Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Horace Smithson turned pale as death, but if he was angry, he gave no utterance to his angry feelings. He only asked if Lady Lesbia’s answer was final — and on being told that it was so, he dismissed the subject in the easiest manner, and with a gentlemanlike placidity which very much astonished the lady.

  ‘You say that you regard me as your friend,’ he said. ‘Do not withdraw that privilege from me because I have asked for a higher place in your esteem. Forget all I have said this morning. Be assured I shall never offend you by repeating it.’

  ‘You are more than good,’ murmured Lesbia, who had expected a wild outbreak of despair or fury, rather than this friendly calm.

  ‘I hope that you and Lady Kirkbank will go and hear Madame Metzikoff this afternoon,’ pursued Mr. Smithson, returning to the subject of the matinée. ‘The duchess’s rooms are lovely; but no doubt you know them.’

  Lesbia blushed, and confessed that the Duchess of Lostwithiel was one of those select few who were not on Lady Kirkbank’s visiting list.

  ‘There are people Lady Kirkbank cannot get on with,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she will hardly like to go to the duchess’s, as she does not visit her.’

  ‘Oh, but this affair counts for nothing. We go to hear Metzikoff, not to bow down to the duchess. All the people in town who care for music will be there, and you who play so divinely must enjoy fine professional playing.’

  ‘I worship a really great player,’ said Lesbia, ‘and if I can drag Lady Kirkbank to the house of the enemy, we will be there.’

  On this Mr. Smithson discreetly murmured ‘au revoir,’ took up his hat and cane, and departed, without, in Sir George’s parlance, having turned a hair.

  ‘Refusal number one,’ he said to himself, as he went downstairs, with his leisurely catlike pace, that velvet step by which he had gradually crept into society. ‘We may have to go through refusal number two and number three; but she means to have me. She is a very clever girl for a countrybred one; and she knows that it is worth her while to be Lady Lesbia Smithson.’

  This soliloquy may be taken to prove that Horace Smithson knew Lesbia Haselden better than she knew herself. She had refused him in all good faith; but even to-day, after he had left her, she fell into a day-dream in which Mr. Smithson’s houses and yachts, drags and hunters, formed the shifting pictures in a dissolving view of society; and Lesbia wondered if there were any other young woman in London who would refuse such an offer as that which she had quietly rejected half-an-hour ago.

  Lady Kirkbank surprised her while she was still absorbed in this dreamy review of the position. It is just possible that the fair Georgie may have had notice of Mr. Smithson’s morning visit, and may have kept out of the way on purpose, for she was not a person of lazy habits, and was generally ready for her nine o’clock breakfast and her morning stroll in the park, however late she might have been out overnight.

  ‘Mr. Smithson has been here, I understand,’ said Lady Kirkbank, settling herself in an arm-chair by the open window, after she had kissed her protégée. ‘Rilboche passed him on the stairs.’

  ‘Rilboche is always passing people on the stairs,’ answered Lesbia rather pettishly. ‘I think she must spend her life on the landing, listening for arrivals and departures.’

  ‘I had a kind of vague idea that Smithson would call to-day. He was so fussy about those tickets for the Metzikoff recital. I hate pianoforte recitals, and I detest that starched old duchess, but I suppose I shall have to take you there — or poor Smithson will be miserable,’ said Lady Kirkbank, watching Lesbia keenly over the top of the newspaper.

  She expected Lesbia to confide in her, to announce herself blushingly as the betrothed of one of the richest commoners in England. But Lesbia sat gazing dreamily across the flowers in the balcony at the house over the way, and said never a word; so Lady Kirkbank’s curiosity burst into speech.

  ‘Well, my dear, has he proposed? There was something in his manner last night when he put on your wraps that made me think the crisis was near.’

  ‘The crisis is come and is past, and Mr. Smithson and I are just as good friends as ever.’

  ‘What!’ screamed Lady Kirkbank. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you have refused him?’

  ‘Certainly. You know I never meant to do anything else. Did you think I was like Miss Trinder, bent upon marrying town and country houses, stables and diamonds?’

  ‘I did not think you were a fool,’ cried Lady Kirkbank, almost beside herself with vexation, for it had been borne in upon her, as the Methodists sometimes say, that if Mr. Smithson should prosper in his wooing it would be better for her, Lady Kirkbank, who would have a claim upon his kindness ever after. ‘What can be your motive in refusing one of the very best matches of the season — or of ever so many seasons? You think, perhaps, you will marry a duke, if you wait long enough for his Grace to appear; but the number of marrying dukes is rather small, Lady Lesbia, and I don’t think any of those would care to marry Lord Maulevrier’s granddaughter.’

  Lesbia started to her feet, pale as ashes.

  ‘Why do you fling my grandfather’s name in my face — and with that diabolical sneer?’ she exclaimed. ‘When I have asked you about him you have always evaded my questions. Why should a man of the highest rank shrink from marrying Lord Maulevrier’s granddaughter? My grandfather was a distinguished man — Governor of Madras. Such posts are not given to nobodies. How can you dare to speak as if it were a disgrace to me to belong to him?’

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  ‘CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN.’

  Lady Kirkbank had considerable difficulty in smoothing Lesbia’s ruffled plumage. She did all in her power to undo the effect of her rash words — declared that she had been carried away by temper — she had spoken she knew not what — words of no meaning. Of course Lesbia’s grandfather had been a great man — Governor of Madras; altogether an important and celebrated person — and Lady Kirkbank had meant nothing, could have meant nothing to his disparagement.

  ‘My dearest girl, I was beside myself, and talked sheer nonsense,’ said Georgie. ‘But you know really now, dearest, any woman of the world would be provoked at your foolish refusal of that dear good Smithson. Only think of that too lovely house in Park Lane, a palace in the style of the Italian Renaissance — such a house is in itself equivalent to a peerage — and there is no doubt Smithson will be offered a peerage before he is much older. I have heard it confidently asserted that when the present Ministry retires Smithson will be made a Peer. You have no idea what a useful man he is, or what henchman’s service he has done the Ministry in financial matters. And then there is his villa at Deauville — you don’t know Deauville — a positively perfect place, the villa, I mean, built by the Duke de Morny in the golden days of the Empire — and another at Cowes, and his palace in Berkshire, a manor, my love, with a glorious old Tudor manor-house; and he has a pied à terre in Paris, in the Faubourg, a ground-floor furnished in the Pompeian style, half-a-dozen rooms opening one out of the other, and surrounding a small garden, with a fountain in the middle. Some of the greatest people in Paris occupy the upper part of the house, and their rooms of course are splendid; but Smithson’s ground-floor is the gem of the Faubourg. However, I suppose there is no use in talking any more; for there is the gong for luncheon.’

  Lesbia was in no humour for luncheon.

  ‘I would rather have a cup of tea in my own room,’ she said. ‘This Smithson business has given me an abominable headache.’

  ‘But you will go to hear Metzikoff?’

  ‘No, thanks. You detest the Duchess of Lostwithiel, and you don’t care for pianoforte recitals. Why should I drag you there?’

  ‘But, my dearest Lesbia, I am not such a selfish wretch as to keep you at home, when I know you are passionately fond of good music. Forget all about your headache, and let me see how that lovely little Catherine of Aragon bonnet suits you. I’m so glad I happened to see it in Seraphine’s hands yester
day, just as she was going to send it to Lady Fonvielle, who gives herself such intolerable airs on the strength of a pretty face, and always wants to get the primeures in bonnets and things.’

  ‘Another new bonnet!’ replied Lesbia. ‘What an infinity of things I seem to be having from Seraphine. I’m afraid I must owe her a good deal of money.’

  This was a vague way of speaking about actual facts. Lady Lesbia might have spoken with more certainty. Her wardrobes and old-fashioned hanging closets and chests of drawers in Arlington Street were crammed to overflowing with finery; and then there were all the things that she had grown tired of, or had thought unbecoming, and had given away to Kibble, her own maid, or to Rilboche, who had in a great measure superseded Kibble on all important occasions; for how could a Westmoreland girl know how to dress a young lady for London balls and drawing-rooms?

  ‘If you had only accepted Mr. Smithson it would not matter how much money you owed people,’ said Lady Kirkbank. ‘You had better come down to lunch. A glass of Heidseck will bring you up to concert pitch.’

  Champagne was Lady Kirkbank’s idea of a universal panacea; and she had gradually succeeded in teaching Lesbia to believe in the sovereign power of Heidseck as a restorative for shattered nerves. At Fellside Lesbia had drunk only water; but then at Fellside she had never known that feeling of exhaustion and prostration which follows days and nights spent in society, the wear and tear of a mind forever on the alert, and brilliant spirits which are more often forced than real. For her chief stimulant Lesbia had recourse to the teapot; but there were occasions when she found that something more than tea was needed to maintain that indispensable vivacity of manner which Lady Kirkbank called concert pitch.

  To-day she allowed herself to be persuaded. She went down to luncheon, and took a couple of glasses of dry champagne with her cutlet, and, thus restored, was equal to putting on the new bonnet, which was so becoming that her spirits revived as she contemplated the effect in her glass. So Lady Kirkbank carried her off to the musical matinée, beaming and radiant, having forgotten all about that dark hint of evil glancing at the name of her long dead grandfather.

  The duchess was not on view when Lady Kirkbank and her protégée arrived, and a good many people belonging to Georgie’s own particular set were scattered like flowers among those real music-lovers who had come solely to hear the new pianiste. The music-lovers were mostly dowdy in their attire, and seemed a race apart. Among them were several young women of the Blessed Damozel school, who wore flowing garments of sap-green or ochre, or puffed raiment of Venetian red, and among whom the cartwheel hat, the Elizabethan sleeve, and the Toby frill were conspicuous.

  There were very few men except the musical critics in this select assemblage, and Lesbia began to think that it was going to be very dreary. She had lived in such an atmosphere of masculine adulation while under Lady Kirkbank’s wing that it was a new thing to find herself in a room where there were none to love and very few to praise her. She felt out in the cold, as it were. Those ungloved critics, with their shabby coats and dubious shirts, snuffy, smoky, everything they ought not to be, seemed to her a race of barbarians.

  Finding herself thus cold and lonely in the midst of the duchess’s splendour of peacock-blue velvet and peacock-feather decoration, Lesbia was almost glad when in the middle of Madame Metzikoff’s opening gondolied — airy, fairy music, executed with surpassing delicacy — Mr. Smithson crept gently into the fauteuil just behind hers, and leant over the back of the chair to whisper an inquiry as to her opinion of the pianist’s style.

  ‘She is exquisite,’ Lesbia murmured softly, but the whispered question and the murmured answer, low as they were, provoked indignant looks from a brace of damsels in Venetian red, who shook their Toby frills with an outraged air.

  Lesbia felt that Mr. Smithson’s presence was hardly correct. It would have been ‘better form’ if he had stayed away; and yet she was glad to have him here. At the worst he was some one — nay, according to Lady Kirkbank, he was the only one amongst all her admirers whose offer was worth having. All Lesbia’s other conquests had counted as barren honour; but if she could have brought herself to accept Mr. Smithson she would have secured the very best match of the season.

  To marry a plain Mr. Smithson — a man who had made his money in iron — in cochineal — on the Stock Exchange — had seemed to her absolute degradation, the surrender of all her lofty hopes, her golden dreams. But Lady Kirkbank had put the question in a new light when she said that Smithson would be offered a peerage. Smithson the peer would be altogether a different person from Smithson the commoner.

  But was Lady Kirkbank sure of her facts, or truthful in her statement? Lesbia’s experience of her chaperon’s somewhat loose notions of truth and exactitude made her doubtful upon this point.

  Be this as it might she was inclined to be civil to Smithson, albeit she was inwardly surprised and offended at his taking her refusal so calmly.

  ‘You see that I am determined not to lose the privilege of your society, because I have been foolish!’ he said presently, in the pause after the first part of the recital. ‘I hope you will consider me as much your friend to-day as I was yesterday.’

  ‘Quite as much,’ she answered sweetly, and then they talked of Raff, and Rubenstein, and Henselt, and all the composers about whom it is the correct thing to discourse nowadays.

  Before they left Belgrave Square Lady Kirkbank had offered Mr. Smithson Sir George’s place in her box at the Gaiety that evening, and had invited him to supper in Arlington Street afterwards.

  It was Sarah Bernhardt’s first season in London — the never-to-be-forgotten season of the Comédie Française.

  ‘I should love of all things to be there,’ said Mr. Smithson, meekly. He had a couple of stalls in the third row for the whole of the season. ‘But how can I be sure that I shall not be turning Sir George out of doors?’

  ‘Sir George can never sit out a serious play. He only cares for Chaumont or Judie. The Demi-monde is much too prosy for him.’

  ‘The Demi-monde is one of the finest plays in the French language,’ said Smithson. ‘You know it, of course, Lady Lesbia?’

  ‘Alas! no. At Fellside I was not allowed to read French plays or novels: or only a novel now and then, which my grandmother selected for me.’

  ‘And now you read everything, I suppose, — including Zola?’

  ‘The books are lying about, and I dip into them sometimes while I am having my hair brushed,’ answered Lesbia, lightly.

  ‘I believe that is the only time ladies devote to literature during the season,’ said Mr. Smithson. ‘Well, I envy you the delight of seeing the Demi-monde without knowing what it is all about beforehand.’

  ‘I daresay there are a good many people who would not take their girls to see a play by Dumas,’ said Lady Kirkbank, ‘but I make a point of letting my girls see everything. It widens their minds and awakens their intelligence.’

  ‘And does away with a good many silly prejudices,’ replied Mr. Smithson.

  Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia were due at a Kensington garden-party after the recital, and from the garden-party, for which any hour sufficed, they went to show themselves in the Park, then back to Arlington Street to dress for the play. Then a hurried dinner, and they were in their places at the theatre in time for the rising of the curtain.

  ‘If it were an English play we would not care for being punctual,’ said Lady Kirkbank; ‘but I should hate to lose a word of Dumas. In his plays every speech tells.’

  There were Royalties present, and the house was good; but not so full as it had been on some other nights, for the English public had been told that Sarah Bernhardt was the person to admire, and had been flocking sheep-like after that golden-haired enchantress, whereby many of these sheep — fighting greedily for Sarah’s nights, and ignoring all other talent — lost some of the finest acting on the French stage, notably that of Croizette, Delaunay and Febvre, in this very Demi-monde. Lesbia, who, in spite of h
er affectations, was still fresh enough to be charmed with fine acting and a powerful play, was enthralled by the stage, so wrapt in the scene that she was quite unaware of her brother’s presence in a stall just below Lady Kirkbank’s box. He too had a stall at the Gaiety. He had come in very late, when the play was half over. Lesbia was surprised when he presented himself at the door of the box, after the fourth act.

  Maulevrier and his sister had met very seldom since the young lady’s début. The young Earl did not go to many parties, and the society he cultivated was chiefly masculine; and as he neither played polo nor shot pigeons his masculine pursuits did not bring him in his sister’s way. Lady Kirkbank had asked him to her house with that wide and general invitation which is so easily evaded. He had promised to go, and he had not gone. And thus Lesbia and he had pursued their several ways, only crossing each other’s paths now and then at a race meeting or in a theatre.

  ‘How d’ye do, Lady Kirkbank? — how d’ye do, Lesbia? Just caught sight of you from below as the curtain was going down,’ said Maulevrier, shaking hands with the ladies and saluting Mr. Smithson with a somewhat supercilious nod. ‘Rather surprised to see you and Lesbia here to-night, Lady Kirkbank. Isn’t the Demi-monde rather strong meat for babes, eh? Not exactly the play one would take a young lady to see.’

  ‘Why should a young lady be forbidden to see a fine play, because there are some hard and bitter truths told in it?’ asked Lady Kirkbank. ‘Lesbia sees Madame d’Ange and all her sisterhood in the Park and about London every day of her life. Why should not she see them on the stage, and hear their history, and understand how cruel their fate is, and learn to pity them, if she can? I really think this play is a lesson in Christian charity; and I should like to see that Oliver man strangled, though Delaunay plays the part divinely. What a voice! What a manner! How polished! How perfect! And they tell me he is going to leave the stage in a year or two. What will the world do without him?’