Red as a Rose is She: A Novel

"I say, old fellow," remarks Mr. De Grey, touching St. John on the shoulder as he leans against the wall, gazing somewhat morosely at his own boots, "don't you think we might as well be saying Ta-ta? I don't know what you have, but I have had nearly enough of this gay and festive scene."

"All right," answers the other, shaking off dull care; "I have put into exactly twenty-five raffles, and only got a christening robe and a squirt, so I think I may be supposed to have done my duty."

At the door there is a little confusion – carriages driving up, carriages driving away; a small crowd gathered to see the smart ladies; two policemen.

The Felton equipage and Mr. Gerard's T. – cart stand at some little distance down the street. St. John offers Esther his arm, and she, having no decent excuse for declining, takes it. As they walk along, he speaks to her hurriedly and not without temper. "If you have no special ground of quarrel against me – and Heaven knows why you should have – but feel only that weariness to which most women seem, in my society, to be more or less subject, be unselfish, and let me drive you home. I will not speak, neither need you, if you will have it so; there are many things more unsociable than absolute silence."

"Why cannot you be satisfied with this morning's arrangements?" she asks, demurring; the recollection of his reported insult rankling in her mind.

He shrugs his shoulders expressively. "If you had had three fourths of 'Le Follet' and half the Morning Post poured into your reluctant ears, as I have, you would not have asked that question."

"If you have heard half the Morning Post, is it not a thousand pities that you should not hear the other half?" she inquires, drily.

They have reached the T. – cart, the big black horse, the baby-tiger; in the low, red sun the new harness shines brightly.

"I almost wish you could sprain your other ankle," Gerard says, recovering his good humour. "As long as you were lame, you were much more amiable."

Ten minutes more, and the Melford steep street and railway bridge are left behind them, they are trotting with smooth briskness between the nutty, briary hedgerows. At first the silence which Gerard had guaranteed threatens to remain unbroken; it is infringed at last by Esther, out of whose heart the fair late breeze, the happy yellow stillness, and lastly, the proximity to and solitude with the beloved one, are smoothing all angry creases. ("If he did speak lightly of me," she thinks, sorrowfully, "we shall not have the chance of many more drives together; whether he think ill or well, highly or meanly, of me, let me be happy with him while I may!")

"What a pleasant vehicle this would be to make a driving tour in!"

"A tour of all the cathedral towns throughout England, as the Heir of Redclyffe proposed spending his honeymoon in making!"

She laughs.

"I remember long ago the Saturday Review saying of some she-novelist's men, that they were like old governesses in trousers: it was not a bad simile, was it?"

Silence falls on them again; broken this time by Gerard, who, turning abruptly towards his companion, says, "You are not bored by my society, Miss Craven? Unless you are cast in a mould different from the rest of humanity, you must be bored by the society of the Misses De Grey. Why, then, were you so resolute this morning in rejecting the one and accepting the other? This is the problem that has been puzzling me for the last half mile."

She hangs her head like a scolded school-child.

"What was your motive?"

"A prudential one, partly," she answers, rallying her spirits. "I knew that in after life I should have small experience of T. – carts and such rich man's luxuries, so I thought it wiser not to run the risk of contracting a taste for them."

"How do you know what the experience of your after life may be?"

"One may argue from the known to the unknown; I can give a pretty shrewd guess."

"And was that your sole motive?"

"What does it matter to you whether it was or not?"

"Nothing; except that, to a philosophical mind like mine, woman and her caprices are an interesting psychological study. Did you ever hear of an essay of Addison's entitled 'Dissection of a Coquette's Heart?'"

"I am not a coquette," she cries, indignantly, answering the indirect accusation directly.

"I did not say you were. I hope you are not – I hope to God you are not!" he answers, with more vehemence than the occasion seems to demand.

"And yet," she says, feeling oppressed by the solemnity of his manner and trying to speak lightly, "I have heard it said that no woman can be thoroughly attractive who is not something of a flirt."

"I had rather that she should be thoroughly unattractive then," he answers, shortly and grimly.

"Men always wish to have a monopoly of all pleasant sins," she retorts, a little cynically.

"If you think that the reason why I wish you not to flirt is that I want a monopoly of that occupation, you are mistaken," he says, gravely; "it is an art that I have not either the will or the power to practise."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. Confess that, after that admission, your opinion of me is considerably lowered."

No answer but a smile.

"Confess that you feel for me as sovereign a contempt as the ladies of the last century felt for a man that never got drunk."

"I feel," she says, averting her head and speaking under an impulse that kindles her cheeks and makes her voice falter – "I feel a surprise that the words you say and the words you are reported to say do not tally better together."

"What am I reported to say?" (a little impatiently.) "A réchauffé of one's own stale speeches is not an appetising dish, but may be wholesome as an exhortation to consistency."

"A person – I was told – " begins Esther, floundering in confusion among different forms of speech – "I was told – by a person that ought to have known – that you had spoken in a slighting, disparaging way of – of – of – a person."

"Who told you so?" (breathlessly.)

"That can be of no consequence."

"Without your telling me I know," he says, his face growing hot with the red of indignant anger, not guilt. "God forgive her for such a lie!"

"It was not true, then?" she asks, eagerly, lifting her eyes, brimful of joyful relief, to his.

"Such an accusation is not worth rebutting," he answers, contemptuously. "Is a man likely to speak slightingly of – " He stops abruptly. ("Not yet! not yet! it is impossible that she can like me yet. Am I an Antinous, to be loved as soon as seen? Let me be patient – be patient!")

CHAPTER XIV

"I am afraid that their names will not convey much idea to your minds, as you do not know our part of the world, but you may have met some of them in London: Sir Charles and Lady Bolton; Mr. and Mrs. Tredegar; Mr., Mrs., and Miss Annesley; the Misses Denzil (by-the-by, you saw them at the bazaar yesterday); and two or three stray men."

This remark is addressed by Miss Blessington to her two friends on the afternoon following the bazaar, and contains a list of the guests expected at dinner at Felton that evening.

"So there's to be a party?" says Esther, from a window recess, where, hidden by a drooped curtain, she has been lying perdue up to the present moment, deeply buried in the unwonted luxury of a French novel.

Constance gives a little start. "I did not know that you were there! Yes; there are a few people coming to dine!"

"Don't you like parties?" asks Miss De Grey, half turning round her head, and a coquettish little lace morning cap, in the direction whence Esther's voice proceeds.

"I – I – think so; I hardly know."

"I suppose that you have only just left the schoolroom?"

Esther laughs. "I can hardly be said to have left it, for I was never in it."

"Did you never have a governess, do you mean? What a fortunate person!"

"Never."

"I am not sure that the other alternative, going to school, is not worse."

"I never went to school."

"Is it possible? Do you mean (raising herself, and opening her eyes) that you have never had any education at all?"

"I suppose not," answers Esther, reluctantly; regretting having made an admission which evidently tells so much against her.

"How very odd!"

"What's very odd?" asks her brother, who, with St. John, lounges in from the billiard-room, where they have been knocking the balls about and getting tired of one another.

"Miss Craven has just been telling us that she has had no education," answers Constance, in her even voice – perhaps not sorry of an opportunity to let Gerard know his protégée's deficiencies. "I am sure (civilly) that we should never have found it out if she had not told us."

The protégée droops her black eyes in mortification over her book, in which she has already found several things that amuse, several things that startle, and several other things that profoundly puzzle her innocent mind.

How unnecessary to make the admission of her own illiterateness, and how needless for Constance to be in such a hurry to repeat the confession!

"What an awful sensation it must be being such an ignoramus!" says Gerard's voice, low and laughing, as he sits down on the window-seat beside her. "What does it feel like?"

She looks up with a re-assured smile.

"At all events," continues he, glancing at her book, "you are doing your best to supply your deficiencies, however late in life."

She colours a little, and involuntarily puts her hand over the title.

"What is it? May I see?"

She hesitates, and her other hand goes hastily to its fellow's help; then, changing her mind, she offers the book boldly to him.

He looks at the title, and a slightly shocked expression dawns on his features: men are always shocked that women should read about the things that they do.

"Where did you get this?" (quickly).

"I climbed up the ladder in the library; pleasant books always rise to top shelves, as the cream rises to the top of the milk."

"Will you oblige me by putting it back where you took it from?"

"When I have read it? Of course."

"Before you have read it."

"Why should I?" (rather snappishly).

"Why should you," he repeats, impatiently – not much fonder of opposition than are most of his masterful sex. "Why, because it is not a fit book for a – a child like you to read."

"A child like me!" (sitting bolt up and reddening). "Do you know what age I am?"

"I have not an idea; forty, perhaps."

She laughs.

"Don't you know that all women are children till they are twenty-one; and you are particularly childish for your age."

"I am, am I?"

"Child or no child, this is a book that no modest woman ought to read."

"But that all modest men may, with pleasure and profit for themselves," rejoins she, ironically. "Well, when I have finished it I shall be better able to tell you whether I agree with you or not."

"Do you mean to say that, after what I have told you, you are still bent on reading it?" he asks, astonishment and displeasure fighting together for the mastery in his voice.

"Certainly!" (looking rather frightened, but speaking with a sort of timid bravado). "Do you suppose that Eve would have cared to taste the apple if it had been specially recommended to her notice as a particularly good, juicy Ribstone pippin? Give it me, please!"

"Take it!" he says, throwing it with hasty impoliteness into her lap. "Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest every word of it; and since you have a taste for such literature, I can lend you a dozen more like it."

So speaking, he rises abruptly, and leaves her side and the room at almost the same moment.

When he is gone, finding that the rest of the company have likewise slipped away in different directions, Esther relieves her feelings by flinging the disputed volume on the floor; sits for a quarter of an hour staring uncertainly at it; then, pocketing her pride, picks it up, sneaks off with it to the library, and, climbing the high, steep ladder, deposits it in the hole whence she had ravished it, between two of its fellows, as agreeably lax and delicately indelicate as itself. Half an hour later, passing through the hall, she sees the door of Gerard's sanctum ajar, and hears some one walking to and fro within. To one so praise-loving, the temptation to trumpet forth her own excellence is irresistible. She knocks timidly.

"Come in!"

"I don't want to come in," she answers, standing in beautiful, bashful awkwardness in the aperture.

"Is there anything that I can do for you?" he asks, advancing towards her, looking slightly surprised.

"No, nothing; I – I – only came to tell you that I had put —it back."

At the end of her sentence her eyes, downcast at first, raise themselves to his with the innocent, eager expectancy of a child that waits for approbation of some infantile good action.

"You have, have you?" he cries, joyfully, catching both her hands; "and was it because I asked you?"

"I don't know for what other reason," she answers, unwillingly.

"And have not read a word more of it?"

"Not a word."

"Not even looked at the end?"

"No."

"Well, you are a good child!"

"Child! child!– always child!" she cries, puckering up her low forehead into the semblance of a frown. "I have a good mind to go and fetch it down again!"

"A good old woman, then! a good old lady! – which is best? which is most respectful? Don't go!" (seeing that she is about to withdraw.)

"It is dressing-time!"

"Not for half an hour yet," pulling her gently in, and closing the door.

"See!" she says, half embarrassed by this tête-à-tête that she has herself invited, holding up a bunch of scarlet geraniums that she has lately reft from one of the garden's dazzling squares – "I have been stealing! I hope Sir Thomas won't prosecute me; but as a new dress is with me a biennial occurrence, these are the only contributions I can make to the evening's festivity."

"Red, of course!" he answers, smiling. "I never saw you that you had not something red or yellow about you. But why scarlet geraniums? Don't you know that the least imaginable shake (suiting the action to the word, and gently jogging the hand that holds the flowers) – there!" as a little scarlet shower confirms his prognostications.

She stoops to pick up the scattered blossoms.

"If I had some gum, I would drop a little into the centre of each flower; that keeps the petals quite firm; I have often done it at home," she says, kneeling on one knee, and looking up gravely for advice and assistance into his friendly, dark face: "but I have no gum."

"Haven't you? I have – somebody has" (ringing the bell). "Please sit down" (drawing an armchair forwards for her). "This is Constance's chair: and don't look as if you were racking your brains for a decent excuse to get away from the only comfortable room in the house."

She obeys, and her eyes wander curiously round. Pipes, whips, saloon pistols, prints of Derby winners; photographs of Nilsson tricked out in water-weeds as "Ophelia;" of Patti gazing up, as "Marguerite," into Mario's fortunate eyes; a table strewn with books – two or three yellow-paper backed, with enticing Gallic titles, similar to the one she has just so heroically foregone. Looking up from these latter, she involuntarily catches his eye.

"You are thinking that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," he says, laughing rather consciously; "but I assure you that it is not so. The gander is not nearly such a delicate bird, and takes much stronger seasoning."

The gum arrives. She holds the flowers, while he with a paint-brush delicately insinuates one drop into the scarlet heart of each. Their heads are bent so close together that his crisp brown locks brush against the silk-smooth sweep of hers.

"Gently, gently!" cries Esther, pleasantly excited by the consciousness of doing something rather hors de règle in that prim household, in having this impromptu tête-à-tête with its heir – "not so much! the least soupçon imaginable – there! does not it look like a sticky dewdrop?"

"These people that are coming ought to be very much flattered by the efforts you are making in their honour," says Gerard, half jealously.

"Are they worth making efforts for?"

"You must tell me that to-morrow."

"Who will take me in to dinner, do you think?" she asks, confidentially, looking up at him with childish inquisitiveness.

"I have not an idea; but make your mind easy; it won't be Sir Thomas or me."

"Hardly; but I am sorry that you do not know who it will be, as you might have told me what to talk about."

"Do you always get up your subject beforehand, like Belinda Denzil, out of the Saturday or Echoes of the Clubs?"

"Oh no! but – "

"St. John! St. John!" shouts Sir Thomas, banging a swing-door, behind him, and coming heavy-footed through the hall.

"It's Sir Thomas!" says Esther growing suddenly pale: and if she had said, and had had reason to say, "It's the Devil!" she could not have made the communication in a more tragic whisper: then, not waiting for any advice as to her conduct, snatching up her bouquet, she flies as if shot from a crossbow, out of the window and into the garden.

Was not it Lord Chesterfield who said that the guests at a dinner party should never be less than the Graces or more than the Muses? Kant preferred the Grace number, and had daily two friends, never more, to dine with him. The guests at the Felton banquet greatly exceed the Chesterfieldian limits. Those who have come only to dinner have been bemoaning themselves heavily, as they came along, on the hardship of being forced away from garden and croquet-ground, and obliged to drive three, four, five miles bare-necked and bare-backed – and a woman nowadays in full dress is verily and indeed bare-necked and bare-backed – through the mellow crimson evening.

To even these grumblers, however, destiny now appears kinder – now, I say, that the too candid daylight is shut out, that the amber champagne —

"With beaded bubbles winking at the brim – "

is creaming gently in every glass, and the entrées are making their savoury rounds.

Esther has fallen to the lot of one of the stray men of whom Miss Blessington spoke – a man who, when bidden to dinner, complies with the letter of his invitation, and dines chiefly and firstly; looks upon the lady whom he escorts to the social board as a mere adjunct – an agreeable or disagreeable one, as the case may be, but as merely an adjunct, as the flowers in the vases, or the silver Cupids that uphold the fruit baskets. In the intervals of the courses he has no objection to being amused: it is too much exertion to be very amusing himself, but he is not unwilling to smile and lend an indulgent ear to his companion's prattle, so as that prattle does not infringe upon the succulent programme that he has, by diligent study of the menu, laid out for himself.

Baffled on her left hand, Miss Craven turns to her right, to be baffled there also. Not that this right-hand neighbour labours under any excessive gourmandise– he is willing, on the contrary, that the unknown, black-eyed innocent and the turtle cutlet should share and share alike in his regards; but ere a quarter of an hour their conversation has come to a shipwreck. In it he takes too much for granted: as, for example, that she has been to London this season; that she has seen Faed's last picture; that she has been at Lady – 's ball; that, by having seen both, she is in a position to judge of the comparative merits of Mademoiselle Nilsson's and Madame Carvalho's rendering of "Marguerite." Tired at length of saying, "I was not there," "I have not seen it," "I never heard of her," she relapses into a mortified silence; thinking, what an impostor must I be to have thrust myself in among all these fine people – I, who cannot even catch their jargon for five minutes!

Foiled in her own little conversational ventures, she tries to listen to other people's. In vain: if, above the general hum, she catches the beginning of one sentence, it is immediately joined on to the end of another. As well, listening to the sultry buzz of a swarm of bees, might one try to distinguish each separate voice. But the dumb show, at least, is left her: the waggling heads, the moving jaws – poor jaws, that have to talk and eat both at once! To put a history to each of these heads – to pick out characters by watching the delicate shades of difference with which each person sits; says, "No, thank you;" laughs – this is not unamusing. Yes, to study the faces, and find similitudes for them: one nut-cracker; several flowers; one plum-pudding; one horse, one vulture, one door-knocker. She is puzzled to find a resemblance for all; for Belinda Denzil, for instance, who, virginally clad in white muslin, that seems to mock her thirty celibate years, is apparently forcing the suave yet weary De Grey into an up-hill, one-sided flirtation. No man has hired Belinda, and it is, with her, the eleventh hour. What fowl, or fish, or quadruped, or article of furniture is she most like? Before Esther can decide this point quite to her mind, the signal of retirement is given, and each maid and wife rises obedient and vanishes.

It is the general complaint in the Felton neighbourhood that at that house the men sit unfashionably, wearisomely long over their wine. Sir Thomas belongs to that excellent school that in their hearts regret the good old days, when a man never rejoined the ladies without seeing double their real number. Half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hour and a quarter have passed. Several girls are beginning to yawn behind their fans; the Misses De Grey are driving heavily through a long duet, with never a squire to turn over the leaves (in the wrong place) for them. The door opens, and a fat, bald head appears; the most uninteresting always come first, but, like Noah's dove, he is the harbinger of better things. Five minutes more, and the room is as full of broadcloth as of silk and satin. The younger men are still hovering about uncertainly, unfixed as yet in their minds as to which elaborate fair one they shall come to final anchor by.

The epicure, now that there is nothing to eat, casts his eyes round in search of the finest woman and the comfortablest chair to be found in the great gilded room. Both requisites he finds united in Esther's neighbourhood. Accordingly he is moving towards her, when his attention is happily arrested by a remark that he overhears as to the best method of dressing beccaficos. Instantly Miss Craven's white, silky shoulders and red-pouted lips go out of his head. White shoulders and red lips are good things in their way, but what are they to beccaficos! Esther draws a long breath of relief. What an escape! In a minute more suspense is ended, and the low armchair beside her is occupied by the person for whom it was intended – for whom, indeed, she has been slyly keeping it half-covered by her dress.

"Well! and how are you getting on?" says Gerard, asking a silly question for want of a wiser one occurring to him, and looking rather affectionate.

St. John is not in the very least degree elevated; but it is useless to deny that the best and fondest of men are still fonder after dinner than before: it must be a very, very deep love that cannot be a little deepened by champagne.

"Better than I thought I should be a few seconds ago, when that odious gourmand seemed to be steering this way," she answers, not taking any great trouble to hide her pleasure in his neighbourhood.

"Poor devil! he must not come to you for a character, I see."

"I could forgive a man most sins," she says, rather viciously, "but I never could forgive him the making me feel in his estimation I stood on a lower level than red mullet and ortolans."

"Well, you know, they are very good things," answers Gerard, chiefly to tease her, but partly also because he really thinks so. "Don't look so disgusted," he continues, laughing. "I was afraid you were bored at dinner: you looked absent; I tried to catch your eye once or twice, but you would not let me."