CHAPTER X.
One fine morning, Mrs. Mallory, her son, and Hugo von Birkenau sat at breakfast, and the young men maintained a decorous silence while the lady held forth on what was at present her favourite topic, the approaching ball at Castle Hill, in honour of Helena’s coming of age.
‘Helena will be the belle at her own ball,’ she observed. ‘I called the other day, and Mrs. Spenceley showed me her dress. It had just come from Paris. It is perfectly exquisite. Even you, Sebastian, will be able to find no fault with that toilette.’
‘Black velvet, diamonds, and point lace?’ he suggested. ‘That would be just like her, and then it is a costume on which you may spend an indefinite amount of money.’
‘How ill-natured you are! It is a charming dress, and she will look lovely in it. I hope you have secured one dance, at any rate, or you will have no chance now.’
He confessed that he had not acted with sufficient spirit in that respect; he had never even thought of asking for a dance.
‘Then I am sure she will be very much hurt. She let me see the other day that she thought a great deal about your coming.’
‘If she did, she is not the girl I take her for,’ said he, looking rather impatient. It was not Mrs. Mallory’s fault if her son remained sceptical on the subject of Helena Spenceley’s penchant for him. She had long ago seen that it was useless for her to dangle Helena’s hundred thousand pounds before his eyes; he would none of it, whereas to Mrs. Mallory it was an ornament which grew more becoming and more desirable the longer she looked at it. She had discovered, or thought she had discovered, that Sebastian was very anxious not to hurt the feelings of any one, by neglect or unkindness, ‘that is, of any one but myself,’ as she plaintively told herself—and she thought that if she pictured in colours strong enough the affection which she was determined Helena had for him, this sensitiveness of his might lead to the desired results—sooner or later.
‘Any other man,’ Mrs. Mallory said to herself, ‘would have fallen in love with the girl for her beauty alone, if she had not had a penny; but in that case, of course, he would have fallen in love with her.’
Then she tried to excite his self-esteem, and pique his amour propre, by telling him that Helena was very difficult to please, and had already had half a dozen more or less eligible offers, all of which she had refused sans façon.
‘I can quite believe it,’ was the tranquil reply. ‘Sans façon exactly describes her manner and her character as well. She has no idea of any medium. Wild enthusiasms and extravagant hatreds——’
(‘Like me,’ murmured Hugo to his plate.)
‘And I have no doubt she did refuse the “six braw gentlemen” you mention, unceremoniously enough.’
Mrs. Mallory would have despaired, if she had not taken comfort in the idea that Sebastian liked to conceal his feelings from her, which argued that perhaps he cherished a secret passion for Helena, and would do as he ought to do, if he were let alone.
Her fears as to the influence of Adrienne Blisset were fitful and intermittent. Sometimes that adventuress did not particularly disturb her mental peace, but at other moments a dread fear seized her lest the game should be going in the very direction she least wished it to take; lest the obstacle which interfered with her plans and wishes was not Sebastian’s utter and unaccountable indifference to beauty, love, and a hundred thousand pounds, but a misguided, infatuated inclination on his part, for a daughter of Heth, with neither beauty (compared with Helena) nor pretensions. When attacked by such thoughts, Mrs. Mallory felt herself turn cold and numb with fear. The idea of Adrienne Blisset promoted to her place was the most thoroughly unpleasant—not to say altogether hideous—that had ever occurred to her.
On the morning in question, Sebastian, on being asked what his plans were, said he should be in his office all morning, and at a committee meeting in the afternoon. Would he be in to lunch at half-past one? Yes, he fully expected so; and with that, he said good morning, and went away.
The others went their several ways. Hugo retired to the drawing-room, to a packet of new transcendental German music, and to the spinning out certain music of his own. Mrs. Mallory, after an interview with her housekeeper, ordered her carriage for half-past eleven, wrote letters in the breakfast-room till that time, and then got ready and drove out in the said carriage. The proverbial ‘spectator might have seen’ the equipage go from one place to another in the town, and afterwards to certain mansions in the vicinity of the same, where its mistress made state calls. (It was the fashion in Thanshope to make state calls in full dress between twelve and one.) It was quite half-past one when Mrs. Mallory forsook the war-path, and returning home, came into the dining-room. She sat down to lunch without removing her bonnet. She was dressed in her favourite lavender and black, and so attired, with a new and unusual expression of animation and amiability upon her high fair features, she looked a very handsome, agreeable, though rather thin-lipped English matron.
The gong sounded. First Hugo strolled in, and raised his dark eyes in astonishment when the lady graciously and sweetly inquired,
‘May I give you some soup, Mr. von Birkenau?’
‘No, thank you,’ he replied, politely but tentatively.
‘How warm it is, is it not? So unlike the end of May. May is generally such a bad month in England; don’t you think so?’
‘You should know best,’ said Hugo, bowing solemnly, and somewhat nervous under this excessive amiability.
‘I wonder what Sebastian is doing,’ she remarked, still graciously. ‘He really seems to have his hands quite full.’
At that moment he came in.
‘Sorry to be so late, but Sutcliffe kept me. Soup? No, thanks. I’ll trouble you for some of that cold fowl, Hugo, please.’
‘And will you give me a little sherry, my dear?’ said his mother.
Sebastian, too, changed countenance at this tone, privately wondering ‘what next?’ but poured out the sherry with imperturbable gravity.
The meal proceeded in silence for some little time, until it occurred to Sebastian to ask,
‘Where have you been all morning, mother?’
‘Driving,’ was the vague reply, and another pause ensued.
Sebastian poured out a glass of sherry, drank some of it, and then thought he would trouble Hugo again; he was so awfully hungry. Hugo, with a gravity amounting to gloom, wrenched the second wing from the fowl before him, and placed it upon Sebastian’s plate.
Sebastian was watching the operation with the intense eagerness of a mind quite at ease; and it was at this juncture that Mrs. Mallory said,
‘Sebastian, I am sorry to hear of a very strange thing in connection with that girl—what is her name?—whose uncle’s affairs you somehow got mixed up with.’
Hugo’s eyes gave a flash. That was what was coming.
‘Do you mean Miss Adrienne Blisset?’ asked Sebastian, in a distinct voice.
‘Blisset—yes, Miss Blisset. She professes to take a great interest in the relief affairs.’
‘So far as I know, the interest is real—at least if hard work is any test of reality.’
‘She appears to choose very strange people as her intimate friends.’
‘Myself, par exemple?’ he suggested.
War was now declared. The blandness had disappeared from Mrs. Mallory’s countenance. The excitement remained. Her son did not appear to her to be excited, but Hugo, glancing at him, felt a little thrill as he saw all the slight signs which he so well understood, and which told him that his friend was moved, much moved, unpleasantly moved.
Mrs. Mallory, all unconscious how much Sebastian knew, and reckless of the storm she was inviting to descend upon herself, continued,
‘I must say, I hope you are not amongst her intimate friends, unless you wish to be placed on the level of low, immoral, atheistical work-people; the very dregs of the lower orders.’
‘It is asserted that Miss Blisset selects her friends from the dregs of the lower orders?’ he inquired, with ominous politeness.
‘The case does not rest on mere assertion. Her uncle professed peculiar opinions, and she carries them to extremes, as is the way with those women who have been brought up amongst men, and always led a vagabond life.’
Sebastian smiled slightly as he carefully balanced a fork upon his little finger.
‘Après?’ he inquired.
‘She made the acquaintance of a young man of whose character the less is said the better—picked him up at some reading-room where she used to go in an evening—an evening,’ said Mrs. Mallory, in an utterly indescribable tone. ‘She encouraged him to visit her, and he did so repeatedly; he is a socialist, an atheist, and altogether immoral. How far the connection may have gone I cannot pretend to say, but this I know, that Frederick Spenceley, who is not exactly strait-laced——’
‘No, certainly not.’
‘Frederick Spenceley declined to make her acquaintance, and took his sister away, and declined to let her converse with her.’
‘You have this information from a reliable source?’
‘Perfectly reliable. I am not at liberty to say who told me, but I must say the news exactly agrees with what my own judgment led me to expect. I always said....’
‘Pardon! No matter what you have always said, or what other people say. I can tell you the truth, not from any second-hand source, but from my own personal knowledge of the circumstances. The young man of whom you have heard such a delightful character was, though he no longer is, one of my own work-people. He is perfectly respectable, and of unstained character. If Frederick Spenceley were one hundredth part—if he could ever become one hundredth part as much of a gentleman as Myles Heywood naturally is, he might congratulate himself. He—Heywood, I mean—is a friend of Miss Blisset’s, and the fact honours both him and her. I have met him at her uncle’s house, and I have shaken hands with him in his own house. He is a man whom I honour and respect very much. So much for that part of your information. For the rest, that Frederick Spenceley refused to make Miss Blisset’s acquaintance—my dear mother, I am surprised that a woman with your knowledge of the world should believe such a story. I happened to be present then, too. Miss Spenceley wished to introduce her brother to Miss Blisset, and the latter declined the acquaintance; I believe she had excellent reasons for doing so. I pitied Miss Spenceley, from my soul, for she is as superior to her blackguard of a brother as heaven is to earth. But—I trust you will see the wisdom of making the best of Miss Blisset, and not the worst, for I shall ask her to be my wife—to-day, if I get the chance, and if not, on the very first opportunity.’
Mrs. Mallory had sat, during this prolonged harangue, drawing deep breaths, but at the last announcement, made with an emphasis unusual to Sebastian, it seemed suddenly to burst upon her, how entirely she had overreached herself, and she rose from her chair very pale; and, but that her pride forbade it, would have burst into tears of mortification.
‘There is no ingratitude like that of a child to a mother,’ said she, in an icy voice. ‘You have done all you could to humiliate me and cross my wishes ever since your return, and now you insult me by seeking out the least——’
They were at the door. He had opened it for her, but as she looked up in uttering those words, she paused, subdued by a certain expression in his eyes and mouth.
‘Don’t speak too recklessly of that lady. It will do no good, and you would repent it,’ he remarked.
She did not finish her sentence, but swept out of the room, and he gently closed the door after her.
He stood in the middle of the room, biting his lip, till Hugo came up to him and took his hand.
‘Dear Sebastian, I wish you success, though, freilich, I fancied you would marry Miss Spenceley.’
‘Why, I wonder?’ asked Sebastian, impatiently. ‘I cannot imagine why I am supposed to be destined for Miss Spenceley, or she for me. She cannot endure me, and makes no secret of her dislike....
‘You could overcome that,’ suggested his counsellor audaciously.
‘Could I? She is perfectly charming, I don’t wish to deny, but I have loved Adrienne Blisset for years, and I am not going to give her up unless she refuses me.’
‘Fellows don’t always give up when they are refused,’ suggested Hugo again.
‘Finish your lunch and hold your tongue. What I was going to say is, that my mother is answerable for a great deal of mischief by persisting in marrying me to Miss Spenceley.’
‘If there had been no such person as you, then there would have been no mischief,’ said Hugo, apparently throwing in the observation between two sips of claret, for he had obediently returned to the table.
‘What do you mean?’ asked his friend, stopping in his promenade between the two windows.
‘I mean what I say.’
‘Why, do you mean that I have ever encouraged——’
‘Miss Spenceley? I, bewahre! No. But——’
‘I shall do you some serious bodily injury if you don’t curb your boundless impertinence. Do you mean that I ever encouraged my mother’s scheme in any way?’
‘Can’t say. I’ve done. Adieu!’ said Hugo, going out of the room, and singing in an insultingly loud voice—