Chapter VIII: Opinions Differ

As the party went up-stairs, and strolled about amongst other animated groups, admiring what were reckoned the Gothic portions of the Pantheon, listening to the rising strains of the orchestra, which still admitted the ring of laughing voices—buxom Lady Sundon grew radiant. “Now, ain’t this nice, Harry?” she demanded triumphantly; “ain’t it something to come on shore for—worth years of the sloppy, draggle-tailed country?”

“As to nice, the word is too vague. I’d as lief not pledge myself to what you mean by niceness,” he told her; “and I own to being rather fonder of green fields than filthy streets, after a long tack of blue waves.”

“But this ain’t filthy streets, Harry. Now, I shall think you right down cross and contrary, if you refuse to admit that the Pantheon, at least, takes your fancy.”

“Then, not to mortify you, madam, the Pantheon itself is not half so silly or so bad as many places of public and private entertainment that I’ve been to in my life. If I were to stay on shore, and in London, I should not mind coming sometimes to the Pantheon.”

“I dare say you shouldn’t—your humble servant, Harry, for the condescension!”

“Especially if I were to come across such a man as Admiral Byron,” continued Captain Fane, bowing low to a bluff, elderly gentleman in passing. “He played the man when he was no more than a middy, young sir”—Captain Fane pointed the application by looking over his shoulder and addressing Sir Peter’s nephew, walking between the Misses Sundon, and instantly beginning to swell with wrath because his tender years were hinted at—“He was a castaway on a South Sea Island, and he managed to survive five years of hardship unparalleled in our day, among savages. There is somebody to look at, worth a hundred of your beaux and belles.”

“And han’t I stared the man out,” declared Lady Sundon, “till he thinks there’s a hole in his epaulette, or a paper pinned on his back?”

“It isn’t the luck of every one to be a castaway on a South Sea Island, and to learn a lesson from savages,” said Lady Bell. “Beaux and belles can’t help their want of luck. You should be fair, Captain Fane.”

“I’ll try, Lady Bell,” he promised, “if you’ll point out to me one man or woman of your fine fashionables—remember, I don’t say civilians, I hope I’m not such a swaggering fire-eater as to confine merit to one or both of the services—who, in his or her different circumstances, has shown half the ingenuity and energy, not to say resignation, which my friend the Admiral was privileged, as you put it not incorrectly, to display.”

“Oh, come, sir!” cried Lady Bell with spirit, dropping her assumption of meekness, “I shall not have far to seek to confute your argument, and I shall take a woman in order to cover you with confusion. True, I don’t say she has kindled a fire with flints, or dug up roots with her fingers, or knocked down birds with a stick; but I conclude that you—an educated gentleman—consider ingenuity and energy may be well bestowed in other respects than in relieving mere gross, bodily wants.”

“I grant you that, Lady Bell.”

“Do you see the lady in the silver gauze?—not there, and that is not silver gauze, that is white brocade, while the wearer is only charming Lady Hesketh. No, here, the slight young lady in the silver gauze, with the fine hair in a wave above her forehead, and the high aquiline nose—do you know what she is famous for?”

“No; I must admit my ignorance.”

“Not for her beauty, although you may see she is beautiful; not for being gallant General Conway’s daughter; not even for being wife of my Lord Milton’s son, who has the finest wardrobe in London—finer even than thirty thousand a year will stand, folks swear; for men can be as vain as women sometimes, and a great deal more reckless in their vanity. But Mrs. Damer puts on a mob cap and canvas apron, and with those little white hands wields mallet and chisel, as well as moulds in wax and clay. She hath done groups of animals as true as life, and busts of men and women—their speaking images. She is a great sculptor, sir, such as Mr. Bacon or Mr. Nollekens. What do you say to that?” Lady Bell wound up her peroration by making a profound curtsey.

“It is all gospel, Harry,” Lady Sundon confirmed the account. “They tell me that pretty stylish woman is so far left to herself that she likes nothing better than muddling among wet blocks and splinters of stone, and hewing away like any stonemason.”

“I stand corrected,” admitted Harry Fane honestly, addressing himself to Lady Bell. “I honour the lady both for her capacity and determination.”

“And I can assure you, sir, she is not the only woman who deserves your honour for intellect and perseverance,” insisted Lady Bell, woman-like, not content with the inch conceded, but proceeding to ask a yard. “Of course it is not given to many women to be endowed like Mrs. Damer, but if you knew my dear Mrs. Sundon, down at Summerhill, how wise she is, how attentive to all her duties, how regular and unwearied in her studies—well!” she broke off enthusiastically, “she shames me into solidity and steadiness. I never have a fit of the gapes, and I am in no way flighty when I am with her.”

“That is a great testimony,” said Captain Fane with grave abstraction, as if he were meditating on the force of the evidence.

“You provoking man!” Lady Sundon reproached him, rapping him across the fingers with her fan, while Lady Bell bit her lips with pique, and turned away indignant at being laughed at, a process to which she was not over much accustomed.

Lady Bell was too proud to pout, but she had made up her mind that she would submit to no more flouting from this impertinent, conceited sailor, when all at once he begged her pardon, said penitently and agreeably that Mrs. Sundon was at least fortunate in having such an advocate that he could take the unknown lady’s superiority on trust.

Lady Bell felt rewarded for her gallantry in fighting the humoursome sailor, when she had constrained him to soften his looks and tones, and to except not merely Mrs. Sundon but herself in his budget of criticism—if Lady Sundon had let the man alone in leaving him to his better mind, and had not, by interfering, spoilt all!

“Mercy on us!” Lady Sundon ejaculated, “wonders will never cease; my polar bear has paid a compliment!”

“Not paid a compliment—told a truth,” Captain Fane had condescended to say further, quite graciously.

“Another, another, Harry! you’re a reformed man on the spot—see what a pretty woman can do—a bear that has changed its skin!” Lady Sundon had leapt too fast to a conclusion.

“I am afraid I must damp your expectation, and shock you once more,” alleged Captain Fane, with a perverse twinkle in his eyes, “for I was about to add that if your Mrs. Sundon is so wondrous wise a woman, why did she go ‘in the galley,’ as I have understood she did? I mean, why did she throw herself away on so dissipated a man and so inveterate a gambler as Gregory Sundon, of Chevely, whose disgrace had been so manifest and black, that he has been suffered to drop clean out of this corrupt enough gay world, as well as out of his wife’s offended sight. If she was to be particular, she should have begun sooner.”

“Sir!” replied Lady Bell, with her hot young generosity firing up in every word, “I do not pretend to justify my friend in every act of her life; and for the magnanimous faith with which she trusted her precious self and her fortune to the unhappy husband who failed her, I say nothing, save that it ill becomes even so faultless and prudent a man, as I do not doubt Captain Fane is, to blame her.”

“Well said—as good as a play, Lady Bell. Lady Bell, I’m proud of you,” protested Lady Sundon. “Hit him hard when you’re at it! Yes, indeed, you’re no better than a mean scamp, though you are my own cousin, Harry; and I did not think it of you, for all your droll crustiness and carping words, till Lady Bell hath opened my eyes—to twit a fine woman with her indiscreet tenderness to one of your own ungrateful sex—as well kiss and tell. What have you to say for yourself?”

“Nothing!” answered Harry, with a little shrug of his broad shoulders, “and Lady Bell need not hit harder, seeing she has hit hard enough to floor me already. Madam, I was wrong to urge such an inconsistency in your friend. It was ill done on my part, as you said. I cannot do less than make amends to her and to you by saying that I am sorry for my unhandsome words.”

Again Lady Bell was propitiated by a new and rare flattery in finding that she could sway and subdue not a willing slave, not an indolent, careless adorer, but a restive and opinionative man. For here was one who might have had the misfortune to be a little singular to begin with, and who, after having been confined to ship-board from childhood, turned up in the smooth, accommodating world, all angles, ready-formed prepossessions and prejudices.

Under the subtle incense, Lady Bell looked at her antagonist more deliberately over her fan, and out of a pair of eyes analytically inclined.

She settled that though he was contradictory and a little abrupt and harsh in his contradictions, otherwise he was not in the least ill-mannered or boorish, but had altogether the air of a gentleman and a man of education, and was thus of the new school of naval officers. He looked also a man of sense, even of some benevolence, when he gave way to her, and was so quick and candid in the kind of courage which confessed even to so small a shortcoming as a mistaken judgment in conversation.

As Lady Bell arrived at this improved verdict, the music in chief began, and the party had to take their seats and listen.

When the concert was ended, Lady Bell was accosted and monopolized by one after another of her numerous friends, danglers, and satellites, until Lady Sundon’s party quitted the Pantheon.