"I'm not sorry this opportunity offered," said Charley Yeldham to himself as he was undressing. "I've not much curiosity; but I confess I'm anxious to see the girl who has so captivated Master Gordon--partly on her own account, and partly to see if I can trace in her manner any suspicion of a---- No; no woman could be bad enough to lay herself out to entrap a man at her father's desire! And besides, Gordon Frere's not worth snaring!"
So, three men, all good fellows in their way, and two possessed of qualities not common, and destined to be influenced throughout all their lives by the seeming chance that had made them acquainted with her, were thinking of Katharine Guyon, rather than of any or all their more immediate and important concerns. She had dawned, a new luminary, on their horizon; and two were conscious worshippers of the bright visible presence, the other had not yet turned his eyes that way. He will do so before long, and then----?
As for Katharine Guyon herself, she had thoughts at present for but one person, and speculations only on one subject. Her warm, impulsive, wholly undisciplined heart had accepted Gordon Frere as its tenant and ruler, after a sudden fashion, which was not to be defended or excused if judged by the standard of conventionality, or indeed of common-sense. When the latter quality shall be in any one instance admitted into a case of love-at-first-sight, it may advance a claim to invariable acknowledgment; certainly not otherwise. As for conventionality, Katharine in no way bowed to its authority; and it was fortunate indeed that her good taste and innate good-breeding preserved her from any boldness or vulgarity of demeanour; for those were her only safeguards. Legitimate rule over her there was none, and she would not for a moment have brooked usurped authority. Her position was peculiar, and, though there was a good deal of the glitter of fashion and the reality of enjoyment about it, to clear-sighted eyes, looking below the surface, pitiable.
Katharine's mother had brought her husband no advantages in their short, not remarkably happy, marriage, except those attached to an extensive and distinguished family connection. She had no fortune, no possessions of any kind, except some handsome jewels, which were secured to her, to descend to her children. She lived only a short time; but it is probable she thought the period sufficiently prolonged; for she died, when Katharine was born, with no further expression of regret than that she wished she could have taken the child with her; but was consoled by learning that the physicians thought the feeble infant very unlikely to live. Isabella Stanbourne--for such was the name of Katharine's mother--was a handsome woman, of fine mind and high principles. These qualities had not availed to prevent her making the tremendous though not unusual mistake of a wholly uncongenial marriage; but they did her the questionable service of opening her eyes to the blunder she had committed before she had been Edward Guyon's wife many weeks. Once opened, Mrs. Guyon's eyes were not the sort of optics ever to be even partially closed again; and they perceived and scrutinised every particular of her husband's character and conduct with merciless clearness and vigilance. That gentleman furnished them with ample material for their scrutiny; and from the close of the honeymoon to the termination of her life Mrs. Guyon held the partner of her existence, whom she knew to be a liar and a profligate, and suspected to be a swindler, in quiet, undemonstrative, but supreme contempt. She was a woman in whom the existence of any kind of regard or even compassion was incompatible with the least feeling of scorn; and so she never tried to persuade herself that she entertained either towards her husband, from the day she found out that the man she had married was a being of a totally different order to the idol which her fancy had set up and worshipped. She did not leave him, even when she made further and more serious discoveries: in the first place, because she disliked the scandal of a separation; in the second, because she was conscious of great delicacy of health, and had a strong presentiment that she should not survive the birth of her child. She determined to give herself the chance, if, contrary to her conviction, she lived; she could then decide upon her future. The chance befriended her, and Mrs. Guyon died. Her last days were undisturbed by her husband's presence. He had gone to Doncaster when the event which made him a father and a widower took place; and having made rather a good thing of the expedition, he returned to town in very tolerable spirits, and felt that he should now be more interesting and irresistible than ever as a young widower, and could easily get over the inconsolable stage by a trip on the Continent. His dead wife's sister-in-law, the Hon. Mrs. Philip Stanbourne, undertook very gladly to look after the little motherless infant, at whom the elegant Ned barely glanced, during her days of babyhood; and she redeemed her promise well.
It is unnecessary to inquire into the career of Mr. Guyon between the period of Katharine's birth and that of her début in society. It was evident that, however well-founded his anticipations of success, it had not been in the matrimonial direction; and indeed some rather amusing anecdotes were current in society concerning "Ned's" audacious attempts and egregious failures. His wife's relatives had never particularly admired Mr. Guyon; but they were kindly, unaffected people; and Mrs. Guyon had been strictly and uniformly silent on all her domestic concerns; so that, though they surmised that the brief marriage had not been the altogether ecstatic union Isabella had imagined it would prove, they had nothing but surmise in their minds respecting it; and they never thought of withholding from the motherless girl any of the advantages derivable from their social position and influence. These were far more important to Katharine's father than her guileless uncles, aunts, and cousins imagined--to whom a life of shifts, scheming, and pretence was an utterly unknown and unsuspected possibility--and much more important too to Katharine herself, as regulating her father's conduct towards her, than the girl ever knew or dreamed of. She would probably have been placed economically out of sight, at a foreign boarding-school, and left there to attain the age of womanhood, unnoticed by her father, had not the kind relatives under whose care her early childhood had been happily passed given her consequence in Mr. Guyon's eyes, causing him to regard her as a valuable possession, a court-card in fact. So, instead of a cheap foreign school being selected as an oubliette for the child,--in virtue of whom Mr. Guyon had a seat at the tables of many who were more great than wise,--an expensive establishment for young ladies in the Regent's Park was honoured by Mrs. Stanbourne's choice; and there Katharine was brilliantly, if not solidly educated, the larger portion of the pension and her personal expenses being paid by her uncle. In Katharine's early girlhood the Hon. Philip Stanbourne died; and she sustained by this calamity a double loss: not only that of her kind relative and friend, but of her aunt's counsel, training, and protection in the perilous time which lay before her,--the time of early womanhood, and her entrance into society. The widow went abroad with her daughter, who was some years older than Katharine; and though she was in London when the events just related took place, she was not likely to be again a settled resident in England, as her daughter had married an Austrian nobleman, high in the diplomatic world, and desired to have as much of her mother's society as possible.
The fashionable "establishment" had turned out few girls so well calculated to do it credit and extend its fame as Katharine Guyon, when, at a little more than seventeen, she appeared in a circle of society where, though her father, with all his cleverness and savoir faire, received little more than toleration, she at once made a favourable impression. In her appearance she combined the personal attractions of both her parents: she had her mother's high-bred look, her father's vivacity and his fine features; she had the elegant carriage, the delicate hands and feet, the refined voice of Isabella Stanbourne, and the airy easy manner which in Mr. Guyon had a soupçon of impudence. In disposition she resembled her mother exclusively; but there were strong points of difference between them,--difference deepened no doubt by the circumstances of Katharine's girlhood, by the fact that she had never been the object, as her mother had been of exclusive and conscientious female care since she had ceased to be a child. She had not the clear, direct, keen perception of her mother; but she was her equal in resolution, and more than her equal in implacability. She was high-spirited now, and impatient of contradiction to a degree that indicated some violence of temper; her feelings were keen and impulsive, and her affections strong and passionate, though undeveloped; for indeed who had the girl to love? She had gone through the ordinary schoolgirl friendships, and also through the customary flirtations since the former had come to a natural end; but she did not really love any body in the world, except perhaps Mrs. Stanbourne, and of her she had seen but little for some time.
Her feelings towards her father were of a mixed, and, on the whole, of an unsatisfactory character; such as any one watching the girl with anxiety and experience must have recognised with regret. She was fond of him after a fashion, and there was a good deal of camaraderie between them; but she had an intuitive distrust of him, and she knew instinctively that all his indulgence, all his flattery, all his yielding to her wishes and furnishing her pleasures, were superficial compliances. He liked the kind of life she liked; she knew him well enough, without formally reasoning upon her knowledge, to feel convinced that if their tastes or wishes clashed in any way, hers and not his would be expected, if not obliged, to yield. She admired her father's pleasant manners and social talents; she had but rarely any opportunity of contrasting his fulfilment of the paternal relation with that of other men; and she was full of youth, health, spirits, and capacity for the enjoyment of every kind of pleasure that offered; so she went her way carelessly and joyously, and reasoned little upon the present or the future. Katharine and her father were not real friends, but they were always technically "good friends;" a result to which the underlying violence of the girl's nature no doubt unconsciously conduced. Mr. Guyon hated trouble and detested scenes; and he had a tolerably correct occult sense that he might find himself "in for" both if he interfered much with Katharine: consequently he did not interfere; and as she was totally in the dark respecting his pecuniary circumstances, and never asked any troublesome questions, they got on very well together. Real companionship they had none, but they did not miss it; and while her father's chief anxiety about Katharine was that she should make a good match before she "went off" in looks--a good match implying a rich son-in-law, conveniently indifferent about settlements, and ready to "do" bills to any reasonable or unreasonable amount--Katharine's chief anxiety about him was, that he should dye his hair and whiskers with greater success, and drink less wine on evenings when he went to parties with her. She knew he was proud of her beauty, and thought her "doosid good company;" but she did not for a moment imagine he had any sentimental love for her; indeed she fancied he had not much feeling, for he had never mentioned her mother to her in his life. Their relation, in fact, was pleasant, hollow, and heathen; and when Katharine abandoned herself to her newborn love for Gordon Frere, she never thought of her father's feelings or wishes in the matter, or had a more dutiful notion in her mind than that it "made it pleasant that papa liked his coming about the house." You see she was no exceptional being, no angel alighted for a little on a sphere unworthy of her footsteps and her wings; but an interesting, captivating, self-willed woman,--such as circumstances had made her; a woman whose weaknesses were as visible as her charms, whose strength was latent and unsuspected.
It was not to be supposed that a girl like Katharine--handsome, clever, dashing, and independent in her ideas and manners, of a not precisely-to-be-defined position in society, and with a not-exactly-to-be-commended father--should escape sharp and not kind or altogether candid criticism. She was very much admired; she commanded admiration indeed, however reluctantly accorded; and men liked her very much, even men who were not in love with her, and with whom she did not take the trouble to flirt. Women did not like her; and yet the girl gave them no fair excuse for their prejudice. She was not a determined coquette, conquering and monopolising; she was not rudely inattentive to women, as "beauties" and "blues" usually are: she was smiling and agreeable, and perfectly indifferent to them all; and, with a host of acquaintances, had but one female friend, her aunt Mrs. Stanbourne. With Lady Henmarsh, who was a distant relative on her father's side, Katharine lived on terms of great intimacy,--the lady was indeed her constant, her official chaperone,--but it was an intimacy of the kind which more frequently precludes than includes friendship.
Lady Henmarsh was a woman of the world, in every possible meaning and extent of the term. She was the exact opposite of Mrs. Stanbourne, in manners, mind, tastes, opinions, and principles; and she disliked Mrs. Stanbourne so cordially, that she might have endeavoured to influence Katharine in a contrary direction to that of her wishes, simply to annoy that lady; but she was saved from any thing so unphilosophical by the fact that it suited her in every way to appoint herself high-priestess of Miss Guyon's world-worship. As no one ever saw, and many had never heard of Lady Henmarsh's husband, it was a pardonable mistake, frequently made by strangers, to suppose that she was a widow. This, however, was not the case. A miserable invalid--whose migrations, if not quite confined to Goldsmith's itinéraire, were only from his dull house in Hampshire to his dull house in Cavendish Square; a cross, palsied, querulous old man, called Sir Timothy Henmarsh, who had long since lapsed out of the sight and the memory of society--still existed, not altogether to the displeasure of his lady, who would be seriously impoverished by his death; existed in a condition of illness and suffering which rendered it indispensable that his wife should, in deference to what society calls common decency, provide herself with some further excuse for her neglect of him, and her constant presence at gay and festive scenes of every description, than the real, but unproduceable one, that she liked dissipation and disliked him. Lady Henmarsh and Mr. Guyon had been very good friends indeed in former days, when he was a young widower, thoroughly consoled, and Hetty Lorimer was a pretty portionless girl, who knew that she had nothing to look to but marriage, and that if she desired to secure the enjoyment of such things as her soul loved, she must take care that it was a "good" one. A marriage with her handsome cousin would have been any thing but one of the required description; and indeed neither of them ever contemplated such a possibility. They were persons of a discreet and practical turn, and Mr. Guyon went to Hetty Lorimer's wedding (a solemnity at which Sir Timothy Henmarsh's son, a gentleman some years the bride's senior, sternly declined to be present) with perfect alacrity and good humour. They had been excellent friends ever since; and when, the time having arrived at which Mr. Guyon found it convenient to transfer his daughter from the "establishment" to Queen Anne Street, Lady Henmarsh gave him her advice, and offered him her services with enthusiastic friendship, what more proper and satisfactory arrangement could possibly have been entered into than that Lady Henmarsh should "do the maternal" by Katharine?
"I've no doubt you'll do it to perfection, Hetty," said Mr. Guyon, as he rose and terminated the interview; "only you won't look the part within a dozen years." And the good-looking deceiver went down the stairs with a smile, which expanded into a grin when he reached the street; for Miss Hester Lorimer and Miss Isabella Stanbourne had been girls together, and the former was a little older than the lady who had married the irresistible Ned Guyon.
This unexceptionable arrangement had now lasted a considerable time, and no likelihood of its coming to a conclusion by the marriage of Katharine had yet presented itself. Lady Henmarsh was better pleased than Mr. Guyon that it should be so, and less surprised. She understood Katharine better than her father understood her; she knew how entirely unscathed she had been amid the lightning flashes of real admiration and simulated sentiment which had played around her girlish head; she knew that in Katharine's perfectly impartial brightness, her frank acceptance of the incense offered before her, her smiling pleasure and indifference, consisted the barrier to Mr. Guyon's wishes. For her part, she was in no hurry about the matter; indeed, the longer Miss Guyon should require some one (meaning herself) to go about with her, the better pleased she would be. But though Lady Henmarsh did not disquiet herself because Mr. Guyon's wishes remained unfulfilled, she would very seriously and earnestly have disapproved of their being traversed and thwarted. She did not particularly care that Katharine should marry soon, but she fervently desired that she should marry well; and it was with a new and very unpleasant sense of misgiving that she observed the eager and vivacious pleasure which Katharine evinced in the society of Mr. Gordon Frere, and watched the faces and the manner of the two from the alcove, whence she beheld the dancers at Mrs. Pendarvis's ball. Lady Henmarsh knew very little of Gordon Frere; indeed, only one fact, beyond the good looks and the good manners patent to all observers. But in that one fact lay the only important item of knowledge, in the estimation of Lady Henmarsh. Gordon Frere was a poor man, with no income to speak of, and only very desultory, undefined, and contingent expectations. Clearly this would not meet either Mr. Guyon's views or her own. She hoped, she trusted, nay she believed, that Katharine would not be so infatuated as to think of marrying Frere; she trusted Frere was too much a man of the world to think of marrying Katharine. It was only a flirtation,--it must be only a flirtation; but even that, if she carried it to such an extent as she had done at the ball, Katharine must be induced to give up. It would be remarked, it would keep off other men: of course it was quite foolish to be afraid of any thing serious; so Lady Henmarsh hoped, and trusted, and believed, and yet she doubted and feared. She did not altogether like to acknowledge to herself, perhaps, how little confidence she felt in her own power of "inducing" Katharine to do any thing which did not accord with her own inclination and humour. The tie between them was formed of mutual complaisance, not of influence and respect. Lady Henmarsh did not understand either the strength of Katharine's feelings or the determination of her temper; she had never seen either roused into action, and she regarded her as rather shrewder and more worldly-minded than most girls, as well as cleverer and better-looking. So, though she knew her to be self-willed, she calculated on her sense and shrewdness overcoming her obstinacy in a matter in which her worldliness would teach her that obstinacy was injurious and misplaced.
Lady Henmarsh pondered these things one fine summer's day, while Katharine rambled about the Botanical Gardens with Gordon Frere and others; while every glance caught from his blue eyes, and every sentence intoned especially for her ear by his earnest musical voice, bound the girl's heart more closely to him, and rendered the task which Lady Henmarsh proposed to herself more difficult of fulfilment, more infructuous in result.
"At all events, it shall not go on like this beyond to-night," said her ladyship to herself: "if she looks at and dances with him as she did at Mrs. Pendarvis's, I shall tell Ned Guyon about it, and find out what he thinks; but my decided opinion is that it is full time some steps were taken." And then she went to visit Sir Timothy.
Mrs. Streightley and her daughter had returned to the Brixton villa, had been affectionately received by Robert, and had heard from him the history of all his doings in their absence. Of course Ellen had, allowed the briefest possible space of time to elapse between her return and the despatch of an eager summons entreating Hester Gould to come to her with the least possible delay. Hester arrived about two hours before the ordinary dinner-hour; and the young ladies passed that space of time in the interchange of delightful confidences; complete and heartfelt on the part of Ellen Streightley, and as meagre as might be on that of Hester Gould. All the particulars of Ellen's engagement, which she had already detailed by letter, were again confided to Hester; all the particulars of the visit from which they had just returned, and which had been made to certain relatives of Mrs. Streightley's, of the agricultural persuasion, were once more related in full.
"I used to think Thorswold rather a stupid place, dearest Hester," said Ellen, and a fine blush overspread her pretty honest face: "little did I ever think I should meet my fate there. I do so long for you to see Decimus. You will think him so delightful."
"I shall be very much pleased to see him, Ellen," returned Hester; "and I rejoice, as I am sure you know, in your happiness. But tell me about your brother,--what does he say to it all?"
"Well, indeed, Hester," said Ellen, hesitating and laughing, "that is what I hardly can tell you, he has said so little. He kissed me, and pulled my ear, and called me a little goose, in his own kind way, you know; but he is so taken up with some new friends he has made, I cannot make him out. He looks quite different, I am sure; and is so particular about his dress! A lot of new clothes have just come home from his tailor's, and a whole boxful of lavender-kid gloves. Isn't it funny, Hester? Dear old Robert, he talks a great deal about Mr. Guyon; but I suspect he thinks more of Miss. Though indeed I only found out there was a Miss Guyon quite by accident."
Hester Gould's face flushed with sudden anger, and into her calm calculating heart there came a pang of unaccustomed doubt and fear. But it was quite in her ordinary tone she said:
"So your brother's friend is Mr. Guyon, is he? Does he live in Queen Anne Street?"
"Yes, yes; I am sure that is the street I have heard him mention. Stay, there's an invitation stuck in the chimney-glass--here it is. 'Mr. and Miss Guyon request'--and so--yes, '110 Queen Anne Street' Do you know them, Hester?"
"No, not personally; but I have seen Miss Guyon frequently. I used to teach singing to the Miss Morrisons in the next house, No. 109--it is vacant now, and shut up since Sir Christopher died--and I often saw her going out to ride. She used to go just about at my hour."
"And is she nice, Hester,--is she pretty? Robert never has told me any thing particular about her. Men never can describe any one."
"She is very handsome, very elegant, and very fashionable," replied Hester; and then she departed from her usual cautious reticence so far as to say, "and I heard the Morrisons say Mr. Guyon was very 'fast,' and lived beyond his means."
"Indeed," said Ellen in a very grave tone, for to her the accusation of living beyond one's means sounded very portentous; "I am sure Robert would not approve of that."
Hester Gould watched Robert Streightley quietly and closely the whole of that evening. She saw him different to any thing he had ever been; preoccupied, absent, but not unhappy. A smile played frequently over his features; and though he sunk into frequent fits of abstraction, they were evidently not painful. He was as kind and affectionate as usual to his mother and sisters, as attentive to herself; but a change had passed upon him which she fully understood. In her cold repressed way, she was bitterly angry.
She went home rather early. As Robert Streightley saw her to the cab, and bade her good-night, she said to herself:
"Daniel Thacker knows this Mr. Guyon,--his sisters may know something about the girl. I'll go to Hampstead to-morrow; they don't mind Sunday visitors; and I may have a chance of seeing their brother. Really that girl Ellen grows sillier every day."
The prettiest public fêtes in London are those given in the gardens of the Botanical Society in the Regent's Park. There is to be found plenty of fresh green turf; there are myriads of lovely flowers blooming in open beds, or tastefully arranged beneath the marquees; there are solemn old big trees stretching out their umbrageous arms, and in their majesty making one think even less favourably than usual of the perky straggling sticks at South Kensington; there are the bands of two or three guards regiments, having sufficient compassion on the visitors to play one after the other, and not, as in some places, at the same time; and there is generally a collection of the nicest-looking people in town. There are few savans, and not much literary or artistic talent; but as savans and the professors of literary and artistic talent are for the most part any thing but nice-looking, and as flirtation is the science to which at these gatherings attention is principally devoted, their loss is not felt; indeed it may be safely said that the general company is happier for their absence.
Although the last fête of the season is scarcely to be compared to its immediate predecessor, the warm weather of the two preceding days had done very much in contributing to its gaiety on the first occasion when Mr. Charles Yeldham found himself making holiday from his work, and taking part in a grand ceremony of nothing-doing with those whose lives were passed in never doing any thing; and, like most men who rarely emerge from the business of their lives to seek a temporary respite from perpetual work in a few brief hours of enjoyment, Charley was determined to make the most of his time, and to reap the full value of those precious hours which he had grudgingly given up. With his chum leaning on his arm, he made his way through the fruit-tent and the flower-tent, round the American garden, where the glorious azalias, so lately a mass of magnificent beauty, now stood bare and drooping; now attracting the attention of a group of faded dowagers by his energy and volubility; anon pausing in rapt attention, listening to the strains of the melody-breathing "Sonnambula," as performed by the Grenadiers, or nodding head and beating hand in sufficiently ill-kept time to a whirlwind galop rattled through by the band of the Artillery. Into his holiday, as into his work, Charley had thrown his whole heart; he had determined to shut out temporarily all thoughts of attorneys, pleas, work, and worry, and he went in for the pleasures of the day with an eagerness and an impetuosity that perfectly astonished his companion.
"I'll tell you what it is, Charley," said Gordon Frere, after they had careered round the gardens, and were standing once more by the gate at which they had entered--"I'll tell you what it is; you're like a country cousin, by Jove! or one of those horrible fellows that come up to town with a letter of introduction. You want to see every thing, and all at once. It's a deuced good thing that you don't often give yourself an outing, or you'd be wanting me to take you to the Thames Tunnel, and the Monument, and Madame Tussaud's, and all sorts of wonderful places. Here have we been rushing about from pillar to post, or rather from tent to tent, and from band to band, and you've never yet given me breathing-time to look round and speak to any of the people I know. Now you really must hold on for a moment, for it's just upon three o'clock, and that's the time that Kate--Miss Guyon, I mean--said she should be here; and I promised to be near the entrance, to join her at once."
He spoke with animation, and his bright eyes glowed with fire as he seized his old friend by the shoulders and used a feigned force to arrest his progress. You see Mr. Gordon Frere was brimming over with happiness. To be six-and-twenty years of age; to be good-looking; to have high animal spirits; to have indulgent tradespeople, and a tolerable sufficiency of pocket-money; to be in love with a very charming girl, and to have your passion returned, are all things calculated to make a man content with life, and disposed to regard human nature from its best point of view. He was pleased to speak of himself as a "creature of impulse," and, by some accident probably, he rightly described himself. Whatever best pleased him for the time being he took up and went in for earnestly and vigorously. He had done so all his life, in cricketing, rowing, riding, at school and college--actually once in reading, when he studied so hard and to so much purpose apparently, that old Mr. Yeldham wrote to Charles, anticipating for his son's chum and his own pupil the highest University honours; but Gordon slacked off, and when the class-list came out, a double-third was all the position awarded him. Up to this time the "impulse" had not been shown very strongly in any love-affairs: he had had his ball-room flirtations, involving bouquet-sending, Rotten-Row riding, Opera-box haunting, &c., as all men have; but he had never--to Charles Yeldham's idea at least--been so really smitten with any one as he announced himself to be with Miss Guyon. So his honest old chum, albeit he had his own views of the probable reception of Gordon's proposal by Mr. Guyon, could not find it in his heart to check him, and only smiled pleasantly as he said:
"All right, Gordon; all right, my boy. But you talk of my taking you about here and there, as though I were not a mere child in leading-strings in such a place as this, to be shown each separate sight in the proper order. Now we've seen the fruit and the flowers, and listened to the bands, let us take a look at the people. Tremendous, what you call 'swells,' are they not? No end of crinoline, and flowers, and finery. By Jove! just turn a few of these young ladies to walk through the Temple Gardens, and there would not be much work done that day. Every clerk's nose would be glued to the window; and I verily believe that even old Farrar, our underneath neighbour, would leave his books and his papers for such a refreshing sight. Now there's one,--look there! that tall girl just coming in, with--hallo! steady, young 'un; what's the matter?"
Charley Yeldham might well cry "steady;" for Gordon gave a visible start as he turned in the direction indicated by his friend; and his tone was thick and hurried as he said, "That's Miss Guyon and her father--and--who the devil's that man with them?"
"Now that's a curious thing," said Yeldham with provoking placidity. "I don't suppose I know another soul in all this large gathering; but I do know that man intimately, and I can tell you who he is. That's Robert Streightley, the City man, that you've so often heard me speak of, and--but what has come to him? Talk of 'swells,' why, I should scarcely have recognised Bob Sobersides, as they used to call him, in that costume. And so that is Miss Guyon, is it? that's Miss Guyon I say, young 'un, she's--she's wonderfully lovely."
"For God's sake, don't stand staring there with your mouth open, Charley; but let us go up and speak to these people. They've seen us already;" and Mr. Frere, passing his arm through his friend's, led him up to the group, and after making his own salutations, freely presented him to Miss Guyon and her father. Immediately after his introduction, Yeldham turned and shook hands with Robert Streightley; and after a few words of astonishment from each at meeting the other in such a place, they commenced a conversation, in which Mr. Guyon took part, leaving Gordon Frere and Katharine walking together a little in advance of them.
There are few things more embarrassing than having something very particular to say, knowing that you will have great difficulty in saying it, and being perfectly convinced that if ever it is to be said at all, the exact time has arrived. This was Gordon Frere's position. He knew that the end of the season had arrived; that another fortnight would see Miss Guyon flown, with the rest of the fashionable world, to some English sea-board, foreign watering-place, or country-house, whither he could not have the remotest excuse for following her; he knew the proverbial danger of delay, especially in love-affairs; he fully shared in Charley Yeldham's only half-expressed doubts as to the reception of his proposal by Mr. Guyon, and in the sudden and unexpected appearance upon the scene of Robert Streightley whom he had never met before, but of whom, his wealth, his talents, his City position, he had heard frequently from Charley--he saw a new and important element of danger. If he intended to make his coup for the winning of this peerless beauty, now was the time. So he screwed up his courage and began.
"You are a little late, Miss Guyon,"--this in a low, deep, tremulous voice; "you said you would be here at three."
"You don't pretend to say that you recollect any thing I said about it, Mr. Frere?" in the same tone. "I scarcely remembered we had touched upon the subject."
"Don't you pretend to imagine any such thing so far as I am concerned, Miss Guyon. No, no; pardon me for one instant; you know that whatever concerns you, in however trifling a degree,--and more especially when it relates to the chance of my seeing you,--is always of importance to me."
He had bent his gaze upon her, as he said this, and he received a faint fluttering glance as his first reply. Then she said,
"I was scarcely conceited enough to think so, and--and of course I feel the compliment. However, we have met, you see."
"Yes; and so long as that has come about, no matter how late you are; for you see I still hold to my original opinion. However late or early, I must be doubly thankful for the chances of meeting you now. For the season's at an end, and I suppose you will be off with the rest?"
"I suppose so; though nothing is settled, I believe."
"And where do you go?"
"Papa talked of Scarborough some time ago. He has not said any thing about it lately; and as I am wholly indifferent on the subject, I'm very good to him, and let him have his own way."
"Are you similarly complaisant to Mr. Guyon in all things?"
There must have been something special in the tone of his voice; for she looked up quickly with a slight flush, and said,
"In all matters in which I take no particular interest. Where I am concerned I am exigeante, and--I am afraid--stubborn."
"Let us call it 'firm,' Miss Guyon," said Frere, with a slight smile. "Firmness is a quality by no means reprehensible, even when exercised towards one's father. It's a horrible thing this break-up of the season, especially as one gets older. All the little pleasant--well, I suppose I may call them friendships--are nipped in the bud until next April, when one has to begin again and struggle on until August, when we find ourselves in exactly the same position in which we were a twelvemonth before."
"That is, unless we take up with a different set of friends," said Katharine; "and I believe there are instances on record of such a change."
Gordon Frere looked at her again, and threw an additional warmth into his voice as he said, "Granted that fidelity is uncommon, Miss Guyon, it should be the more prized when it is found. You are going to-night to Mrs. Tresillian's?"
"Yes; Lady Henmarsh has promised to take me. It is almost my 'last rose of summer;' positively the last of our ball-engagements this season."
"Let us trust it will be one of the pleasantest. You will come early, and you will give me the first valse, and as many afterwards as you can."
"I--I shall be very happy; but we shall leave early. Papa has a holy horror of having his horses kept out late, more especially when he is not present; and he will not be there to-night, I think; for he's going to ask Mr. Streightley to dine with us, and I believe he wants to talk business to him afterwards."
"Mr. Streightley going to dine with you! By the way, who is Mr. Streightley?"
"Mr. Streightley? he's a horror--I didn't mean that. He's a City friend of papa's, and, as I'm told, a very rich man."
"Very rich, and in the City, eh!" said Gordon Frere, looking over his shoulder at the object of their remark. "He's better got up than most of his genus. I think I could swear to Poole in his coat. Very rich, and you've been told so, Miss Guyon! He's a lucky man."
"Is he, Mr. Frere? You'll excuse my saying that I don't follow you; that I don't know why Mr. Streightley is lucky."
"Did you not yourself say that he was very rich, Miss Guyon, and that you had been told so?" said Gordon, with more warmth than he had previously exhibited. "Society acts as this gentleman's avant-coureur, and repeats his claim to respect wherever he goes; and of course he finds people prepared to proffer him ready-made honour."
The bitterness in his tone jarred on Kate's ear. His face was averted, so that there was no need for her to restrain the half-inquiring, half-loving gaze with which she looked up at him as she said,
"I never knew you cynical before, Mr. Frere, and I don't think the mood becomes you. Surely the notion that wealth is the most desirable of all possessions is utterly exploded. For my own part, I think that riches in a man--I mean when they are so great as to be talked about--are something against him; something to be got over, like his being black, or having a hump-back."
"This is a very refreshing doctrine, Miss Guyon; but I'm afraid it has not many disciples; and even you would lean to the side of the modest competence and----"
"I would lean to nothing; I would give way to nothing so palpably sordid and base."
"You are strangely in earnest on this point, Miss Guyon."
"I am thoroughly in earnest about it; and I----"
"You cannot tell with what delight I hear it, Miss Guyon. I--you have removed a certain distrust which has prevented me from----"
"As you say"--broke in the strident voice of Mr. Guyon, as he with Streightley and Yeldham "formed up in line"--"In a formal dinner-party you may sit side by side with people and never know any more about them than if they were at opposite ends of the table. You're quite right, Streightley, quite right. But to-night we're quite alone. Katharine, my dear, Mr. Streightley has promised to take us as he finds us, and come home to dinner to-day."
Miss Guyon bowed, and murmured her delight. Then said sotto voce, "It is Mrs. Tresillian's night, papa, you recollect; and Lady Henmarsh is coming to fetch me."
"O yes, my dear; of course, of course. Lady Henmarsh coming, eh! But that won't make any difference."
"No, papa; only you won't mind my running away."
"Of course not, my dear; of course not, And how is my young friend Gordon Frere? Blooming as usual. No need to ask that. Give your arm to an old boy, Gordon; and trot him round, and show him all the--the beauty of the day."
Gordon, who was eminently disgusted at the interruption of his conversation with Kate, and who was showing his feelings in his knitted brow and puckered mouth, had any hopes of a further causerie which he might have entertained dashed to the ground by Mr. Guyon, who passed his delicate lavender-glove through his young friend's arm and led him off in triumph, while Streightley and Yeldham followed on either side of Miss Guyon.
Few men could make themselves pleasanter companions than Ned Guyon when he was so inclined. He had not merely a capital flow of animal spirits, a store of what in women is called small-talk, but what in men may better be described as broad talk, a keen perception of the ludicrous, and a sufficient power of satire, but he had the great knack--learned in his long experience of life--of exactly suiting his conversation to his audience. He possessed in perfection the slang of the clubs, which nowadays passes current for what is called "swell talk," and which is not merely a peculiar argot with special words meaning special things, with excised pronouns and abbreviated nouns, but which, to be perfect, must be spoken in a voice specially pitched for the purpose. The voice and the language none had studied better than Guyon; there were few men of his age, indeed, who had taken the trouble to master either; but in the fashionable sinner's worldly experience he had found the greatest profit in keeping himself au courant with the ways and manners of men of the rising generation. Once let any of them perceive that he was a fogey, in the least antiquated in his ideas or pursuits, and all hope of influence over them was gone; but so long as he could take a leading part in their follies, and blend undoubted past experience with apparent present enjoyment, their houses, horses, purses were at his disposal; and it was considered rather an honour among the subalterns of the Rag or the Plungers from Aldershott to have dropped their money at écarté or baccarat to such a cool clever hand as Mr. Guyon.
Perhaps the old diplomatist had never been in better force than on the present occasion, although there was apparently little opportunity for the exercise of his powers. Frere, distrait, if not savage, at starting, found himself first listening to his companion's remarks; then laughing at his stories; finally answering him, and leading him on to further banter. With a fair proportion of the company present Mr. Guyon had some acquaintance, and of nearly every body who was any body he had some racy anecdote to whisper laughingly into his companion's ear. It did not strike Frere until long afterwards that all these piquant stories were indebted for their piquancy to a half-sneering cynicism, a half-avowed libertinism; that in all the broad principles of honour were ridiculed, and the scampish shifts of so-called "gallantry" exalted; that the whole conversation, in fact, was such as might have been expected from a blasé youth or a battered rake, but scarcely to be looked for in a gentleman whose marriageable daughter was walking within a few feet of him.
They remained in the gardens until past six o'clock, promenading, visiting the tents, stopping to speak to friends; but never on any occasion had Gordon Frere another chance of approaching Miss Guyon. He made several attempts; but invariably her father had something to say to her--or to him--and cut in between them with the pleasantest smile and the cheeriest remarks possible. It was not until just as they were getting into the carriage that Mr. Guyon suddenly turned aside, and saying, "Ah, by the way!" took out a card, wrote on it in pencil, in his airiest manner borrowed an envelope from the ticket-taker standing at his desk in the entrance, and despatched it by a commissionaire who was in waiting. In that short interval Gordon Frere managed to slip round to Miss Guyon's side and whisper, "The first valse, to-night?" and to receive in reply an almost imperceptible acquiescence in the glance of her eyes and the bending of her head. Then Mr. Guyon, wheeling round, took a very affectionate leave of Gordon, and made a polite bow to Charles Yeldham, handed his daughter into the carriage, motioned to Streightley to follow her; and finally jumping lightly in himself, they were whirled off, with much door-slamming and horse-pawing.
The concluding episode of the little drama in which he had asserted his position with Miss Guyon had reanimated Gordon Frere, and rendered him happy and amiable. "Such a lord is Love, and Beauty such a mistress of the world." So he turned cheerily to Yeldham, on whom he had not bestowed so much as a glance or a thought for the past two hours, and gripping his arm, said:
"Well, old boy, and what do you think of her?"
Mr. Charles Yeldham was seldom absent or preoccupied: he was far too practical for that. But on the present occasion his thoughts must have been engaged, for he started, with something like a flush on his cheeks, as he said:
"Who? what, Gordon? I wasn't attending, I fear."
"I was asking you what you thought of Miss Guyon, Charley?"
"She is wonderfully beautiful."
"Well said, old fellow. Quite enthusiastic, by Jove!--for you, at all events. But what I mean is, seriously, is not she something to be proud of; something different from the ruck of grinning, simpering, yea-nay girls one meets about--in such places as that we've just left, for instance?"
"She is, indeed."
"I hope you talked to her. Not that I think--no offence to you, old fellow--not that perhaps your talk would be exactly suited to her--too deep, you know, and all that kind of thing--but still you would be able to make out that she had a head on her shoulders. Doesn't she talk well?"
"Well, to tell truth, I had not much opportunity of judging, for she remained tolerably silent; and the conversation--such as it was--was between Robert Streightley and myself."
"O, by the way, that fellow Streightley,--I've heard you speak of him. Who is he, and what's all about him? What the deuce did old Guyon bring him here for? and why has he gone home with them to dinner?"
"Ha, ha!" laughed Charles Yeldham. "'Beware, my lord, of jealousy!' Here's an Othello for you! I don't think, Gordon, you need look with much suspicion on Robert Streightley, unless you've fixed your affections on good investments or early information; and then you would stand no chance with him, I can tell you. But he's been too long engaged to Capel Court to waver in his allegiance."
"But what on earth brought him here?"
"What? Who? you should ask, and I would answer, your intended father-in-law. There's no man with a clearer head for business: what will be more explanatory, I will say there's no man better able to put a friend on to 'a good thing' than Streightley; and I fancy Mr. Guyon would not be above a little stagging if he could act on Streightley's information."
"But people don't get City information or talk to each other on what you call 'stagging' topics at Botanical Fêtes. Why did he bring him here?"
"O impetuous youth, 'still harping on my daughter!' don't you see that there must be a quid pro quo? If Mr. Streightley is to assist Mr. Guyon, why should not Mr. Guyon show Mr. Streightley the elevated position which he holds, the society in which he moves?"
"Yes, that's all very well; but I say, Charley, Streightley don't know Mrs. Tresillian, does he?"
"Who's Mrs. Tresillian?"
"The wife of the member for Penmouth; people who live at Rutland Gate, and entertain perpetually. He's not likely to be going there to-night, this Streightley, is he?"
"No more than he's likely to be going to Kamschatka; not so likely. Why?"
"O, nothing; only Miss Guyon is going there--and so am I."
"Is Miss Guyon going? Ah, well, I hope you'll enjoy yourself."
And during their ride to chambers in the hansom, both men were singularly silent.