Piccadilly Part 12

"Look, my dear," said Lady Pimlico to Lady

Mundane, "there are the two Frenchwomen," and she directed universal attention to the last importations from the Continent, Madame la Princesse de Biaisee a la Queue, and La Baronne de Colte, whose fame had preceded them from Paris, and who created such a sensation that the general hum on the stairs increased, and the whole society collected there audibly criticised the new-comers. "Why, positively the tall one has got her hair done _en papillon_--I thought it had gone out--I suppose her face won't bear being _coiffe a la grecque_; and the other is outrageously painted." This remark was made so loud that both ladies looked up, but failed to check the running fire of comments which their dress and appearance suggested.

"They say the Princess makes up for her want of looks by her legs,"

drawled out Larkington to Lady Veriphast; "but I am afraid we shall not have an opportunity of seeing them to-night, it is so crowded."

"They are not worth looking at; I saw them at a fancy ball in Paris,"

said Lady Veriphast, "and I a.s.sure you you would be disappointed. By the way, have you the least notion who the Bodwinkles are?"

"Not I," replied Larkington. "I did not come here to make their acquaintance, nor I hope did you."

I think Mrs Bodwinkle heard the speech--for it is customary in good society to make remarks about one's neighbours in rather a loud tone--as she coloured a little when she was pointed out to Larkington by the fat butler as the person to whom he was expected to bow. Poor woman! she probably thought he would be embarra.s.sed when he found out his proximity; but Larkington is above any such weakness, and sauntered on after Lady Veriphast, with whom he has _affiched_ himself for the last few weeks, to the great comfort of Veriphast, who has long been desirous of making his wife share the scandal which has attached to his name for some time past.

"And it is for this, my dear Mrs Bodwinkle," I thought, "that you have given up your villa at Clapham, and the friends that respectfully worshipped at the Bodwinkle shrine, who gazed upon you with reverend upturned eyes, instead of irreverent upturned noses, like the present company! Do you think, when you have blazed for a moment and gone out like a blue-light, that you will know how to find your way in the dark back to Clapham, or that you will be able to collect your old congregation? Will not new Bodwinkles have arisen above the suburban horizon, or will the departed glories of your rapid but bright pa.s.sage across the firmament of fashion always secure you an audience who will gladly listen to your wonderful experiences in the great world, to whom you will recount the devotion manifested towards you by certain n.o.blemen, and the slights you received at the hands of certain n.o.blewomen, and who will stare when you describe the Broadhem-Spiffy combination which sent you up like a rocket, and the sudden collapse of that combination which will a.s.suredly bring you down like a stick? Never mind, Mrs B.; whatever happens, nothing short of a fire can deprive you of the basket of fashionable cards which will be left upon you during the season, and which, carefully treasured with your dinner _menus_, will be a lasting evidence of the reality of that social triumph which might otherwise seem like the 'baseless fabric of a dream.'"

And this consideration reminds me that I possess middle-cla.s.s readers, who may positively doubt the truth of the picture which I am endeavouring to give them of the society in which Mrs Bodwinkle now found herself. They will not have the advantage of hearing from the lips of that good lady these wonderful traits of the manners and customs of this, to them, mysterious cla.s.s. And therefore they will fail to see any particular merit in what they may suppose to be merely a flippant delineation of a purely ideal state of society. My dear readers, I should be no more competent to invent a state of society so eccentric in its habits and const.i.tution as this of London cream, than I should be to write an account of lion-hunting like the late lamented Jules Gerard.

That was a real strain upon the imaginative and constructive faculties; I aspire to no such talent, but simply contemplate hyperbolically a certain phase of contemporary civilisation. If, by way of a little pastime, I put Mayfair into a fancy dress, it only appears in its true colours and becomes fancy-fair, with a great deal of show and very little substance; so I dress it up as it pleases me, but I invent nothing. I confine myself strictly to the stage properties. You in the pit or gallery may be too far off to see, but I a.s.sure you I have avoided anything beyond the exaggeration permissible in a caricature. As I know your imitative faculties, dear middle cla.s.ses, I can conscientiously a.s.sure you that you may take 'Piccadilly' as a guide upon which to frame your own society. Take the most successful costermonger of the neighbourhood and erect him into a Bodwinkle, and fall down upon your knees before the most opulent p.a.w.nbroker of your parish; and you will feel that you are only performing, on a humble scale, the same act of worship as those above you.

Lady Jane Helter, followed by Wild Harrie, came up while I was thus musing. "So, Lord Frank," she said, "you are not to be congratulated after all? I suppose you heard of our dinner at the Whitechapels'? We all thought your conduct very incomprehensible. I a.s.sure you Lady Broadhem seemed as much in the dark as the rest of us."

"And you want to be enlightened?" said I. "Well, it has been a social _canard_ throughout, which I did not at first think worth contradicting.

There must be a certain number every season."

"I am sure we want them more than ever now," said Wild Harrie. "Was there ever such an utterly flat season? I only went to two b.a.l.l.s last week, and, as they say at 'the corner,' 'there was positively nothing doing.'"

"It is not the same in every corner," said I; "look opposite," and I pointed out Larkington and Lady Veriphast snugly ensconced in a recess.

"Poor Amy! I am afraid that won't suit her book," said Wild Harrie. "She is really devoted to Lord Larkington. I told her to hedge, but she says she has too much heart. By the way, I want to have a little private conversation with you. Take me to have a cup of tea, or a quadrille, or something"--this in rather a low tone, not for Lady Jane's benefit; and we sidled off through the throng, leaving Lady Jane at the doorway, which, in the absence of her ladyship, does duty as chaperon.

"Do you know, Lord Frank," said my companion, "that it really was very kind of you to get me the invitation you did, and that I can appreciate kindness; can you guess how?"

"By asking me to do something else for you," I said.

"Exactly," she said, laughing; "but this time it will not perhaps be quite so easy. I want you to get me a card for Lady Broadhem's on Thursday week."

"For Lady Broadhem's!" said I, astounded. "How on earth did you come to hear of it? Why, it is a meeting, not a party. A few Christian friends are going to hear the Bishop of the Caribbee Islands describe the state of mission-work in his diocese. You would be bored to death."

"Indeed I should not," said Wild Harrie. "I have a brother in India; and I have heard so much about the heathen. Besides, I want to make Lady Ursula's acquaintance."

"I really don't think," said I, a good deal puzzled, "that you will find it a very congenial atmosphere, but I am sure n.o.body can know Lady Ursula without deriving benefit, so I should feel too glad to be the means of making you acquainted; but Lady Jane will never take you."

"Oh, mamma will; you know her brother was a clergyman. Promise. Don't forget--one for me and one for mamma. Now I must leave you; I quite forgot I was engaged to little Haultort for this dance, and there he is hunting for me everywhere," and she dragged me to the spot where that young gentleman was stroking a fluffy mustache, with an imbecile air.

"Do you call that hunting?" said I; "He must be in chase of ideas."

"Of course he is. Now watch him catch big _idee fixe_," and she placed herself before him. Poor youth! how he coloured and stammered, as a ray of intelligence illumined his countenance! "So that is the way you keep your engagements, Lord Haultort, is it? Well, you have forfeited your dance"--the ray went out--"but you may take me back to Lady Jane." The ray came back again; he was sufficiently experienced to know what that meant, and Lord Haultort disappeared into the next room with his _idee fixe_ on his arm, and I looked the other way half an hour after, when I pa.s.sed the corresponding recess in which Larkington and Lady Veriphast were still sitting, and saw who were there.

"I wonder what that little girl wants to know the Broadhems for?" I ruminated, and for some time I was positively fool enough to continue to wonder.

"I tell you what it is, Goldtip," I overheard Bodwinkle say, "that idea of yours about giving presents is all humbug; we've got the people here, what do you want to give them presents for?"

"In the first place," retorted Spiffy, "they will never come again unless you keep faith with them now, for I have been giving it out specially that no expense was to be spared; and in the second place, as you have got all the presents made up in ribbons, &c., what else are you to do with them? The girls will be terribly disappointed."

Bodwinkle shook his head sulkily, and Spiffy, seeing me, adroitly turned the conversation. "I was talking over the prospects of the approaching election, Frank, with Bodwinkle, and telling him how much you could a.s.sist us with your influence in Shuffleborough; it seems to me that he is likely to be turned out unless your brother-in-law, Sir John Stepton, will come to the rescue. It would be well worth your while, Bodwinkle, to let Lady Broadhem's matter stand over until you have made sure of your seat," said Spiffy, looking significantly at me.

"Oh, certainly," said Bodwinkle, "if you will secure your brother-in-law's adhesion to our plans. You will find me very amenable in that unfortunate affair of Lady Broadhem's. I know what an interest you take in it, and I am sure, for your sake, if not for hers--ahem,"

and Bodwinkle, quite unconscious that he was behaving like a scoundrel, smiled upon me blandly.

"It seems to me," said I, "that, considering what you owe to Lady Broadhem," and I looked round the crowded room, "you ought not to be too hard upon her."

"Ah, well, I must admit that her ladyship and our friend Goldtip here are doing their best to balance the account; but I have made it a principle through life never to be satisfied with anything short of my full money's worth; and I don't even feel now, if you make my election a certainty, that we shall be more than square."

"What are your other principles besides that of getting your full money's worth?" said I, with a sneer, that was lost upon Bodwinkle.

"High Tory," he replied, promptly. "None of your Liberal Conservatives for me this time--that did well enough last election."

"But Stepton is an absolute Radical," said I.

"Exactly: that is why he is so important. You see the fact is--here, Goldtip, explain our little game; it is all his idea, and he can put it better than me."

I knew from the bold defiant way in which Spiffy raised his eyes to mine that his original and unscrupulous genius had conceived a _coup d'etat_ of some kind, so I listened curiously.

"I am going to stand for Shuffleborough, and it is I who want Sir John Stepton's vote and influence," he announced, calmly.

"You!" said I, amazed; "what are you going to stand as? and who is going to pay your expenses?"

"I am going to stand as an extreme Liberal, and Bodwinkle as a regular old Tory. He is going to pay my expenses. We are going to strike out an entirely new line, and have convictions. He can't come the Liberal Conservative this time, as one of the Liberals who is very popular has gone in rather extensively for the Moderate Conservatives. So there is nothing for it but to come forward as an out-and-out Tory, and put me up as a Radical; by these means we hope to floor both the fellows that are trying the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g game. Of course I am not intended to come in--I only split the party."

"But if you stand, one of the others will retire. Look at what has just happened at Westminster."

"Then Bodwinkle starts his wife's cousin Tom--why, he is rich enough to keep all three Liberals in the field to fight him if necessary; and you are pluck to the backbone, aint you, old fellow?" and Spiffy slapped Bodwinkle on the back.

"Perhaps you would like to see our addresses," he went on,--"here they are; I wrote them both. I shall issue mine first, and Bodwinkle's a day or two after."

"May I take them home to read?" I asked.

"Oh, certainly, and frame your own on their model if you like," said Spiffy, laughing; "they'll be the neatest thing out in addresses, I a.s.sure you."

"Mr Goldtip, I wish you would exert yourself, instead of talking politics with Mr B.," said Mrs Bodwinkle, coming up; "there are all sorts of things to arrange, and I am sure I don't know who is to take who down to supper;" and Spiffy was carried away upon special service.

"Good-night, Bodwinkle," said I; "your ball is a great success, but I am an early man, and hot rooms don't suit me. I understand the political situation thoroughly now, and without pledging myself to anything, will see what is to be done."

"Of course, all in the most perfect confidence; it would never do for Stepton to suspect what we were at."

"Oh, it would be absolute ruin. There is just one question I should like to ask, Can you give me your solemn word that in all this you have no other motive but the single one of being of use to your country?"

"Eh!" said Bodwinkle, with his eyes rather wide open.