THE DINNER PARTY.
It still wanted twenty minutes to the hour appointed in the cards of
invitation, but the toilet of Mrs. Effingham was already concluded, and
after a somewhat anxious examination into what her husband would have
termed “the machinery” of her establishment, now to be brought to its
first formidable test, she entered her superb drawing-room, there to
await her guests. The apartment was dimly lighted by a single pair of
candles at the further end; the crystal chandelier suspended from the
ceiling, the ormolu candelabra on the mantel-piece, had not yet been
kindled into sparkling constellations; but the arrangement of every
article of furniture was faultless, and the young mistress glanced
around her with a feeling of pleasure, not, perhaps, unmingled with a
little pride.
“O Mrs. Effingham, I am so glad that you have come!” exclaimed Louisa,
advancing towards her with almost a dancing step, in a flutter of muslin
and lace. “Here is a little note which came for you about five minutes
ago; I dare say that it is an excuse from one of the guests.”
Clemence broke the seal, and glanced over the contents. “You are right;
Dr. Howard has been suddenly summoned to see a patient in the country.”
“Oh! then, dear Mrs. Effingham,” cried Louisa eagerly, laying her
white-gloved hand on the arm of her step-mother, “you know that some one
must fill his place; do—do let me go down to dinner!”
“Arabella is the elder,” replied Clemence.
“Arabella!” repeated Louisa, pettishly; “there is very little difference
between our ages, and I am the taller of the two; besides,” she added
more slowly, as if measuring her words as she spoke—“besides, after what
passed the day before yesterday, I should hardly have expected you to
favour Arabella.”
“I should think it very wrong to favour either,” said Clemence gravely,
“and still more wrong to neglect either; for—” here she was suddenly
interrupted and startled by the sound of a loud knock at the door.
“A guest already!” exclaimed Louisa, hurriedly attempting to pull on her
left-hand glove.
“A guest already!” echoed Clemence, glancing uneasily at the unlighted
chandelier, and laying her hand on the bell-rope.
In two minutes a loud voice was heard below in the hall. “Not see
me!—going to have company! Trash and nonsense, man! she’ll see me at any
hour, and in any company!” and a heavy, tramping step immediately
sounded on the stair, while Clemence exclaimed, with mingled pleasure,
surprise, and vexation, “Oh! can it be my dear Uncle Thistlewood?” and
hastening down the long room, she met him just as he flung the door wide
open.
In a moment she was in his arms! The old sea-captain kissed his niece
heartily, again and again, each time making the room resound. Louisa,
extremely diverted, perhaps a little maliciously so, at what she
considered the inopportune appearance of one of Mrs. Effingham’s vulgar
relations, advanced towards the door to have a nearer view of the
meeting, and so came in for her share of it.
“Ah! one of your daughters, Clemence?” cried her old uncle, and he
immediately bestowed on the astonished Louisa a fatherly salute. “Fine,
well-grown girl,” he continued in his loud, cheerful voice; “must make
you feel quite old, my darling, to have children as tall as yourself!
But let us have a little of the fire, for it’s blowing great guns
to-night, and I’ve had my feet half frozen off on the top of the
omnibus!” And marching up to the grate at the end of the room, the
captain spread out his coarse red hands to the warmth, after having
stirred the fire to a roaring blaze, and stamped on the rug to warm his
feet, leaving the impression of his boots on the velvet. “And now, let
me have a better look of your sweet face, blessings on it!” cried the
sea-man, turning towards Clemence, and taking hold of both her hands,
while he fixed on her a gaze of fond admiration. Very lovely, indeed,
looked Mrs. Effingham, with the flush of excitement on her cheek, and
the sparkle of affection in her eye. Captain Thistlewood was evidently
pleased with his survey, though he said,—
“You seem to me a little older and thinner than when we parted,
May-blossom, and you looked just as well in your good russet gown as in
that dainty blue velvet with the sparklers; but you’ll do very well—do
very well! And now I dare say that you want to know what brought the old
man gadding here.” He threw himself into an arm-chair to converse more
at ease, perfectly regardless of the presence of the servants, now
engaged in illuminating the room.
“You see, ever since you left us, Stoneby’s grown as dull as
ditch-water—all the life seems gone out of it. Parson’s always busy as
usual—too busy to have much time to give to a little social gossip; and
his wife’s sick, and keeps her room in the cold weather. There’s nothing
stirring in the village, or for ten miles round—the very windmill seems
to have gone to sleep; and the robins, to my mind, don’t chirp and sing
as they used to do. Susan has taken it into her silly head to marry,
like her mistress, and the new girl don’t suit me—breaks my crockery,
and over-roasts my mutton. The long and short of it is, that home is not
home without my May-blossom. I bore it as long as I could—lonely
evenings and all. At last says I to myself, ‘I’ll put up my bundle and
be off to London. I know there’s some one there will be glad to see the
old man; let him arrive when he may, he won’t be unwelcome!’”
Clemence felt indignant with herself for not being able more fully and
cordially to respond to her uncle’s assurance. “The world must indeed
have already exercised its corrupting influence over me,” was her silent
reflection, “when I can experience anything but joy at the sound of that
dear familiar voice! But what will my husband say?” As the thought
crossed her mind, the door opened, and Mr. Effingham entered the room.
A greater contrast could scarcely be imagined than that between the
tall, dignified, handsome gentleman, with his polished manner and
graceful address, and the short, square-built, jovial old captain, with
a face much of the shape and colouring, without the smoothness, of a
rosy-cheeked apple. Mr. Effingham was aware of the arrival of
Thistlewood—indeed, no one in the house, not afflicted with deafness,
was likely to be altogether ignorant of it; he was therefore quite
prepared for the meeting. To the unspeakable relief of Clemence, Mr.
Effingham cordially held out his hand to the sailor, who shook it as he
might have worked a pump handle, and then said in a kindly voice, “I am
glad to see you, captain; you must take up your quarters with us.”
Thistlewood nodded in acquiescence, as one who felt an invitation to be
quite an unnecessary form; but Clemence’s expressive eyes were turned on
her husband with a look of gratitude, which told how much it was
appreciated by her.
“We expect company this evening,” continued Mr. Effingham.
“Ay, so the white-headed chap with the gold cable told me.”
“It does not want a quarter of an hour to dinner-time,” said the
gentleman, taking out his watch.
“Dinner-time! I should rather call it supper-time. Ha! ha! ha! I dined
before one, but my long journey has made me rather peckish. A beefsteak
wouldn’t come anyways amiss.”
“You may like to make some little alteration in your dress,” observed
Mr. Effingham, glancing at the pea-jacket and muddy boots of his guest;
“my servant will show you your apartment.”
The question of toilet was evidently one of supreme indifference to the
honest captain; a dress good enough to walk in seemed to him to be good
enough to eat in; but he made no difficulty about compliance. He was
just about to quit the room, when it was entered by Arabella.
The young lady stared at the rough-looking stranger with an air of
haughty inquiry which would have abashed a sensitive man; but Captain
Thistlewood was as little troubled with shyness as with hypochondria—his
nerves were weather-proof, as well as his constitution—his perceptions
were blunt to ridicule or insult, if only directed against himself.
“Ha! another fine daughter!” he exclaimed; “we must not meet as
strangers, my dear;” and he would have greeted Arabella in the same
paternal style as her sister, but for the backward step and the
indignant look, which might have beseemed an empress.
“Who is this man?” she exclaimed.
“Mrs. Effingham’s uncle and my friend,” was her father’s reply, uttered
in a tone which effectually repressed for the time any further
expression of Arabella’s scorn.
The two girls retired to the back drawing-room to converse together,
Louisa full of mirth, Arabella of indignation; while Clemence, glad to
be a few minutes alone with her husband, laid her hand fondly on his
arm, and murmured, “How good you have been to me, Vincent!”
“I could wish that your uncle had not arrived till to-morrow,” said Mr.
Effingham; “but I could not but treat with courtesy and kindness him
from whose hand I received my wife. Will there be room at the table?”
“Yes; Dr. Howard has declined.”
“To which lady would you introduce Captain Thistlewood?”
“Let me consider,” said Clemence, thoughtfully; “who is most
good-natured and quiet? Uncle sometimes says such strange things.”
“What say you to Miss Mildmay?”
“She would show no rudeness at least, but—” here the conversation was
interrupted by the entrance of servants.
When the little captain re-appeared in the drawing-room, radiant in blue
coat, buff waistcoat and brass buttons, most of the guests had arrived.
That semicircle of ladies had been formed which presents to the eye of a
hostess as formidable a front as the unbroken square of infantry,
bristling with steel, does to an opposing general. Mrs. Effingham was,
as yet, entirely unskilled in the art of mixing together the various
materials of society. With a shy, anxious air, she glided from one guest
to another to accomplish the necessary form of introduction,—to her a
serious undertaking, especially as some of her visitors were strangers
to her. Clemence tried to forget that the cold, criticizing eye of Lady
Selina was watching her every movement, and sought to remember only,
that even in the arrangement of a party she might please her husband,
and do credit to him. The entrance of Captain Thistlewood had
considerable effect in breaking the ice of formality which lies like a
crust upon London society, though in a manner that astonished the
guests, and embarrassed the master and mistress of the house. The jovial
sailor was as much at his ease in the polished circle as amidst
shipmates round a cuddy table; and his loud voice and merry laugh, as he
stood with his thumbs in his pockets, chatting with Louisa, created an
unusual sensation.
“Who may that lively old gentleman be?” inquired Lord Vaughan of Lady
Selina.
“One of Mrs. Effingham’s near relations,” was her distinctly audible
reply.
Clemence hastened to introduce the captain to Miss Mildmay, in hopes
that that lady’s opposite qualities might serve as a kind of
compensation balance, to moderate her uncle’s boisterous mirth. Miss
Mildmay was a sallow lady on the shady side of forty, attired in a pale
sea-green silk, with long, lank sprays of artificial leaves drooping low
on each side of her head. She was a mild, inanimate sample of gentility,
whose very eyes seemed to have had the colour washed out of them, and
whose prim, pursed-up lips rarely unclosed to speak, and still more
rarely to smile. Miss Mildmay was one of the dead-weights of society,
and was, therefore, judiciously coupled with the little, noisy, bustling
captain, who, like some steam locomotive, would sturdily puff straight
on his way, regardless of obstacles, unconscious of observation, ready
to go over or through an obstruction, but never to turn aside for it,
let it be what it might.
As Captain Thistlewood wanted nothing but a listener, he dashed bravely
along the railway of conversation, choosing, of course, his own
lines—now on country subjects, now on sea—turnips and tornadoes, calves
and Cape wines,—till, on dinner being announced, he gallantly handed
down his partner, and in his simplicity took his seat near the top of
the table, in order to be, as he said, “within hail of my niece.”
Miss Mildmay languidly drew off her gloves; there was a pause of a few
minutes in the conversation, for Captain Thistlewood, bending forward,
was looking with curious eyes down the length of the table, decked out
in the magnificence of modern taste. He had never seen anything like it
before.
“I say!” he burst out at length, “do you call this a dinner? Nothing on
the table but fruit, and flowers, and sweat-meats, that wouldn’t furnish
a meal for a sparrow!”
The sailor’s exclamation overcame the gravity of several of those who
sat near him; even Miss Mildmay put up her feather-tipped fan to her
lips,—it is possible that it might be to conceal a smile.
“But what’s that on the dish before us?” continued the captain,
surveying it with curious surprise. “Peaches in December! I never heard
of such a thing!” And determined to investigate the phenomenon more
closely, he suddenly plunged his fork into the nearest peach, and
carried it off to his plate. In a moment his knife had divided the
sugared cake into halves. “It’s all a sham!” he cried, pushing it from
him; “no more a peach than I am!”—and then, for the first time in the
experience of man, a little laugh was actually heard from Miss Mildmay,
in which Clemence herself, who had seen the proceeding, could not
refrain from joining. The captain laughed loudest of all, quite
unconscious that anything excited mirth except the “sham” of the
peaches.
“I did not know, Clemence,” he cried, “that you would have been up to
such dodges!” and the exclamation set his end of the table in a roar.
Such a merry party had perhaps never before assembled round the mahogany
in Belgrave Square.
Notwithstanding the prognostications of Lady Selina, nothing glaringly
wrong appeared in the arrangements of the banquet. Perhaps the sharp eye
of malice detected here and there some token of inexperience in the
mistress of the feast, but few were disposed to criticize harshly. Lord
Vaughan did not regret the absence of his French cook; and Colonel
Parsons and Sir William Page sat as contentedly on the same side of the
table, as if they had never occupied opposite benches in “The House.”
All would have proceeded in the most approved routine of formality and
regularity, but for the presence of the merry old captain, who cut his
jokes, and told his stories, and pledged his niece in a loud, jovial
tone, to the great amusement of the guests, but the embarrassment of
Mrs. Effingham.
Arabella and Louisa awaited the ladies in the drawing-room, where they
were joined by Thistlewood and the other gentlemen. The stiff semicircle
was again dashingly broken by the brave old captain, who chatted merrily
with the laughing Louisa, proposed a country dance or a reel, and
engaged her as his partner. But nothing so informally lively as an
impromptu dance after dinner was to be thought of in Belgrave Square.
The grand piano, indeed, was opened; but it was that a succession of
ladies, after a due amount of declining and pressing, might give the
company the benefit of their music.
Captain Thistlewood was extremely fond of music, and therefore at once
planted himself by the piano, beating time like a conductor. The concert
opened with a bravura song from Miss Praed, to which he listened with
much of the feeling which Johnson expressed when asked if a lady’s
performance were not wonderful: “Wonderful!—would it were _impossible_!”
Then followed a languid “_morceau_” from Miss Mildmay, which the
composer must have designed for a soporific; and then Arabella seated
herself before the instrument. Her forte was rapid execution; hers was a
hurry-skurry style of playing, hand over hand, the right suddenly
plunging into the bass, then the left unexpectedly flourishing away in
the treble—each seeming bent on invading the province of the other, and
causing as much noise there as possible. As the performer finished with
a crashing chord, the captain, who had been watching her fingers with
great diversion, clapped Arabella on the shoulder. “Well done, my lass!”
he exclaimed; “that’s what I should call a thunder-and-lightning piece,
stunning in both senses of the word! But still, for my part, I like a
little quiet tune;—did you ever hear your mother sing ‘Nelly Bly’?”
Arabella looked daggers as she withdrew from the piano. To be so
treated, as if she were a child—she, an earl’s grand-daughter—before so
many guests, and by _him_, the vulgar little brother-in-law of an
apothecary; it was more than her proud spirit could endure! Mrs.
Effingham should pay dearly for the insult!
Nothing further occurred to vary the monotony of the fashionable London
entertainment. The evening wore on, much after the usual style of such
evenings, till, one after another, the guests took leave of their young
bright hostess; and there was cloaking in the ante-room, and bustle in
the hall, and rolling of carriages from the door—till at length the
lights in the drawing-room were darkened, silence settled down even on
the servants’ hall, the grand entertainment was concluded, the laborious
trifle ended, and that which had cost so much thought and anxious care,
to say nothing of trouble and expense, passed quietly into the mass of
nothings, once important, which Memory, when she takes inventory of her
possessions, throws aside for ever as mere tarnished tinsel not worth
the preserving.
“I am so glad that it is over!” thought Clemence.
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