THE HONOURABLE MRS. VAL AND MISS GOLIGHTLY
The first eighteen months of Gertrude's married life were not unhappy,
though, like all persons entering on the realities of the world,
she found much to disappoint her. At first her husband's society was
sufficient for her; and to give him his due, he was not at first an
inattentive husband. Then came the baby, bringing with him, as first
babies always should do, a sort of second honeymoon of love, and a
renewal of those services which women so delight to receive from their
bosoms' lord.
She had of course made acquaintances since she had settled herself in
London, and had, in her modest way, done her little part in adding to
the gaiety of the great metropolis. In this respect indeed Alaric's
commencement of life had somewhat frightened Mrs. Woodward, and the more
prudent of his friends. Grand as his official promotion had been, his
official income at the time of his marriage did not exceed £600 a year,
and though this was to be augmented occasionally till it reached £800,
yet even with this advantage it could hardly suffice for a man and his
wife and a coming family to live in an expensive part of London, and
enable him to 'see his friends' occasionally, as the act of feeding
one's acquaintance is now generally called.
Gertrude, like most English girls of her age, was at first so ignorant
about money that she hardly knew whether £600 was or was not a
sufficient income to justify their present mode of living; but she soon
found reason to suspect that her husband at any rate endeavoured to
increase it by other means. We say to suspect, because he never spoke to
her on the subject; he never told her of Mary Janes and New Friendships;
or hinted that he had extensive money dealings in connexion with Undy
Scott.
But it can be taken for granted that no husband can carry on such
dealings long without some sort of cognizance on his wife's part as to
what he is doing; a woman who is not trusted by her lord may choose
to remain in apparent darkness, may abstain from questions, and may
consider it either her duty or her interest to assume an ignorance as
to her husband's affairs; but the partner of one's bed and board, the
minister who soothes one's headaches, and makes one's tea, and looks
after one's linen, can't but have the means of guessing the thoughts
which occupy her companion's mind and occasionally darken his brow.
Much of Gertrude's society had consisted of that into which Alaric was
thrown by his friendship with Undy Scott. There was a brother of Undy's
living in town, one Valentine Scott--a captain in a cavalry regiment,
and whose wife was by no means of that delightfully retiring disposition
evinced by Undy's better half. The Hon. Mrs. Valentine, or Mrs. Val
Scott as she was commonly called, was a very pushing woman, and pushed
herself into a prominent place among Gertrude's friends. She had been
the widow of Jonathan Golightly, Esq., umquhile sheriff of the city of
London, and stockbroker, and when she gave herself and her jointure
up to Captain Val, she also brought with her, to enliven the house,
a daughter Clementina, the only remaining pledge of her love for the
stockbroker.
When Val Scott entered the world, his father's precepts as to the
purposes of matrimony were deeply graven on his heart. He was the best
looking of the family, and, except Undy, the youngest. He had not Undy's
sharpness, his talent for public matters, or his aptitude for the higher
branches of the Civil Service; but he had wit to wear his sash and
epaulets with an easy grace, and to captivate the heart, person, and
some portion of the purse, of the Widow Golightly. The lady was ten
years older than the gentleman; but then she had a thousand a year, and,
to make matters more pleasant, the beauteous Clementina had a fortune of
her own.
Under these circumstances the marriage had been contracted without any
deceit, or attempt at deceit, by either party. Val wanted an income,
and the sheriff's widow wanted the utmost amount of social consideration
which her not very extensive means would purchase for her. On the whole,
the two parties to the transaction were contented with their bargain.
Mrs. Val, it is true, kept her income very much in her own hands; but
still she consented to pay Val's tailors' bills, and it is something for
a man to have bed and board found him for nothing. It is true, again,
the lady did not find that the noble blood of her husband gave her an
immediate right of entry into the best houses in London; but it did
bring her into some sort of contact with some few people of rank and
fame; and being a sensible woman, she had not been unreasonable in her
expectations.
When she had got what she could from her husband in this particular,
she did not trouble him much further. He delighted in the Rag, and there
spent the most of his time; happily, she delighted in what she called
the charms of society, and as society expanded itself before her, she
was also, we must suppose, happy. She soon perceived that more in her
immediate line was to be obtained from Undy than from her own member of
the Gaberlunzie family, and hence had sprung up her intimacy with Mrs.
Tudor.
It cannot be said that Gertrude was very fond of the Honourable Mrs.
Val, nor even of her daughter, Clementina Golightly, who was more of
her own age. These people had become her friends from the force of
circumstances, and not from predilection. To tell the truth, Mrs. Val,
who had in her day encountered, with much patience, a good deal of
snubbing, and who had had to be thankful when she was patronized, now
felt that her day for being a great lady had come, and that it behoved
her to patronize others. She tried her hand upon Gertrude, and found the
practice so congenial to her spirits, so pleasantly stimulating, so well
adapted to afford a gratifying compensation for her former humility,
that she continued to give up a good deal of her time to No. 5, Albany
Row, Westbourne Terrace, at which house the Tudors resided.
The young bride was not exactly the woman to submit quietly to patronage
from any Mrs. Val, however honourable she might be; but for a while
Gertrude hardly knew what it meant; and at her first outset the natural
modesty of youth, and her inexperience in her new position, made her
unwilling to take offence and unequal to rebellion. By degrees, however,
this feeling of humility wore off; she began to be aware of the assumed
superiority of Mrs. Val's friendship, and by the time that their mutual
affection was of a year's standing, Gertrude had determined, in a quiet
way, without saying anything to anybody, to put herself on a footing of
more perfect equality with the Honourable Mrs. Val.
Clementina Golightly was, in the common parlance of a large portion of
mankind, a 'doosed fine gal.' She stood five feet six, and stood very
well, on very good legs, but with rather large feet. She was as straight
as a grenadier, and had it been her fate to carry a milk-pail, she
would have carried it to perfection. Instead of this, however, she was
permitted to expend an equal amount of energy in every variation of
waltz and polka that the ingenuity of the dancing professors of the age
has been able to produce. Waltzes and polkas suited her admirably; for
she was gifted with excellent lungs and perfect powers of breathing, and
she had not much delight in prolonged conversation. Her fault, if she
had one, was a predilection for flirting; but she did her flirtations in
a silent sort of way, much as we may suppose the fishes do theirs, whose
amours we may presume to consist in swimming through their cool element
in close contiguity with each other. 'A feast of reason and a flow of
soul' were not the charms by which Clementina Golightly essayed to keep
her admirers spell-bound at her feet. To whirl rapidly round a room at
the rate of ten miles an hour, with her right hand outstretched in the
grasp of her partner's, and to know that she was tightly buoyed up, like
a horse by a bearing-rein, by his other hand behind her back, was for
her sufficient. To do this, as she did do it, without ever crying for
mercy, with no slackness of breath, and apparently without distress,
must have taken as much training as a horse gets for a race. But the
training had in nowise injured her; and now, having gone through her
gallops and run all her heats for three successive seasons, she was
still sound of wind and limb, and fit to run at any moment when called
upon.
We have said nothing about the face of the beauteous Clementina, and
indeed nothing can be said about it. There was no feature in it with
which a man could have any right to find fault; that she was a 'doosed
fine girl' was a fact generally admitted; but nevertheless you might
look at her for four hours consecutively on a Monday evening, and yet
on Tuesday you would not know her. She had hair which was brownish and
sufficiently silky--and which she wore, as all other such girls do,
propped out on each side of her face by thick round velvet pads,
which, when the waltzing pace became exhilarating, occasionally showed
themselves, looking greasy. She had a pair of eyes set straight in her
head, faultless in form, and perfectly inexpressive. She had a nose
equally straight, but perhaps a little too coarse in dimensions. She had
a mouth not over large, with two thin lips and small whitish teeth; and
she had a chin equal in contour to the rest of her face, but on which
Venus had not deigned to set a dimple. Nature might have defied a French
passport officer to give a description of her, by which even her own
mother or a detective policeman might have recognized her.
When to the above list of attractions it is added that Clementina
Golightly had £20,000 of her own, and a reversionary interest in
her mother's jointure, it may be imagined that she did not want for
good-winded cavaliers to bear her up behind, and whirl around with her
with outstretched hands.
'I am not going to stay a moment, my dear,' said Mrs. Val, seating
herself on Gertrude's sofa, having rushed up almost unannounced into the
drawing-room, followed by Clementina; 'indeed, Lady Howlaway is
waiting for me this moment; but I must settle with you about the June
flower-show.'
'Oh! thank you, Mrs. Scott, don't trouble yourself about me,' said
Gertrude; 'I don't think I shall go.'
'Oh! nonsense, my dear; of course you'll go; it's the show of the year,
and the Grand duke is to be there--baby is all right now, you know; I
must not hear of your not going.'
'All the same--I fear I must decline,' said Gertrude; 'I think I shall
be at Hampton.'
'Oh! nonsense, my dear; of course you must show yourself. People will
say all manner of things else. Clementina has promised to meet Victoire
Jaquêtanápes there and a party of French people, people of the very
highest ton. You'll be delighted, my dear.'
'M. Jaquêtanápes is the most delicious polkist you ever met,' said
Clementina. 'He has got a new back step that will quite amaze you.' As
Gertrude in her present condition was not much given to polkas, this
temptation did not have great effect.
'Oh, you must come, of course, my dear--and pray let me recommend you to
go to Madame Bosconi for your bonnet; she has such darling little ducks,
and as cheap as dirt. But I want you to arrange about the carriage;
you can do that with Mr. Tudor, and I can settle with you afterwards.
Captain Scott won't go, of course; but I have no doubt Undecimus and Mr.
Tudor will come later and bring us home; we can manage very well with
the one carriage.'
In spite of her thousand a year the Honourable Mrs. Val was not ashamed
to look after the pounds, shillings, and pence. And so, having made her
arrangements, Mrs. Val took herself off, hurrying to appease the anger
of Lady Howlaway, and followed by Clementina, who since her little
outburst as to the new back step of M. Jaquêtanápes had not taken much
part in the conversation.
Flower-shows are a great resource for the Mrs. Scotts of London life.
They are open to ladies who cannot quite penetrate the inner sancta of
fashionable life, and yet they are frequented by those to whom those
sancta are everyday household walks. There at least the Mrs. Scotts of
the outer world can show themselves in close contiguity, and on equal
terms, with the Mrs. Scotts of the inner world. And then, who is to
know the difference? If also one is an Honourable Mrs. Scott, and can
contrive to appear as such in the next day's _Morning Post_, may not one
fairly boast that the ends of society have been attained? Where is the
citadel? How is one to know when one has taken it?
Gertrude could not be quite so defiant with her friends as she would
have wished to have been, as they were borne with and encouraged by
her husband. Of Undy's wife Alaric saw nothing and heard little, but
it suited Undy to make use of his sister-in-law's house, and it suited
Alaric to be intimate with Undy's sister-in-law. Moreover, had not
Clementina Golightly £20,000, and was she not a 'doosed fine girl?' This
was nothing to Alaric now, and might not be considered to be much to
Undy. But that far-seeing, acute financier knew that there were other
means of handling a lady's money than that of marrying her. He could not
at present acquire a second fortune in that way; but he might perhaps
acquire the management of this £20,000 if he could provide the lady
with a husband of the proper temperament. Undy Scott did not want
to appropriate Miss Golightly's fortune, he only wanted to have the
management of it.
Looking round among his acquaintance for a fitting _parti_ for the sweet
Clementina, his mind, after much consideration, settled upon Charley
Tudor. There were many young men much nearer and dearer to Undy than
Charley, who might be equally desirous of so great a prize; but he could
think of none over whom he might probably exercise so direct a control.
Charley was a handsome gay fellow, and waltzed _au ravir_; he might,
therefore, without difficulty, make his way with the fair Clementina.
He was distressingly poor, and would therefore certainly jump at an
heiress--he was delightfully thoughtless and easy of leading, and
therefore the money, when in his hands, might probably be manageable. He
was also Alaric's cousin, and therefore acceptable.
Undy did not exactly open his mind to Alaric Tudor in this matter.
Alaric's education was going on rapidly; but his mind had not yet
received with sufficient tenacity those principles of philosophy which
would enable him to look at this scheme in its proper light. He had
already learnt the great utility, one may almost say the necessity, of
having a command of money; he was beginning also to perceive that money
was a thing not to be judged of by the ordinary rules which govern
a man's conduct. In other matters it behoves a gentleman to be open,
above-board, liberal, and true; good-natured, generous, confiding,
self-denying, doing unto others as he would wish that others should do
unto him; but in the acquirement and use of money--that is, its use
with the object of acquiring more, its use in the usurer's sense--his
practice should be exactly the reverse; he should be close, secret,
exacting, given to concealment, not over troubled by scruples;
suspicious, without sympathies, self-devoted, and always doing unto
others exactly that which he is on his guard to prevent others from
doing unto him--viz., making money by them. So much Alaric had learnt,
and had been no inapt scholar. But he had not yet appreciated the full
value of the latitude allowed by the genius of the present age to men
who deal successfully in money. He had, as we have seen, acknowledged
to himself that a sportsman may return from the field with his legs and
feet a little muddy; but he did not yet know how deep a man may wallow
in the mire, how thoroughly he may besmear himself from head to foot
in the blackest, foulest mud, and yet be received an honoured guest by
ladies gay and noble lords, if only his bag be sufficiently full.
Rem..., quocunque modo rem!
The remainder of the passage was doubtless applicable to former times,
but now is hardly worth repeating.
As Alaric's stomach was not yet quite suited for strong food, Undy
fitted this matter to his friend's still juvenile capacities. There
was an heiress, a 'doosed fine girl' as Undy insisted, laying peculiar
strength on the word of emphasis, with £20,000, and there was Charley
Tudor, a devilish decent fellow, without a rap. Why not bring them
together? This would only be a mark of true friendship on the part of
Undy; and on Alaric's part, it would be no more than one cousin would be
bound to do for another. Looking at it in this light, Alaric saw nothing
in the matter which could interfere with his quiet conscience.
'I'll do what I can,' said Undy. 'Mrs. Val is inclined to have a way of
her own in most things; but if anybody can lead her, I can. Charley
must take care that Val himself doesn't take his part, that's all. If he
interferes, it would be all up with us.'
And thus Alaric, intent mainly on the interest of his cousin, and
actuated perhaps a little by the feeling that a rich cousin would be
more serviceable than a poor one, set himself to work, in connexion with
Undy Scott, to make prey of Clementina Golightly's £20,000.
But if Undy had no difficulty in securing the co-operation of Alaric
in this matter, Alaric by no means found it equally easy to secure the
co-operation of Charley. Charley Tudor had not yet learnt to look
upon himself as a marketable animal, worth a certain sum of money, in
consequence of such property in good appearance, address, &c., as God
had been good enough to endow him withal.
He daily felt the depth and disagreeable results of his own poverty, and
not unfrequently, when specially short of the Queen's medium, sighed for
some of those thousands and tens of thousands with which men's mouths
are so glibly full. He had often tried to calculate what would be his
feelings if some eccentric, good-natured old stranger should leave him,
say, five thousand a year; he had often walked about the street, with
his hands in his empty pockets, building delicious castles in the air,
and doing the most munificent actions imaginable with his newly-acquired
wealth, as all men in such circumstances do; relieving distress,
rewarding virtue, and making handsome presents to all his friends,
and especially to Mrs. Woodward. So far Charley was not guiltless of
coveting wealth; but he had never for a moment thought of realizing his
dreams by means of his personal attractions. It had never occurred to
him that any girl having money could think it worth her while to marry
him. He, navvy as he was, with his infernal friends and pot-house love,
with his debts and idleness and low associations, with his saloons of
Seville, his Elysium in Fleet Street, and his Paradise near the Surrey
Gardens, had hitherto thought little enough of his own attractions. No
kind father had taught him that he was worth £10,000 in any market in
the world. When he had dreamt of money, he had never dreamt of it as
accruing to him in return for any value or worth which he had inherent
in himself. Even in his lighter moments he had no such conceit; and at
those periods, few and far between, in which he did think seriously
of the world at large, this special method of escaping from his
difficulties--never once presented itself to his mind.
When, therefore, Alaric first spoke to him of marrying £20,000 and
Clementina Golightly, his surprise was unbounded.
'£20,000!' said Alaric, 'and a doosed fine girl, you know;' and he
also laid great stress on the latter part of the offer, knowing how
inflammable was Charley's heart, and at the same time how little
mercenary was his mind.
But Charley was not only surprised at the proposed arrangement, but
apparently also unwilling to enter into it. He argued that in the first
place no girl in her senses would accept him. To this Alaric replied
that as Clementina had not much sense to speak of, that objection might
fall to the ground. Then Charley expressed an idea that Miss Golightly's
friends might probably object when they learnt what were the exact
pecuniary resources of the expectant husband; to which Alaric argued
that the circumstances of the case were very lucky, inasmuch as some of
Clementina's natural friends were already prepossessed in favour of such
an arrangement.
Driven thus from two of his strongholds, Charley, in the most modest
of voices, in a voice one may say quite shamefaced and conscious of
its master's weakness--suggested that he was not quite sure that at the
present moment he was very much in love with the lady in question.
Alaric had married for love, and was not two years married, yet had his
education so far progressed in that short period as to enable him to
laugh at such an objection.
'Then, my dear fellow, what the deuce do you mean to do with yourself?
You'll certainly go to the dogs.
Charley had an idea that he certainly should; and also had an idea that
Miss Clementina and her £20,000 might not improbably go in the same
direction, if he had anything to do with them.
'And as for loving her,' continued Alaric, 'that's all my eye. Love is
a luxury which none but the rich or the poor can afford. We middle-class
paupers, who are born with good coats on our backs, but empty purses,
can have nothing to do with it.'
'But you married for love, Alaric?'
'My marriage was not a very prudent one, and should not be taken as an
example. And then I did get some fortune with my wife; and what is more,
I was not so fearfully in want of it as you are.'
Charley acknowledged the truth of this, said that he would think of the
matrimonial project, and promised, at any rate, to call on Clementina
on an early occasion. He had already made her acquaintance, had already
danced with her, and certainly could not take upon himself to deny that
she was a 'doosed fine girl.'
But Charley had reasons of his own, reasons which he could not make
known to Alaric, for not thinking much of, or trusting much to, Miss
Golightly's fortune. In the first place, he regarded marriage on such a
grand scale as that now suggested, as a ceremony which must take a long
time to adjust; the wooing of a lady with so many charms could not
be carried on as might be the wooing of a chambermaid or a farmer's
daughter. It must take months at least to conciliate the friends of so
rich an heiress, and months at the end of them to prepare the wedding
gala. But Charley could not wait for months; before one month was over
he would probably be laid up in some vile limbo, an unfortunate poor
prisoner at the suit of an iron-hearted tailor.
At this very moment of Alaric's proposition, at this instant when
he found himself talking with so much coolness of the expedience or
inexpedience of appropriating to his own purpose a slight trifle of
£20,000, he was in dire strait as to money difficulties.
He had lately, that is, within the last twelve months, made acquaintance
with an interesting gentleman named Jabesh M'Ruen. Mr. Jabesh M'Ruen
was in the habit of relieving the distresses of such impoverished young
gentlemen as Charley Tudor; and though he did this with every
assurance of philanthropic regard, though in doing so he only made one
stipulation, 'Pray be punctual, Mr. Tudor, now pray do be punctual,
sir, and you may always count on me,' nevertheless, in spite of all
his goodness, Mr. M'Ruen's young friends seldom continued to hold their
heads well up over the world's waters.
On the morning after this conversation with Alaric, Charley intended
to call on his esteemed old friend. Many were the morning calls he did
make; many were the weary, useless, aimless walks which he took to that
little street at the back of Mecklenburg Square, with the fond hope of
getting some relief from Mr. M'Ruen; and many also were the calls,
the return visits, as it were, which Mr. M'Ruen made at the Internal
Navigation, and numerous were the whispers which he would there whisper
into the ears of the young clerk, Mr. Snape the while sitting by, with
a sweet unconscious look, as though he firmly believed Mr. M'Ruen to be
Charley's maternal uncle.
And then, too, Charley had other difficulties, which in his mind
presented great obstacles to the Golightly scheme, though Alaric would
have thought little of them, and Undy nothing. What was he to do with
his Norfolk Street lady, his barmaid houri, his Norah Geraghty, to whom
he had sworn all manner of undying love, and for whom in some sort of
fashion he really had an affection? And Norah was not a light-of-love
whom it was as easy to lay down as to pick up. Charley had sworn to love
her, and she had sworn to love Charley; and to give her her due, she had
kept her word to him. Though her life rendered necessary a sort of daily
or rather nightly flirtation with various male comers--as indeed, for
the matter of that, did also the life of Miss Clementina Golightly--yet
she had in her way been true to her lover. She had been true to him,
and Charley did not doubt her, and in a sort of low way respected her;
though it was but a dissipated and debauched respect. There had even
been talk between them of marriage, and who can say what in his softer
moments, when his brain had been too weak or the toddy too strong,
Charley may not have promised?
And there was yet another objection to Miss Golightly; one even more
difficult of mention, one on which Charley felt himself more absolutely
constrained to silence than even either of the other two. He was
sufficiently disinclined to speak to his cousin Alaric as to the merits
either of Mr. Jabesh M'Ruen or of Miss Geraghty, but he could have been
eloquent on either rather than whisper a word as to the third person who
stood between him and the £20,000.
The school in which Charley now lived, that of the infernal navvies,
had taught him to laugh at romance; but it had not been so successful in
quelling the early feelings of his youth, in drying up the fountains of
poetry within him, as had been the case with his cousin, in that
other school in which he had been a scholar. Charley was a dissipated,
dissolute rake, and in some sense had degraded himself; but he had still
this chance of safety on his side, that he himself reprobated his own
sins. He dreamt of other things and a better life. He made visions to
himself of a sweet home, and a sweeter, sweetest, lovely wife; a love
whose hair should not be redolent of smoke, nor her hands reeking with
gin, nor her services at the demand of every libertine who wanted a
screw of tobacco, or a glass of 'cold without.'
He had made such a vision to himself, and the angel with which he had
filled it was not a creature of his imagination. She who was to reign
in this ethereal paradise, this happy home, far as the poles away
from Norfolk Street, was a living being in the sublunar globe, present
sometimes to Charley's eyes, and now so often present to his thoughts;
and yet she was but a child, and as ignorant that she had ever touched a
lover's heart by her childish charms as though she had been a baby.
After all, even on Charley's part, it was but a vision. He never really
thought that his young inamorata would or could be to him a real true
heart's companion, returning his love with the double love of a woman,
watching his health, curing his vices, and making the sweet things
of the world a living reality around him. This love of his was but
a vision, but not the less on that account did it interfere with his
cousin Alaric's proposition, in reference to Miss Clementina Golightly.
That other love also, that squalid love of his, was in truth no
vision--was a stern, palpable reality, very difficult to get rid of,
and one which he often thought to himself would very probably swallow up
that other love, and drive his sweet dream far away into utter darkness
and dim chaotic space.
But at any rate it was clear that there was no room in his heart for
the beauteous Clementina, 'doosed fine girl' as she undoubtedly was, and
serviceable as the £20,000 most certainly would have been.