The Marquess had preceded Vivian in his arrival about three or four
days, and of course, to use the common phrase, the establishment “was
quite settled.” It was, indeed, to avoid the possibility of witnessing
the domestic arrangements of a nobleman in any other point of view save
that of perfection, that Vivian had declined accompanying his noble
friend to the Château. Mr. Grey, junior, was an epicurean, and all
epicureans will quite agree with me, that his conduct on this head was
extremely wise. I am not very nice myself about these matters; but there
are, we all know, a thousand little things that go wrong on the arrivals
of even the best regulated families; and to mention no others, for any
rational being voluntarily to encounter the awful gaping of an English
family, who have travelled one hundred miles in ten successive hours,
appears to me to be little short of madness.
“Grey, my boy, quite happy to see ye! later than I expected; first bell
rings in five minutes. Sadler will show you your room. Your father, I
hope, quite well?”
Such was the salutation of the Marquess; and Vivian accordingly retired
to arrange his toilet.
The first bell rang, and the second bell rang, and Vivian was seated at
the dinner-table. He bowed to the Marchioness, and asked after her
poodle, and gazed with some little curiosity at the vacant chair
opposite him.
“Mrs. Felix Lorraine, Mr. Vivian Grey,” said the Marquess, as a lady
entered the room.
Now, although we are of those historians who are of opinion that the
nature of the personages they celebrate should be developed rather by a
recital of their conduct than by a set character on their introduction,
it is, nevertheless, incumbent upon us to devote a few lines to the lady
who has just entered, which the reader will be so good as to get
through, while she is accepting an offer of some white soup; by this
means he will lose none of the conversation.
The Honourable Felix Lorraine we have before described as a roué. After
having passed through a career with tolerable credit, which would have
blasted the character of any vulgar personage, Felix Lorraine ended by
pigeoning a young nobleman, whom, for that purpose, he had made his
intimate friend. The affair got wind; after due examination, was
proclaimed “too bad,” and the guilty personage was visited with the
heaviest vengeance of modern society; he was expelled his club. By this
unfortunate exposure, Mr. Felix Lorraine was obliged to give in a match,
which was on the tapis, with the celebrated Miss Mexico, on whose
million he had determined to set up a character and a chariot, and at
the same time pension his mistress, and subscribe to the Society for the
Suppression of Vice. Felix left England for the Continent, and in due
time was made drum-major at Barbadoes, or fiscal at Ceylon, or something
of that kind. While he loitered in Europe, he made a conquest of the
heart of the daughter of some German baron, and after six weeks passed
in the most affectionate manner, the happy couple performing their
respective duties with perfect propriety, Felix left Germany for his
colonial appointment, and also left his lady behind him.
Mr. Lorraine had duly and dutifully informed his family of his marriage;
and they, as amiably and affectionately, had never answered his letters,
which he never expected they would. Profiting by their example, he never
answered his wife’s, who, in due time, to the horror of the Marquess,
landed in England, and claimed the protection of her “beloved husband’s
family.” The Marquess vowed he would never see her; the lady, however,
one morning gained admittance, and from that moment she had never
quitted her brother-in-law’s roof, and not only had never quitted it,
but now made the greatest favour of her staying.
The extraordinary influence which Mrs. Felix Lorraine possessed was
certainly not owing to her beauty, for the lady opposite Vivian Grey
had apparently no claims to admiration, on the score of her personal
qualifications. Her complexion was bad, and her features were
indifferent, and these characteristics were not rendered less
uninterestingly conspicuous by, what makes an otherwise ugly woman quite
the reverse, namely, a pair of expressive eyes; for certainly this
epithet could not be applied to those of Mrs. Felix Lorraine, which
gazed in all the vacancy of German listlessness.
The lady did bow to Mr. Grey, and that was all; and then she negligently
spooned her soup, and then, after much parade, sent it away untouched.
Vivian was not under the necessity of paying any immediate courtesy to
his opposite neighbour, whose silence, he perceived, was for the nonce,
and consequently for him. But the day was hot, and Vivian had been
fatigued by his ride, and the Marquess’ champagne was excellent; and so,
at last, the floodgates of his speech burst, and talk he did. He
complimented her Ladyship’s poodle, quoted German to Mrs. Felix
Lorraine, and taught the Marquess to eat cabinet pudding with Curaçoâ
sauce (a custom which, by-the-bye, I recommend to all); and then his
stories, his scandal, and his sentiment; stories for the Marquess,
scandal for the Marchioness, and sentiment for the Marquess’ sister!
That lady, who began to find out her man, had no mind to be longer
silent, and although a perfect mistress of the English language, began
to articulate a horrible patois, that she might not be mistaken for an
Englishwoman, an occurrence which she particularly dreaded. But now came
her punishment, for Vivian saw the effect which he had produced on Mrs.
Felix Lorraine, and that Mrs. Felix Lorraine now wished to produce a
corresponding effect upon him, and this he was determined she should not
do; so new stories followed, and new compliments ensued, and finally he
anticipated her sentences, and sometimes her thoughts. The lady sat
silent and admiring! At last the important meal was finished, and the
time came when good dull English dames retire; but of this habit Mrs.
Felix Lorraine did not approve, and although she had not yet prevailed
upon Lady Carabas to adopt her ideas on field-days, still, when alone,
the good-natured Marchioness had given in, and to save herself from
hearing the din of male voices at a time at which during her whole life
she had been unaccustomed to them, the Marchioness of Carabas dozed. Her
worthy spouse, who was prevented, by the presence of Mrs. Felix
Lorraine, from talking politics with Vivian, passed the bottle pretty
briskly, and then, conjecturing that “from the sunset we should have a
fine day to-morrow,” fell back in his easy-chair, and snored.
Mrs. Felix Lorraine looked at her noble relatives, and shrugged up her
shoulders with an air which baffleth all description. “Mr. Grey, I
congratulate you on this hospitable reception; you see we treat you
quite en famille. Come! ‘tis a fine evening; you have seen as yet but
little of Château Desir: we may as well enjoy the fine air on
the terrace.”