Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories Part 18

"Marked?"

"Yes, marked! Why do you repeat it in that tone? If they _were_ marked, there is nothing to be ridiculed that I see. They were very marked, indeed, especially for him; he's such an unimpressible, never-show-anything man. I wonder you did not notice it!"

"My dear mother!" said Carruthers, a little impatiently, brushing up the Angora cat's ruff the wrong way with his cane, "do you suppose I pa.s.s my evenings noticing the attentions other men may see fit to pay to young ladies?"

"Well--don't be impatient. You never used to be," said Lady Marabout.

"If you were in my place just for a night or two, or any other chaperone's, you'd be more full of pity. But people never _will_ sympathize with anything that doesn't touch themselves. The only chords that strike the key-note in anybody is the chord that sounds 'self;' and that is the reason why the world is as full of crash and tumult as Beethoven's 'Storm.'"

"Quite right, my dear mother!"

"Of course it's quite right. I always think you have a great deal of sympathy for a man, Philip, even for people you don't harmonize with--(you could sympathize with that child Flora, yesterday, in her rapturous delight at seeing that Coccoloba Uvifera in the Patchouli conservatory, because it reminded her of her West Indian home, and you care nothing whatever about flowers, nor yet about the West Indies, I should suppose)--but you never will sympathize with me. You know how many disappointments and grievances and vexations of every kind I have had the last ten, twenty, ay, thirty, forty seasons--ever since I had to chaperone your aunt Eleanore, almost as soon as I was married, and was worried, more than anybody ever _was_ worried, by her coquetteries and her inconsistencies and her vacillations--so badly as she married, too, at the last! Those flirting beauties so often do; they throw away a hundred admirable chances and put up with a wretched _dernier resort_;--let a thousand salmon break away from the line out of their carelessness, and end by being glad to land a little minnow. I don't know when I _haven't_ been worried by chaperoning. Flora Montolieu is a great anxiety, a great difficulty, little detrimental that she is!"

"Detrimental! What an odd word you choose for her."

"I don't choose it for her; she _is_ it," returned Lady Marabout, decidedly.

"How so?"

"How so! Why, my dear Philip, I told you the very first day she came.

How so! when she is John Montolieu's daughter, when she has no birth to speak of, and not a farthing to her fortune."

"If she were Jack Ketch's daughter, you could not speak much worse. Her high-breeding might do credit to a Palace; I only wish one found it in all Palaces! and I never knew you before measure people by their money."

"My dear Philip, no more I do. I can't bear you when you speak in that tone; it's so hard and sarcastic, and unlike you. _I_ don't know what you mean either. I should have thought a man of the world like yourself knew well enough what I intend when I say Flora is a detrimental. She has a sweet temper, very clever, very lively, very charming, as any one knows by the number of men that crowd about her, but a detrimental she is----"

"Poor little heart!" muttered Carruthers in his beard, too low for his mother to hear.

"--And yet I am quite positive that if she herself act judiciously, and it is well managed for her, Goodwood may be won before the season is over," concluded Lady Marabout.

Carruthers, not feeling much interest, it is presumed, in the exclusively feminine pursuit of match-making, returned no answer, but played with Bijou's silver bells, and twisted his own tawny moustaches.

"I am quite positive it _may be_, if properly managed," reiterated Lady Marabout. "You might second me a little, Philip."

"_I?_ Good Heavens! my dear mother, what are you thinking of? I would sooner turn torreador, and throw la.s.sos over bulls at Madrid, than help you to fling nuptial cables over poor devils in Belgravia. Twenty to one? I'm going to the Yard to look at a bay filly of Cope Fielden's, and then on to a mess-luncheon of the Bays."

"Must you go?" said his mother, looking lovingly on him. "You look tired, Philip. Don't you feel well?"

"Perfectly; but Cambridge had us out over those confounded Wormwood Scrubs this morning, and three hours in this June sun, in our harness, makes one swear. If it were a sharp brush, it would put life into one; as it is, it only inspires one with an intense suffering from boredom, and an intense desire for hock and seltzer."

"I am very glad you haven't a sharp brush, as you call it, for all that," said Lady Marabout. "It might be very pleasant to you, Philip, but it wouldn't be quite so much so to me. I wish you would stay to luncheon."

"Not to-day, thanks; I have so many engagements."

"You have been very good in coming to see me this season--even better than usual. It _is_ very good of you, with all your amus.e.m.e.nts and distractions. You have given me a great many days this month," said Lady Marabout, gratefully. "Anne Hautton sees nothing of Hautton, she says, except at a distance in Pall-Mall or the Park, all the season through.

Fancy if I saw no more of you! Do you know, Philip, I am almost reconciled to your never marrying. I have never seen anybody I should like at all for you, unless you had chosen Cecil Ormsby--Cecil Cheveley I mean; and I am sure I should be very jealous of your wife if you had one. I couldn't help it!"

"Rest tranquil, my dear mother; you will never be put to the test!" said Carruthers, with a laugh, as he bid her good morning.

"Perhaps it _is_ best he shouldn't marry: I begin to think so," mused Lady Marabout, as the door closed on him. "I used to wish it very much for some things. He is the last of his name, and it seems a pity; there ought to be an heir for Deepdene; but still marriage _is_ such a lottery (he is right enough there, though I don't admit it to him: it's a tombola where there is one prize to a million of blanks; one can't help seeing that, though, on principle, I never allow it to him or any of his men), and if Philip had any woman who didn't appreciate him, or didn't understand him, or didn't make him happy, how wretched _I_ should be! I have often pictured Philip's wife to myself, I have often idealized the sort of woman I should like to see him marry, but it's very improbable I shall ever meet my ideal realized; one never does!

And, after all, whenever I have fancied, years ago, he _might_ be falling in love, I have always felt a horrible dread lest she shouldn't be worthy of him--a jealous fear of her that I could not conquer. It's much better as it is; there is no woman good enough for him."

With which compliment to Carruthers at her s.e.x's expense Lady Marabout returned to weaving her pet projected toils for the ensnaring of Goodwood, for whom also, if asked, I dare say the d.u.c.h.ess of Doncaster would have averred on _her_ part, looking through _her_ maternal Claude gla.s.ses, no woman was good enough either. When ladies have daughters to marry, men always present to their imaginations a battalion of worthless, decalogue-smashing, utterly unreliable individuals, amongst whom there is not one fit to be trusted or fit to be chosen; but when their sons are the candidates for the holy bond, they view all women through the same foggy and non-embellishing medium, which, if it does not speak very much for their unprejudiced discernment, at least speaks to the oft-disputed fact of the equality of merit in the s.e.xes, and would make it appear that, in vulgar parlance, there must be six of the one and half a dozen of the other.

"Flora, soft and careless, and rebellious as she looks, _is_ ambitious, and has set her heart on winning Goodwood, I do believe, as much as ever poor Valencia did. True, she takes a different plan of action, as Philip would call it, and treats him with gay nonchalante indifference, which certainly seems to pique him more than ever my poor niece's beauty and quiet deference to his opinions did; but that is because she reads him better, and knows more cleverly how to rouse him. She has set her heart on winning Goodwood, I am certain, ambitious as it seems. How eagerly she looked out for the Blues yesterday at that Hyde Park inspection--though I am sure Goodwood does not look half so handsome as Philip does in harness, as they call it; Philip is so much the finer man! I will just sound her to-day--or to-night as we come back from the opera," thought Lady Marabout, one morning.

Things were moving to the very best of her expectations. Learning experience from manifold failures, Lady Marabout had laid her plans this time with a dexterity that defied discomfiture: seconded by both the parties primarily necessary to the accomplishment of her manoeuvres, with only a little outer-world opposition to give it piquancy and excitement, she felt that she might defy the fates to checkmate her here. This should be her Marathon and Lemnos, which, simply reverted to, should be sufficient to secure her immunity from the attacks of any feminine Xantippus who should try to rake up her failures and tarnish her glory. To win Goodwood with a n.o.body's daughter would be a feat as wonderful in its way as for Miltiades to have pa.s.sed "in a single day and with a north wind," as Oracle exacted, to the conquest of the Pelasgian Isles; and Lady Marabout longed to do it, as you, my good sir, may have longed in your day to take a king in check with your only available p.a.w.n, or win one of the ribands of the turf with a little filly that seemed to general judges scarcely calculated to be in the first flight at the Chester Consolation Scramble.

Things were beautifully in train; it even began to dawn on the perceptions of the Hauttons, usually very slow to open to anything revolutionary and unwelcome. Her Grace of Doncaster, a large, lethargic, somnolent dowager, rarely awake to anything but the interests and restoration of the old ultra-Tory party in a Utopia always dreamed of and never realized, like many other Utopias political and poetical, public and personal, had turned her eyes on Flora Montolieu, and asked her son the question inevitable, "_Who_ is she?" to which Goodwood had replied with a devil-may-care recklessness and a headlong indefiniteness which grated on her Grace's ears, and imparted her no information whatever: "One of Lady Tattersall's yearlings, and the most charming creature _I_ ever met. You know that? Why did you ask me, then? You know all I do, and all I care to do!"--a remark that made the d.u.c.h.ess wish her very dear and personal friend, Lady Marabout, were comfortably and snugly interred in the mausoleum of Fern Ditton, rather than alive in the flesh in Belgravia, chaperoning young ladies whom n.o.body knew, and who were not to be found in any of Sir E. Burke's triad of volumes.

Belgravia, and her sister Mayfair, wondered at it, and talked over it, raked up the parental Montolieu lineage mercilessly, and found out, from the Bishop of Bonviveur and Sauceblanche, that the uncle on the distaff side had been only a Tug at Eton, and had lived and died at Fern Ditton a perpetual curate and nothing else--not even a dean, not even a rector!

Goodwood _couldn't_ be serious, settled the coteries. But the more hints, innuendoes, questions, and adroitly concealed but simply suggested animadversion Lady Marabout received, the greater was her glory, the warmer her complacency, when she saw her Little Montolieu, who was not little at all, leading, as she undoubtedly did lead, the most desired eligible of the day captive in her chains, sent bouquets by him, begged for waltzes by him, followed by him at the Ride, riveting his lorgnon at the Opera, monopolizing his attention--though, clever little intriguer, she knew too well how to pique him ever to let him monopolize hers.

"She certainly makes play, as Philip would call it, admirably with Goodwood," said Lady Marabout, admiringly, at a morning party, stirring a cup of Orange Pekoe, yet with a certain irrepressible feeling that she should almost prefer so very young a girl not to be quite so adroit a schemer at seventeen. "That indifference and nonchalance is the very thing to pique and retain such a courted fastidious creature as Goodwood; and she knows it, too. Now a clumsy casual observer might even fancy that she liked some others--even you, Philip, for instance--much better; she talks to you much more, appeals to you twice as often, positively teases you to stop and lunch or come to dinner here, and really told you the other night at the Opera she missed you when you didn't come in the morning; but to anybody who knows anything of the world, it is easy enough to see which way her inclinations (yes, I _do_ hope it is inclination as well as ambition--I am not one of those who advocate pure _mariages de convenance_; I don't think them right, indeed, though they are undoubtedly very expedient sometimes) turn. I do not think _anybody_ ever could prove me to have erred in my quick-sightedness in those affairs. I may have been occasionally mistaken in other things, or been the victim of adverse and unforeseen circ.u.mstances which were beyond my control, and betrayed me; but I know no one can read a girl's heart more quickly and surely than I, or a man's either, for that matter."

"Oh, we all know you are a clairvoyante in heart episodes, my dear mother; they are the one business of your life!" smiled Carruthers, setting down his ice, and lounging across the lawn to a group of cedars, where Flora Montolieu stood playing at croquet, and who, like a scheming adventuress, as she was, immediately verified Lady Marabout's words, and piqued Goodwood a outrance by avowing herself tired of the game, and entering with animated verve into the prophecies for Ascot with Carruthers, whose bay filly Sunbeam, sister to Wild-Falcon, was entered to run for the Queen's Cup.

"What an odd smile that was of Philip's," thought Lady Marabout, left to herself and her Orange Pekoe. "He has been very intimate with Goodwood ever since they joined the Blues, cornets together, three-and-twenty years ago; surely he can't have heard him drop anything that would make him fancy he was _not serious_?"

An idle fear, which Lady Marabout dismissed contemptuously from her mind when she saw how entirely Goodwood--in defiance of the Hauttons' sneer, the drowsy d.u.c.h.ess's unconcealed frown, all the comments sure to be excited in feminine minds, and all the chaff likely to be elicited from masculine lips at the mess-table, and in the U. S., and in the Guards'

box before the curtain went up for the ballet--vowed himself to the service of the little detrimental throughout that morning party, and spoke a temporary adieu, whose tenderness, if she did not exactly catch, Lady Marabout could at least construe, as he pulled up the tiger-skin over Flora's dainty dress, before the Marabout carriage rolled down the Fulham Road to town. At which tenderness of farewell Carruthers--steeled to all such weaknesses himself--gave a disdainful glance and a contemptuous twist of his moustaches, as he stood by the door talking to his mother.

"You too, Phil?" said Goodwood, with a laugh, as the carriage rolled away.

Carruthers stared at him haughtily, as he will stare at his best friends if they touch his private concerns more nearly than he likes; a stare which said disdainfully, "I don't understand you," and thereby told the only lie to which Carruthers ever stooped in the whole course of his existence.

Goodwood laughed again.

"If you poach on my manor _here_, I shall kill you Phil; so _gare a vous_!"

"You are in an enigmatical mood to-day! I can't say I see much wit in your riddles," said Carruthers, with his grandest and most contemptuous air, as he lit his Havana.

"Confound that fellow! I'd rather have had any other man in London for a rival! Twenty and more years ago how he cut me out with that handsome Virginie Peauderose, that we were both such mad boys after in Paris.

However, it will be odd if _I_ can't win the day here. A Goodwood rejected--pooh! There isn't a woman in England that would do it!"

thought Goodwood, as he drove down the Fulham Road.

"'_His_ manor!' Who's told him it's his? And if it be, what is that to me?" thought Carruthers, as he got into his tilbury. "Philip, _you_'re not a fool, like the rest of them, I hope? You've not forsworn yourself surely? Pshaw!--nonsense!--impossible!"

"Certainly she _has_ something very charming about her. If I were a man I don't think I could resist her," thought Lady Marabout, as she sat in her box in the grand tier, tenth from the Queen's, moving her fan slowly, lifting her lorgnon now and then, listening vaguely to the music of the second act of the "Barbiere," for probably about the two hundredth time in her life, and looking at Flora Moutolieu, sitting opposite to her.

"The women are eternally asking me who she is, I don't care a hang _who_, but she's the prettiest thing in London," said Fulke Nugent, which was the warmest praise that any living man about town remembered to have heard fall from his lips, which limited themselves religiously to one legitimate laudation, which is a superlative nowadays, though Mr.

Lindley Murray, if alive, wouldn't, perhaps, receive or recognize it as such: "Not bad-looking."

"It isn't _who_ a woman is, it's _what_ she is, that's the question, I take it," said Goodwood, as he left the Guards' box to visit the Marabout.

"By George!" laughed Nugent to Carruthers, "Goodey must be serious, eh, Phil? He don't care a b.u.t.ton for little Bibi; he don't care even for Zerlina. When the ballet begins, I verily believe he's thinking less of the women before him than of the woman who has left the house; and if a fellow can give more ominous signs of being 'serious,' as the women phrase it, I don't know 'em, do you?"

"I don't know much about that sort of thing at all!" muttered Carruthers, as he went out to follow Goodwood to the Marabout box.

That is an old, old story, that of the fair Emily stirring feud between Palamon and Arcite. It has been acted out many a time since Beaumont and Fletcher lived and wrote their twin-thoughts and won their twin laurels; but the bars that shut the kinsmen in their prison-walls, the ivy-leaves that filled in the rents of their prison-stones, were not more entirely and blissfully innocent of the feud going on within, and the battle foaming near them, than the calm, complacent soul of Lady Marabout was of the rivalry going on close beside her for the sake of little Montolieu.