Phantom Fortune Part 55

'And introduce you to the rowdiest people in the city,' cried Mr.

Smithson. 'Lesbia, I adore you. It is the dream of my life to be your husband: but if you are going to spend a winter in Italy with Lady Kirkbank, I renounce my right, I surrender my hope. You will not be the wife of my dreams after that.'

'Do you a.s.sert a right to control my life during our engagement?'

'Some little right; above all, the privilege of choosing your friends.

And that is one reason why I most fervently desire our marriage should not be delayed. You would find it difficult, impossible perhaps, to get out of Lady Kirkbank's claws while you are single; but once my wife, that amiable old person can be made to keep her distance.'

'Lady Kirkbank's claws! What a horrible way in which to speak of a friend. I thought you adored Lady Kirkbank.'

'So I do. We all adore her, but not as a guide for youth. As a specimen of the elderly female of the latter half of the nineteenth century, she is perfect. Such gush, such juvenility, such broad views, such an utter absence of starch; but as a lamp for the footsteps of girlhood--no _there_ we must pause.'

'You are very ungrateful. Do you know that poor Lady Kirkbank has been most strenuous in your behalf?'

'Oh, yes, I know that.'

'And you are not grateful?'

'I intend to be very grateful, so grateful as to entirely satisfy Lady Kirkbank.'

'You are horribly cynical. That reminds me, there was a poor girl whom Lady Kirkbank had under her wing one season--a Miss Trinder, to whom I am told you behaved shamefully.'

'There was a parson's daughter who threw herself at my head in a most audacious way, and who behaved so badly, egged on by Lady Kirkbank, that I had to take refuge in flight. Do you suppose I am the kind of man to marry the first adventurous damsel who takes a fancy to my town house, and thinks it would be a happy hunting ground for a herd of brothers and sisters? Miss Trinder was shocking bad style, and her designs were transparent from the very beginning! I let her flirt as much as she liked; and when she began to be seriously sentimental I took wing for the East?'

'Was she pretty?' asked Lesbia, not displeased at this contemptuous summing up of poor Belle Trinder's story.

'If you admire the Flemish type, as ill.u.s.trated by Rubens, she was lovely. A complexion of lilies and roses--cabbage roses, _bien entendu_, which were apt to deepen into peonies after champagne and mayonaise at Ascot or Sandown--a figure--oh--well--a tremendous figure--hair of an auburn that touched perilously on the confines of red--large, serviceable feet, and an appet.i.te--the appet.i.te of a ploughman's daughter reared upon short commons.'

'You are very cruel to a girl who evidently admired you.'

'A fig for her admiration! She wanted to live in my house and spend my money.'

'There goes the gong,' exclaimed Lesbia; 'pray let us go to breakfast.

You are hideously cynical, and I am wofully tired of you.'

And as they strolled back to the house, by lavender walk and rose garden, and across the dewy lawn, Lesbia questioned herself as to whether she was one whit better or more dignified than Isabella Trinder.

She wore her rue with a difference, that was all.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD.'

The return to Arlington Street meant a return to the ceaseless whirl of gaiety. Even at Rood Hall life had been as near an approach to perpetual motion as one could hope for in this world; but the excitement and the hurrying and scampering in Berkshire had a rustic flavour; there were moments that were almost repose, a breathing s.p.a.ce between the blue river and the blue sky, in a world that seemed made of green fields and hanging woods, the plashing of waters, and the song of the lark. But in London the very atmosphere was charged with hurry and agitation; the freshness was gone from the verdure of the parks; the glory of the rhododendrons had faded; the Green Park below Lady Kirkbank's mansion was baked and rusty; the towers of the Houses of Parliament yonder were dimly seen in a mist of heat. London air tasted of smoke and dust, vibrated with the incessant roll of carriages, and the trampling of mult.i.tudinous feet.

There are women of rank who can take the London season quietly, and live their own lives in the midst of the whirl and the riot--women for whom that squirrel-like circulation round and round the fashionable wheel has no charm--women who only receive people they like, only go into society that is congenial. But Lady Kirkbank was not one of these. The advance of age made her only more keen in the pursuit of pleasure. She would have abandoned herself to despair had the gla.s.s over the mantelpiece in her boudoir ceased to be choked and littered with cards--had her book of engagements shown a blank page. Happily there were plenty of people--if not all of them the best people--who wanted Sir George and Lady Kirkbank at their parties. The gentleman was sporting and harmless, the lady was good-natured, and just sufficiently eccentric to be amusing without degenerating into a bore. And this year she was asked almost everywhere, for the sake of the beauty who went under her wing. Lesbia had been as a pearl of price to her chaperon, from a social point of view; and now that she was engaged to Horace Smithson she was likely to be even more valuable.

Mr. Smithson had promised Lady Kirkbank, sportively as it were, and upon the impulse of the moment, as he would have offered to wager a dozen of gloves, that were he so happy as to win her _protegee's_ hand he would find her an investment for, say, a thousand, which would bring her in twenty per cent.; nay, more, he would also find the thousand, which would have been the initial difficulty on poor Georgie's part. But this little matter was in Georgie's mind a detail, compared with the advantages to accrue to her indirectly from Lesbia's union with one of the richest men in London.

Lady Kirkbank had brought about many good matches, and had been too often rewarded with base ingrat.i.tude upon the part of her _protegees_, after marriage; but there was a touch of Arcady in the good soul's nature, and she was always trustful. She told herself that Lesbia would not be ungrateful, would not basely kick down the ladder by which she had mounted to heights empyrean, would not cruelly shelve the friend who had pioneered her to high fortune. She counted upon making the house in Park Lane as her own house, upon being the prime mover of all Lesbia's hospitalities, the supervisor of her visiting list, the shadow behind the throne.

There were b.a.l.l.s and parties nightly, dinners, luncheons, garden-parties; and yet there was a sense of waning in the glory of the world--everybody felt that the f.a.g-end of the season was approaching.

All the really great entertainments were over--the Cabinet dinners, the Reception at the Foreign Office, the last of the State b.a.l.l.s and concerts. Some of the best people had already left town; and senators were beginning to complain that they saw no prospect of early deliverance. There was Goodwood still to look forward to; and after Goodwood the Deluge--or rather Cowes Regatta, about which Lady Kirkbank's set were already talking.

Lady Lesbia was to be at Cowes for the Regatta week. That was a settled thing. Mr. Smithson's schooner-yacht, the Cayman, was to be her hotel.

It was to be Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia's yacht for the nonce; and Mr. Smithson was to live on sh.o.r.e at his villa, and at that aristocratic club to which, by Maulevrier's influence, and on the score of his approaching marriage with an earl's daughter, he had been just selected.

He would be only Lady Kirkbank's visitor on board the Cayman. The severe etiquette of the situation would therefore not be infringed; and yet Mr.

Smithson would have the happiness of seeing his betrothed sole and sovereign mistress of his yacht, and of spending the long summer days at her feet. Even to Lady Lesbia this idea of the yacht was not without its charm. She had never been on board such a yacht as the Cayman; she was a good sailor, as testified by many an excursion, in hired sailing boats, at Tynemouth, and St. Bees; and she knew that she would be the queen of the hour. She accepted Mr. Smithson's invitation for the Cowes week more graciously than she was wont to receive his attentions, and was pleased to say that the whole thing would be rather enjoyable.

'It will be simple enchantment,' exclaimed the more enthusiastic Georgie Kirkbank. 'There is nothing so rapturous as life on board a yacht; there is a flavour of adventure, a _sansgene_, a--in short everything in the world that I like. I shall wear my cotton frocks, and give myself up to enjoyment, lie on the deck and look up at the blue sky, too deliciously idle even to read the last horrid thing of Zola's.'

But the Cowes Regatta was nearly three weeks ahead; and in the meantime there was Goodwood, and the ravelled threads of the London season had to be wound up. And by this time it was known everywhere that the affair between Mr. Smithson and Maulevrier's sister was really on. 'It's as settled a business as the entries and bets for next year's Derby,' said one lounger to another in the smoking-room of the Haute Gomme. 'Play or pay, don't you know.'

Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had both written to Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia writing somewhat coldly, very briefly, and in a half defiant tone, to the effect that she had accepted Mr. Smithson's offer, and that she hoped her grandmother would be pleased with a match which everybody supposed to be extremely advantageous. She was going to Grasmere immediately after the Cowes week to see her dear grandmother, and to be a.s.sured of her approval. In the meanwhile she was awfully busy; there were callers driving up to the door at that very moment, and her brain was racked by the apprehension that she might not get her new gown in time for the Bachelor's Ball, which was to be quite one of the nicest things of the year, so dearest grandmother must excuse a hurried letter, etc., etc., etc.

Georgie Kirkbank was more effusive, more lengthy. She expatiated upon the stupendous alliance which her sweetest Lesbia was about to make; and took credit to herself for having guided Lesbia's footsteps in the right way.

'Smithson is a most difficult person,' she wrote. 'The least error of taste on your dear girl's part would have _froissed_ him. Men with that immense wealth are always suspicious, ready to imagine mercenary motives, on their guard against being trapped. But Lesbia had _me_ at her back, and she managed him perfectly. He is positively her slave; and you will be able to twist him round your little finger in the matter of settlements. You may do what you like with him, for the ground has been thoroughly prepared by _me_.'

Lady Maulevrier's reply was not enthusiastic. She had no doubt Mr.

Smithson was a very good match, according to the modern estimate of matrimonial alliances, in which money seemed to be the Alpha and Omega.

But she had cherished views of another kind. She had hoped to see her dear granddaughter wear one of those n.o.ble and historic names which are a badge of distinction for all time. She had hoped to see her enter one of those grand old families which are a kind of royalty. And that Lesbia should marry a man whose sole distinction consisted of an immense fortune ama.s.sed heaven knows how, was a terrible blow to her pride.

'But it is not the first,' wrote Lady Maulevrier. 'My pride has received crushing blows in days past, and I ought to be humbled to the dust. But there is a stubborn resistance in some natures which stands firm against every shock. You and Lesbia will both be surprised to hear that Mary, from whom I expected so little, has made a really great match. She was married yesterday afternoon in my morning room, by special licence, to the Earl of Hartfield, the lover of her choice, whom we at Fellside have all known as plain John Hammond. He is an admirable young man, and sure to make a great figure in the world, as no doubt you know better than I do, for you are in the way of hearing all about him. His courtship of Mary is quite an idyll; and the happy issue of this romantic love-affair has cheered and comforted me more than anything that has happened since Lesbia left me.'

This letter, written in Fraulein's niggling little hand, Lady Kirkbank handed to Lesbia, who read it through in silence; but when she came to that part of the letter which told of her sister's marriage, her cheek grew ashy pale, her brow contracted, and she started to her feet and stared at Lady Kirkbank with wild, dilated eyes, as if she had been stung by an adder.

'A strange mystification, wasn't it?' said Lady Kirkbank, almost frightened at the awful look in Lesbia's face, which was even worse than Belle Trinder's expression when she read the announcement of Mr.

Smithson's flight.

'Strange mystification! It was base treachery--a vile and wicked lie!'

cried Lesbia, furiously. 'What right had he to come to us under false colours, to pretend to be poor, a n.o.body--with only the vaguest hope of making a decent position in the future?--and to offer himself under such impossible conditions to a girl brought up as I had been--a girl educated by one of the proudest and most ambitious of women--to force me to renounce everything except him? How could he suppose that any girl, so placed, could decide in his favour? If he had loved me he would have told me the truth--he would not have made it impossible for me to accept him.'

'I believe he is a very high flown young man,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly; 'he was never in _my_ set, you know, dear. And I suppose he had some old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry _anybody_, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a mere fluke she becomes a countess.'

Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks. She was pacing the room like a tigress, her delicate cambric handkerchief grasped between her two hands, and torn and rent by the convulsive action of her fingers. She could have thrown herself from the balcony on to the spikes of the area railings, she could have dashed herself against yonder big plate-gla.s.s window looking towards the Green Park, like a bird which shatters his little life against the gla.s.s barrier which he mistakes for the open sky. She could have flung herself down on the floor and grovelled, and torn her hair--she could have done anything mad, wicked, desperate, in the wild rage of this moment.

'Loved me!' she exclaimed; 'he never loved me. If he had he would have told me the truth. What, when I was in his arms, my head upon his breast, my whole being surrendered to him, adoring him, what more could he want? He must have known that this meant real love. And why should he put it upon me to fight so hard a fight--to brave my grandmother's anger--to be cursed by her--to face poverty for his sake? I never professed to be a heroine. He knew that I was a woman, with all a woman's weakness, a woman's fear of trial and difficulty in the future.

It was a cowardly thing to use me so.'

'It was,' said Lady Kirkbank, in the same soothing tone; 'but if you liked this Hammond-Hartfield creature--a little in those old days, I know you have outlived that liking long ago.'

'Of course; but it is a hard thing to know one has been fooled, cheated, weighed in the balance and found wanting,' said Lesbia, scornfully.

She was taming down a little by this time, ashamed of that outbreak of violent pa.s.sion, feeling that she had revealed too much to Lady Kirkbank.

'It was a caddish thing to do,' said Georgie; 'and this Hartfield is just what I always thought him--an insufferable prig. However, my sweetest girl, there is really nothing to lament in the matter. Your sister has made a good alliance, which will score high in your favour by-and-by, and you are going to marry a man who is three times as rich as Lord Hartfield.'