when hoops were coming in, stiff brocades, laces and lappets,
high-heeled coloured shoes, and every extravagance in finery all the
rage. True, the texture of her white silk gown was of the richest, and
it was laced with silver, and fastened with pearl clasps that must have
cost a great sum; but it was fashioned with a simplicity that suggested
the rustic maiden rather than the high-born dame. Yet the simple
elegance of the graceful, girlish figure was displayed to such advantage
that even the modish mother had been able to find no fault with the
fashion in which her daughter instructed that her gowns should be cut;
and surmises and bets were freely exchanged by the gallants crowding
Lord Romaine's house as to whether it were a deep form of coquetry or
real simplicity of taste which made the Lady Geraldine differ so much
from the matrons and maids about her.
She wore no patches upon her face, though the dazzling purity of her
complexion would thereby have been enhanced. And in days when the hair
was dressed into tower-like erections, and adorned with powder, laces,
ribbons, and all manner of strange fripperies, this girl wore her
beautiful waving golden tresses floating round her face in the fashion
of the ladies of Charles the Second's reign, or coiled them with
careless grace about her head in a natural coronet. With powder or
pomatum, wires or artificial additions, she would have nothing to do.
She had been brought up in the country by her grandmother, a lady of
very simple tastes, who would in no wise conform to the extravagant
fashions which had crept in, and were corrupting all the old-time grace
and simplicity of female attire.
"Leave those fripperies to the gallants," had been the old lady's
pungent remark; "what do we want with powder and periwigs, patches and
pomatum?"
She remembered the simple elegance of the court-dresses of the ladies in
the Stuart times, and had no patience with the artificial trappings that
followed. Moreover, albeit not a Puritan in any strict sense of the
word--being a loyal advocate of the Stuart cause--she was a woman of
great piety and devotion, and studied her Bible diligently; so that she
took small pleasure in the adornment of the person in gaudy clothing,
and the broidering of the hair, and in fine array. She taught her
granddaughter to think more of the virtue of the meek and quiet spirit,
and to seek rather to cultivate her mind, and store it with information
and with lofty aspirations, than to give her time and thoughts to the
round of folly and dissipation which made up the life of the lady of
fashion.
Geraldine was so happy in the care of her grandmother, and felt so
little at home with her fashionable mother, that her visits had been few
and far between hitherto, until the sudden death of Mrs. Adair six
months previously had obliged her to return permanently to her father's
roof.
Here she found a state of things which amazed and troubled her not a
little, and greatly did she marvel how her mother could be the daughter
of the guardian of her childhood. True, Lady Romaine had married very
young, and early escaped from the watchful care of her judicious mother;
but it seemed marvellous that so close a tie could have existed between
them, and the girl would look on with amaze and pain at her mother's
freaks and follies, wondering how any woman could find entertainment in
the idle, foolish, and often profane vapourings of the beaux who
fluttered about her, and how any sane persons could endure such a life
of trivial amusement and ceaseless meaningless dissipation.
Pleading with her father her grief at her grandmother's death, she had
obtained a six months' respite from attendance at the gay functions
which made up life to Lady Romaine. Those six months had been spent,
for the most part, in the privacy of her own apartments, which she had
furnished with the dim and time-honoured treasures of her grandmother's
house, all of which were now her own, and which made her quarters in the
old part of the house like an oasis of taste, and harmony, and true
beauty in an ocean of confused and almost tawdry profusion. The old
garden was another favourite haunt of hers, for there were portions of
it which were seldom invaded by the gay butterflies who often hovered
about the newer terraces and the formal Dutch garden, and the hound
always gave her ample warning of any approaching footstep, so that she
could fly and hide herself before any one could molest her.
So here she prosecuted her studies, read her favourite authors, and when
the house was quiet--her mother having flown off to some gay rout or
card-party or ball--she would practise her skill on the lute, virginal,
spinet, or harp, and her fresh young voice would resound through the
house, drawing the servants to the open windows to hear the sweet
strains.
Lady Romaine would have humoured the girl's fancy for seclusion
indefinitely. She felt almost humiliated by the presence of a daughter
so stately and so mature. Geraldine was nineteen, but might have passed
for more, with her grave, refined beauty, and her lack of all the
kittenish freakishness which made many matrons seem almost like girls,
even when their charms began to fade, and nature had to be replaced by
art. Lady Romaine fondly believed that her admirers took her for
four-and-twenty; and now to have to pose as the mother of a grown-up
daughter was a bitter mortification, and one which disposed her to make
as speedy a marriage for Geraldine as could well be achieved. Lord
Romaine had at last insisted that his daughter should appear in the
world of fashion, and she had been once or twice to Court in her
parents' train, where her striking beauty and unwonted appearance had
made some sensation. Geraldine had little fault to find with what she
saw and heard there. Good Queen Anne permitted nothing reprehensible in
her neighbourhood, and her Court was grave to the verge of dullness.
She was a loving and a model wife; and the Duchess was devoted to her
husband, though often making his life a burden by her imperious temper.
Anything like conjugal infidelity was not tolerated therefore by either
of these ladies, and decorum ruled wherever the Queen was to be found.
But at other places and in other company matters were far different, and
already Geraldine began to shrink with a great disgust and distaste from
the compliments she received, from the coarse, foolish, affected talk
she heard, and from the knowledge of the senseless dissipation which
flowed like a stream at her feet, and which seemed to encircle the span
of her life in a way that made escape impossible.
But she had been taught obedience as one of the cardinal virtues, and
the days of emancipated daughters were not yet. When her father bade
her lay aside her mourning and join in the life of the house, she knew
she must obey. But she had asked from him the favour of being permitted
to design her own dresses, and to follow her own tastes in matters
pertaining to her own toilet, and also that she might be excused
attendance at her mother's morning levee; for the spectacle of crowds of
men flocking in and out of her mother's apartments, and witnessing the
triumphs of the coiffeurs and tire-women, was to her degrading and
disgusting; and though Lord Romaine laughed--being himself so inured to
the custom--and told her she was a little fool, and must get the better
of her prudery, he gave way to her in this, and the more readily because
she represented to him how that these morning hours were now the only
ones she could command for study; and he was proud to find in his
daughter an erudition and talent very rare amongst women in those days.
[Illustration: The old garden was another favourite haunt of hers (page
96).]
But now an approaching footstep warned the girl that her pleasant
morning was over. The dog sprang up, but did not growl. It was
Geraldine's own serving-woman approaching with the girl's white-plumed
hat and long silver-laced gloves.
"My lady's coach waits, and she desires your presence," was the message
that reached her. Geraldine sat down to let the woman fasten the hat
upon her head, and with a sigh she put away her books in their basket,
and gave it to the charge of the faithful hound. She had found that her
treasures were far more carefully safeguarded by him than when left in
the care of a giddy maid, who was more bent on having the same kind of
amusement with the men-servants that her mistress had with the gallants
than of seeking to discharge her duties faithfully and well.
"Hasten, child, hasten!" cried Lady Romaine's shrill voice from the
entrance-hall, as Geraldine approached. She was a wonderful object as
she stood there in the full light of the June sunshine, her stiff amber
brocade sweeping round her in great billows, her waist laced in like
that of a wasp, and accentuated by the style of the long-pointed bodice;
her high-heeled shoes, ornamented to extravagance, the heels being
bright red and the uppers sewed with precious stones; gems glittering in
the mass of laces at her throat, and in a number of clasps fastened to
the bodice; her hair towering upwards to such a height that she could
scarce sit comfortably in her lofty coach, and could wear nothing in the
way of head-gear save the laces and ribbons which were worked in with
much skill by the French hair-dresser. She was redolent of perfume;
gloves, lace handkerchief, dainty muff, every little knickknack, of
which she possessed so many, all emitted the same cloying sweetness.
Geraldine felt herself heave a sigh of oppression as she followed this
grotesque object into the coach. She was growing used to the aspect
presented by the dames of fashion, but there were moments when her first
disgust came over her in great waves.
"I marvel that you like to make yourself such a figure of fun, child,"
remarked the mother, as she settled herself in her coach, smirked
towards the piece of looking-glass let in opposite, and turned a
sidelong glance upon her daughter; "'tis enough to set the gallants
laughing to see how you habit yourself. Well, well; you are a lucky
girl to have found a suitor so soon. Now take good heed to show him no
saucy airs, should he present himself at our box at the play to-day. He
has been away these last days, but he can never long absent himself from
town. Mind you have a smile for him when he appears, or I shall have
somewhat to say to you later, Miss Impertinence." And the lady's ivory
fan came down somewhat smartly upon Geraldine's arm.
"Of whom are you speaking, ma'am?" she asked, whilst the colour mounted
suddenly in her fair face.
"Oh, come now; so we are already posing as a belle of many beaux! Pray
who has ever cast a glance upon you save my good kinsman Sandford? And,
mind you, he is a man of taste and fashion, and it is a great compliment
that he has singled you out for notice. There be girls would give their
ears for a kind glance from his eyes, and there are as good fish in the
sea as ever came out of it; so mind your manners, miss, and treat him to
no tricks. It is high time you were wed, and had a husband to look
after you, and that is why I take you about. For, as for pleasure in
such company, one might as well play bear-leader to a snow queen!"
"I did not know that Lord Sandford had done me any favour," spoke
Geraldine quietly. "I have seen him but seldom, and he has spoke not
over much to me. But I will bear your wishes in mind, madam, should he
appear to-day."
"Ha! there he is!" suddenly cried my lady, becoming excited, and rapping
smartly with her fan on the glass of the window. The next minute the
coach had pulled up, and Lord Sandford, attired in the very height of
the fashion, was bowing over her hand with his courtliest air.
*CHAPTER VI.*
*THE PASTIMES OF THE TOWN.*
"The sun shines once again," quoth Lord Sandford, as he raised the
extended hand of Lady Romaine to his lips, and dropped a light kiss upon
her scented glove. "The sun shines in the sky; but let him beware and
look to his laurels, for there are stars abroad of such dazzling lustre
that Phoebus must have a care lest the brightness of his shafts be
quenched in a more refulgent glow." And the young man gazed into the
lady's eyes with a bold laughing stare that pointed the meaning of the
compliment.
"La! but you talk the greatest nonsense!" cried Lady Romaine, highly
delighted, as she tapped him smartly with her fan. "Come, tell me where
you have been these many days. Some said you had been a-wooing in the
country, and others that your dolts of tradesmen were dunning you to
distraction, and others that you had fought a duel and had need to fly;
but, pardieu! if one believed all the gossip of the town, one would have
enough to do. I know there has been a duel, and I am aching to hear all
about it. I'll warrant you know all the story, since he was your
friend. Come, get into the coach, and tell me all about it. Were you
there? What was it all about? And what sort of an end did he make?"
Lady Romaine's face expressed the eager pleasure and curiosity of a
child talking over some trivial pleasure; she flirted her fan, cast
languishing glances, and played off upon the young Earl all those
countless little airs and graces which characterized the fine lady of
the period.
But Geraldine drew back in her corner, her face growing cold and pale.
She had scarcely acknowledged Lord Sandford's presence, only just
bending her head in response to his bow. He had not addressed her as
yet, and he appeared engrossed by the mother; but he flashed one quick
glance upon her now, and possibly read something of the pain and disgust
which possessed her, for he answered,--
"Nay, madam, let us not talk of what is past and done. How can thought
of gloom and death dwell in so radiant a presence? In sooth, all dark
thoughts take to themselves wings in this company, and will not be
caught or caged. I forget that we are not in the bowers of Arcadia;
for, in sooth, I am transported thither so soon as these poor eyes be
dazzled by the light of those twin stars of love and beauty!"
Again Lady Romaine tapped him with her fan. She loved a compliment,
however fulsome; but she wanted at this moment to be entertained by the
account of the duel, which had made a little stir in the town, from the
fact of one of the combatants having been the boon companion and friend
of Lord Sandford.
"You dear, tormenting devil! But I will have the story yet! And we are
all dying to know how you will get on without your Fidus Achates. By my
troth, you do not look as though you had wasted away in fruitless
longing. Perchance you have found already another to fill his place?"
"Perhaps I have, madam," was the negligent reply. "I had not known the
town had so much thought to spare for worthless me. I' faith, I am a
bigger man than I thought for. But I must not keep your coach standing
in this blaze of sunshine. Whither are you bound, fair ladies? To some
Arcadian bowers of Paphos, I doubt not, where Orpheus will charm you
with his lyre, and nymphs will cluster round in envy, marvelling at
those charms which not even Aphrodite herself can rival."
"Oh fie! you are a sad flatterer!" cried Lady Romaine, sinking back upon
her cushions and waving her hand. "We are bound to Lady Saltire's
hazard table for an hour's play. Shall we meet you there, my lord?
Afterwards, we take supper at our favourite India house, and then to the
play--Wynstanly's water theatre. He has a new piece--monstrous fine,
those who have seen it vow. They have nymphs, and mermaids, and
tritons, and I know not what beside; and they ask a pretty price for the
boxes, I can tell you. But la! one must go and see what all the world
is talking of. Mind you come to our box if you be there. We shall
expect you, and shall welcome you and any friend you like to bring."
"Even the new Fidus Achates, of whom you spoke just now?" asked Lord
Sandford, with a slightly ironical bow.
"Oh gracious, yes!" cried Lady Romaine, excited by the very idea; "bring
him at once and present him to us. I hope he is a pretty fellow, and
can turn a merry quip and tell a story. You should have heard Beau
Sidney last night! Sakes! I thought I should have split my sides!"
At this juncture the horses became so fidgety with standing in the glare
of the sun that Lord Sandford stepped back, and the coach rolled upon
its way. Lady Romaine waved her scented kerchief, and then routed her
scent-bottle out of her reticule, and turning sharply upon her daughter,
said,--
"Why sit you ever like a stuffed owl, without so much as a word or a
smile? I die for shame every time I take you out. What have I done to
be punished with such a daughter? One would think you to be a
changeling child, if you did not so favour the Adairs. How think you
you will ever get wed, sitting gaping there like a farm-house wench, who
is afraid to open her lips lest she should betray herself by her speech.
You put me to shame, child; I could cry with mortification. What will
the world say, save that I have an idiot for a daughter?"
Geraldine knew not what to answer. As she listened to the fatuous and
stilted talk which was fashionable in her mother's world, with its
senseless mythological allusions and high-flown extravagances, it often
seemed to her that these gay dandies and dames were all playing at
madmen together. Her tongue had never learned the trick of such talk.
It perplexed and disgusted her, seeming trivial and childish when it was
not improper or profane. She saw other young girls who listened
eagerly, and as eagerly reproduced the flowery nonsense amongst
themselves and their admirers; but it seemed impossible to her to do the
like, and she listened in humble silence to her mother's tirades,
wondering whether there were something radically wrong about herself, or
whether the absurdity and folly were in others.
"But, madam," she said gently at the last, "why should I get me a
husband so soon? My grandmother was against very early marriages, and
as she lay dying she often warned me to make very careful choice ere I
gave my hand in troth-plight. She said I must needs be certain of mine
own heart, for that no more wretched life could exist for woman than
when she was tied to a man she could not love or respect."
"Tush, child! Your grandmother was a good woman. I speak no hurt of
her. But she knew less of life than many a girl of eighteen does
nowadays, and her ideas were all topsy-turvy. A woman wants a fine
establishment, her powdered footmen, her negro boys, her dresses, her
jewels, and all the world doing her homage. That is what makes the
pleasure of life. A good husband who can give you all that is what you
want; and what can you ask better than the addresses of Lord Sandford?
I tell you there are half the girls in town would give their ears for
his smiles. He has been extravagant, 'tis true; but the estate can
stand a heavy drain, and he is lucky at cards. He soon finds himself on
his legs again. When he marries he will open his great house in the
Strand, of which he uses but one wing now. With your fortune and his
estates and his luck in gaming, you might be the gayest couple in town.
Look to it, girl, that you show him no airs. I am ashamed to have such
a mannerless wench for a daughter. If you are not more careful, you
will drive all the beaux away; and then, when it is too late, you will
be sorry."
Geraldine had her own ideas on that point. It was her one desire just
now to keep at arm's length all those gay popinjays that fluttered about
her mother. Lord Sandford, it is true, was somewhat removed from the
crowd by a handsomer person, a more distinguished air, and by a greater
force of character. On more than one occasion, when he had put himself
about to gain her ear, she had found that he could drop his mask of gay
affectations, and be both shrewd and entertaining. Some of his
criticisms had even interested and aroused her; but she was very far
from being captivated. She did not know whether it would be possible to
give to such a man either love or reverence, and without either one or
other Geraldine had resolved not to marry, though she knew that it was a
hard task for a daughter to set at naught the wishes of her parents in
these matters. She saw that both father and mother, though for
different reasons, desired her to make a speedy choice, and take up her
position in the fashionable world as a lady of title and importance.
However, she was spared further strictures by the arrival of the
carriage at Lady Saltire's fine house: and shortly she found herself
standing behind her mother's chair at the hazard table, half stunned by
the clatter and clamour of voices, watching with grave, pained eyes the
eager faces of the players, their excited gestures as they reached for
their winnings, their rage and disappointment when the luck went against
them, the greed she saw in all faces--that lust after gold which is of
all vices one of the most hateful and degrading.
Old men and young girls, matrons and aged dames, all crowded round the
tables, their hoops crushing together, their tall powdered heads
sometimes meeting in sharp collision. There were scented dandies, who
regarded this "ladies' play" as the merest bagatelle, and lost or won
their gold pieces with careless grace, thinking of the more serious play
which awaited them later at the club, or at the lodgings of some member
of their own set.
Amongst this motley crowd, gaily apparelled servants moved to and fro,
handing coffee, chocolate, and delicate confectionery, or offering
scented waters for the refreshment of the ladies. The gentlemen
preferred stronger potations, and congregated together, laughing and
jesting. But not infrequently they would be joined by some giddy young
matron, who called them all by their Christian names, passed jests with
them that would not bear repetition in these days, and even toasted some
"pretty fellow," laughing gaily and giddily the while.
There were a few graver spirits congregated together in one small room,
and Geraldine could catch fleeting glimpses of them through an open
door. She knew some of the faces, and that they were politicians and
men of letters; and she thought they were discussing some literary
point, for one held a paper in his hand, and he seemed to be reading
from it to the others.
"I'll warrant they have got a new ode to my Lord of Marlborough yonder,"
spoke a voice at Geraldine's elbow; and turning she saw an elderly man
whose face was known to her from his having been a guest at her father's
house. "They had a great trouble after the victory of Blenheim to find
a poet able to hymn the triumph in periods sufficiently fine; but I
think it was Lord Halifax who discovered Mr. Addison, whose noble lines
set the city wondering. Belike he has broken forth into lyric or epic
praise over the battle of Ramillies, and the marvellous effects it has
had abroad. Shall we go and listen to his periods?"
Geraldine was thankful to get away from the heated atmosphere of the
card-room, and to find herself amongst men and women who had other
fashions of thought and speech. But she was not allowed much peace in
these different surroundings; for she was quickly summoned to her
mother's side, taken from house to house, ever seeing and hearing the
like vapourings, the like fripperies and follies. It was the same thing
at the dinner or supper, where her mother had a whole train of young
bloods in her wake. She gave them the best the house afforded, and
spent her time quizzing the dresses of the other ladies at the
surrounding tables, learning all the gossip about any person whose face
or costume struck her, and drinking in flattery and adulation as a bee
sips honey from the flowers.
In spite of her efforts to please her mother, Geraldine found it
impossible to take any share in this strange sort of gaiety. Her
answers were little more than monosyllables. Often she did not even
understand the allusions or the far-fetched metaphors of those who
addressed her. More often she shrank from their glances and their open
compliments, feeling degraded by both, but powerless to repel them. She
was thankful when at last she found herself by her mother's side in the
box at Wynstanly's; for here she hoped she might find some measure of
peace, since the box would not hold any great number of persons, and her
mother was never satisfied without the attention of four or five
gentlemen at once.