Had Nataly and Nesta known who was outside helping Skepsey to play ball
with the boys, they would not have worked through their share of the
performance with so graceful a composure. Even Simeon Fenellan was
unaware that his half-brother Dartrey had landed in England. Dartrey
went first to Victor’s office, where he found Skepsey packing the
day’s letters and circulars into the bag for the delivery of them
at Lakelands. They sprang a chatter, and they missed the last of the
express trains which did, not greatly signify, Skepsey said, ‘as it was
a Concert.’ To hear his hero talk, was the music for him; and he richly
enjoyed the pacing along the railway-platform.
Arrived on the grounds, they took opposite sides in a game of rounders,
at that moment tossing heads or tails for innings. These boys were
slovenly players, and were made unhappy by Skepsey’s fussy instructions
to them in smartness. They had a stupid way of feeding the stick, and
they ran sprawling; it concerned Great Britain for them to learn how to
use their legs. It was pitiful for the country to see how lumpish her
younger children were. Dartrey knew his little man and laughed, after
warning him that his English would want many lessons before they
stomached the mixture of discipline and pleasure. So it appeared: the
pride of the boys in themselves, their confidence, enjoyment of the
game, were all gone; and all were speedily out but Skepsey; who ran for
the rounder, with his coat off, sharp as a porpoise, and would have got
it, he had it in his grasp, when, at the jump, just over the line of the
goal, a clever fling, if ever was, caught him a crack on that part of
the human frame where sound is best achieved. Then were these young
lumps transformed to limber, lither, merry fellows. They rejoiced
Skepsey’s heart; they did everything better, ran and dodged and threw in
a style to win the nod from the future official inspector of Games and
Amusements of the common people; a deputy of the Government, proposed by
Skepsey to his hero with a deferential eagerness. Dartrey clapped him on
the shoulder, softly laughing.
‘System--Mr. Durance is right--they must have system, if they are to
appreciate a holiday,’ Skepsey said; and he sent a wretched gaze around,
at the justification of some of the lurid views of Mr. Durance, in signs
of the holiday wasted;--impoverishing the country’s manhood in a small
degree, it may be argued, but we ask, can the country afford it, while
foreign nations are drilling their youth, teaching them to be ready to
move in squads or masses, like the fist of a pugilist. Skepsey left
it to his look to speak his thought. He saw an enemy in tobacco. The
drowsiness of beer had stretched various hulks under trees. Ponderous
cricket lumbered half-alive. Flabby fun knocked-up a yell. And it was
rather vexatious to see girls dancing in good time to the band-music.
One had a male-partner, who hopped his loutish burlesque of the thing he
could not do.
Apparently, too certainly, none but the girls had a notion of orderly
muscular exercise. Of what use are girls! Girls have their one mission
on earth; and let them be healthy by all means, for the sake of
it; only, they should not seem to prove that old England is better
represented on the female side. Skepsey heard, with a nip of spite at
his bosom, a small body of them singing in chorus as they walked in
step, arm in arm, actually marched: and to the rearward, none of these
girls heeding; there were the louts at their burlesque of jigs and
fisticuffs! ‘Cherry Ripe,’ was the song.
‘It’s delightful to hear them!’ said Dartrey.
Skepsey muttered jealously of their having been trained.
The song, which drew Dartrey Fenellan to the quick of an English home,
planted him at the same time in Africa to hear it. Dewy on a parched
forehead it fell, England the shedding heaven.
He fetched a deep breath, as of gratitude for vital refreshment. He had
his thoughts upon the training of our English to be something besides
the machinery of capitalists, and upon the country as a blessed mother
instead of the most capricious of maudlin step-dames.
He flicked his leg with the stick he carried, said: ‘Your master’s the
man to make a change among them, old friend!’ and strolled along to
a group surrounding two fellows who shammed a bout at single-stick.
Vacuity in the attack on either side, contributed to the joint success
of the defense. They paused under inspection; and Dartrey said: ‘You’re
burning to give them a lesson, Skepsey.’
Skepsey had no objection to his hero’s doing so, though at his personal
cost.
The sticks were handed to them; the crowd increased; their rounders boys
had spied them, and came trooping to the scene. Skepsey was directed to
hit in earnest. His defensive attitude flashed, and he was at head and
right and left leg, and giving point, recovering, thrusting madly, and
again at shoulder and thigh, with bravos for reward of a man meaning
business; until a topper on his hat, a cut over the right thigh, and the
stick in his middlerib, told the spectators of a scientific adversary;
and loudly now the gentleman was cheered. An undercurrent of warm
feeling ran for the plucky little one at it hot again in spite of the
strokes, and when he fetched his master a handsome thud across the
shoulder, and the gentleman gave up and complimented him, Skepsey had
applause.
He then begged his hero to put the previous couple in position, through
a few of the opening movements. They were horribly sheepish at first.
Meantime two boys had got hold of sticks, and both had gone to work in
Skepsey’s gallant style; and soon one was howling. He excused himself,
because of the funny-bone, situated, in his case, higher than usual up
the arm. And now the pair of men were giving and taking cuts to make a
rhinoceros caper.
‘Very well; begin that way; try what you can bear,’ said Dartrey.
Skepsey watched them, in felicity for love of the fray, pained by the
disregard of science.
Comments on the pretty play, indicating a reminiscent acquaintance with
it, and the capacity for critical observations, were started. Assaults,
wonderful tricks of a slashing Life-Guardsman, one spectator had
witnessed at an exhibition in a London hall. Boxing too. You may see
displays of boxing still in places. How about a prizefight?--With money
on it?--Eh, but you don’t expect men to stand up to be knocked into
rumpsteaks for nothing?--No, but it’s they there bets!--Right, and
that’s a game gone to ruin along of outsiders.--But it always was and it
always will be popular with Englishmen!
Great English names of young days, before the wintry shadow of the Law
had blighted them, received their withered laurels. Emulous boys were in
the heroic posture. Good! sparring does no hurt: Skepsey seized a likely
lad, Dartrey another. Nature created the Ring for them. Now then, arms
and head well up, chest hearty, shoulders down, out with the right fist,
just below the level of the chin; out with the left fist farther, right
out, except for that bit of curve; so, and draw it slightly back for
wary-pussy at the spring. Firm you stand, feeling the muscles of both
legs, left half a pace ahead, right planted, both stringy. None of your
milk-pail looks; show us jaw, you bulldogs. Now then, left from the
shoulder, straight at right of head.--Good, and alacrity called on
vigour in Skepsey’s pupil; Dartrey’s had the fist on his mouth before he
could parry right arm up. ‘Foul blow!’ Dartrey cried. Skepsey vowed to
the contrary. Dartrey reiterated his charge. Skepsey was a figure of
negation, gesticulating and protesting. Dartrey appealed tempestuously
to the Ring; Skepsey likewise, in a tone of injury. He addressed a
remonstrance to Captain Dartrey.
‘Hang your captain, sir! I call you a coward; come on,’ said the
resolute gentleman, already in ripe form for the attack. His blue eyes
were like the springing sunrise over ridges of the seas; and Skepsey
jumped to his meaning.
Boys and men were spectators of a real scientific set-to, a lovely show.
They were half puzzled, it seemed so deadly. And the little one got in
his blows at the gentleman, who had to be hopping. Only, the worse the
gentleman caught it, the friendlier his countenance became. That was the
wonder, and that gave them the key. But it was deliciously near to the
real thing.
Dartrey and Skepsey shook hands.
‘And now, you fellows, you’re to know, that this is one of the
champions; and you take your lesson from him and thank him,’ Dartrey
said, as he turned on his heel to strike and greet the flow from the
house.
‘Dartrey come!’ Victor, Fenellan, Colney, had him by the hand in turn.
Pure sweetness of suddenly awakened joy sat in Nataly’s eyes as she swam
to welcome him, Nesta moved a step, seemed hesitating, and she tripped
forward. ‘Dear Captain Dartrey!’
He did not say: ‘But what a change in you!’
‘It is blue-butterfly, all the same,’ Nataly spoke to his look.
Victor hurriedly pronounced the formal introduction between the Hon.
Dudley Sowerby and Captain Dartrey Fenellan. The bronze face and the
milky bowed to one another ceremoniously; the latter faintly flushing.
‘So here you are at last,’ Victor said. ‘You stay with us.’
‘To-morrow or later, if you’ll have me. I go down to my people
to-night.’
‘But you stay in England now?’ Nataly’s voice wavered on the question.
‘There’s a chance of my being off to Upper Burmah before the week’s
ended.’
‘Ah, dear, dear!’ sighed Fenellan; ‘and out of good comes evil!--as
grandfather Deucalion exclaimed, when he gallantly handed up his
dripping wife from the mud of the Deluge waters. Do you mean to be
running and Dewing it on for ever, with only a nod for friends, Dart?’
‘Lord, Simmy, what a sound of home there is in your old nonsense!’
Dartrey said.
His eyes of strong dark blue colour and the foreign swarthiness of his
brows and cheeks and neck mixed the familiar and the strange, in the
sight of the women who knew him.
The bill-broker’s fair-tressed young wife whispered of curiosity
concerning him to Nataly. He dressed like a sailor, he stood like a
soldier: and was he married? Yes, he was married.
Mrs. Blathenoy imagined a something in Mrs. Radnor’s tone. She could
account for it; not by the ordinary reading of the feminine in the
feminine, but through a husband who professed to know secrets. She
was young in years and experience, ten months wedded, disappointedly
awakened, enlivened by the hour, kindled by a novel figure of man,
fretful for a dash of imprudence. This Mrs. Radnor should be the one to
second her very innocent turn for a galopade; her own position allowed
of any little diverting jig or reel, or plunge in a bath--she required
it, for the domestic Jacob Blathenoy was a dry chip: proved such,
without a day’s variation during the whole of the ten wedded months.
Nataly gratified her spoken wish. Dartrey Fenellan bowed to the lady,
and she withdrew him, seeing composedly that other and greater ladies
had the wish ungratified. Their husbands were not so rich as hers, and
their complexions would hardly have pleased the handsome brown-faced
officer so well.
Banquet, equal to a blast of trumpet, was the detaining word for the
multitude. It circulated, one knows not how. Eloquent as the whiffs to
the sniffs (and nowhere is eloquence to match it, when the latter are
sharpened from within to without), the word was very soon over the
field. Mr. Carling may have helped; he had it from Fenellan; and he
was among the principal groups, claiming or making acquaintances, as a
lawyer should do. The Concert was complimentarily a topic: Durandarte
divine!--did not everybody think so? Everybody did, in default of a term
for overtopping it. Our language is poor at hyperbole; our voices
are stronger. Gestures and heaven-sent eyeballs invoke to display the
ineffable. Where was Durandarte now? Gone; already gone; off with the
Luciani for evening engagements; he came simply to oblige his dear
friend Mr. Radnor. Cheque fifty guineas: hardly more on both sides than
an exchange of smiles. Ah, these merchant-princes! What of Mr. Radnor’s
amateur instrumentalists? Amateurs, they are not to be named: perfect
musicians. Mr. Radnor is the perfection of a host. Yes, yes; Mrs.
Radnor; Miss Radnor too: delicious voices; but what is it about Mr.
Radnor so captivating! He is not quite English, yet he is not at all
foreign. Is he very adventurous in business, as they say?
‘Soundest head in the City of London,’ Mr. Blathenoy remarked.
Sir Rodwell Blachington gave his nod.
The crowd interjected, half-sighing. We ought to be proud of such a man!
Perhaps we are a trifle exaggerating, says its heart. But that we are
wholly grateful to him, is a distinct conclusion. And he may be one of
the great men of his time: he has a quite individual style of dress.
Lady Rodwell Blachington observed to Colney Durance:
‘Mr. Radnor bids fair to become the idol of the English people.’
‘If he can prove himself to be sufficiently the dupe of the English
people,’ said Colney.
‘Idol--dupe?’ interjected Sir Rodwell, and his eyebrows fixed at the
perch of Colney’s famous ‘national interrogation’ over vacancy of
understanding, as if from the pull of a string. He had his audience with
him; and the satirist had nothing but his inner gush of acids at sight
of a planted barb.
Colney was asked to explain. He never explained. He performed a series
of astonishing leaps, like the branchy baboon above the traveller’s head
in the tropical forest, and led them into the trap they assisted him to
prepare for them. ‘No humour, do you say? The English have no humour?’ a
nephew of Lady Blachington’s inquired of him, with polite pugnacity, and
was cordially assured, that ‘he vindicated them.’
‘And Altruistic! another specimen of the modern coinage,’ a classical
Church dignitary, in grammarian disgust, remarked to a lady, as they
passed.
Colney pricked-up his ears. It struck him that he might fish for
suggestions in aid of the Grand Argument before the Elders of the Court
of Japan. Dr. Wardan, whose recognition he could claim, stated to him,
that the lady and he were enumerating words of a doubtfully legitimate
quality now being inflicted upon the language.
‘The slang from below is perhaps preferable?’ said Colney.
‘As little-less.’
‘But a pirate-tongue, cut-off from its roots, must continue to practise
piracy, surely, or else take reinforcements in slang, otherwise it is
inexpressive of new ideas.’
‘Possibly the new ideas are best expressed in slang.’
‘If insular. They will consequently be incommunicable to foreigners.
You would, then, have us be trading with tokens instead of a precious
currency? Yet I cannot perceive the advantage of letting our ideas be
clothed so racy of the obscener soil; considering the pretensions of the
English language to become the universal. If we refuse additions from
above, they force themselves on us from below.’
Dr. Wardan liked the frame of the observations, disliked the substance.
‘One is to understand that the English language has these pretensions?’
he said:--he minced in his manner, after the well-known mortar-board
and tassel type; the mouthing of a petrifaction: clearly useless to the
pleadings of the patriotic Dr. Bouthoin and his curate.
He gave no grip to Colney, who groaned at cheap Donnish sarcasm, and let
him go, after dealing him a hard pellet or two in a cracker-covering.
There was Victor all over the field netting his ephemerae! And he who
feeds on them, to pay a price for their congratulations and flatteries,
he is one of them himself!
Nesta came tripping from the Rev. Septimus Barmby. ‘Dear Mr. Durance,
where is Captain Dartrey?’
Mrs. Blathenoy had just conducted her husband through a crowd, for an
introduction of him to Captain Dartrey. That was perceptible.
Dudley Sowerby followed Nesta closely: he struck across the path of the
Rev. Septimus: again he had the hollow of her ear at his disposal.
‘Mr. Radnor was excellent. He does everything consummately: really, we
are all sensible of it. I am. He must lead us in a symphony. These light
“champagne overtures” of French composers, as Mr. Fenellan calls
them, do not bring out his whole ability:--Zampa, Le Pre aux clercs,
Masaniello, and the like.’
‘Your duet together went well.’
‘Thanks to you--to you. You kept us together.’
‘Papa was the runaway or strain-the-leash, if there was one.’
‘He is impetuous, he is so fervent. But, Miss Radnor, I could not be the
runaway-with you... with you at the piano. Indeed, I... shall we stroll
down? I love the lake.’
‘You will hear the bell for your cold dinner very soon.’
‘I am not hungry. I would so much rather talk--hear you. But you are
hungry? You have been singing twice: three times! Opera singers, they
say, eat hot suppers; they drink stout. And I never heard your voice
more effective. Yours is a voice that... something of the feeling one
has in hearing cathedral voices: carry one up. I remember, in Dresden,
once, a Fraulein Kuhnstreich, a prodigy, very young, considering her
accomplishments. But it was not the same.’
Nesta wondered at Dartrey Fenellan for staying so long with Mr. and Mrs.
Blathenoy.
‘Ah, Mr. Sowerby, if I am to have flattery, I cannot take it as a
milliner’s dumb figure wears the beautiful dress; I must point out my
view of some of my merits.’
‘Oh! do, I beg, Miss... You have a Christian name and I too: and once
... not Mr. Sowerby: yes, it was Dudley!
‘Quite accidentally, and a world of pardons entreated.’
‘And Dudley begged Dudley might be Dudley always!’
He was deepening to the Barmby intonation--apparently Cupid’s; but a
shade more airily Pagan, not so fearfully clerical.
Her father had withdrawn Dartrey Fenellan from Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy.
Dr. Schlesien was bowing with Dartrey.
‘And if Durandarte would only--but you are one with Miss Graves to
depreciate my Durandarte, in favour of the more classical Jachimo; whom
we all admire; but you shall be just,’ said she, and she pouted. She had
seen her father plant Dartrey Fenellan in the midst of a group of City
gentlemen.
Simeon touched among them to pluck at his brother. He had not a chance;
he retired, and swam into the salmon-net of seductive Mrs. Blathenoy’s
broad bright smile.
‘It’s a matter of mines, and they’re hovering in the attitude of
the query, like corkscrews over a bottle, profoundly indifferent to
blood-relationships,’ he said to her.
‘Pray, stay and be consoled by me,’ said the fair young woman. ‘You
are to point me out all the distinguished people. Is it true, that your
brother has left the army?’
‘Dartrey no longer wears the red. Here comes Colonel Corfe, who does.
England has her army still!’
‘His wife persuaded him?’
‘You see he is wearing the black.’
‘For her? How very very sad! Tell me--what a funnily dressed woman
meeting that gentleman!’
‘Hush--a friend of the warrior. Splendid weather, Colonel Corfe.’
‘Superb toilettes!’ The colonel eyed Mrs. Blathenoy dilatingly,
advanced, bowed, and opened the siege.
She decided a calculation upon his age, made a wall of it, smilingly
agreed with his encomium of the Concert, and toned her voice to
Fenellan’s comprehension: ‘Did it occur recently?’
‘Months; in Africa; I haven’t the date.’
‘Such numbers of people one would wish to know! Who are those ladies
holding a Court, where Mr. Radnor is?’
‘Lady Carmine, Lady Swanage--if it is your wish?’ interposed the
colonel.
She dealt him a forgiving smile. ‘And that pleasant-looking old
gentleman?’
Colonel Corfe drew-up. Fenellan said: ‘Are we veterans at forty or so?’
‘Well, it ‘s the romance, perhaps!’ She raised her shoulders.
The colonel’s intelligence ran a dog’s nose for a lady’s interjections.
‘The romance?... at forty, fifty? gone? Miss Julinks, the great heiress
and a beauty; has chosen him over the heads of all the young men of his
time. Cranmer Lotsdale. Most romantic history!’
‘She’s in love with that, I suppose.’
‘Now you direct my attention to him,’ said Fenellan, ‘the writing of the
romantic history has made the texture look a trifle thready. You have a
terrible eye.’
It was thrown to where the person stood who had first within a few
minutes helped her to form critical estimates of men, more consciously
to read them.
‘Your brother stays in England?’
‘The fear is, that he’s off again.’
‘Annoying for you. If I had a brother, I would not let him go.’
‘How would you detain him?’
‘Locks and bolts, clock wrong, hands and arms, kneeling--the fourth act
of the Huguenots!’
‘He went by way of the window, I think. But that was a lover.’
‘Oh! well!’ she flushed. She did not hear the ‘neglected and astonished
colonel speak, and she sought diversion in saying to Fenellan: ‘So many
people of distinction are assembled here to-day! Tell me, who is that
pompous gentleman, who holds his arms up doubled, as he walks?’
‘Like flappers of a penguin: and advances in jerks: he is head of the
great Firm of Quatley Brothers: Sir Abraham: finances or farms one of
the South American Republics: we call him, Pride of Port. He consumes it
and he presents it.’
‘And who is that little man, who stops everybody?’
‘People of distinction indeed! That little man--is your upper lip
underrateing him?... When a lady’s lip is erratically disdainful,
it suggests a misuse of a copious treasury, deserving to be mulcted,
punished--how?--who can say?--that little man, now that little man, with
a lift of his little finger, could convulse the Bacon Market!’
Mrs. Blathenoy shook. Hearing Colonel Corfe exclaim:
‘Bacon Market!’ she let fly a peal. Then she turned to a fresh
satellite, a round and a ruddy, ‘at her service ever,’ Mr. Beaves
Urmsing, and repeated Fenellan’s words. He, in unfeigned wonderment at
such unsuspected powers, cried: ‘Dear me!’ and stared at the little man,
making the pretty lady’s face a twinkling dew.
He had missed the Concert. Was it first-rate? Ecstasy answered in the
female voice.
‘Hem’d fool I am to keep appointments!’ he muttered.
She reproved him: ‘Fie, Mr. Urmsing; it’s the making of them, not the
keeping!’
‘Ah, my dear ma’am, if I’d had Blathenoy’s luck when he made a certain
appointment. And he was not so much older than me? The old ones get the
prizes!’
Mr. Beaves Urmsing prompted Colonel Corfe to laugh in triumph. The
colonel’s eyebrows were up in fixity over sleepy lids. He brightened to
propose the conducting of the pretty woman to the banquet.
‘We shall see them going in,’ said she. ‘Mr. Radnor has a French cook,
who does wonders. But I heard him asking for Mr. Beaves Urmsing. I’m
sure he expected The Marigolds at his Concert.’
‘Anything to oblige the company,’ said the rustic ready chorister,
clearing his throat.
The lady’s feet were bent in the direction of a grassy knoll, where
sunflowers, tulips, dahlias, peonies, of the sex eclipsed at a distance
its roses and lilies. Fenellan saw Dartrey, still a centre of the
merchantmen, strolling thither.
‘And do you know, your brother is good enough to dine with us next week,
Thursday, down here,’ she murmured. ‘I could venture to command?--if you
are not induced.’
‘Whichever word applies to a faithful subject.’
‘I do so wish your brother had not left the army!’
‘You have one son of Mars.’
Her eyes took the colonel up to cast him down: he was not the antidote.
She said to him: ‘Luciani’s voice wears better than her figure.’
The colonel replied: ‘I remember,’ and corrected himself, ‘at Eton, in
jackets: she was not so particularly slim; never knew how to dress. You
beat Italians there! She moved one as a youngster.’
‘Eton boys are so susceptible!’
‘Why, hulloa, don’t I remember her coming out!--and do you mean to tell
me,’ Mr. Beaves Urmsing brutally addressed the colonel, ‘that you were
at Eton when... why, what age do you give the poor woman, then!’ He
bellowed, ‘Eh?’ as it were a bull crowing.
The colonel retreated to one of his defensive corners. ‘I am not aware
that I meant to tell you anything.’
Mr. Beaves Urmsing turned square-breasted on Fenellan: ‘Fellow’s a born
donkey!’
‘And the mother lived?’ said Fenellan.
Mr. Beaves Urmsing puffed with wrath at the fellow.
Five minutes later, in the midst of the group surrounding and
felicitating Victor, he had sight of Fenellan conversing with fair ones,
and it struck a light in him; he went three steps backward, with shouts.
‘Dam funny fellow! eh? who is he? I must have that man at my table.
Worth fifty Colonel Jackasses! And I ‘ve got a son in the Guards: and as
much laugh in him, he ‘s got, as a bladder. But we’ll make a party, eh,
Radnor? with that friend o’ yours. Dam funny fellow! and precious little
of it going on now among the young lot. They’re for seeing ghosts and
gaping their jaws; all for the quavers instead of the capers.’
He sounded and thrummed his roguish fling-off for the capers. A second
glimpse of Fenellan agitated the anecdote, as he called it, seizing
Victor’s arm, to have him out of earshot of the ladies. Delivery,
not without its throes, was accomplished, but imperfectly, owing to
sympathetic convulsions, under which Mr. Beaves Urmsing’s countenance
was crinkled of many colours, as we see the Spring rhubarb-leaf. Unable
to repeat the brevity of Fenellan’s rejoinder, he expatiated on it to
convey it, swearing that it was the kind of thing done in the old days,
when men were witty dogs:--‘pat! and pat back! as in the pantomime.’
‘Repartee!’ said Victor. ‘He has it. You shall know him. You’re the man
for him.’
‘He for me, that he is!--“Hope the mother’s doing well? My card”:--eh?
Grave as an owl! Look, there goes the donkey, lady to right and left,
all ears for him--ha! ha! I must have another turn with your friend.
“Mother lived, did she?” Dam funny fellow, all of the olden time! And
a dinner, bachelor dinner, six of us, at my place, next week, say
Wednesday, half-past six, for a long evening--flowing bowl--eh, shall it
be?’
Nesta came looking to find her Captain Dartrey.
Mr. Beaves Urmsing grew courtly of the olden time. He spied Colonel
Corfe anew, and ‘Donkey!’ rose to split the roar at his mouth, and full
of his anecdote, he pursued some congenial acquaintances, crying to his
host: ‘Wednesday, mind! eh? by George, your friend’s gizzarded me for
the day!’
Plumped with the rich red stream of life, this last of the squires of
old England thumped along among the guests, a very tuning-fork to keep
them at their pitch of enthusiasm. He encountered Mr. Caddis, and it was
an encounter. Mr. Caddis represented his political opinions; but here
was this cur of a Caddis whineing his niminy note from his piminy nob,
when he was asked for his hearty echo of the praises of this jolly good
fellow come to waken the neighbourhood, to be a blessing, a blazing
hearth, a fall of manna:--and thank the Lord for him, you desertdog! ‘He
‘s a merchant prince, and he’s a prince of a man, if you’re for titles.
Eh? you “assent to my encomiums.” You’ll be calling me Mr. Speaker next.
Hang me, Caddis, if those Parliamentary benches of yours aren’t freezing
you from your seat up, and have got to your jaw--my belief!’
Mr. Caddis was left reflecting, that we have, in the dispensations
of Providence, when we have a seat, to submit to castigations from
butcherly men unaccountably commissioned to solidify the seat. He could
have preached a discourse upon Success, to quiet the discontentment of
the unseated. And our world of seats oddly gained, quaintly occupied,
maliciously beset, insensately envied, needs the discourse. But it was
not delivered, else would it have been here written down without mercy,
as a medical prescript, one of the grand specifics. He met Victor,
and, between his dread of him and the counsels of a position subject
to stripes, he was a genial thaw. Victor beamed; for Mr. Caddis had
previously stood eminent as an iceberg of the Lakelands’ party. Mr.
Inchling and Mr. Caddis were introduced. The former in Commerce, the
latter in Politics, their sustaining boast was, the being our stable
Englishmen; and at once, with cousinly minds, they fell to chatting upon
the nothings agreeably and seriously. Colney Durance forsook a set of
ladies for fatter prey, and listened to them. What he said, Victor did
not hear. The effect was always to be seen, with Inchling under Colney.
Fenellan did better service, really good service.
Nataly played the heroine she was at heart. Why think of her as having
to act a character! Twice had Carling that afternoon, indirectly and
directly, stated Mrs. Burman to be near the end we crape a natural, a
defensible, satisfaction to hear of:--not wishing it--poor woman!--but
pardonably, before man and all the angels, wishing, praying for the
beloved one to enter into her earthly peace by the agency of the other’s
exit into her heavenly.
Fenellan and Colney came together, and said a word apiece of their
friend.
‘In his element! The dear old boy has the look of a goldfish, king of
his globe.’
‘The dear old boy has to me the look of a pot on the fire, with a loose
lid.’
I may have the summons from Themison to-morrow, Victor thought. The
success of the day, was a wine that rocked the soberest of thoughts.
For, strange to confess, ever since the fall on London Bridge, his
heart, influenced in some degree by Nataly’s depression perhaps, had
been shadowed by doubts of his infallible instinct for success. Here, at
a stroke, and before entering the house, he had the whole neighbourhood
about him: he could feel that he and Nataly stood in the minds of the
worthy people variously with the brightness if not with the warmth
distinguishable in the bosom of Beaves Urmsing--the idea of whom gave
Lakelands an immediate hearth-glow.
Armandine was thirteen minutes, by his watch, behind the time she had
named. Small blame to her. He excused her to Lady Carmine, Lady Swanage,
Lady Blachington, Mrs. Fanning, Sir Abraham Quatley, Mr. Danny (of Bacon
fame) and the rest of the group surrounding Nataly on the mound leftward
of the white terraces descending to the lake; where she stood beating
her foot fretfully at the word brought by Nesta, that Dartrey Fenellan
had departed. It was her sunshine departed. But she went through her
task of conversing amiably. Colney, for a wonder, consented to be useful
in assisting Fenellan to relate stories of French Cooks; which were,
like the Royal Hanoverian oyster, of an age for offering acceptable
flavour to English hearers. Nesta drew her mother’s attention to
Priscilla Graves and Skepsey; the latter bending head and assenting.
Nataly spoke of the charm of Priscilla’s voice that day, in her duet
with the Rev. Septimus. Mr. Pempton looked; he saw that Priscilla was
proselytizing. She was perfection to him but for one blotting thing.
With grief on his eyelids, he said to Nataly or to himself: ‘Meat!’
‘Dear friend, don’t ride your hobby over us,’ she replied.
‘But it’s with that object they mount it,’ said Victor.
The greater ladies of the assembly were quite ready to accuse the
sections, down to the individuals, of the social English (reserving our
elect) of an itch to be tyrants.
Colney was apologizing for them, with his lash: ‘It’s merely the
sensible effect of a want of polish of the surface when they rub
together.’
And he heard Carling exclaim to Victor: ‘How comes the fellow here!’
Skepsey had rushed across an open space to intercept a leisurely
progressive man, whose hat was of the shape Victor knew; and the man
wore the known black gaiters. In appearance, he had the likeness of a
fallen parson.
Carling and Victor crossed looks that were questions carrying their
answers.
Nataly’s eyes followed Victor’s. ‘Who is the man?’ she said; and she got
no reply beyond a perky sparkle in his gaze.
Others were noticing the man, who was trying to pass by Skepsey, now on
his right side, now on his left.
‘There’ll be no stopping him,’ Carling said, and he slipped to the
rear.’
At this juncture, Armandine’s mellow bell proclaimed her readiness.
Victor rubbed the back of his head. Nataly asked him: ‘Dear, is it that
man?’
He nodded scantly: ‘Expected, expected. I think we have our summons from
Armandine. One moment--poor soul! poor soul! Lady Carmine--Sir Abraham
Quatley. Will you lead? Lady Blachington, I secure you. One moment.’
He directed Nataly to pair a few of the guests; he hurried down the
slope of sward.
Nataly applied to Colney Durance. ‘Do you know the man?--is it that
man?’
Colney rejoined: ‘The man’s name is Jarniman.’
Armandine’s bell swung melodiously. The guests had grouped, thickening
for the stream to procession. Mrs. Blathenoy claimed Fenellan; she
requested him to tell her whether he had known Mrs. Victor Radnor many
years. She mused. ‘You like her?’
‘One likes one’s dearest of friends among women, does one not?’
The lady nodded to his response. ‘And your brother?’
‘Dartrey is devoted to her.’
‘I am sure,’ said she, ‘your brother is a chivalrous gentleman. I
like her too.’ She came to her sentiment through the sentiment of the
chivalrous gentleman. Sinking from it, she remarked that Mr. Radnor
was handsome still. Fenellan commended the subject to her, as one to
discourse of when she met Dartrey. A smell of a trap-hatch, half-open,
afflicted and sharpened him. It was Blathenoy’s breath: husbands of
young wives do these villanies, for the sake of showing their knowledge.
Fenellan forbore to praise Mrs. Victor: he laid his colours on Dartrey.
The lady gave ear till she reddened. He meant no harm, meant nothing but
good; and he was lighting the most destructive of our lower fires.
Visibly, that man Jarniman was disposed of with ease. As in the
street-theatres of crowing Punch, distance enlisted pantomime to do the
effective part of the speeches. Jarniman’s hat was off, he stood bent,
he delivered his message. He was handed over to Skepsey’s care for the
receiving of meat and drink. Victor returned; he had Lady Blachington’s
hand on his arm; he was all hers, and in the heart of his company of
guests at the same time. Eyes that had read him closely for years,
were unable to spell a definite signification on his face, below the
overflowing happiness of the hospitable man among contented guests. He
had in fact something within to enliven him; and that was the more than
suspicion, amounting to an odour of certainty, that Armandine intended
one of her grand surprises for her master, and for the hundred and fifty
or so to be seated at her tables in the unwarmed house of Lakelands.