The Absentee (6 page)

But Grace was too good a friend to comply with that request; she left
Miss Broadhurst to unfold her own character.

'It is your move, my lord,' said Lady Catharine.

'I beg your ladyship's pardon—'

'Are not these rooms beautiful, Miss Broadhurst?' said Lady Catharine,
determined, if possible, to turn the conversation into a commonplace,
safe channel; for she had just felt, what most of Miss Broadhurst's
acquaintance had in their turn felt, that she had an odd way of
startling people, by setting their own secret little motives suddenly
before them, 'Are not these rooms beautiful?'

'Beautiful!—Certainly.'

The beauty of the rooms would have answered Lady Catharine's purpose for
some time, had not Lady Anne imprudently brought the conversation back
again to Miss Broadhurst.

'Do you know, Miss Broadhurst,' said she, 'that if I had fifty sore
throats, I could not have refrained from my diamonds on this GALA night;
and such diamonds as you have! Now, really, I could not believe you to
be the same person we saw blazing at the opera the other night!'

'Really! could not you, Lady Anne? That is the very thing that
entertains me. I only wish that I could lay aside my fortune sometimes,
as well as my diamonds, and see how few people would know me then. Might
not I, Grace, by the golden rule, which, next to practice, is the best
rule in the world, calculate and answer that question?'

'I am persuaded,' said Lord Colambre, 'that Miss Broadhurst has friends
on whom the experiment would make no difference.'

'I am convinced of it,' said Miss Broadhurst; 'and that is what makes me
tolerably happy, though I have the misfortune to be an heiress.'

'That is the oddest speech,' said Lady Anne. 'Now I should so like to be
a great heiress, and to have, like you, such thousands and thousands at
command.'

'And what can the thousands upon thousands do for me? Hearts, you
know, Lady Anne, are to be won only by radiant eyes. Bought hearts your
ladyship certainly would not recommend. They're such poor things—no
wear at all. Turn them which way you will, you can make nothing of
them.'

'You've tried then, have you?' said Lady Catharine.

'To my cost. Very nearly taken in by them half a dozen times; for they
are brought to me by dozens; and they are so made up for sale, and the
people do so swear to you that it's real, real love, and it looks so
like it; and, if you stoop to examine it, you hear it pressed upon
you by such elegant oaths—By all that's lovely!—By all my hopes of
happiness!—By your own charming self! Why, what can one do but look
like a fool, and believe; for these men, at the time, all look so like
gentlemen, that one cannot bring oneself flatly to tell them that they
are cheats and swindlers, that they are perjuring their precious souls.
Besides, to call a lover a perjured creature is to encourage him. He
would have a right to complain if you went back after that.'

'Oh dear! what a move was there!' cried Lady Catharine. 'Miss Broadhurst
is so entertaining to-night, notwithstanding her sore throat, that one
can positively attend to nothing else. And she talks of love and lovers
too with such CONNAISSANCE DE FAIT—counts her lovers by dozens, tied up
in true-lovers' knots!'

'Lovers!—no, no! Did I say lovers?—suitors I should have said. There's
nothing less like a lover, a true lover, than a suitor, as all the world
knows, ever since the days of Penelope. Dozens!—never had a lover in my
life! And fear, with much reason, I never shall have one to my mind.'

'My lord, you've given up the game,' cried Lady Catharine; 'but you make
no battle.'

'It would be so vain to combat against your ladyship,' said Lord
Colambre, rising, and bowing politely to Lady Catharine, but turning the
next instant to converse with Miss Broadhurst.

But when I talked of liking to be an heiress,' said Lady Anne, 'I was
not thinking of lovers.'

'Certainly. One is not always thinking of lovers, you know,' added Lady
Catharine.

'Not always,' replied Miss Broadhurst. 'Well, lovers out of the question
on all sides, what would your ladyship buy with the thousands upon
thousands?'

'Oh, everything, if I were you,' said Lady Anne.

'Rank, to begin with,' said Lady Catharine.

'Still my old objection—bought rank is but a shabby thing.'

'But there is so little difference made between bought and hereditary
rank in these days,' said Lady Catharine.

'I see a great deal still,' said Miss Broadhurst; 'so much, that I would
never buy a title.'

'A title without birth, to be sure,' said Lady Anne, 'would not be so
well worth buying; and as birth certainly is not to be bought—'

'And even birth, were it to be bought, I would not buy,' said Miss
Broadhurst, 'unless I could be sure to have with it all the politeness,
all the noble sentiments, all the magnanimity—in short, all that should
grace and dignify high birth.'

'Admirable!' said Lord Colambre. Grace Nugent smiled.

'Lord Colambre, will you have the goodness to put my mother in mind I
must go away?'

'I am bound to obey, but I am very sorry for it,' said his lordship.

'Are we to have any dancing to-night, I wonder?' said Lady Catharine.
'Miss Nugent, I am afraid we have made Miss Broadhurst talk so much, in
spite of her hoarseness, that Lady Clonbrony will be quite angry with
us. And here she comes!'

My Lady Clonbrony came to hope, to beg, that Miss Broadhurst would not
think of running away; but Miss Broadhurst could not be prevailed upon
to stay. Lady Clonbrony was delighted to see that her son assisted
Grace Nugent most carefully in SHAWLING Miss Broadhurst; his lordship
conducted her to her carriage, and his mother drew many happy auguries
from the gallantry of his manner, and from the young lady's having
stayed three-quarters, instead of half an hour—a circumstance which
Lady Catharine did not fail to remark.

The dancing, which, under various pretences, Lady Clonbrony had
delayed till Lord Colambre was at liberty, began immediately after Miss
Broadhurst's departure; and the chalked mosaic pavement of the Alhambra
was, in a few minutes, effaced by the dancers' feet. How transient are
all human joys, especially those of vanity! Even on this long meditated,
this long desired, this gala night, Lady Clonbrony found her triumph
incomplete—inadequate to her expectations. For the first hour all had
been compliment, success, and smiles; presently came the BUTS, and the
hesitated objections, and the 'damning with faint praise.' All THAT
could be borne. Everybody has his taste—and one person's taste is as
good as another's; and while she had Mr. Soho to cite, Lady Clonbrony
thought she might be well satisfied. But she could not be satisfied with
Colonel Heathcock, who, dressed in black, had stretched his 'fashionable
length of limb' under the statira canopy upon the snow-white swan-down
couch. When, after having monopolised attention, and been the subject
of much bad wit, about black swans and rare birds, and swans being geese
and geese being swans, the colonel condescended to rise, and, as Mrs.
Dareville said, to vacate his couch, that couch was no longer white—the
black impression of the colonel remained on the sullied snow.

'Eh, now! really didn't recollect I was in black,' was all the apology
he made. Lady Clonbrony was particularly vexed that the appearance of
the statira, canopy should be spoiled before the effect had been seen by
Lady Pococke, and Lady Chatterton, and Lady G—, Lady P—, and the Duke
of V—, and a party of superlative fashionables, who had promised TO LOOK
IN UPON HER, but who, late as it was, had not yet arrived. They came in
at last. But Lady Clonbrony had no reason to regret for their sake the
statira couch. It would have been lost upon them, as was everything
else which she had prepared with so much pains and cost to excite their
admiration, They came resolute not to admire. Skilled in the art of
making others unhappy, they just looked round with an air of apathy.
'Ah! you've had Soho!—Soho has done wonders for you here! Vastly
well!—Vastly well!—Soho's very clever in his way!'

Others of great importance came in, full of some slight accident that
had happened to themselves, or their horses, or their carriages; and,
with privileged selfishness, engrossed the attention of all within their
sphere of conversation. Well, Lady Clonbrony got over all this, and got
over the history of a letter about a chimney that was on fire, a week
ago, at the Duke of V's old house, in Brecknockshire. In gratitude
for the smiling patience with which she listened to him, his Grace of
V—fixed his glass to look at the Alhambra, and had just pronounced
it to be 'Well!—very well!' when the Dowager Lady Chatterton made
a terrible discovery—a discovery that filled Lady Clonbrony with
astonishment and indignation—Mr. Soho had played her false! What was
her mortification when the dowager assured her that these identical
Alhambra hangings had not only been shown by Mr. Soho to the Duchess
of Torcaster, but that her grace had had the refusal of them, and had
actually rejected them, in consequence of Sir Horace Grant the great
traveller's objecting to some of the proportions of the pillars.
Soho had engaged to make a new set, vastly improved, by Sir Horace's
suggestions, for her Grace of Torcaster.

Now Lady Chatterton was the greatest talker extant; and she went shout
the rooms telling everybody of her acquaintance—and she was acquainted
with everybody—how shamefully Soho had imposed upon poor Lady
Clonbrony, protesting she could not forgive the man. 'For,' said
she,'though the Duchess of Torcaster has been his constant customer for
ages, and his patroness, and all that, yet this does not excuse him and
Lady Clonbrony's being a stranger, and from Ireland, makes the thing
worse.' From Ireland!—that was the unkindest cut of all but there was
no remedy.

In vain poor Lady Clonbrony followed the dowager about the rooms, to
correct this mistake, and to represent, in justice to Mr. Soho, though
he had used her so ill, that he knew she was an Englishwoman, The
dowager was deaf, and no whisper could reach her ear. And when Lady
Clonbrony was obliged to bawl an explanation in her car, the dowager
only repeated—

'In justice to Mr. Soho!—No, no; he has not done you justice, my dear
Lady Clonbrony! and I'll expose him to everybody. Englishwoman—no, no,
no!—Soho could not take you for an Englishwoman!'

All who secretly envied or ridiculed Lady Clonbrony enjoyed this scene.
The Alhambra hangings, which had been, In one short hour before, the
admiration of the world, were now regarded by every eye with contempt,
as CAST hangings, and every tongue was busy declaiming against Mr. Soho;
everybody declared that, from the first, the want of proportion had
'struck them, but that they would not mention it till others found it
out.'

People usually revenge themselves for having admired too much, by
afterwards despising and depreciating without mercy—in all great
assemblies the perception of ridicule is quickly caught, and quickly
too revealed. Lady Clonbrony, even in her own house, on her gala
night, became an object of ridicule—decently masked, indeed, under the
appearance of condolence with her ladyship, and of indignation against
'that abominable Mr. Soho!'

Lady Langdale, who was now, for reasons of her own, upon her good
behaviour, did penance, as she said, for her former imprudence, by
abstaining even from whispered sarcasms. She looked on with penitential
gravity, said nothing herself, and endeavoured to keep Mrs. Dareville in
order; but that was no easy task. Mrs. Dareville had no daughters,
had nothing to gain from the acquaintance of my Lady Clonbrony; and,
conscious that her ladyship would bear a vast deal from her presence,
rather than forego the honour of her sanction, Mrs. Dareville, without
any motives of interest, or good-nature of sufficient power to restrain
her talent and habit of ridicule, free from hope or fear, gave full
scope to all the malice of mockery, and all the insolence of fashion.
Her slings and arrows, numerous as they were and outrageous, were
directed against such petty objects, and the mischief was so quick,
in its aim and its operation, that, felt but not seen, it is scarcely
possible to register the hits, or to describe the nature of the wounds.

Some hits sufficiently palpable, however, were recorded for the
advantage of posterity. When Lady Clonbrony led her to look at the
Chinese pagoda, the lady paused, with her foot on the threshold, as
if afraid to enter this porcelain Elysium, as she called it—Fool's
Paradise, she would have said; and, by her hesitation, and by the
half-pronounced word, suggested the idea—'None but belles without
petticoats can enter here,' said she, drawing her clothes tight round
her; 'fortunately, I have but two, and Lady Langdale has but one.'
Prevailed upon to venture in, she walked on with prodigious care and
trepidation, affecting to be alarmed at the crowd of strange forms and
monsters by which she was surrounded.

'Not a creature here that I ever saw before in nature! Well, now I may
boast I've been in a real Chinese pagoda!'

'Why yes, everything is appropriate here, I flatter myself,' said Lady
Clonbrony.

'And how good of you, my dear Lady Clonbrony, in defiance of bulls and
blunders, to allow us a comfortable English fireplace and plenty
of Newcastle coal, in China!—And a white marble—no! white velvet
hearthrug, painted with beautiful flowers—oh, the delicate, the USEFUL
thing!'

Vexed by the emphasis on the word USEFUL, Lady Clonbrony endeavoured to
turn off the attention of the company. 'Lady Langdale, your ladyship's a
judge of china—this vase is an unique, I am told.'

'I am told,' interrupted Mrs. Dareville, 'this is the very vase in which
B—, the nabob's father, who was, you know, a China captain,
smuggled his dear little Chinese wife and all her fortune out of
Canton—positively, actually put the lid on, packed her up, and sent
her off on shipboard!—True! true! upon my veracity! I'll tell you my
authority!'