The wretched man who sold them to him must have cheated.
It was a terrible _fiasco_. Not a single one of the rotten things went off. The most awful thing happened that could happen in life. After great fear, hope, suspense, excitement and joy, _the squibs were damp_!
Nothing went off. Nothing happened. As to the Bengal fire, nothing was ever seen of it but some damp paper and a very horrible scent.
Certainly there was no vulgarity about it, no ostentation, except the perfume. The fireworks were as private as they could possibly be!
"At any rate," said Cissy, trying to console her guest, "perhaps it"s better than if the house had caught fire and we had all been burnt up!"
They weren"t so very sure. It wouldn"t have been so flat.
Then Pickering made an attempt to imply that the whole thing was simply a practical joke of his.
"Well, if it is," said Clifford to himself, "by Jove, if it is--it"s the greatest success I"ve ever seen in my life!"
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
NIGEL ABROAD
Nigel "ran across" Rupert in Paris--Englishmen who are acquainted with each other always do meet in Paris--and they agreed to dine together.
Each was pleased to see the other, not so much for each other"s own sake, but for the pleasure of a.s.sociations. The sight of Rupert reminded Nigel of one of the pleasantest evenings in his life--that evening they had spent at the Russian Ballet. Bertha had sat next to him. Bertha had been delightful. She had looked lovely and laughed at his jokes, and had been all brightness and amiability--it had been before the first shadow, the first thought of _arriere pensee_ had risen in her mind to cloud her light heart. And he at that time, with what he saw now to be his dense stupidity, had believed that she was beginning to like him, that she was even on the way to get to care for him in time if he managed with great tact and did not annoy Percy nor seem wanting in deference for him, and above all if he did not give it away about Mary"s jealousy. He always knew that if Bertha once learnt that, it would be fatal to his hopes.
She was never to know it.
And now everything had come out, everything had gone wrong in the most horrible, hideous way. It had all gone off like young Pickering"s fireworks. When he remembered that dreadful scene at the party it made him shudder. How hopelessly stupid he had been to persuade her to come!
How could he have been so idiotic? Looking at Rupert reminded him of the delightful little meetings and talks he had had with Bertha about him and Madeline. How charmingly grateful and delighted she had been at his offering to help her and smooth away the difficulties by diplomacy. And this was how he had done it! Madeline was now engaged to n.o.body.
Bertha knew all about the jealousy and had been exposed to insults. And Percy knew even more about it than she did. Talk of diplomacy! Nigel must have been indeed a poor diplomatist, since, without having ever done the slightest harm or indeed really said a word of love to Bertha, he had yet brought her husband down upon him, forbidding him the house and sending him to the devil. That was diplomacy, wasn"t it? and as to success, she regarded him with indifference bordering on aversion and was clearly madly in love with that dull uninteresting Percy. All (Nigel admitted), all his own stupidity. Whether or not wickedness is punished in another world, there can be no doubt that stupidity and folly is most decidedly punished in this.
But then, could he help it that Mary went behind his back and wrote the most dreadful letters, that she had this terrible mania for writing letters? But if he had been so very clever and diplomatic he would somehow or another have prevented it. Oh yes, there was no doubt he was a fool, and he had without doubt been made supremely ridiculous. He was well aware that he was ridiculous.
Rupert Denison liked Nigel, but he had no idea how intimate he was with Nigel. In other words he hadn"t the faintest idea how well Nigel knew him. And this is a case which happens every day owing to the present custom of confidential gossip; and is too frequently rather unfairly arranged through the intimate friendship of women. For example, Madeline, regarding Bertha as the most confidential of sisters, told her every little thing, showed her every letter, and had no shadow of a secret from her in word or thought. Bertha was almost equally confiding except than an older married woman is never quite so frank with a girl friend--there must always be certain reservations. Bertha was an intimate friend of Nigel and practically told _him_ every little thing--he was "the sort of man you could tell everything to," he was interested, amused, and gave excellent advice. The result was obvious; very little about Rupert and his private romance with Madeline was unrevealed to Nigel.
Nigel felt inclined to smile when he remembered all he had heard.
Rupert, on the other hand, was not "the sort of man you could tell everything to"; he therefore had no confidential women friends and knew nothing at all about Nigel. For all he knew, he was just as much as ever _l"ami de la maison_ at Percy"s house.
At the very end of the dinner, which was a very pleasant one, during which Nigel had been sparkling and Rupert a little quiet, Nigel suddenly "felt it in his bones," as Bertha used to say--dear Bertha, she used to declare that her bones were so peculiarly and remarkably sensitive to anything of interest--Nigel felt, as I say, Rupert was longing to talk about Madeline.
He therefore led the conversation to her, remarked how quiet she had been of late, and told him various things about her.
"Did she ever mention me?" asked Rupert, as he looked down at his winegla.s.s.
"Oh yes, rather."
"What did she say?"
"She said," replied Nigel, "that she was jolly glad she never saw you now and that you were a silly rotter!"
"I recognise Miss Madeline"s style," replied Rupert with a smile, as he rose from the table.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
MOONA
Like all cultivated people, particularly those who attach much importance to pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt, variety, art, and the play, Nigel was very fond of Paris; it always pleased him to go there; and yet he doubted if he were quite as fond of it in reality as he was in theory.
The best acting, the best cooking, the best millinery in the world was to be found in Paris; and yet Nigel wasn"t sure that he didn"t enjoy those things more when he got them in London--that he enjoyed French cooking best in an English restaurant, and even a French play at an English theatre. Certainly Paris was the centre of art. Nigel was fond of pictures, and he amused himself more with a few young French artists whom he happened to know living here than with anybody else in the city; and yet when he went back to London he sometimes felt that the recollection of it, the chatter of studios, the slang of the critics, even the whole sense and sound of Paris gave him a little the recollection as of a huge cage of monkeys. Like most modern Englishmen, he talked disparagingly about British hypocrisy, Anglo-Saxon humbug, English stiffness and London fog; and yet, after all, he missed and valued these very things. Wasn"t the fog and the hypocrisy--one was the symbol of the other--weren"t all these things the very charm of London?
Fog and hypocrisy--that is to say, shadow, convention, decency--these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.
Everything in Paris, it was true, was picturesque, everything had colour and form, everything made a picture. But it was all too obvious; everything was all there ready for one"s amus.e.m.e.nt, ready for one"s pleasure. People were too obliging, too willing. And the men! Well, Nigel was far more of a _viveur_, of a lover of pleasure than ninety-nine Englishmen out of a hundred, yet he found too much of that point of view among the men he came across in Paris. From boys to old gentlemen, from the artists to a certain set among the _haute finance_--of whom he had some acquaintances--from the sporting young sprig of the Faubourg to the son of the sham jeweller in the Rue de Rivoli--all, without a single exception, seemed to think of nothing else but pleasure, in other words, of _les pet.i.tes femmes_. For that--paying attention more or less serious to _les pet.i.tes femmes_--seemed the one real idea of pleasure. Of this point of view Nigel certainly grew very tired, and he marvelled at the wonderful energy, the unflagging interest in the same eternal subject.
They said, and of course thought, that there was nothing so charming as a French woman, particularly the Parisienne; but, except on one point, he was not entirely inclined to agree. This point was their dress. Their dress was delightful, their fashion was an art, and it had great, real charm. In whatever walk of life they were placed they were always exquisitely dressed. Nigel appreciated this sartorial gift, it was an art he understood and that amused, but weren"t they on the whole--also in every walk of life--a little too much arranged, overdone, too much _maquillees_; weren"t their faces too white, their lips too red, their hats too new? They knew how to put on their clothes to perfection, but he was not sure that he didn"t prefer these beautiful clothes not quite so well put on; he thought he liked to see the pretty French dress put on a little wrong on a pretty Englishwoman; and then he thought of Bertha, of course. Nowhere in Paris was there anything quite like Bertha, that pink and white English complexion, that abundant fair hair, the natural flower-like look.
Of course Bertha was unusually clever, lively and charming; she was not stiff or prim, she was very exceptional, but distinctly English, and he admired her more than all the Parisiennes in the world. Besides, he thought, one got very tired of them. When they _were bourgeoises_ they were so extremely _bourgeoises_; when they were smart they were so excessively _sn.o.b_. Perhaps it was through having seen a good deal of them for a little while that he met a compatriot of his with unexpected gratification.
He was walking with one of his artist friends on the boulevard when, to his great surprise, the artist was stopped by a young lady walking alone who evidently knew him. She was dressed in a very tight blue serge coat and skirt, she had black bandeaux of hair over her ears, from which depended imitation coral ear-rings. She had shoes with white spats, and a very small hat squashed over her eyes. She did not look in the least French. He knew her at once. It was the girl whose artistic education Rupert had at one time undertaken. It was Moona Chivvey.
"Ah! Miss Chivvey! What a pleasure! And what are you doing here?"
She replied that she and her friend, Mimsie Sutton, had taken a little studio and were studying art together with a number of other English and American girls with a great artist.
Nigel"s friend left his arm and went away. Nigel strolled on with Miss Chivvey.
"And are you here quite alone with no chaperon," asked Nigel, with that momentary sort of brotherly feeling of being shocked that an Englishman nearly always feels when he sees a compatriot behaving unconventionally in a foreign land.
"Chaperon! Oh! come off the roof," replied the young lady in her boisterous manner, which he saw had not at all toned down. "Of course I"m being chaperoned by Miss Sutton. I"m staying with Mimsie. Mother couldn"t come, and didn"t want me to come, but there"s no hope of learning art in London; it"s simply _hopeless_. You see we"re serious, Mr. Hillier, we"re studying really hard. We"re going to do big things.
Mimsie"s a genius. I"m not; but I"m industrious. I"m a tremendous worker. Oh, I shall do something yet!"
She was full of fire and enthusiasm, and continued to give him an immense quant.i.ty of information. He listened with interest and thought it rather touching. Of course she was genuine and believed in herself; equally, of course, she had no sort of talent. She was in a position in which no girl in her own cla.s.s could be placed who was not English, except an American, and then it wouldn"t be the same thing. No doubt she knew thoroughly well how to take care of herself, and most likely there was no need, even, that she should. Still, he thought it was rather pathetic that she should leave her parents and a thoroughly comfortable home in Camden Hill, in order to live in a wretchedly uncomfortable studio--he was sure it was wretchedly uncomfortable--and have a dull life with other depressing girls--all for the cultivation of a gift that was purely imaginary.
"You must come and dine with me to-night, won"t you, Miss Chivvey?"
She was rather pretty, rather amusing, and she was English. He liked talking English again.
"Well, I should like to very much, Mr. Hillier. Is your wife here?"