Though the leaders of fashion have decided that it looks greedy and
gormandizing to be punctually ready for dinner, yet, at the Granby
Hotel, no sooner does the clock strike five than the bell rings, and
the instantaneous rush of company which then takes place towards the
dining-room can only be compared to a congregation hurrying out of
church, or a flock of chickens in a poultry-yard assembling to be fed.
Doors fly open,--guests are seen precipitating themselves headlong down
stairs,--elderly matrons advance, leaning on their gouty, red-faced
husbands,--troops of marriageable daughters follow,--and solitary
gentlemen are visible, strolling forward in all the unencumbered
independence of having no one to care for but themselves. The
noise-meter then rises to a deafening pitch, when, to the din of a
hundred tongues, is added the jingling of glasses, plates, knives, and
forks, while the long serpent-like procession winds slowly into the
room, and gradually subsides into places.
Amidst the moving mass of strangely mingled personages, Captain De
Crespigny had offered his arm to Marion, which she did not seem to
observe, but led forward Sir Arthur, while all eyes were turned upon
Agnes, who walked beside Lord Doncaster, with burning cheeks and
downcast eyes, yet affecting to look superbly dignified.
Sir Patrick, in the mean time, always on the _qui vive_ for variety and
adventure, entreated Mrs. O'Donoghoe's permission to sit between her
and the young lady under charge, who attracted his especial notice
because she so obviously suffered from that apprehension of being
conspicuous, common to strangers on their first appearance at a public
table, and was dressed with a degree of plainness which amounted almost
to eccentricity.
"I lose no time in making new acquaintances here," whispered he aside
to Mrs. O'Donoghoe, with a glance at her timid companion, who had
become a perfect aurora of blushes as she seated herself at the table.
"Our short visits at Harrowgate scarcely leave me five minutes to spare
for each new face."
"Then I hope you do most of the conversation yourself, for I suspect
the young lady, who was placed under my _chaperonage_ by Mr. Crawford,
is not so much accustomed to live upon airy nothings, and to run up
_impromptu_ intimacies as you are."
"The sooner she begins then, the better. I have a thousand things to
say to her!"
"Perhaps she may not have time for above five hundred of them. You must
talk to her like a dialogue book, supplying both the questions and the
answers; for, as far as my experience goes, she seems to be shockingly
silent and nervous. Are you generally reckoned amusing?"
"Everybody agrees in considering me so, and many people think me quite
the reverse, but I can be either the one or the other, on a moment's
notice."
"Indeed! a little of both, and a great deal to spare! I imagine it all
depends on which way the wind blows!"
"Exactly! I am sentimental in a westerly breeze,--cutting and sarcastic
in an east wind,--noisy and boisterous in a northern blast,--and during
'a southerly wind and a cloudy day,' the genius of nonsense takes
possession of me so completely, that I have bestowed on myself the
privilege of saying whatever I think."
"How shocking! I do not particularly fancy you in any of these moods!"
"Adagio! do not condemn me yet! choose your own subject, concerts,
sermons, pic-nics, dress, Harrowgate water, or the last new novel,
nothing comes amiss to me! I mean soon to publish a weekly programme of
the five or six subjects to which all conversation at the Granby is
usually limited; a complete set of the questions invariably asked by
all the visitors every day, with a sketch of the most appropriate
answers. For my own part, all my replies are given by rote, and it puts
me out entirely, if the inquiry whether I have been at Ripley, comes
before the question how I like the waters, or who was the last arrival,
which is, _a propos_, the only subject on which I am not very well
informed."
Sir Patrick saying these words, gave a sly glance towards his left
hand, where the young _incognita_ sat, without apparently listening to
what passed, and as she seemed at the moment to be looking another way,
Mrs. O'Donoghoe archly turned round the label on her bottle of wine, so
that the young baronet could read that it bore, according to custom,
the name of its proprietor 'Miss Smythe.'
Nothing could be a more complete balk to curiosity than such a name.
Sir Patrick had already known seven Mrs. Smythes. His washerwoman was
Mrs. Smith,--his sister's governess had been a Miss Smith,--two
Captains in his own regiment had gloried in the name of Smyth,--and his
old Colonel's widow was Mrs. Smith. There was no individuality in the
name, but a whisper had reached him in the morning that a Miss Smith,
the authoress of several popular romances, was expected at Harrowgate,
and a horrible apprehension crossed his mind that, young as she looked,
this might actually be the culprit, his surmises respecting which he
could not but whisper to the laughing widow, adding, with a look of
comical consternation--
"Only think how my portrait will look in her next book! There is no
escape, unless I faint away immediately and am carried out! We must
remain together now as long as I stay at Harrowgate, for no change of
place is allowed. Even if you and I quarrel, there is no remedy! It is
like connubial felicity, we are settled here permanently, for better or
for worse."
"It might certainly be worse! I am tolerably resigned to my fate, for I
sat till lately among the dullest set of hum-drum bores who ever ate a
potato; but you are so clever, I always become clever in your company."
"That is a novelty, I suppose?"
"Why, for that matter, my mind is like a piano-forte, which requires to
be skilfully played upon," replied the widow, gayly. "I have often been
offered large annuities by people, merely to live in their houses and
entertain them, but lately I was in danger of falling into a state of
sensible, every-day dullness."
"Impossible!"
"You may doubt it--anybody would--but actually, yesterday, talking to
Lord Wigton, I was threatened with a fit of prosing! a thing I never
was subject to, and I never heard it had been in our family! Whether do
you dislike most, a professed wit, or a professed proser, Sir Patrick?"
"My favorite society is any old lady of seventy, who has met with great
misfortunes!"
"Well, I am not much upon that pattern, certainly, but fifty years
hence, we might make an appointment, perhaps, to meet here again."
"How many succession of visitors will before then have flourished in
this house, and vanished. Even after the interval of one season, a
visitor's return is like coming back from the grave. Nothing is
remembered of either yourself or your cotemporaries. Guests, waiters,
landlords, and even boots, have all disappeared."
"Very affecting, indeed," said Mrs. O'Donoghoe; "but half the dinner
has disappeared during that long moral discourse of yours, Sir Patrick.
Among the transitory things in this house, pray enumerate, another
time, the _entre-mets_ and vegetables."
"Pardon me--these dishes re-appear only too often. I have known some of
those pies intimately for several days. In our regiment, we called such
revivals 'old clothes,' and it really is too bad treating ninety
deserving people so ill."
"I should like to live upon the diet of a chameleon! Eating is a vulgar
necessity which the mind despises," observed Mrs. O'Donoghoe, helping
herself to a _pate_; "but some of the company here seem _ne pour la
digestion_, talking love and sentiment over a haunch of venison. Mr.
Crawford tells me that an Indian dinner party lasts twelve hours, and
people who sit down as thin as skeletons, rise from table quite
corpulent."
"It certainly does require the aid of refined conversation to keep up
our self-respect in a scene of such gormandizing. For my own part, I
live upon anti-pastry principles, and am also a no-vegetable man; but I
wish haunches of venison had never been invented! I made fifteen mortal
enemies by the last I carved in this house, because no one thought I
had given him the best slice," observed Sir Patrick. "I wish all men
like old Doncaster, who eat more good things in a day than they say in
a year, would dine alone."
"But I think," said Mr. Crawford, "that the habit of meeting at meals
is one of our most excellent social customs! If each individual in a
family were merely to snatch a morsel when hungry, there would be no
re-union, and often no intimacy among members even of the same
household. I like frequently to trace the usefulness of old established
customs, which have been sanctioned by successive generations, because
the advantages are always so much greater than they at first appear,
that it has now become quite a sufficient reason for me to respect any
custom, when I find that it is an old one."
"I take the liberty of thinking quite the reverse!" said Sir Patrick.
"Change is the very essence of enjoyment! change of habits, change of
company, and change of air, are all equally necessary, and I never have
a guinea in the world without instantly getting it changed. That custom
will make a scarcity of silver at the bank, when I marry the heiress,
Miss Howard."
"You!" exclaimed Mr. Crawford, his very wig standing on end with
surprise, while the young lady next him colored to the very tip of her
fingers.
"I beg your pardon," said Sir Patrick, turning to her with one of his
most winning smiles. "I thought you gave symptoms of speaking."
A torrent of blushes being her only reply, he began to doubt whether
she had the faculty of speech at all, and having decided at last that
the young lady was either a statue or an idiot, he turned to his more
accessible neighbor, muttering in an under tone, "Mute as a fish! An
exhausted receiver! I never saw such a genius for shyness! Her very
cap-strings are blushing! But about Miss Howard, my friend De
Crespigny, who was born and educated for the very purpose of marrying
his cousin, wishes me to take her off his hands, and if I could have
sold myself, which I cannot, she might have done. I am told she is very
romantic, so he and I agreed once to get up an amicable duel for her,
and after that I was to waylay the mad cousin who persecutes her, and
horse-whip him!"
"Nothing like spirited beginning," said Mr. Crawford, in agonies of
risibility, while the young lady on Sir Patrick's other side, after an
evident struggle, during which the ever-deepening color in her cheek
became perfectly scarlet, at length burst into an uncontrollable fit of
laughter, so full of fun and glee, that the young baronet instinctively
joined her, though amazed and perplexed beyond measure by the oddity of
her manner, and by her unspeakable silence. "Your love," added Mr.
Crawford, "is to be more in the heroic than in the pastoral style."
"Never was there a Captain of Huzzars so preternaturally in love at
first sight, as I should have been. De Crespigny tells me she is first
cousin to Croesus! has land in every country, gold in every bank, the
mines of Golconda for a part of her portion, carries a million of money
in each pocket, and changes horses three times in driving across her
own estate! I should think myself rich to be five minutes in her
company."
"I see you are half in joke, and wholly in earnest," said Mrs.
O'Donoghoe. "But some gentlemen certainly do speculate in matrimony,
exactly as they would in the public stocks. So my poor husband used to
say before he left me so handsomely provided for. As for Miss Howard's
hundred lovers, they will have but one idea amongst them--money! money!
money!"
"Love for an heiress certainly has the most solid of all foundations.
How much better to be married for your fortune than for your dancing or
singing--your pedigree or connections! There can be no mistake in
pounds, shillings, and pence! De Crespigny tells me she is said to be
not only very rich, but very plain, therefore as people generally marry
their opposites, we shall suit exactly."
The timid young lady had now fallen into a perfect paroxysm of blushes,
and an extraordinary twitching about her mouth betrayed the last
extreme of nervousness, though whether her agitation were not of a
risible nature, Sir Patrick felt somewhat perplexed to decide,
especially as she was seized with a fit of coughing which appeared
almost like laughter, while she hastily drank up the water in her
finger-glass, threw salt over her pudding, and committed a dozen of
absurdities, which caused the young Baronet to ask himself whether she
were in possession of her fifty senses. A moment afterwards, Sir
Patrick felt his arm convulsively grasped by the young lady, as if for
protection, while a half-suppressed scream burst from her lips, and she
clung to him with an aspect of breathless terror, her lips parted, her
cheeks livid, and her eyes almost startling from her head, as she gazed
anxiously after the receding figure of a man who was hastily leaving
the room.
Sir Patrick, when thus unexpectedly appealed to, started from his seat
to offer assistance, though at a loss how to act, when, seeing Miss
Smythe's countenance become of a ghastly paleness, he rapidly poured
out a tumbler of water, and held it to her lips, proposing, at the same
time, to support her out of the room.
"No, no! I am better here!" replied she, in trembling accents.
"I--I need society! I am so nervous! It must have been some dreadful
mistake! Excuse me, I would rather remain!"
Mr. Crawford, in the mean time, had rushed hastily out of the room;
and, having now returned, he made a signal, as if desirous to escort
her also; but to this implied proposal the young lady only answered by
an almost imperceptible shake of the head, while she fixed her eyes on
her plate, resolved, apparently, to remain stationary. To the great
surprise of Sir Patrick, two tall footmen, in plain livery, now placed
themselves behind her chair; and, having afterwards closely followed
her when the ladies retired to tea, they were observed lounging about
in the lobby during the rest of that evening.
"What could be the meaning of such a scene?" asked Mrs. O'Donoghoe, in
an undertone of extreme curiosity. "Can you conceive, Sir Patrick, why
the young lady started in that extraordinary way?"
"Yes!" whispered he confidentially. "I can explain, but do not mention
this. It was because--she couldn't help it! There is a sublime mystery
of some kind at work here! I cannot dive into it! Suppose she were to
turn out Miss Howard Smytheson _incog._!"
"Oh no! that is impossible! Her aunt was coming with her, who is one of
my most intimate friends!"
Never had anybody so many most intimate friends, as Mrs. O'Donoghoe.
Every person she met for half-an-hour, had the honor to be so
designated, and if a gentleman were distinguished by the appellation,
it was generally followed by a very plain insinuation that she had
refused him. Of late, however, Mrs. O'Donoghoe had been more cautious
in such assertions, having been discredited in one of her many
forgeries on the bank of truth, by its being proved, that she boasted
of a proposal from Mr. Crawford three weeks after it became known that
he was already engaged to his second wife. Such accidents happen,
however, in the best-regulated families!