CHAPTER XLV
In the weeks which followed--weeks often of mental and physical depression, caused by his sense of personal loss and by the influence of an overworked state he could not be got to admit--Elsmere owed much to Hugh Flaxman"s cheery sympathetic temper, and became more attached to him than ever, and more ready than ever, should the fates deem it so, to welcome him as a brother-in-law. However, the fates for the moment seemed to have borrowed a leaf from Langham"s book, and did not apparently know their own minds. It says volumes for Hugh Flaxman"s general capacities as a human being that at this period he should have had any attention to give to a friend, his position as a lover was so dubious and difficult.
After the evening at the Workmen"s Club, and as a result of further meditation, he had greatly developed the tactics first adopted on that occasion. He had beaten a masterly retreat, and Rose Leyburn was troubled with him no more.
The result was that a certain brilliant young person was soon sharply conscious of a sudden drop in the pleasures of living. Mr. Flaxman had been the Leyburns" most constant and entertaining visitor. During the whole of May he paid one formal call in Lerwick Gardens, and was then entertained _tete-a-tete_ by Mrs. Leyburn, to Rose"s intense subsequent annoyance, who knew perfectly well that her mother was incapable of chattering about anything but her daughters.
He still sent flowers, but they came from his head gardener, addressed to Mrs. Leyburn. Agnes put them in water; and Rose never gave them a look. Rose went to Lady Helen"s because Lady Helen made her, and was much too engaging a creature to be rebuffed; but, however merry and protracted the teas in those scented rooms might be, Mr. Flaxman"s step on the stairs, and Mr. Flaxman"s hand on the curtain over the door, till now the feature in the entertainment most to be counted on, were, generally speaking, conspicuously absent.
He and the Leyburns met, of course; for their list of common friends was now considerable; but Agnes, reporting matters to Catherine, could only say that each of these occasions left Rose more irritable, and more inclined to say biting things as to the foolish ways in which society takes its pleasures.
Rose certainly was irritable, and at times, Agnes thought, depressed.
But as usual she was unapproachable about her own affairs, and the state of her mind could only be somewhat dolefully gathered from the fact that she was much less unwilling to go back to Burwood this summer than had ever been known before.
Meanwhile, Mr. Flaxman left certain other people in no doubt as to his intentions.
"My dear aunt," he said calmly to Lady Charlotte, "I mean to marry Miss Leyburn if I can at any time persuade her to have me. So much you may take as fixed, and it will be quite waste of breath on your part to quote dukes to me. But the other factor in the problem is by no means fixed. Miss Leyburn won"t have me at present, and as for the future I have most salutary qualms."
"Hugh!" interrupted Lady Charlotte angrily, "as if you hadn"t had the mothers of London at your feet for years!"
Lady Charlotte was in a most variable frame of mind; one day hoping devoutly that the Langham affair might prove lasting enough in its effects to tire Hugh out; the next, outraged that a silly girl should waste a thought on such a creature, while Hugh was in her way; at one time angry that an insignificant chit of a schoolmaster"s daughter should apparently care so little to be the Duke of Sedbergh"s niece, and should even dare to allow herself the luxury of snubbing a Flaxman; at another, utterly sceptical as to any lasting obduracy on the chit"s part. The girl was clearly anxious not to fall too easily, but as to final refusal--pshaw! And it made her mad that Hugh would hold himself so cheap.
Meanwhile, Mr. Flaxman felt himself in no way called upon to answer that remark of his aunt"s we have recorded.
"I have qualms," he repeated, "but I mean to do all I know, and you and Helen must help me."
Lady Charlotte crossed her hands before her.
"I may be a Liberal and a lion-hunter," she said firmly, "but I have still conscience enough left not to aid and abet my nephew in throwing himself away."
She had nearly slipped in "again"; but just saved herself.
"Your conscience is all a matter of the Duke," he told her. "Well, if you won"t help me, then Helen and I will have to arrange it by ourselves."
But this did not suit Lady Charlotte at all. She had always played the part of earthly providence to this particular nephew, and it was abominable to her that the wretch, having refused for ten years to provide her with a love affair to manage, should now manage one for himself in spite of her.
"You are such an arbitrary creature!" she said fretfully; "you prance about the world like Don Quixote, and expect me to play Sancho without a murmur."
"How many drubbings have I brought you yet?" he asked her laughing. He was really very fond of her. "It is true there is a point of likeness; I won"t take your advice. But then why don"t you give me better? It is strange," he added musing; "women talk to us about love as if we were too gross to understand it; and when they come to business, and they"re not in it themselves, they show the temper of attorneys."
"Love!" cried Lady Charlotte nettled. "Do you mean to tell me, Hugh, that you are really, _seriously_ in love with that girl?"
"Well, I only know," he said, thrusting his hands far into his pockets, "that unless things mend I shall go out to California in the autumn and try ranching."
Lady Charlotte burst into an angry laugh. He stood opposite to her, with his orchid in his b.u.t.tonhole, himself the fine flower of civilisation.
Ranching, indeed! However, he had done so many odd things in his life, that, as she knew, it was never quite safe to decline to take him seriously, and he looked at her now so defiantly, his clear greenish eyes so wide open and alert, that her will began to waver under the pressure of his.
"What do you want me to do, sir?"
His glance relaxed at once, and he laughingly explained to her that what he asked of her was to keep the prey in sight.
"I can do nothing for myself at present," he said; "I get on her nerves.
She was in love with that black-haired, _enfant du siecle_,--or rather, she prefers to a.s.sume that she was--and I haven"t given her time to forget him. A serious blunder, and I deserve to suffer for it. Very well, then, I retire, and I ask you and Helen to keep watch. Don"t let her go. Make yourselves nice to her; and, in fact, spoil me a little now I am on the high road to forty, as you used to spoil me at fourteen."
Mr. Flaxman sat down by his aunt and kissed her hand, after which Lady Charlotte was as wax before him. "Thank heaven," she reflected, "in ten days the Duke and all of them go out of town." Retribution, therefore, for wrong-doing would be tardy, if wrong-doing there must be. She could but ruefully reflect that after all the girl was beautiful and gifted; moreover, if Hugh would force her to befriend him in this criminality, there might be a certain joy in thereby vindicating those Liberal principles of hers, in which a scornful family had always refused to believe. So, being driven into it, she would fain have done it boldly and with a dash. But she could not rid her mind of the Duke, and her performance all through, as a matter of fact, was blundering.
However, she was for the time very gracious to Rose, being in truth really fond of her; and Rose, however high she might hold her little head, could find no excuse for quarrelling either with her or Lady Helen.
Towards the middle of June there was a grand ball given by Lady Fauntleroy at Fauntleroy House, to which the two Miss Leyburns, by Lady Helen"s machinations, were invited. It was to be one of the events of the season, and when the cards arrived "to have the honour of meeting their Royal Highnesses," etc. etc., Mrs. Leyburn, good soul, gazed at them with eyes which grew a little moist under her spectacles. She wished Richard could have seen the girls dressed, "just once." But Rose treated the cards with no sort of tenderness. "If one could but put them up to auction," she said flippantly, holding them up, "how many German opera tickets I should get for nothing! I don"t know what Agnes feels.
As for me, I have neither nerve enough for the people, nor money enough for the toilette."
However, with eleven o"clock Lady Helen ran in, a fresh vision of blue and white, to suggest certain dresses for the sisters which had occurred to her in the visions of the night, "original, adorable,--cost, a mere nothing!"
"My harpy," she remarked, alluding to her dressmaker,"would ruin you over them, of course. Your maid"--the Leyburns possessed a remarkably clever one--"will make them divinely for twopence-halfpenny. Listen."
Rose listened; her eye kindled; the maid was summoned; and the invitation accepted in Agnes"s neatest hand. Even Catherine was roused during the following ten days to a smiling indulgent interest in the concerns of the workroom.
The evening came, and Lady Helen fetched the sisters in her carriage.
The ball was a magnificent affair. The house was one of historical interest and importance, and all that the ingenuity of the present could do to give fresh life and gaiety to the pillared rooms, the carved galleries and stately staircases of the past, had been done. The ball-room, lined with Vandycks and Lelys, glowed softly with electric light; the picture gallery had been banked with flowers and carpeted with red, and the beautiful dresses of the women trailed up and down it, challenging the satins of the Netschers and the Terburgs on the walls.
Rose"s card was soon full to overflowing. The young men present were of the smartest, and would not willingly have bowed the knee to a n.o.body, however pretty. But Lady Helen"s devotion, the girl"s reputation as a musician, and her little nonchalant disdainful ways, gave her a kind of prestige, which made her, for the time being at any rate, the equal of anybody. Pet.i.tioners came and went away empty. Royalty was introduced, and smiled both upon the beauty and the beauty"s delicate and becoming dress; and still Rose, though a good deal more flushed and erect than usual, and though flesh and blood could not resist the contagious pleasure which glistened even in the eyes of that sage Agnes, was more than half-inclined to say with the Preacher, that all was vanity.
Presently, as she stood waiting with her hand on her partner"s arm before gliding into a waltz, she saw Mr. Flaxman opposite to her, and with him a young _debutante_ in white tulle--a thin, pretty, undeveloped creature, whose sharp elbows and timid movements, together with the blushing enjoyment glowing so frankly from her face, pointed her out as the school-girl of sweet seventeen, just emanc.i.p.ated, and trying her wings.
"Ah, there is Lady Florence!" said her partner, a handsome young Hussar.
"This ball is in her honour, you know. She comes out to-night. What, another cousin? Really she keeps too much in the family!"
"Is Mr. Flaxman a cousin?"
The young man replied that he was, and then, in the intervals of waltzing, went on to explain to her the relationships of many of the people present, till the whole gorgeous affair began to seem to Rose a mere family party. Mr. Flaxman was of it. She was not.
"Why am I here?" the little Jacobin said to herself fiercely as she waltzed; "it is foolish, unprofitable. I do not belong to them, nor they to me!"
"Miss Leyburn! charmed to see you!" cried Lady Charlotte, stopping her; and then, in a loud whisper in her ear, "Never saw you look better. Your taste, or Helen"s, that dress? The roses--exquisite!"
Rose dropped her a little mock curtsey and whirled on again.
"_Lady Florences_ are always well dressed," thought the child angrily; "and who notices it?"
Another turn brought them against Mr. Flaxman and his partner. Mr.
Flaxman came at once to greet her with smiling courtesy.
"I have a Cambridge friend to introduce to you--a beautiful youth. Shall I find you by Helen? Now, Lady Florence, patience a moment. That corner is too crowded. How good that last turn was!"
And bending with a sort of kind chivalry over his partner, who looked at him with the eyes of a joyous excited child, he led her away. Five minutes later Rose, standing flushed by Lady Helen, saw him coming again towards her, ushering a tall blue-eyed youth, whom he introduced to her as "Lord Waynflete." The handsome boy looked at her with a boy"s open admiration, and beguiled her of a supper dance, while a group standing near, a mother and three daughters, stood watching with cold eyes and expressions which said plainly to the initiated that mere beauty was receiving a ridiculous amount of attention.
"I wouldn"t have given it him, but it is _rude_--it is _bad manners_, not even to ask!" the supposed victress was saying to herself, with quivering lips, her eyes following not the Trinity freshman, who was their latest captive, but an older man"s well-knit figure, and a head on which the fair hair was already growing scantily, receding a little from the fine intellectual brows.