These were mere rumors, however; for as yet, none, save Albert Jekyl himself, had seen the interior; and from him, unless disposed to accord it, all Confidence was hopeless. Indeed, his little vague stare when questioned; his simpering, "I shouldn"t wonder," "It is very likely," or "Now that you mention it, I begin to think so too," would have disarmed the suspicion of all who had not studied him deeply. What the Onslows were going to do, and when they would do it, were, then, the vexed questions of every coterie. In a few days more the Carnival would begin, and yet no announcement of their intentions had yet gone forth, no programme of future festivities been issued to the world. A vague and terrible fear began to prevail that it was possible they meant all these splendid preparations for themselves alone. Such a treason was incredible at first; but as day followed day, and no sign was made, suspicion ripened into actual dread; and now the eager expectants began to whisper among themselves dark reasons for a conduct so strange and inexplicable.
Haggerstone contributed his share to these mysterious doublings, for, while not confessing that his acquaintance with the Onslows was of the very slightest, and dated but from a week before, he spoke of them with all the affected ease and information of one who had known them for years.
Nor were his comments of the most flattering kind, for seeing how decidedly every effort he made to renew acquaintance was met by a steady opposition, he lost no time in a.s.suming his stand as enemy. The interval of doubt which had occurred as to their probable mode of life was favorable for this line of action. None knew if they were ever to partake of the splendor and magnificence of the Mazzarini; none could guess what chance they had of the sumptuous banquets of the rich man"s table. It was a lottery, in which, as yet, they had not even a ticket; and what so natural as to depreciate the scheme!
If the courts of law and equity be the recognized tribunals by which the rights of property are decided, so there exists in every city certain not less decisive courts, which p.r.o.nounce upon all questions of social claims, and deliver judgments upon the pretensions of every new arrival amongst them. High amid the number of these was a certain family called Ricketts, who had been residents of Florence for thirty-odd years back.
They consisted of three persons, General Ricketts, his wife, and a maiden sister of the General. They inhabited a small house in a garden within the boulevard, dignified by the name of the "41 Villino Zoe." It had originally been the humble residence of a market-gardener, but, by the aid of paint and plaster, contrived to impose upon the world almost as successfully as did the fair owner herself by the help of similar adjuncts. A word, however, for the humanities before we speak of their abiding-place. The "General" Heaven alone knew when, where, or in what service he became so was a small, delicate little man, with bland manners, a weak voice, a weak stomach, and a weaker head; his instincts all mild, gentle, and inoffensive, and his whole pursuit in life a pa.s.sion for inventing fortifications, and defending pa.s.ses and tetes-du-pont by lines, circ.u.mvallations, and ravelins, which cost reams of paper and whole buckets of water-color to describe. The only fire which burned within his nature was a little flickering flame of hope, that one day the world would awake to the recognition of his great discoveries, and his name be a.s.sociated with those of Vauban and Carnot.
Sustained by this, he bore up against contemporary neglect and actual indifference; he whispered to himself, that, like Nelson, he would one day "have a gazette of his own," and in this firm conviction, he went on with rule and compa.s.s, measuring and daubing and drawing from morn till night, happy, humble, and contented: nothing could possibly be more inoffensive than such an existence. Even the French our natural enemies or the Russians our Palmerstonian Betes noires would have forgiven, had they but seen, the devices of his patriotism. Never did heroic ardor burn in a milder bosom, for, though his brain revelled in all the horrors of siege and slaughter, he would not have had the heart to crush a beetle.
Unlike him in every respect was the partner of his joys: a more bustling, plotting, scheming existence it was hard to conceive. Most pretenders are satisfied with aspiring to one crown; her ambitions were "legion." When Columbus received the taunts of the courtiers on the ease of his discovery, and merely replied, that the merit lay simply in the fact that he alone had made it, he was uttering a truth susceptible of very wide application. Nine tenths of the inventions which promote the happiness or secure the ease of mankind have been not a whit more difficult than that of balancing the egg. They only needed that some one should think of them "practically." Thousands may have done so in moods of speculation or fancy; the grand requisite was a practical intelligence. Such was Mrs. Ricketts"s. As she had seen at Naples the lava used for mere road-making, which in other hands, and by other treatment, might have been fashioned into all the shapes and colors of Bohemian gla.s.s, so did she perceive that a certain raw material was equally misapplied and devoted to base uses, but which, by the touch of genius, might be made powerful as the wand of an enchanter. This was "Flattery." Do not, like the Spanish courtiers, my dear reader, do not smile at her discovery, nor suppose that she had been merely exploring an old and exhausted mine. Her flattery was not, as the world employs it, an exaggerated estimate of existing qualities, but a grand poetic and creative power, that actually begot the great sublime it praised.
Whatever your walk, rank, or condition in life, she instantly laid hold of it to entrap you. No matter what your size, stature, or symmetry, she could costume you in a minute! Her praises, like an elastic-web livery, fitted all her slaves; and slaves were they of the most abject slavery, who were led by the dictation of her crafty intelligence!
A word about poor Martha, and we have done; nor, indeed, is there any need we should say more than that she was universally known as "Poor Martha" by all their acquaintance. Oh! what patience, submission, and long suffering it takes before the world will confer its degree of Martyr, before they will condescend to visit, even with so cheap a thing as compa.s.sion, the life of an enduring self-devotion. Martha had had but one idol all her life, her brother; and although, when he married late in years, she had almost died broken-hearted at the shock, she clung to him and his fortunes, unable to separate from one to whose habits she had been ministering for above thirty years. It was said that originally she was a person of good common faculties, and a reasonably fair knowledge of the world; but to see her at the time of which we now speak, not a vestige remained of either, not a stone marked where the edifice once stood. Nor can this ba matter of wonderment. Who could have pa.s.sed years amid all the phantasmagoria of that unreal existence, and either not gone clean mad, or made a weak compromise with sanity, by accepting everything as real? Poor Martha had exactly these two alternatives, either to "believe the crusts mutton," or be eternally shut out from all hope. Who can tell the long and terrible struggle such a mind must have endured? what little bursts of honest energy repelled by fear and timidity? what good intentions baffled by natural humility, and the affection she bore her brother?
It may have nay, it did cost her much to believe this strange creed of her sister-in-law; but she ended by doing so. So implicit was her faith, that, like a true devotee, she would not trust the evidence of her own senses, if opposed by the articles of her belief. The very pictures at whose purchase she had been present, and whose restoration and relacquering had been the work of her own hands, she was willing to aver had been the gifts of royal and princely personages. The books for which she had herself written to the publishers, she would swear all tributes offered by the respective writers to the throne of taste and erudition.
Every object with whose humble birth and origin she was familiar, was a.s.sociated in her mind with some curious history, which, got off by rote, she repeated with full credulity. Like the well-known athlete, who lifted a bull because he had accustomed himself to the feat since the animal had been a calf, rising from small beginnings, she had so educated her faculties that now nothing was above her powers. Not all the straits and contrivances by which this motley display was got up, not all the previous schemings and plottings, not all the discussions as to what King or Kaiser this should be attributed, by what artist that was painted, who carved this cup, who enamelled that vase, could shake the firmness of her faith when the matter was once decided. She might oppose the Bill in every stage; she might cavil at it in Committee, and divide on every clause; but when it once became law, she revered it as a statute of the land. All her own doubts faded away on the instant; all her former suggestions vanished at once; a new light seemed to break on her mind, and she appeared to see with the eyes of truth and discernment. We have been led away beyond our intention in this sketch, and have no s.p.a.ce to devote to that temple wherein the mysteries were celebrated. Enough if we say that it was small and ill-arranged, its discomfort increased by the incongruous collection of rare and curious objects by which it was filled. Stuffed lions stood in the hall; mock men in armor guarded the entrance to the library; vast gla.s.s cases of mineralogical wealth, botanical specimens, stuffed birds, impaled b.u.t.terflies, Indian weapons, Etrurian cups, Irish antiquities, Chinese curiosities, covered the walls on every side. Not a specimen amongst them that could not trace its presentation to some ill.u.s.trious donor.
Miniatures of dear, dear friends everywhere; and what a catholic friendship was that which included every one, from Lord Byron to Chalmers, and took in the whole range of morals, from Mrs. Opie to f.a.n.n.y Elssler. Indeed, although the fair Zoe was a "rigid virtue," her love of genius, her "mind-worship," as she called it, often led her into strange intimacies with that intellectual cla.s.s whose strength lies in pirouettes, and whose gifts are short petticoats. In a word, whatever was "notorious" was her natural prey; a great painter, a great radical, a great ba.s.so, a great traveller; any one to lionize, anything to hang history upon; to enlist, even "for one night only," in that absurd comedy which was performed at her house, and to display among her acquaintances as another in that long catalogue of those who came to lay the tribute of their genius at her feet.
That a large section of society was disposed to be rude and ungenerous enough to think her a bore, is a fact that we are, however unwilling, obliged to confess; but her actual influence was little affected by the fact. The real serious business of life is often carried on in localities surrounded by innumerable inconveniences. Men buy and sell their millions, subsidize states, and raise loans in dens dark and dismal enough to be prison-cells. In the same way, the Villino was a recognized rendezvous of all who wanted to hear what was going on in the world, and who wished to be d la hauteur of every current scandal of the day. Not that such was ever the tone of the conversation; on the contrary, it was "all taste and the musical gla.s.ses," the "naughty talk"
being the mere asides of the scene.
Now, in that season of foreign life which precedes the Carnival, and on those nights when there is no opera, any one benevolent enough to open his doors to receive is sure of full houses; so the Villino "improved the occasion," by announcing a series of Tuesdays and Fridays, which were, as the papers say, frequented by all the rank and fashion of the metropolis. It is at one of these "at homes" that we would now present our reader, not, indeed, during the full moon of the reception, when the crowded rooms, suffocating with heat, were crammed with visitors, talking in every tongue of Europe, and every imaginable dialect of each.
The great melee tournament was over, and a few lingered over the now empty lists, discussing in familiar converse the departed guests and the events of the evening.
This privy council consisted of the reader"s old acquaintance, Haggerstone, a Russo-Polish Count Petrolaffski, a dark, sallow-skinned, odd-looking gentleman, whose national predilections had raised him to the rank of an enemy to the Emperor, but whose private resources, it was rumored, came from the Imperial treasury to reward his services as a spy; a certain Mr. Scroope Purvis, the brother of Mrs. Ricketts, completing the party. He was a little, rosy-cheeked old man, with a limp and a stutter, perpetually running about retailing gossip, which, by some accident or other, he invariably got all wrong, never, on even the most trifling occasion, being able to record a fact as it occurred.
Such were the individuals of a group which sat around the fire in close and secret confab., Mrs. Ricketts herself placed in the midst, her fair proportions gracefully disposed in a chair whose embroidery displayed all the quarterings and emblazonment of her family for centuries back.
The "Bill" before the house was the Onslows, whose res gestee were causing a most intense interest everywhere.
"Have dey return your call, madam?" asked the Pole, with an almost imperceptible glance beneath his dark brows.
"Not yet, Count; we only left our cards yesterday." This, be it said in parenthesis, was "inexact," the visit had been made eight days before.
"Nor should we have gone at all, but Lady Foxington begged and entreated we would. "They will be so utterly without guidance of any kind," she said, "you must really take them in hand.""
"And you will take dem in your hand eh?"
"That depends, my dear Count, that depends," said she, pondering. "We must see what line they adopt here; rank and wealth have no influence with us if ununited with moral and intellectual excellence."
"I take it, then, your circle will be more select than amusing this winter," said Haggerstone, with one of his whip-cracking enunciations.
"Be it so, Colonel," sighed she, plaintively. "Like a lone beacon on a rock, with I forget the quotation."
"With the phos-phos-phos-phate of lime upon it?" said Purvis, "that new discov-co-covery?"
"With no such thing! A figure is, I perceive, a dangerous mode of expression."
"Ha! ha! ha!" cried he, with a peculiar cackle, whose hysteric notes always carried himself into the seventh heaven of enjoyment, "you would cut a pretty figure if you were to be made a beacon of, and be burned like Moses. Ha! ha! ha!"
The lady turned from him in disdain, and addressed the Colonel.
"So you really think that they are embarra.s.sed, and that is the true reason of their coming abroad?"
"I believe I may say I know it, ma"am!" rejoined he. "There is a kind of connection between our families, although I should be very sorry they "d hear of it, the Badelys and the Harringtons are first cousins."
"Oh, to be sure!" broke in Purvis. "Jane Harrington was father; no, no, not father she was mo-mo-mother of Tom Badely; no! that is n"t it, she was his aunt, or his brother-in-law, I forget which."
"Pray be good enough, sir, not to involve a respectable family in a breach of common law," said Haggerstone, tartly, "and leave the explanation to me."
"How I do dislike dat English habit of countin" cousins," said the Pole; "you never see tree, four English togeder without a leetle tree of genealogie in de middle, and dey do sit all round, fighting for de fruit."
"Financial reasons, then, might dictate retirement," said Mrs. Ricketts, coming back to the original theme.
A very significant nod from Haggerstone inferred that he concurred in the remark.
"Four contested elections for a county, ma"am, a spendthrift wife, and a gambling son, rarely increase a man"s income," said he, sententiously.
"Do he play? What for play is he fond of?" asked the Pole, eagerly.
"Play, sir? There is nothing an Englishman will not play at, from the turf, to tossing for sovereigns."
"So Hamlet say, in Shakspeare, "de play is de ting,"" cried the Count, with the air of a man who made a happy quotation.
"They are going to have plays," broke in Purvis; "Jekyl let it out to-night. They "re going to get up a Vauvau-vau-vau--"
"A tete de veau, probably, sir," said Haggerstone; "In which case,"
continued he, in a whisper, "you would be invaluable."
"No, it is n"t that," broke in Purvis; "they are to have what they call Proverbs."
"I trust they have engaged your services as Solomon, sir," said Haggerstone, with that look of satisfaction which always followed an impudent speech.
"I heard the subject of one of them," resumed the other, who was far too occupied with his theme to bestow a thought upon a sarcasm. "There"s a lady in love with with with her Mam-mam-mam--"
"Her mamma," suggested the Pole.
"No, it is n"t her mamma; it"s her Mam-ame-ameluke her Mameluke slave; and he, who is a native prince, with a great many wives of his own--"
"Oh, for shame, Scroope, you forget Martha is here," said Mrs. Ricketts, who was always ready to suppress the bore by a call to order on the score of morals.
"It isn"t wrong, I a.s.sure you; just hear me out; let me only explain--"
"There, pray don"t insist, I beg you," said Mrs. Ricketts, with a regal wave of her hand.
"Why, it"s Miss Dalton is to play it, Jekyl says," cried Purvis, in a tone of most imploring cadence.
"And who may Miss Dalton be?" asked Mrs. Ricketts.
"She is the niece no, she"s the aunt or rather her father is aunt to to--"