"Why, Madame, you are not nervous," said Kitty, gaily.
"No, my dear," replied the elder, quietly, "but I must confess that for some reason or another I have been a little upset since coming here; I don"t like being alone."
"You shall never be that," said Kitty, fondly nestling to her.
"Thank you, puss," said Madame, tapping her cheek; "but I am nervous,"
she said, rapidly; "at night especially. Sometimes I have to get Selina to come into my room and stay all night."
"Madame Midas nervous," thought Vandeloup to himself; "then I can guess the reason; she is afraid of her husband coming back to her."
Just at this moment the servant announced Mr Calton, and he entered, with his sharp, incisive face, looking clever and keen.
"I must apologise for being late, Mrs Villiers," he said, shaking hands with his hostess; "but business, you know, the pleasure of business."
"Now," said Madame, quickly, "I hope you have come to the business of pleasure."
"Very epigrammatic, my dear lady," said Calton, in his high, clear voice; "pray introduce me."
Madame did so, and they all went to dinner, Madame with Calton and Kitty following with Vandeloup.
"This," observed Calton, when they were all seated at the dinner table, "is the perfection of dining; for we are four, and the guests, according to an epicure, should never be less than the Graces nor greater than the Muses."
And a very merry little dinner it was. All four were clever talkers, and Vandeloup and Calton being pitted against one another, excelled themselves; witty remarks, satirical sayings, and well-told stories were constantly coming from their lips, and they told their stories as their own and did not father them on Sydney Smith.
"If Sydney Smith was alive," said Calton, in reference to this, "he would be astonished at the number of stories he did not tell."
"Yes," chimed in Vandeloup, gaily, "and astounded at their brilliancy."
"After all," said Madame, smiling, "he"s a sheet-anchor for some people; for the best original story may fail, a dull one ascribed to Sydney Smith must produce a laugh."
"Why?" asked Kitty, in some wonder.
"Because," explained Calton, gravely, "society goes mainly by tradition, and our grandmothers having laughed at Sydney Smith"s jokes, they must necessarily be amusing. Depend upon it, jokes can be sanctified by time quite as much as creeds."
"They are more amusing, at all events," said Madame, satirically.
"Creeds generally cause quarrels."
Vandeloup shrugged his shoulders.
"And quarrels generally cause stories," he said, smiling; "it is the law of compensation."
They then went to the drawing-room and Kitty and Vandeloup both sang, and treated one another in a delightfully polite way. Madame Midas and Calton were both clever, but how much cleverer were the two young people at the piano.
"Are you going to Meddlechip"s ball?" said Calton to Madame.
"Oh, yes," she answered, nodding her head, "I and Miss Marchurst are both going."
"Who is Mr Meddlechip?" asked Kitty, swinging round on the piano-stool.
"He is the most charitable man in Melbourne," said Gaston, with a faint sneer.
"Great is Diana of the Ephesians," said Calton, mockingly. "Because Mr Meddlechip suffers from too much money, and has to get rid of it to prevent himself being crushed like Tarpeia by the Sabine shields, he is called charitable."
"He does good, though, doesn"t he?" asked Madame.
"See advertis.e.m.e.nt," scoffed Calton. "Oh, yes! he will give thousands of pounds for any public object, but private charity is a waste of money in his eyes."
"You are very hard on him," said Madame Midas, with a laugh.
"Ah! Mr Calton believes as I do," cried Vandeloup, "that it"s no good having friends unless you"re privileged to abuse them."
"It"s one you take full advantage of, then," observed Kitty, saucily.
"I always take what I can get," he returned, mockingly; whereon she shivered, and Calton saw it.
"Ah!" said that astute reader of character to himself, "there"s something between those two. "Gad! I"ll cross-examine my French friend."
They said good-night to the ladies, and walked to the St Kilda station, from thence took the train to town, and Calton put into force his cross-examination. He might as well have tried his artful questions on a rock as on Vandeloup, for that clever young gentleman saw through the barrister at once, and baffled him at every turn with his epigrammatic answers and consummate coolness.
"I confess," said Calton, when they said good-night to one another, "I confess you puzzle me."
"Language," observed M. Vandeloup, with a smile, "was given to us to conceal our thoughts. Good night!"
And they parted.
"The comedy is over for the night," thought Gaston as he walked along, "and it was so true to nature that the spectators never thought it was art."
He was wrong, for Calton did.
CHAPTER IX
A PROFESSIONAL PHILANTHROPIST
We have professional diners-out, professional beauties, professional Christians, then why not professional philanthropists? This brilliant century of ours has nothing to do with the word charity, as it savours too much of stealthy benevolence, so it has subst.i.tuted in its place the long word philanthropy, which is much more genteel and comprehensive.
Charity, the meekest of the Christian graces, has been long since dethroned, and her place is taken by the blatant braggard Philanthropy, who does his good deeds in a most ostentatious manner, and loudly invites the world to see his generosity, and praise him for it. Charity, modestly hooded, went into the houses of the poor, and tendered her gifts with smiles. Philanthropy now builds almshouses and hospitals, and rails at poverty if it has too much pride to occupy them. And what indeed, has poverty to do with pride?--it"s far too sumptuous and expensive an article, and can only be possessed by the rich, who can afford to wear it because it is paid for. Mr Meddlechip was rich, so he bought a large stock of pride, and wore it everywhere. It was not personal pride--he was not good-looking; it was not family pride--he never had a grandfather; nor was it pecuniary pride--he had too much money for that. But it was a mean, sneaking, insinuating pride that wrapped him round like a cloak, and pretended to be very humble, and only holding its money in trust for the poor. The poor ye have always with you--did not Mr Meddlechip know it? Ask the old men and women in the almshouses, and they would answer yes; but ask the squalid inhabitants of the slums, and they would probably say, "Meddlechip, "o"s "e?" Not that the great Ebenezer Meddlechip was unknown--oh, dear, no--he was a representative colonial; he sat in Parliament, and frequently spoke at those enlarged vestry meetings about the prosperity of the country. He laid foundation stones. He took the chair at public meetings. In fact, he had his finger in every public pie likely to bring him into notoriety; but not in private pies, oh, dear, no; he never did good by stealth and blush to find it fame. Any blushes he might have had would have been angry ones at his good deed not being known.
He had come in the early days of the colony, and made a lot of money, being a shrewd man, and one who took advantage of every tide in the affairs of men. He was honest, that is honest as our present elastic acceptation of the word goes--and when he had acc.u.mulated a fortune he set to work to buy a few things. He bought a grand house at Toorak, then he bought a wife to do the honours of the grand house, and when his domestic affairs were quite settled, he bought popularity, which is about the cheapest thing anyone can buy. When the Society for the Supplying of Aborigines with White Waistcoats was started he headed the list with one thousand pounds--bravo, Meddlechip! The Secretary of the Band of Hard-up Matrons asked him for fifty pounds, and got five hundred--generous Meddlechip! And at the meeting of the Society for the Suppression of Vice among Married Men he gave two thousand pounds, and made a speech on the occasion, which made all the married men present tremble lest their sins should find them out-n.o.ble Meddlechip! He would give thousands away in public charity, have it well advertised in the newspapers, and then wonder, with humility, how the information got there; and he would give a poor woman in charge for asking for a penny, on the ground that she was a vagrant. Here, indeed, was a man for Victoria to be proud of; put up a statue to him in the centre of the city; let all the school children study a list of his n.o.ble actions as lessons; let the public at large grovel before him, and lick the dust of his benevolent shoes, for he is a professional philanthropist.
Mrs Meddlechip, large, florid, and loud-voiced, was equally as well known as her husband, but in a different way. He posed as benevolence, she was the type of all that"s fashionable--that is, she knew everyone; gave large parties, went out to b.a.l.l.s, theatres, and lawn tennis, and dressed in the very latest style, whether it suited her or not. She had been born and brought up in the colonies, but when her husband went to London as a representative colonial she went also, and stayed there a whole year, after which she came out to her native land and ran everything down in the most merciless manner. They did not do this in England--oh! dear no! nothing so common--the people in Melbourne had such dreadfully vulgar manners; but then, of course, they are not English; there was no aristocracy; even the dogs and horses were different; they had not the stamp of centuries of birth and breeding on them. In fact, to hear Mrs Meddlechip talk one would think that England was a perfect aristocratic paradise, and Victoria a vulgar--other place.
She totally ignored the marvellously rapid growth of the country, and that the men and women in it were actually the men and women who had built it up year by year, so that even now it was taking its place among the nations of the earth. But Mrs Meddlechip was far too ladylike and fashionable for troubling about such things--oh dear, no--she left all these dry facts to Ebenezer, who could speak about them in his own pompous, blatant style at public meetings.
This lady was one of those modern inventions known as a frisky matron, and said and did all manner of dreadful things, which people winked at because--she was Mrs Meddlechip, and eccentric. She had a young man always dangling after her at theatres and dances--sometimes one, sometimes another, but there was one who was a fixture. This was Barty Jarper, who acted as her poodle dog, and fetched and carried for her in the most amiable manner. When any new poodle dog came on the scene Barty would meekly resign his position, and retire into the background until such time as he was whistled back again to go through his antics.
Barty attended her everywhere, made up her programmes, wrote out her invitations, danced with whosoever he was told, and was rewarded for all these services by being given the crumbs from the rich man"s table.
Mr Jarper had a meek little way with Mrs Meddlechip, as if he was constantly apologising for having dared to have come into the world without her permission, but to other people he was rude enough, and in his own mean little soul looked upon himself quite as a man of fashion.
How he managed to go about as he did was a standing puzzle to his friends, as he got only a small salary at the Hibernian Bank; yet he was to be seen at b.a.l.l.s, theatres, tennis parties; constantly driving about in hansoms; in fact, lived as if he had an independent income. The general opinion was that he was supplied with money by Mrs Meddlechip, while others said he gambled; and, indeed, Barty was rather clever at throwing sixes, and frequently at the Bachelors" Club won a sufficient sum to give him a new suit of clothes or pay his club subscription for the year. He was one of those bubbles which dance on the surface of society, yet are sure to vanish some day, and if G.o.d tempered the wind to any particular shorn lamb, that shorn lamb was Barty Jarper.