"AND SUDDENLY, SWEETLY, MY HEART BEAT STRONGER."
Squire Bosworth, having once consented to bring his daughter to town,
was not a man to stint money in detail. He surprised his sister-in-law
by the liberality of his arrangements and the liberty he allowed her in
expenditure. She had excellent rooms for herself and her gaunt
daughters, and a coach and four at her disposition, with free license to
buy tickets for concerts, operas, masquerades, and public amusements of
all kinds; and she was told to order all that was needful for the
adornment of the heiress's person. Her ladyship was an old campaigner,
and knew how to profit by her position. The mantua-makers and milliners
who waited upon Mrs. Bosworth were tradeswomen who had supplied Lady
Tredgold for a quarter of a century, and she had them, as it were,
under her thumb. "I have so little money to spend, my dears, that if I
did not spend it with the same people year after year, I should not be
of the slightest importance to fashionable trades-folk. But by a steady
patronage of the same people, and by always paying ready money, I have
contrived to keep the best milliner and mantua-maker in London my very
humble and devoted servants."
It happened, therefore, that in these halcyon days of the Arlington
Street lodgings, Mrs. Amelia and Mrs. Sophia Tredgold were supplied with
gowns and caps almost at half-price by these obliging and confidential
purveyors. There was a handsome margin for profit upon the prices paid
for Irene's Court-train and other fineries.
Everything in that wonderful world of fashion and pleasure was new and
surprising to the girl who had been reared in the seclusion of Fairmile
Park. She gave herself up freely to the enchantments of the dazzling,
dissipated, extravagant, artificial town. She saw only the glitter and
sparkle of society's surface, and knew not that the light was the
phosphorescence of putrefaction; that the whole fabric, this fairy
palace gleaming with lights and breathing music, was rotten to the core,
and might fall about the heads of these revellers at any moment, as that
other fairy palace where Philip the Regent and his _roués_ had so lately
held their orgies was doomed to fall before the century should be ended.
But of all pleasures which that great city could offer to innocent youth
the divinest was music, which at this period enjoyed an unbounded
popularity and fashion. The one art which George I. loved was music, and
to that art and its most famous professors he and his family gave the
warmest encouragement. The Royal Academy for Music had only been founded
six years, but the influence of such a school was already felt. Italian
opera was in its glory, and the rivalry between Handel and Buononcini,
and between Cuzzoni and La Faustina, was one of the most exciting topics
in the whole round of society talk.
Rena revelled in that magic world of the opera. All the glamour of the
stage was here intensified by the stronger magic of music. Handel's
classic operas, with their wealth of melody and charm of mythologic
story, opened a new world of enchantment to the girl's quick
imagination. Lady Tredgold and her daughters loved the opera only
because it was fashionable, and stifled many a yawn behind their Watteau
fans; Rena and Mdlle. Latour delighted in music as an epicure delights
at a feast. They hung entranced upon every note, and inwardly resented
the chattering and giggling of Mrs. Amelia and Mrs. Sophia, who
coquetted with their admirers at the back of the box, and encouraged
visits from all the most frivolous foplings of the town. Rena had no
suspicion that these young fribbles came for the most part in the hope
of getting a word or two with the heiress. It had never occurred to her
that she was a prize for which half the young men in London would have
liked to race each other.
Lord Lavendale was a frequent visitor at the house in Arlington Street,
and was cordially received by Lady Tredgold, who had been intimate with
his mother in her girlhood and was disposed to favour his suit. He had
spoken to Mr. Bosworth, who had answered bluntly, "Win her if you can,
and then we will see about paying off the mortgages on Lavendale, and
joining the two estates. But I am no tyrant to force my daughter into
an uncongenial marriage. If you would have her and her fortune, you must
first win her heart."
"I will try," Lavendale answered, honestly enough.
It was his resolute intention to try and gain Rena's love, and to lead a
better life than he had ever led yet: to abjure the bottle and the
dice-box, though both those amusements were deemed the fitting diversion
for a fine gentleman's leisure. Even the graver and statelier men of the
day were topers. The late Lord Oxford had been accused of coming drunk
into the presence of his Queen; and Pulteney drank almost as deep as St.
John. Three or four bottles of Burgundy were deemed a fair allowance for
a gentleman; and now the Methuen treaty, giving free trade in Portuguese
wines, was bringing a heavier liquor into fashion.
Lavendale and Irene met in all the aristocratic assemblies of the day,
at operas and balls, auction-rooms, Park, and Mall. They met at the
house of Henrietta Duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the great Duke
and widow of Lord Godolphin the statesman, who gave musical evenings
and swore by Buononcini. Here Rena beheld Mr. Congreve, _l'ami de la
maison_, gouty, irritable, and nearly blind, but occasionally
condescending to sparkle in brief flashes of wit. He was petted and
obviously adored by the lady, who, after having had the greatest soldier
and the grandest statesman of that age for father and husband, appeared
to have reserved her warmest affections for a selfish old bachelor
playwright.
Lavendale and Irene met each other in still higher society at St.
James's, Leicester House, and Richmond Lodge, where Lady Tredgold had
the entry. New and pretty faces are always welcome at Court, and it
became speedily known that the charms of this particular face were
fortified by a handsome fortune. The Princess of Wales was very gracious
to Squire Bosworth's daughter, and Mrs. Howard smiled upon her with that
sweet vague placidity which one sees in the faces of deaf people. Rena
here beheld the famous Dean Swift, newly advanced to that title of Dean,
and come to kiss his patroness's beautiful hand, and to sneer at all
the little great world around him in nightly letters to Stella Johnson,
far away in a Dublin lodging, with small means and an elderly companion.
Fond and faithful Stella may have needed those lively letters of the
Dean's, with their graphic account of _his_ pleasures, to cheer the slow
monotony of her days.
Irene enjoyed everything, and, being nearly as innocent as Una, saw no
evil under that fair outward surface of high-born society. Life flowed
so smoothly and pleasantly under that superficial elegance; everybody
spoke sweetly, wit was current coin, and music of the highest quality
seemed the very atmosphere in which these people lived. It was but for
the King to set the fashion, and everybody adored music; just as in
Charles I.'s time everybody had been more or less fanatical about
painters and painting. Rena moved from scene to scene with a sublime
unconsciousness of evil, and late at night, or over their chocolate in
the morning, would describe all she had seen and heard to her devoted
governess, who shared in none of her amusements except the opera and an
occasional concert, but who was always sympathetic and interested in all
she heard.
"You seem to meet Lord Lavendale wherever you go," Mdlle. Latour said on
one occasion, when his lordship's name had been mentioned by her pupil
with perfect frankness.
"We are always meeting all the same people. When I go into a crowded
room now, I seem to know everybody in it. I feel quite surprised at the
sight of a stranger."
"Just as if you were an experienced fine lady," laughed Mademoiselle;
"how quickly my woodland nymph has accustomed herself to the ways of
this crowded fashionable town! But to return to Lord Lavendale: if you
do not meet him oftener than you do other people, I think that at least
you enjoy more of his society. You and he are often talking together,
Mrs. Amelia told me."
"O yes, we are very good friends," the girl answered carelessly. "I
think he is pleasanter than most people."
"Heart-whole, and likely to remain so, as far as Lavendale is
concerned," thought the little Frenchwoman with satisfaction; for she
knew too much of his lordship's past history to approve of him as a
suitor for her beloved pupil.
After a pause she said,
"By the bye, Rena, Mr. Durnford called yesterday when you were out with
Lady Tredgold. It is the fifth time he has called and found you gone
abroad."
Irene blushed crimson.
"O, why did you not beg him to stop till I came home?" she asked.
"My dear child, this is not my house. I have no right to give
invitations."
"Yes, you have. You could have detained him if you had liked. The fifth
visit! What must he think of me?"
"He confessed that he thought you somewhat a gad-about. He told me that
he tried to waylay you in public resorts--in the Ring, or at the
auction-rooms; but even there he had been unfortunate: when he went
west, you had gone east."
Irene looked piteously disappointed.
"Five times! and I have not been told of one of those visits!" she
exclaimed indignantly. "Why was that?"
"Because your aunt's footmen forgot all about it, I daresay," replied
Mademoiselle. "Footmen have a knack of forgetting such visitors,
especially when the visitor wears a shabby coat and may forget to
emphasise his inquiries with a crown. I doubt you would never have heard
of this last visit, if I had not happened to come in from my walk in St.
James's Park just as Mr. Durnford knocked at the door. He stopped for a
few minutes' chat on the doorstep. I told him you were to be at the
opera to-night."
"Then perhaps he will go there!" cried Rena, suddenly becoming radiant,
and confirming the shrewd little Frenchwoman in a suspicion which she
had harboured for some time.
What a pity that Herrick Durnford was poor, and without rank or lineage
to counterbalance his poverty! She knew that Squire Bosworth would
favour Lavendale's suit, and would in all probability disinherit his
daughter if she presumed to marry a penniless scribbler. Mdlle. Latour
had enjoyed opportunities of studying the character of both these young
men, and she had decided that Durnford's was the nobler nature, though
there was assuredly some good in Lavendale.