"Let observation, with expansive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
--AND OBSERVATION WILL EVERYWHERE FIND, INDISPENSABLE TO THE HAPPINESS OF
WOMAN, A VISITING ACQUAINTANCE.
Lionel knew that Mrs. Haughton would that day need more than usual
forewarning of a visit from Mr. Darrell. For the evening of that day
Mrs. Haughton proposed "to give a party." When Mrs. Haughton gave a
party, it was a serious affair. A notable and bustling housewife, she
attended herself to each preparatory detail. It was to assist at this
party that Lionel had resigned Lady Dulcett's concert. The young man,
reluctantly acquiescing in the arrangements by which Alban Morley had
engaged him a lodging of his own, seldom or never let a day pass without
gratifying his mother's proud heart by an hour or two spent in Gloucester
Place, often to the forfeiture of a pleasant ride, or other tempting
excursion, with gay comrades. Difficult in London life, and at the full
of its season, to devote an hour or two to visits, apart from the track
chalked out by one's very mode of existence--difficult to cut off an hour
so as not to cut up a day. And Mrs. Haughton was exacting-nice in her
choice as to the exact slice in the day. She took the prime of the
joint. She liked her neighbours to see the handsome, elegant young man
dismount from his charger or descend from his cabriolet, just at the
witching hour when Gloucester Place was fullest. Did he go to a levee,
he must be sure to come to her before he changed his dress, that she and
Gloucester Place might admire him in uniform. Was he going to dine at
some very great house, he must take her in his way (though no street
could be more out of his way), that she might be enabled to say in the
parties to which she herself repaired "There is a great dinner at Lord
So-and-so's to-day; my son called on me before he went there. If he had
been disengaged, I should have asked permission to bring him here."
Not that Mrs. Haughton honestly designed, nor even wished to draw the
young man from the dazzling vortex of high life into her own little
currents of dissipation. She was much too proud of Lionel to think that
her friends were grand enough for him to honour their houses by his
presence. She had in this, too, a lively recollection of her lost
Captain's doctrinal views of the great world's creed. The Captain had
flourished in the time when Impertinence, installed by Brummell, though
her influence was waning, still schooled her oligarchs, and maintained
the etiquette of her court; and even when his /misalliance/ and his debts
had cast him out of his native sphere, he lost not all the original
brightness of an exclusive. In moments of connubial confidence, when
owning his past errors, and tracing to his sympathising Jessie the causes
of his decline, he would say: "'Tis not a man's birth, nor his fortune,
that gives him his place in society--it depends on his conduct, Jessie.
He must not be seen bowing to snobs, nor should his enemies track him to
the haunts of vulgarians. I date my fall in life to dining with a horrid
man who lent me L100, and lived in Upper Baker Street. His wife took my
arm from a place they called a drawing-room (the Captain as he spoke was
on a fourth floor), to share some unknown food which they called a dinner
(the Captain at that moment would have welcomed a rasher). The woman
went about blabbing--the thing got wind--for the first time my character
received a soil. What is a man without character! and character once
sullied, Jessie, man becomes reckless. Teach my boy to beware of the
first false step--no association with parvenus. Don't cry, Jessie--
I don't mean that he is to cut your--relations are quite different from
other people--nothing so low as cutting relations. I continued, for
instance, to visit Guy Darrell, though he lived at the back of Holborn,
and I actually saw him once in brown beaver gloves. But he was a
relation. I have even dined at his house, and met odd people there--
people who lived also at the back of Holborn. But he did not ask me
to go to their houses, and if he had, I must have cut him." By
reminiscences of this kind of talk, Lionel was saved from any design of
Mrs. Haughton's to attract his orbit into the circle within which she
herself moved. He must come to the parties she gave--illumine or awe odd
people there. That was a proper tribute to maternal pride. But had they
asked him to their parties, she would have been the first to resent such
a liberty.
Lionel found Mrs. Haughton in great bustle. A gardener's cart was before
the street door. Men were bringing in a grove of evergreens, intended to
border the staircase, and make its exiguous ascent still more difficult.
The refreshments were already laid out in the dining-room. Mrs.
Haughton, with scissors in hand, was cutting flowers to fill the eperyne,
but darting to and fro, like a dragonfly, from the dining-room to the
hall, from the flowers to the evergreens.
"Dear me, Lionel, is that you? Just tell me, you who go to all those
grandees, whether the ratafia-cakes should be opposite to the spauge-
cakes, or whether they would not go better--thus--at cross-corners?"
"My dear mother, I never observed--I don't know. But make haste-take off
that apron-have those doors shut come upstairs. Mr. Darrell will be here
very shortly. I have ridden on to prepare you."
"Mr. Darrell--TO-DAY--HOW could you let him come? Oh, Lionel, how
thoughtless you are! You should have some respect for your mother--I am
your mother, sir."
"Yes, my own dear mother--don't scold--I could not help it. He is so
engaged, so sought after; if I had put him off to-day, he might never
have come, and--"
"Never have come! Who is Mr. Darrell, to give himself such airs?--Only a
lawyer after all," said Mrs. Haughton, with majesty.
"Oh, mother, that speech is not like you. He is our benefactor--our--"
"Don't, don't say very more--I was very wrong--quite wicked--only my
temper, Lionel dear. Good Mr. Darrell! I shall be so happy to see him--
see him, too, in this house that I owe to him--see him by your side! I
think I shall fall down on my knees to him."
And her eyes began to stream.
Lionel kissed the tears away fondly. "That's my own mother now indeed--
now I am proud of you, mother; and how well you look! I am proud of that
too."
"Look well--I am not fit to be seen, this figure--though perhaps an
elderly quiet gentleman like good Mr. Darrell does not notice ladies
much. John, John, makes haste with those plants. Gracious me! you've
got your coat off!--put it on--I expect a gentleman--I'm at home, in the
front drawing-room--no--that's all set out--the back drawing-room, John.
Send Susan to me. Lionel, do just look at the supper-table; and what is
to be done with the flowers, and--"
The rest of Mrs. Haughton's voice, owing to the rapidity of her ascent,
which affected the distinctness of her utterance, was lost in air. She
vanished at culminating point--within her chamber.