been built for Elizabeth, when she deigned to include Rood
Hall in one of her royal progresses. Charles the First had rested his
weary head upon those very pillows, before he went on to the Inn at
Uxbridge, where he was to be lodged less luxuriously. James the Second
had stayed there when Duke of York, with Mistress Anne Hyde, before he
acknowledged his marriage to the multitude; and Anne's daughter had
occupied the same room as Queen of England forty years later; and now
the Royal Chamber, with adjacent dressing-room, and oratory, and
spacious boudoir all in the same suite, was reserved for Lady Lesbia
Haselden.
'I'm afraid you are spoiling me,' she told Mr. Smithson, when he asked
if she approved of the rooms that had been allotted to her. 'I feel
quite ashamed of myself among the ghosts of dead and gone queens.'
'Why so? Surely the Royalty of beauty has as divine a right as that of
an anointed sovereign.'
'I hope the Royal personages don't walk,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
her girlish tone; 'this is just the house in which one would expect
ghosts.'
Whereupon Mrs. Mostyn hastened to enlighten the company upon the real
causes of ghost-seeing, which she had lately studied in Carpenter's
'Mental Physiology,' and favoured them with a diluted version of the
views of that authority.
This was at afternoon tea in the library, where the brass-wired
bookcases, filled with mighty folios and handsome octavos in old
bindings, looked as if they had not been opened for a century. The
literature of past ages furnished the room, and made a delightful
background. The literature of the present lay about on the tables, and
testified that the highest intellectual flight of the inhabitants of
Rood Hall was a dip into the _Contemporary_ or the _Nineteenth Century_,
or the perusal of the last new scandal in the shape of Reminiscences or
Autobiography. One large round table was consecrated to Mudie, another
to Rolandi. On the one side you had Mrs. Oliphant, on the other Zola,
exemplifying the genius of the two nations.
After tea Mr. Smithson's visitors, most of whom had arrived in Sir
George's drag, explored the grounds. These were lovely beyond expression
in the low afternoon light. Cedars of Lebanon spread their broad shadows
on the velvet lawn, yews and Wellingtonias of mighty growth made an
atmosphere of gloom in some parts of the grounds. One great feature was
the Ladies' Garden, a spot apart, a great square garden surrounded with
a laurel wall, eight feet high, containing a rose garden, where the
choicest specimens grew and flourished, while in the centre there was a
circular fish-pond with a fountain. There was a Lavender Walk too,
another feature of the grounds at Rood Hall, an avenue of tall lavender
bushes, much affected by the stately dames of old.
Modern manners preferred the river terrace, as a pleasant place on which
to loiter after dinner, to watch the boats flashing by in the evening
light, or the sun going down behind a fringe of willows on the opposite
bank. This Italian terrace, with its statues, and carved vases filled
with roses, fuchsias, and geraniums, was the great point of rendezvous
at Rood Hall--an ideal spot whereon to linger in the deepening twilight,
from which to gaze upon the moonlit river later on in the night.
The windows of the drawing-room, and music-room, and ballroom opened on
to this terrace, and the royal wing--the tower-shaped wing now devoted
to Lady Lesbia, looked upon the terrace and the river.
'Lovely as your house is altogether, I think this river view is the
best part of it,' said Lady Lesbia, as she strolled with Mr. Smithson on
the terrace after dinner, dressed in Indian muslin which was almost as
poetical as a vapour, and with a cloud of delicate lace wrapped round
her head. 'I think I shall spend half of my life at my boudoir window,
gloating over that delicious landscape.'
Horace Meander, the poet, was discoursing to a select group upon that
peculiar quality of willows which causes them to shiver, and quiver, and
throw little lights and shadows on the river, and on the subtle,
ineffable beauty of twilight, which perhaps, however utterly beautiful
in the abstract, would have been more agreeable to him personally if he
had not been surrounded by a cloud of gnats, which refused to be
buffeted off his laurel-crowned head.
While Mr. Meander poetised in his usual eloquent style, Mrs. Mostyn, as
a still newer light, discoursed as eloquently to little a knot of women,
imparting valuable information upon the anatomical structure and
individual peculiarities of those various insects which are the pests of
a summer evening.
'You don't like gnats!' exclaimed the lady; 'how very extraordinary. Do
you know I have spent days and weeks upon the study of their habits and
dear little ways. They are the most interesting creatures--far superior
to _us_ in intellect. Do you know that they fight, and that they have
tribes which are life-long enemies--like those dreadful Corsicans--and
that they make little sepulchres in the bark of trees, and bury each
other--alive, if they can; and they hold vestries, and have burial
boards. They are most absorbing creatures, if you only give yourself up
to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of
that kind. I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours,
watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them.
Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch for me.'
'How interesting, how noble of you,' exclaimed the other ladies; and
then they began to talk about bonnets, and about Mr. Smithson, to
speculate how much money this house and all his other houses had cost
him, and to wonder if he was really rich, or if he were only one of
those great financial windbags which so often explode and leave the
world aghast, marvelling at the ease with which it has been deluded.
They wondered, too, whether Lady Lesbia Haselden meant to marry him.
'Of course she does, my dear,' answered Mrs. Mostyn, decisively.
'You don't suppose that after having studied the habits of _gnats_ I
cannot read such a poor shallow creature as a silly vain girl. Of course
Lady Lesbia means to marry Mr. Smithson's fine houses; and she is only
amusing herself and swelling her own importance by letting him dangle in
a kind of suspense which is not suspense; for he knows as well as she
does that she means to have him.'
The next day was given up, first to seeing the house, an amusement which
lasted very well for an hour or so after breakfast, and then to
wandering in a desultory manner, to rowing and canoeing, and a little
sailing, and a good deal of screaming and pretty timidity upon the blue
bright river; to gathering wild flowers and ferns in rustic lanes, and
to an _al fresco_ luncheon in the wood at Medmenham, and then dinner,
and then music, an evening spent half within and half without the
music-room, cigarettes sparkling, like glowworms on the terrace, tall
talk from Mr. Meander, long quotations from his own muse and that of
Rossetti, a little Shelley, a little Keats, a good deal of Swinburne.
The festivities were late on this second evening, as Mr. Smithson had
invited a good many people from the neighbourhood, but the house party
were not the less early on the following morning, which was the first
Henley day.
It was a peerless morning, and all the brasswork of Mr. Smithson's
launch sparkled and shone in the sun, as she lay in front of the
terrace. A wooden pier, a portable construction, was thrown out from the
terrace steps, to enable the company to go on board the launch without
the possibility of wet feet or damaged raiment.
Lesbia's Chaumount costume was a success. The women praised it, the men
stared and admired. The dark-blue silken jersey, sparkling with closely
studded indigo beads, fitted the slim graceful figure as a serpent's
scales fit the serpent. The coquettish little blue silk toque, the
careless cluster of gold-coloured poppies, against the glossy brown
hair, the large sunshade of old gold satin lined with indigo, the
flounced petticoat of softest Indian silk, the dainty little
tan-coloured boots with high heels and pointed toes, were all perfect
after their fashion; and Mr. Smithson felt that the liege lady of his
life, the woman he meant to marry willy nilly, would be the belle of the
race-course. Nor was he disappointed. Everybody in London had heard of
Lady Lesbia Haselden. Her photograph was in all the West-End windows,
was enshrined in the albums of South Kensington and Clapham, Maida Vale
and Haverstock Hill. People whose circles were far remote from Lady
Lesbia's circle, were as familiar with her beauty as if they had known
her from her cradle. And all these outsiders wanted to see her in the
flesh, just as they always thirst to behold Royal personages. So when it
became known that the beautiful Lady Lesbia Haselden was on board Mr.
Smithson's launch, all the people in the small boats, or on neighbouring
barges, made it their business to have a good look at her. The launch
was almost mobbed by those inquisitive little boats in the intervals
between the races.
'What are the people all staring and hustling one another for?' asked
Lesbia, innocently. She had seen the same hustling and whispering and
staring in the hall at the opera, when she was waiting for her carriage;
but she chose to affect unconsciousness. 'What do they all want?'
'I think they want to see you,' said Mr. Smithson, who was sitting by
her side. 'A very natural desire.'
Lesbia laughed, and lowered the big yellow sunshade, so as to hide
herself altogether from the starers.
'How silly!' she exclaimed. 'It is all the fault of those horrid
photographers: they vulgarise everything and everybody. I will never be
photographed again.'
'Oh yes, you will, and in that frock. It's the prettiest thing I've seen
for a long time. Why do you hide yourself from those poor wretches, who
keep rowing backwards and forwards in an obviously aimless way, just to
get a peep at you _en passant_? What happiness for us who live near you,
and can gaze when we will, without all those absurd manoeuvres. There
goes the signal--and now for a hard-fought race.'
Lesbia pretended to be interested in the racing--she pretended to be
gay, but her heart was as heavy as lead. The burden of debt, which had
been growing ever since Seraphine sent in her bill, was weighing her
down to the dust.
She owed three thousand pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe
so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount
to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases,
ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was
an indebtedness of close upon three thousand pounds.
Three thousand pounds! The sum was continually sounding in her ears like
the cry of a screech owl. The very ripple of the river flowing so
peacefully under the blue summer sky seemed to repeat the words. Three
thousand pounds! 'Is it much?' she wondered, having no standard of
comparison. 'Is it very much more than my grandmother will expect me to
have spent in the time? Will it trouble her to have to pay those bills?
Will she be very angry?'
These were questions which Lesbia kept asking herself, in every pause of
her frivolous existence; in such a pause as this, for instance, while
the people round her were standing breathless, open-mouthed, gazing
after the boats. She did not care a straw for the boats, who won, or who
lost the race. It was all a hollow mockery. Indeed it seemed just now
that the only real thing in life was those accursed bills, which would
have to be paid somehow.
She had told Lady Maulevrier nothing about them as yet. She had allowed
herself to be advised by Lady Kirkbank, and she had taken time to think.
But thought had given her no help. The days were gliding onward, and
Lady Maulevrier would have to be told.
She meditated perplexedly about her grandmother's income. She had never
heard the extent of it, but had taken for granted that Lady Maulevrier
was rich. Would three thousand pounds make a great inroad on that
income? Would it be a year's income?--half a year's? Lesbia had no idea.
Life at Fellside was carried on in an elegant manner--with considerable
luxury in house and garden--a luxury of flowers, a lavish expenditure of
labour. Yet the expenditure of Lady Maulevrier's existence, spent always
on the same spot, must be as nothing to the money spent in such a life
as Lady Kirkbank's, which involved the keeping up of three or four
houses, and costly journeys to and fro, and incessant change of attire.
No doubt Lady Maulevrier had saved money; yes, she must have saved
thousands during her long seclusion, Lesbia argued. Her grandmother had
told her that she was to look upon herself as an heiress. This could
only mean that Lady Maulevrier had a fortune to leave her; and this
being so, what could it matter if she had anticipated some of her
portion? And yet there was in her heart of hearts a terrible fear of
that stern dowager, of the cold scorn in those splendid eyes when she
should stand revealed in all her foolishness, her selfish, mindless,
vain extravagances. She, who had never been reproved, shrank with a
sickly dread from the idea of reproof. And to be told that her career as
a fashionable beauty had been a failure! That would be the bitterest
pang of all.
Soon came luncheon, and Heidseck, and then an afternoon which was gayer
than the morning had been, inasmuch as every one babbled and laughed
more after luncheon. And then there was five o'clock tea on deck, under
the striped Japanese awning, to the jingle of banjos, enlivened by the
wit of black-faced minstrels, amidst wherries and canoes and gondolas,
and ponderous houseboats, and snorting launches, crowding the sides of
the sunlit river, in full view of the crowd yonder in front of the Red
Lion, and here on this nearer bank, and all along either shore, fringing
the green meadows with a gaudy border of smartly-dressed humanity.
It was a gay scene, and Lesbia gave herself up to the amusement of the
hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one
brief season, holding her own against all comers.
Rood Hall looked lovely when they went back to it in the gloaming, an
Elizabethan pile crowned with towers. The four wings with their conical
roofs, the massive projecting windows, grey stone, ruddy brickwork,
lattices reflecting the sunlight, Italian terrace and blue river in the
foreground, cedars and yews at the back, all made a splendid picture of
an English ancestral home.
'Nice old place, isn't it?' asked Mr. Smithson, seeing Lesbia's
admiring gaze as the launch neared the terrace. They two were standing
in the bows, apart from all the rest.
'Nice! it is simply perfect.'
'Oh no, it isn't. There is one thing wanted yet.'
'What is that?'
'A wife. You are the only person who can make any house of mine perfect.
Will you?' He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his grasp.
He bent his head and kissed the little hand in its soft Swedish glove.
'Will you, Lesbia?' he repeated earnestly; and she answered softly,
'Yes.'
That one brief syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it
seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand
pounds had been paid.