A LECTURE.
A small, friendly dinner-table, Mr. Grubb and Lady Adela presiding. A
thin, sharp-featured, insignificant little man, whose evening clothes
looked the worse for wear, and who wore a black watered ribbon across
his waistcoat in lieu of a gold chain, sat at Lady Adela's right hand.
It was Colonel Hope. To look at him and his attire, you would have
said he did not know where to turn for a shilling: yet he was the
possessor of great wealth, and had seen hard service in India. Beside
Mr. Grubb sat the colonel's wife, Lady Sarah; a tall, portly woman,
whose face bore much resemblance to her mother's, Lady Acorn. Grace
and Frances Chenevix and Mr. Howard, Mr. Grubb's partner, completed
the party: the latter was a staid, stiff gentleman of sixty, with
iron-grey hair and whiskers, and a stern face. He and the colonel had
known each other in early life, when both had the world to fight for
fame or fortune. Each had fought it well, and won; certainly so far as
fortune was concerned. The colonel was just home from India, and Mr.
Grubb had given the two early friends a speedy opportunity of meeting.
One place at table was empty, and the young lady who sat next it,
Frances Chenevix, did not look quite pleased at its being so. It was
intended for Gerard Hope, who had somehow failed to make his
appearance.
Colonel Hope had retired from the army and was come home for good.
About a year ago he and Lady Sarah had lost their two sons, lads of
seven and eight, from fever. They had no other children, and it was
generally supposed the colonel would make his nephew, Gerard, his
heir. The colonel and his wife were both tired this evening, having
been looking at houses all day. Frances had been with them, but she
seemed fresh and bright as a lark. The colonel had bought a pretty
little property in Gloucestershire, but Lady Sarah wished for a town
house also.
"I think I shall take it, though it is rather small," observed the
colonel, talking of one of the houses they had seen. "There'd be room
for a friend or two as well as for ourselves: and for Gerard also, if
I decide to adopt him. By the way--what is your opinion of that young
man, Grubb?"
"As to looks, do you mean, colonel?" smiled Mr. Grubb. "They are good.
I don't know much else of him."
"Thought you did," growled the colonel, who was a hot-tempered man,
and liked plain answers to his questions.
"I know nothing against him," said Mr. Grubb, emphatically. "I have
seen but little of him, but that little I like."
"He is very nice and very good, and quite worthy to be adopted by you
and Sarah, colonel," spoke up Lady Frances in her free way. "I'm sure
the manner he slaves away in that red-tape office he is chained to,
ought to be a gold feather in his cap."
"A gold feather?" repeated the literal colonel, looking at the speaker
questioningly. While Mr. Howard, who knew what "slaving away" amounted
to in a red-tape office, indulged in a silent laugh.
"Well, ought to tell in his favour, I mean," said Frances, mending her
speech.
"I suppose he only does what he is put to do--his daily work,"
continued the colonel. "That, he cannot shirk: he has nothing to look
to but his salary to pay his way. There's no merit in doing one's
simple duty."
"I think there is a great deal, when it is such hard work as
Gerard's," contended Frances. And this time Mr. Howard laughed
outright at the "hard work."
"Perhaps the hard work is keeping him tonight," suggested Mr. Grubb,
with just the ghost of a smile.
"No," said Frances, "I think the office closes at four."
"Oh," cried the colonel. "Where is he then? What does he mean by
staying away?"
"He is run over, of course," said Frances, "and taken to the nearest
hospital. Nothing short of that would have kept him away."
Lady Sarah Hope looked down the table at her sister. "Is Gerard in
love with you, Frances?"
"In love with me!" exclaimed the young lady, her face flushing
vividly. "What ridiculous fable will you imagine next, Sarah?"
"Is it a fable?" added Lady Sarah, struck with the flush.
"What else should it be?" laughed Frances. "Gerard could not think of
falling in love upon nothing a-year. Nothing a-year, and find himself!
That has been his case, poor fellow--or something akin to it."
"That may be remedied," remarked Lady Sarah. She had caught up an
opinion upon the subject, and she held to it in the future.
As the small line of ladies filed out of the dining-room, Lady Sarah,
walking first, turned just outside the door to wait for her sister
Adela. Mr. Grubb, who was holding the door open, said something to his
wife in an undertone as she passed him. Adela made no answer whatever;
except that her lifted face put on a look of scorn, and her lips took
a downward curve.
"What did your husband say to you?" asked Lady Sarah, having fancied
that she heard her own name--Hope.
"I don't know--or care. As if I should listen to anything he might
say!" contemptuously added Lady Adela.
Lady Sarah stared. "Why, child, what do you mean? He is your husband."
"To my cost."
"What do you mean? What does she mean?" continued Lady Sarah,
appealing to the other two sisters, for Adela had not deemed it
necessary to lower her voice. They did not answer. Grace took up an
album, her face wearing a sad look of pain; Frances walked into the
other drawing-room.
"I insist upon knowing what you mean, in saying that Mr. Grubb is your
husband to _your cost_," cried Lady Sarah, returning to the charge.
She was so much older than Adela--looking, in fact, old enough to be
her mother, for India's sun and the loss of her children had greatly
aged her--that she took her to task at will. Lady Sarah, like her
mother, had always displayed somewhat of a propensity for setting the
world to rights.
"It is to my cost," spoke Adela, defiantly. "That I should be _his_
wife, obliged to stand as such before the world, a man of _his_ name,
a tradesman!" And the emphatic scorn, the stress of aversion laid on
the "his," no pen could adequately express. "I never hear myself
announced, 'Lady Adela Grubb,' but I shiver; I never see it in the
_Morning Post_, amongst the lists at an entertainment, or perhaps at
Court, but I fling the paper from me. As I should like to fling
_him_."
"Bless my heart and mind, what's in a name?" demanded Lady Sarah,
having listened as one astounded.
"Grubb! Grubb!" hissed Adela, from between her dainty lips. "There is
a great deal in that name, at any rate, Sarah. I hate it. It is to me
as a nightmare. And I hate him for forcing me to bear it."
"Forcing you to bear it! Why, you are his wife."
"I am--to my shame. But he had no right to make me his wife: to ask me
to be his wife. Why could he not have fixed upon any one else? Grace,
there, for instance. She would not have minded the name or the trade.
She'd have got used to it--and to him."
Lady Sarah Hope nodded her head four or five times in succession. "A
pretty frame of mind you are cherishing, Adela! Leave off such evil
speaking--and thinking. Your husband is a true gentleman, a man that
the world may be proud of; he can hold his own as such anywhere. As to
the house in Leadenhall Street, it is of world-wide fame--the idea of
your calling him a 'tradesman!'--Let me speak! Where can you find a
man with so noble a presence, so refined and sweet a countenance? And
I feel sure that he is as good and true and generous in himself as he
is distinguished in reputation and person."
"All the same, I scorn him. I hate him for having chosen me. And it is
the pleasure of my life to let him see that I do," concluded Adela, in
sheer defiance, as she tossed her pretty head.
"Cease, Adela, cease!" interposed Grace, coming forward, her hands
lifted imploringly. "You little know the wickedness of what you are
saying; or the evil you may be laying up for yourself in the days to
come. This is not your true nature; you are only forcing it upon
yourself to gratify a resentment you have persistently taken up. How
often have I prayed to you to be your own true self!
"Pray for it yourself, child," enjoined Lady Sarah, laying her hand
with a firm grasp upon Adela's shoulder. "Pray upon your bended knees
to Heaven, to snatch and shield you from Satan. Most assuredly he has
got into you."
"What has got into me?" asked Adela, with languid indifference, not
having caught the words.
"The devil," angrily amended Lady Sarah.
That infant of Lady Adela's, little George, did not live. Just for a
month or two, just long enough for her to get passionately attached to
him, to use every means to make him strong, he lingered. Then there
came three days of illness, and the little soul fled from the feeble
frame. No other child had been born, and Lady Adela seemed to be left
with no end or aim in life, except that of cherishing resentment
against Mr. Grubb. She took it up more fiercely than ever, and she let
him feel it to his heart's core. The still, small voice of conscience,
warning her that this was a forced and unnatural state of mind, could
not always be deadened. The very fact of its pricking her caused her
to resent the pricks, and to nourish her ill-omened temper the more
persistently. Francis Grubb's life was not one of fair skies and
rose-leaves.
"I should like to shake it out of her--and I wonder he does not do
it," ran the thoughts of Frances Chenevix, as she opened the piano in
the next room and began to play a dashing march.
Very especially just now was the Lady Adela Grubb resenting things in
general. Captain Stanley--who had set up a flirtation with her when
she was but a slip of a girl, and with whom it had pleased her to
fancy herself in love after he sailed for India, though that was pure
fancy and not fact--had taken no notice of her now that he was home
again, beyond that demanded by the ordinary usages of society; and at
this Lady Adela felt mortified--slighted. He had not as much as said
to her, "So we are both married, you and I; we cannot sit in corners
any more to talk in whispers:" on the contrary, he spent his time
talking with newer beauties, Selina Dalrymple for one. It was quite
the behaviour of a bear, decided Adela; and she was resenting it by
showing temper to the world.
Frances Chenevix dashed through the march. Its last bars were dying
into silence, when she thought she heard footsteps on the stairs.
Going to the door, she saw Gerard Hope.
"Well, and what account have you to give of yourself?" began Frances,
as he took her hand.
"I was at a water-party at Richmond," breathlessly answered Gerard,
who had been having a race with time.
"Well, I'm sure! And here have I been vowing to them that nothing
could have kept you but being run over in the streets; and Colonel
Hope thinks you are detained over the red-tape duties. You might have
come for once, Gerard."
"I couldn't possibly, Frances; I couldn't land; and then I had to
dress. The tide kept us out. It has vexed me above a bit, I can tell
you."
"You look vexed," she retorted, regarding his laughing countenance.
"I am vexed; but it is of no use to weep over it. You know I want to
stand well with my uncle. I suppose you have finished dinner?"
"Ages ago."
"Where are the rest of you ladies?"
"In the next room, quarrelling. Lady Sarah is treating Adela to a bit
of her mind--and she deserves it. Now, Gerard, behave yourself. What
do you want to come so close to me for?"
For Mr. Gerard Hope was squeezing himself beside her on a small
ottoman, meant for only one portly personage. He did more than that:
he stole his arm round her waist.
"I believe Uncle Hope wants to adopt me," cried Gerard. "Won't it be
jolly. No more scratch, scratch, scratch away with a pen all the
blessed day."
"I called it 'slavery' to them just now," interrupted Frances.
"Good girl! No more getting up by candle-light in winter, and trudging
off through the frost and through the thaw without breakfast, which
you have not had time to take! It will be a change--if he does it. I'm
not sure of it yet."
"You don't deserve it, Gerard."
"No! Why don't I? I'd try and be a good nephew to him--as dutiful as
the good boy in the spelling-book. I say, Frances, has he been asking
about me?--getting references as to character?"
"Yes, he has," was the perhaps unexpected answer. "Just as if you were
a footman. Mr. Grubb said he did not know much of you; but what he did
know he liked. Hark! They are coming out of the dining-room. And if
you want any dinner, you had better go there and ring for it."
"Perhaps there's none left for me."
Frances laughed. "I heard Mr. Grubb whisper to his wife that if Gerard
Hope came he was to go into the dining-room."
Gerard rose, went out, and met the gentlemen. Frances stayed where she
was, and fell into a reverie. Did Gerard really love her? At times she
thought so, at others she thought not.
The days wore onwards in their rapid flight. Time does not stand still
even for those favoured ones who are plunged, for the first time, into
the allurements of a London season: as was Selina Dalrymple.
One bright morning, when the sun was shining brilliantly and the
skies were blue and the streets warm and dusty, she sat in the
breakfast-room with her husband. The late meal was over, and Selina, a
hot colour in her cheeks, was drumming her pretty foot on the floor,
and not looking the essence of good-humour. She wore a richly
embroidered white dress with pink ribbons. Mr. Dalrymple's eyes had
rarely rested on a fairer woman, and his heart knew it too well.
"Selina, I asked you last night whether you intended to go to Lady
Burnham's breakfast, at that rural villa of theirs. Of course, if you
go, I will accompany you, otherwise I have some business I should like
to attend to on Thursday."
"I can't go," answered Selina. "I have nothing to wear."
"Nothing to wear!"
"Nothing on earth."
"How can you say so?"
"I did think of ordering a suitable toilette for it, and was at
Damereau's about it yesterday. But, after what you said last
night----"
"My dear, what do you mean? what did I say? Only that you seemed, to
me, never to appear in the same gown whether at home or out; and I
begged you to remember that our income was limited."
"You said I changed my dresses four times a-day, Oscar."
"Well. Don't you?"
"But every one else does; Some change them five times. You would not
like me to come down in the morning and go up to bed at night in the
same dress, would you?"
"I suppose not. It's of no use asking me about dress, Selina. I
scarcely know one gown from another. But it does strike me that you
have a most extraordinary number of new things. Go out or come in when
I will, there's sure to be the milliner's porter and basket at the
door."
"Would you have me look an object?"
"You never do look an object."
"Of course I don't. I guard against it. I'd give the world to go to
this fête at the Burnhams'. Every soul will be there, but me."
"And why not you, if your heart is so set upon It? I think all such
affairs a stupid bore: but that's nothing."
"Would you wish me to go there in a petticoat?"
"No; I suppose not. I tell you I am no judge of a lady's things. I
don't think I should know a petticoat from a gown. Those are gowns,
are they not, hanging in rows round the walls in the room above, and
covered up with sheets and table-cloths."
"Sheets and table-cloths! Oscar!"
"My dear, they look like it."
"Well--if they are gowns--there's not one I can wear."
"They are all recently new," said Mr. Dalrymple. "What's the matter
with them?"
"There's not one I can wear," persisted his wife.
"But why?"
"Why!" repeated Mrs. Dalrymple, in quite a contemptuous tone, for she
had no patience with ignorance. "You ought to know why!"
"My dear, I really don't. If you wish me to know, you must tell me."
"_I have worn them all once_," was the angry answer. "And some twice,
and some three times. And one---- Oscar," she broke off, "you remember
that lovely one; a sky blue, shot with white; a robe à disposition?"
"What is à disposition?"
"Oh--a silk, flounced, and the flounces have some designs upon them,
embossed, or raised, sometimes of a different colour. That dress I
have worn five times. I really have, Oscar; five times!
"I wear my coats fifty times five."
"The idea of my being seen at Lady Burnham's in a dress I have worn
before! No; I'd rather go in a petticoat, of the two evils, and hide
my head for ever after."
Mr. Dalrymple was puzzled. "Why could you not be seen, there or
anywhere else, in a dress you have worn before?"
"Because no one else is."
"Then what becomes of all the new gowns?" inquired the wondering man.
"For goodness' sake, do not keep on calling them 'gowns.'"
"Dresses, then. What becomes of them?"
"Oh--they do for the country. Some few, by dint of retrimming, can be
made to look new for town. You don't understand ladies' dresses,
Oscar."
"I have said I do not."
"Neither ought you," added Selina, crossly. "We do not worry ourselves
to interfere between you and your tailors, or pry into the shape and
make of your waistcoats and buttons and things, and we do not expect
to have it done by us."
"Selina, let your grievance come to an end. I do not like to hear this
tone of reproach."
"Then you must retract what you said last night. It was as if you
wanted me never to have a new dress again."
"Nay, Selina, I only reminded you how small our income is. You must
not overlook that."
"Don't be foolish, Oscar. Do you fear I am going to ruin you? What's
the cost of a few dresses? I _must_ have one for Lady Burnham's fête."
"My dear, have what you like, in reason," he said, in the innocence of
his unconscious heart: "you are the best judge. Of course I can trust
you."
The words were as the sweetest music in her ear. She sprang up,
dancing to a scrap of a song.
"You dear, good Oscar I knew you were never going to be an old
griffin. I think I must have that lovely green-and-white gauze. It was
the most magnificent dress. I was divided between that and a
cream-coloured damask. I'll have the gauze. And gauze dresses cost
nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Next to nothing."
Selina flew upstairs. She pulled aside the "sheets and table-cloths,"
and glanced underneath. It was a goodly stock of robes; but yet not
all the stock: for the lace, and muslin, and flimsy gauze, and
delicate white, and delicate pearl, and delicate pink, and delicate
other shades, were reposing in drawers, out of sight, between folds of
tissue paper. Barège and balzarine: satin, plain and figured; velvet;
silk, plain, damask, flowered, shot, corded, and of all the colours of
the rainbow. Beautiful dresses; and yet--new, and rich, and elegant as
they were, Selina Dalrymple could not go to the fête without a new
one!
Away she went to Madame Damereau's. Astonishing that renowned artiste
by the early hour of her visit.
"I want a thousand things," began Selina, in the blitheness of her
heart. "Have you sold the green-and-white gauze dress?"
No, was madame's answer, she had kept it on purpose for Madame
Dalreemp. Milady Ac-corn had come in yesterday afternoon late, and
wanted it, but she had told milady that it was sold.
Selina took it all in. The fact was, madame had tried to persuade
Milady Ac-corn into buying it, but milady was proof against the price.
She had wanted it for Frances. It was only seventeen guineas, and that
included the fringe and trimmings. Selina had told her husband that
gauze dresses cost nothing!
"I want it for the breakfast on Thursday," cried Selina. "What mantle
can I wear?"
A momentous question. They ran over in memory the mantles, scarfs,
fichus, possessed by Mrs. Dalrymple, and came to the conclusion that
not one of them would "go with" the gauze dress.
"I have a lace mantle," said madame--"ah! but it is recherché!--a real
Brussels. If there is one robe in my house that it ought to go with,
it is that green-and-white."
She brought it forward and exhibited it upon the dress. Very
beautiful; of that there was no doubt. It was probably a beautiful
price also.
"Twenty-five guineas."
"Oh my goodness--twenty-five guineas!" cried Selina. "But I'll take
it. A breakfast fête does not come every day."
For a wonder--_for_ a wonder--Selina, having exhibited her white lace
bonnet with the emeralds only twice, came to the conclusion that that
"would do." Not that she hesitated at buying another, but that it was
so suitable to the green-and-white dress.
"And now for---- Oh, stop; I think I must have a new parasol. My
point-lace one is soiled, and I caught it in my bracelet the other day
and tore it a little. You had a beautiful point-lace parasol here
yesterday. Let me see it."
"The one you wore looking at yesterday will not do," cried madame. "It
is lined with blue: Madame Dalreemp knows that blue can never go with
the green dress. I have one parasol--ah, but it is a beauty!--a
point-lace, lined with white. I will get it. It does surpass the
other."
It did surpass the other, and in price also. Selina chose it. It was
twenty guineas.
"My husband thought I could have worn one of my old dresses," observed
Selina, as she turned over some gloves; "he says I have a great many.
But one can only appear in a perfectly fresh toilette at a magnificent
gathering such as this is to be." And madame fully assented.
Mrs. Dalrymple went to the breakfast, and she and her attire were
lovely amidst the lovely, exciting no end of admiration. Very
gratifying to her heart, then topsy-turvy with vanity. And so it went
on to the end of the season, and her pleasurable course was never
checked.
When they were preparing to return to the Grange, and her maid was
driven wild with perplexity as to the stowing away of so extensive a
wardrobe, and conjecturing that the carriage down of it would alone
come to "something," it occurred to Selina, as she sat watching, that
the original cost would also come to "something." Some hundreds, she
feared, now she came to see the whole collection in a mass.
"Of course I shall not let Oscar see the bill," she soliloquized.
"I'll get it from madame before I leave: and then there'll be no fear
of its coming to him at the Grange."
Mrs. Dalrymple asked for the bill; and madame, under protest that
there was no hurry in the world, promised to send it in.
Selina was alone, sitting in the drawing-room by twilight, when the
account was delivered to her; it was enclosed in a large thick
envelope, with an imposing red seal. She opened it somewhat eagerly.
"What makes it such a bulk?" she thought. "Oh, I see; she has detailed
the things."
Holding it close to the window, she looked at the bottom of the page,
and saw ninety-four pounds.
"Ninety-four pounds!" ejaculated Selina. "What does madame mean? It
must be much more than that."
She lighted the little taper on her writing-table; and then found she
had been looking at one item only--the Venice point-lace for the
decoration of a dress. So she turned the page and looked at the foot
of the next.
"Antique robe, lace trimmings, and sapphire buttons, one hundred and
twenty-five pounds. Tush!" impatiently exclaimed Selina.
With a rapid movement she turned the account over to the end, and
gazed at the sum total; gazed at it, stared at it, and recoiled from
it. Three thousand and odd pounds, odd shillings, and no pence! What
the odd pounds were, whether one, or whether nine hundred
ninety-nine, she did not catch in that moment of terror; the first
grand sum of three thousand absorbed her eyes and her faculties. And
there floated over her a confused consciousness of other bills to come
in: one from the jeweller's, one for shawls, one for expensively
trimmed linen. There was one shawl, real India--but she dared not
think of that. "Oscar will say I have been mad," she groaned.
No doubt he would.
At that moment she heard his step, coming in from the dining-room, and
turned sick. She crushed the bill in her right hand and thrust it down
the neck of her dress. Then she blew out the taper, and turned, with a
burning brow and shrinking frame, to the window again, and stood
there, apparently looking out. Selina had never attempted to sum up
what she had bought. At odd moments she had feared it might come to
something like a thousand pounds.
Oscar came up and put his arm around her, asking whether it was not
time to have the lights.
"Yes. Presently."
"What in the world have you got here?" cried he. "A ball?"
She pushed the "ball" higher up, and murmured something about "some
paper."
"My dear, what is the matter with you here? You are trembling."
"The night-air, I suppose. It is rather chilly."
Yet the night was hot. Mr. Dalrymple immediately began to close the
window. He was a minute or two over it, for one of the cords was stiff
and did not go well. When he turned round again, his wife had left the
room.
"Selina does not seem very well," thought Oscar.