Chapter XII

THE LITTLE DINNER AT HAMPTON, WITH MUSIC ON THE WATER.

In the course of the little dinner in the Hampton tea-room, Sir George would not only not sit down till the rest of the party were seated, but he would supersede a regular waiter to wait upon his companions. It might have been for the peculiar satisfaction of waiting on Lady Bell, but certainly he did not confine his cares to that quarter of the table. He, the finest gentleman in the room, but that was saying little, did the whole waiting. He changed plates and placed glasses, and brought round sauces, so neatly and so comically, with such cleverness, taste, and devotion, making amends to everybody, as it were, for all his previous shortcomings—not caring, though his own meal were cold, or though he had not a meal at all—that it was hard, before so patent a proof, not to think him unselfish as well as delightful.

“Upon my word,” mumbled Lady Sundon, with her mouth full of cutlet, “Sir George is the charmingest man going—he beats the women out and out, even you, Lady Bell. I don’t wonder that nobody can say nay to him.”

Mrs. Lascelles did not appear so bent on redeeming her character; she still made wry faces and turned up her nose at the pickled walnuts and the cherry pie.

But Lady Bell was in her element. “I wonder if there are any cows here,” she cried, peeping out of the window behind her. “If there had been such a Whitefoot as we have at Summerhill, I might have run out and milked her and whipped you a syllabub in no time. Yes, I can whip syllabubs, Mrs. Lascelles, you need not look incredulous, and strain gooseberry fool too, only this is not the season of the year for gooseberries.”

“Ain’t it?” inquired Mrs. Lascelles with languid innocence.

“Gracious, madam! did you not know that we hadn’t gooseberries in February?” questioned Lady Sundon, staring goggle-eyed at this curious piece of ignorance.

Lady Bell went on without paying any heed to Mrs. Lascelles’ affectation. “If my Mrs. Sundon or Master Charles were here they would bear out my story.”

“By bribery and corruption, only too excusable in such a court,” argued Sir George. “But who may Master Charles be when he is at home? An overgrown baby, as his name would imply, or a wild man of the woods, eh, Lady Bell?” asked Sir George with privileged freedom, while preparing to make his own dinner, like the most frugal of hermits, on bread and milk. “No, don’t press any grosser fare upon me,” he waved off the eagerness of his friends to repay his benefits. “I do enjoy an Arcadian meal at times, when I have not only the felicity of being in Arcady, but of being with nymphs in Arcady,” Sir George bowed, with his hand on his heart.

“It is fine to have the command of such language,” said Lady Sundon, holding up her hands.

“But about this Master Charles,” Sir George returned to the subject; “can he, after partaking of such syllabubs and gooseberry fools, be still a ruddy youth, with great hands and feet?”

Lady Bell laughed, blushed, and winced a little for her friend. Beside Sir George Master Charles would appear ruddy, and his Lumley-bought gloves and boots did not tend to diminish the natural size of his hands and feet; but where was the harm—in the ruddiness especially, unless she had learnt to despise rude health, like the Misses Sundon? They had been putting severe restraint on themselves, that they might not taste more than a morsel, after being hours on the water, not so much to bear Sir George company, for they had not foreseen his temperance, as to display their own ethereal appetites.

Harry Fane had watched Lady Bell narrowly. “She is not only of the world worldly, she is as heartless as the others,” was his scornful conclusion. “She is ashamed of the mere recollection of some poor befooled country fellow, whatever he may be, better than this mocking jackanapes; but what does it matter to me?”

“A penny for your thoughts, Harry,” cried Lady Sundon, “or if you won’t give us them, propose a toast, do something for the good of the company.”

“I drink to you, then, cousin, since you have started the idea,” replied Captain Fane, so soberly that it was almost gloomily, after he found that he could not escape, and that the attention of the party was directed to him.

“A plague on the lad! to give an old married woman who might be his mother,” remonstrated Lady Sundon, “but if you are all so kind, thanks to you,” and Lady Sundon beamed radiantly on the raised glasses.

“Now, Lady Bell, I’m ready for Master Charles,” suggested Sir George, holding up his glass of milk.

“Nothing of the kind,” said Lady Bell, getting nettled. “At least Master Charles is not a milksop; supposing you will pledge in no better, you must pledge yourself, Sir George. I give ‘Sir George Waring,’ and I couple my toast with a sentiment: ‘May we persevere in and profit by simplicity.’”

“I respond to your toast with the humblest gratitude, and I drink your sentiment with all the pleasure in life, for have I not profited by simplicity already this day?” rejoined Sir George, with perfect good-humour, looking not a whit annoyed, but rather gratified, by Lady Bell’s poor little wit being spent upon him—a cheerful nonchalance which put Lady Bell to shame.

Affronted with herself, Lady Bell began hastily to talk of the cockle-shells which had been found by the bushel under one of the floors of Somerset House; and that led to a discussion of the exchange which the Queen had made in giving up Somerset House for Buckingham House.

The discussion paved the way for Mrs. Lascelles descanting on the petition of the maids of honour that they might get a compensation in lieu of supper, which was worth seventy pounds more salary.

When the party went back to the boat, the day was terminating in the rosiest sunset which ever breathed of spring, youth, and promise.

“I vow we must be in Arcady,” repeated Sir George. With all his pretence at fine language, he had just the tiniest spark of the soul of a lover of nature. Yet the glow which blushed on the water and shone on all the faces, and was only the brighter and the gladder for the chill bleakness of winter scarcely forsaken, awoke some small response even in his artificial nature.

As for Captain Fane, he sat with his cap in his hand, letting the breeze blow in his hair, looking down the river towards the open sea, wishing he were away in his ship. Life was bad enough on ship-board sometimes, in the depths of tyranny, ignorance, profanity, and mutiny; but there the mass of men, even at their worst, were toilsome men in rough earnest. There, in the night-watches, a man could be alone with sea and sky, until he forgot the very existence of heartless fine ladies and expert actors of fine gentlemen.

“We want only music to make the hour complete,” said Sir George. “Lady Bell, might I beg—?”

Lady Bell hesitated, then yielding to the spirit of the hour, commenced to sing an air from the popular opera.

Sir George struck in with a mellow second, singing being one of this fine gentleman’s accomplishments, as well as playing on the flute and the flageolet.

The song was warmly applauded by all save Captain Fane. Even Lady Sundon praised, while she frankly admitted that she did not comprehend a word of the jargon, “but nevertheless do let us have some more of it.”

“We shall have these boats following us, Lady Sundon,” objected Harry Fane, looking round sharply from where he was steering, and indicating, among the work-a-day barges, two boats filled with company, that had been attracted like themselves to a row on the river by a day borrowed from April and set in the end of February. These boats had already been drawn into the wake of the first by the singing.

“What though the boats do follow, they ain’t going to run us down,” stout Lady Sundon made light of the demur; “you are becoming quite a kill-joy, Harry Fane.”

It was an extraordinary sensation for Lady Bell to have the propriety of her behaviour doubted by a man—a sailor—before these pinks of fashion, Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles, who had been contributing to put Lady Bell at her ease.

She disliked the ruggedness of Captain Fane as much as she liked the suavity of Sir George, which no sauciness of hers could disturb, for she had been saucy in substituting Sir George’s own name as a toast which he might drink in milk.

Lady Bell looked Harry Fane in the face and challenged Sir George to accompany her in something which Lady Sundon would approve—“Begone, dull care,” or “Pray Goody, cease,” a challenge which Sir George accepted, nothing loth.

But before the first song was concluded, one of the boats in the rear shot across the bow of the Sundons’ boat, and three or four excited men, in white vests and rich coats like Sir George’s, threatened to upset both of the craft as they gesticulated violently, while they shouted—

“Heyday! Waring, hold on! What little opera-girl have you got there? Here, pitch her over to us, that she may tip us a stave. We’ve been dining at Kew, and we’ll engage to troll, among us, as good an accompaniment as you can contrive with your single pipe, sweet though it be.”

“Hold off! Annesley, Gower; mind what you’re about. You’re absurdly wrong, I tell you, and if you don’t set yourselves right, by heavens! I’ll have to take the correcting of you into my own hands,” called back Sir George, frowning blackly for once in his life.

“It is true, confound him!” cried one of the strange gentlemen, letting his boat fall off. “He’s in other company; yonder is Mrs. Lascelles—who would have thought it?—and there is an avenging fury of a naval officer porting helm. Good afternoon, Sir George, good afternoon to you,” dropped more faintly over the water.

But Lady Bell had shrunk into herself abashed, recalled to her senses, and deeply wounded alike in her self-respect and her pride.

Not all the solicitations and excuses of Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles could make Lady Bell immediately forget the indignity to which she had exposed herself, or forgive them for promoting the exposure, though she was silent on her feelings, and as willing as the others to welcome a diversion.

The day was so complete in its spring character, that at sundown a little cloud of midges seemed to start into life and hover in the air.

“How short their day is!” said Lady Bell regretfully for the ephemera. “I know they are only creatures of a day, but to come and go so soon,—if they had waited for a few more months, they might have danced through a few more hours, and not been pinched by so sharp a death. Who knows?”

“My dear creature,—forgive me; my best Lady Bell,” Sir George corrected himself, “the midges have been highly honoured, even before you condescended to pity them. They have more than served their purpose,—they have helped to furnish an illusion for us, that this February day by the calendar, is in the merry month of May by our experience, and that Hampton is Arcady. Now, here we are past Chelsea, fast coming back to the coarse dissipation of the garish town and the cold winds of March; what should remain to the midges, but to be swept aside with the illusion?”

Lady Bell turned away her head and shut her eyes for a moment, she did not wish to see even the midges swept aside. She did not like the philosophy of which she and hers formed always the centre. She had not consented to view life as a rainbow-hued but hollow mockery, a mere series of convenient, spangled illusions.