“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 sponge-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.