Contraband Part 16

"We'll have one turn for health in the Park," said Mrs. Lascelles, as the two ladies seated themselves in her open carriage. "You know you're in my charge to-day, Helen; and I mean to bring you out in what your papa calls the 'best possible form.' To-night, dear, I'm determined you shall win all your engagements!"

So her stout and florid coachman, shaving the kerbstone to an inch, turned under the Marble Arch at a liberal twelve miles an hour, which subsided into three before he reached Grosvenor Gate, and so, losing his ident.i.ty in a double column of carriages, brilliant and glittering as his own, commenced the performance of that imposing function--grand, deliberate, and funereal--which is solemnised every lawful day in Hyde Park between six and half-past seven p.m. Barouches, sociables, tax-carts, Victorias, every kind of wheeled conveyance, were wedged three-deep in the road. All the chairs on the footway were occupied, and the path was blocked with walkers to the rails. Mounted policemen, making themselves ubiquitous, pranced about and gesticulated with unusual vehemence. Those on foot ferried pa.s.sengers across the drive at intervals, majestically rebuking for that purpose the horse and his rider, the charioteer, and the foaming, highly-bitted animal he controlled.

It was once said of London by a visitor, I believe, from Dublin, that "you could not see the town for the houses." Here, in this high tide of humanity, you could not see the people for the crowd.

"Not a soul in the Park!" observed Mrs. Lascelles, languidly scanning the myriads that surrounded her.

"I can't think where they get to," said Helen. "n.o.body ever seems to come here that one knows."

But a vivid blush rose to her temples while she spoke. So becoming was its effect, that a young man, leaning against the rails, extricating his intellect for a moment out of vacancy, exclaimed to his companion:

"_Caramba!_ Jack!"--he had once been at Gibraltar for a week, and piqued himself on swearing in Spanish--"_Caramba!_ Jack! what a good-looking girl! Who is she?"

And Jack, never at a loss, detailed her private history forthwith, identifying her as the daughter of a foreign minister, and furnishing his friend with a jaw-breaking German name, impracticable to p.r.o.nounce, even had it been possible to remember. But the origin of this young lady's confusion occupied a position far beyond these pedestrian admirers, and was, indeed, none other than Frank Vanguard, taking the air on a very desirable hack amongst several equestrians of the season, but so part.i.tioned off from Helen by dandies, dowagers, peers, commoners, and servants in livery, to say nothing of an iron railing, that, for all gratification to be obtained from his society, he might as well have been the other side of the Serpentine.

He saw her, though, that was some comfort. So did Mrs. Lascelles, confirming thereby into certainty the suspicions she entertained that Helen cherished a real affection for this captivating dragoon.

"She's a dear girl," thought that quick-sighted lady; "and Jin shall not interfere with her. He's tolerably well off. They might both do worse; and Sir Henry would like it. Home, John!"

So, although Frank sent his hack along as fast as our police-regulations permit, in order to catch a glimpse of his charmer while she left the Park at Albert Gate, he was rewarded only with a back view of Mrs.

Lascelles's carriage, ornamented by a boy and a basket taking a free pa.s.sage to their next destination.

"Never mind," thought the rider. "I can't miss seeing her to-night at Battledore House. We'll put it all right in the tea-room. I _think_ she'll say, 'Yes.' Why shouldn't she? My darling, I'll make you as happy as ever I can."

I wonder if the hack thought his master's caress at this moment was bestowed entirely for his own sake. He shook his dainty head as if he did, rolling his shoulders, and rising into one or two managed gambols, as he bore Frank homewards at a canter.

To meet one's lady-love at an exceedingly smart ball with the desperate intention of proposing to her then and there, ought to be excitement enough, in all conscience, for any one day; but, during the London season, people cram a week's work into twenty-four hours, and Frank had yet a good deal to do before he could find himself in that tea-room at Battledore House, to which he looked forward so longingly, and with the recesses of which his previous experience, I fear, had rendered him unjustifiably familiar.

A protracted mess-dinner to meet an ill.u.s.trious personage must first be gone through. It would be impossible to leave the barracks till that personage gave the signal for breaking up; and although a London ball is the latest of all festive gatherings, Frank, I think, was the only individual present, at an early hour of the morning, who felt anything but regret when the guest, who had thus honoured them, taking a kind and cordial farewell of his entertainers, announced himself ready to depart.

"If I can get there by two," thought the young officer, "I may catch her before she leaves. It's just my luck to have tumbled into this d----d thing, when I wanted to be elsewhere!"

Thus, you see, does one man undervalue privileges which another perhaps esteems the height of human felicity. Of all Thackeray's keen touches, there are none keener than that in which Lord Steyne says, "Everybody wants what they haven't got. 'Gad, I dined with the King yesterday, and we'd boiled mutton and turnips!"

"We're late, Frank," said young Lord Kilgarron. "Jump into my brougham.

It will get us there quicker than a cab. Battledore House, Tom. Drive like blazes!" The last to a smart lad in livery, who obeyed this injunction to the letter, as Lord Kilgarron leaped lightly in after his friend, and banged to the door.

"I _must_ go," added his lordship. "She's my aunt, you know. What's the _use_ of an aunt, Frank? I get very little good out of mine. Now a _grandmother's_ a decent kind of relationship. Mine gave me the very mare we're driving--half-sister to Termagant. She's a rum 'un, I can tell you!"

"A fast one, I see," remarked Frank, with much composure, considering they were now whirling past the lamps at a gallop.

"Is it fast?" demanded his companion, exultingly. "Wouldn't she have won the Garrison Cup at the Curragh last year, as sure as ever she was saddled, only the fools ran the race at a walk, and never began at all till the finish!"

Lord Kilgarron was a thorough Irishman, devoted to sport, reckless of danger, and possessing the knack, indigenous to his countrymen, of hitting off graphic description by a happy blunder.

"She can go," he added, "and she can stay. That mare, sir, would gallop for a week. Faith, an' she's running off now!"

She was, indeed! The Termagant blood, roused by contradiction and an injudicious pull at that side of her mouth which had not been rendered callous in training, rose to boiling pitch. Irritation, resentment, and fear of subsequent punishment, combined to madden her. A frantic rise at her collar, a plunge, a lift of her shapely quarters, that only the strongest of kicking-straps prevented from dissevering the whole connection, and the mare was fairly out of her driver's hands, and swinging down Piccadilly with a brougham and two dandies behind her, almost as fast as she ever swept across the Curragh of Kildare.

"This is too good to last long," observed Frank, as, shaving a lamp-post, they slued across the street, almost into the panels of a stationary cab, causing its driver to swear hideously in the vulgar tone. "But it is the only chance of being in time!"

"We'll pull through, well enough, bar lepping!" answered the other, a touch of the brogue rising under excitement with mellow fluency to his lips. "Ye done it now, by the vestment!" he added, while half-sister to Termagant, cannoning from the broad wheel of an early vegetable waggon, against which she cut her shoulder to the bone, lost her foothold, and fell with a crash on the slippery pavement, bursting every strap and buckle of her harness, smashing into fragments lamps, shafts, and splash-board, to bring the whole carriage, with its contents, atop of her in headlong confusion. "Hurt, Kil?" demanded Frank, rising from the footway, on which he had gone a shooter through the swinging door, over the entire person of his friend.

"Landed on my head!" answered Kilgarron, as esteeming the fact a sufficient a.s.surance of safety. "Where's Tom?"

"Here, my lord," replied that invincible functionary, with a cut on his pate that, to use his master's expression, would have "bothered an Irishman." "I've got your lordship a cab." Tom having indeed hailed one of these peripatetic vehicles while in the act of regaining his feet to secure the mare from destructive struggles by kneeling on her head.

In such a thoroughfare as Piccadilly, a.s.sistance is to be found even at two in the morning. Ere long the mare was again on her legs, at least on three of them. The brougham was being towed, like a dismasted wreck, into port; and the two pa.s.sengers, having obtained clean water and the use of a clothes-brush in a chemist's shop, alighted from their cab at the door of Battledore House, "not a ha'porth the worse," as Kilgarron said, "an' fit to take the floor with the best of them!"

This young n.o.bleman was proud of his dancing, pluming himself especially on a strict attention to time, which he called "humouring the tune."

But these untoward incidents befalling guests who were too late at any rate, brought their arrival to a period when most others were departing, and the ball seemed nearly over. Pa.s.sing hastily through the crowd that always cl.u.s.ters about an awning, and hurrying up the cloth-covered steps with unseemly precipitancy, Frank became aware of his ill-luck when he heard the fatal announcement, "Lady Sycamore's carriage stops the way!

Lady Sycamore coming out!"

Lady Sycamore was Helen's aunt and occasional chaperon. The Miss Planes, her ladyship's daughters, without pretension to beauty, were large, healthy, fresh-looking girls, of the dairy-maid style. Their mamma, wisely resolving that, whatever charms they did possess should be deteriorated as little as possible by bad air and want of sleep, invariably withdrew her charges from ball, drum, or concert at the earliest hour she could gather them under her wing.

Frank, entering the cloak-room to leave his paletot, found himself face to face with Helen coming into the hall.

For the first hour or two that night, Miss Hallaton had reaped a very fair harvest of admiration. Those who arrived later, and to whom she was pointed out as a beauty of the season, opined she was too pale, wanted freshness, brightness, and wore a very saddened expression for so young a girl. Lord Jericho, who danced his first quadrille with her, thought Miss Hallaton, without exception, the pleasantest company he ever came across, and held forth next day at luncheon in praise of her beauty, wit, manners, originality, and good nature, till his sisters, the ladies Ruth and Rebecca Jordan, hated the very sound of her name. Whereas, Vere Vacuous (of the Foreign Office, with an inordinate opinion of the last-named individual), who took her to tea, considered Miss Hallaton "cla.s.sical, perhaps--statuesque rather. All very well as long as she don't open her mouth; but dull, he should say; probably quite uneducated. Provincial; yes, that described her, he thought. Great want of animation, and much too pale!"

This last accusation he must have retracted could he have seen the blush that reddened Helen's cheek, when, coming suddenly out of the cloak-room on the person she had been expecting the whole evening, she almost b.u.t.ted her head into the tie of his neckcloth ere she could start back and take him calmly by the hand.

Frank never saw it. How should he? Neither of these young people quite understood all that was going on in the other's heart; and yet both were prepared to take the fatal plunge, and pa.s.s the rest of their lives together in the same element. Captain Vanguard, wonderful to relate, felt almost shy, and found himself strangely un.o.bservant of everything but a beating in his temples, and a queer sensation about his diaphragm.

Of course he would have denied it, but his own colour rose higher than usual, while Lady Sycamore, a portly person with vast scope for the laces, jewels, and other ornaments which decorated her before and behind, accosted him with exceeding graciousness, wondering volubly why he came so late? Then he had to exchange friendly greetings with the Miss Planes, each of whom considered him an eligible partner for a waltz, a cotillion, or a lifetime. At the last moment too, Goldthred, who had a happy knack of committing ill-timed civilities, and such little social blunders, coming down-stairs unoccupied, pounced on Miss Hallaton to put her into the carriage, thinking, no doubt, he was fulfilling his duty to everybody's satisfaction, and Frank was forced to offer his arm to Lady Sycamore.

It was too provoking! Poor Helen could have cried; but, goaded to desperation, the moment Goldthred released her by the carriage-door, she contrived to drop her fan with so much energy, that it fell clattering on the steps at Frank Vanguard's feet.

He accepted the opportunity readily enough, and while he put it into her hand, their heads came very near together, under the inspection only of an approving linkman--more than half drunk.

"Did you get my note?" she whispered, quick as lightning.

"No."

"It's waiting for you. Thanks! Captain Vanguard. Good-night," and disappearing in the gloomy vaults of the family coach, she rolled off through the darkness, leaving him standing on the steps at Battledore House,

"With a ghost-seer's look when the ghost disappears."

"I hope your honour's enjoyed your ball," said the linkman.

Frank started. He had never been up-stairs, nor even made his bow to Lady Shuttlec.o.c.k. What had he to do with the ball?

Nevertheless, he put his hand in his pocket and gave the linkman half-a-crown.

CHAPTER XVI.

"A FACER."