Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
Very good sort of people.—Common Conversation.
A little innocent flirtation.—Ibid.
"Enamoured of mine own conceit."—Lord Stirling.
A fancy ball! Pray where is the fancy?—Rational Question.
Is it not Rochefoucault who says, "there are many who would never have fallen in love, had they not first heard it talked about?" What he says of love may extend to a great variety of other propensities. How many gastronomes, with mouths never meant but for mutton and mashed potatoes, dilate learnedly on the merits of salmis and sautés—but far less as matter of taste than flavour! How many a red-cheeked and red-jacketed squire exchanges the early hours of the field for the late hours of the House, from that universal ambition called example! And what but that powerful argument, "why, every body gives them," ever made Mrs. Danvers give parties? Without one of the ordinary inducements which light up the saloon, and cover the supper-table with spun-sugar temples;—she had no son, for whom an heiress was to be drawn from her "bright peculiar sphere" in the mazes of a mazurka—no daughters, making waltzes and window-seats so desirable; not so much as a niece, or even a disposable second cousin;—without one grain of esprit de société, or one atom of desire for its success;—the Morning Post might have eulogised for ever the stars that made her drawing-room "a perfect constellation of rank, beauty, and fashion,"—and before Mrs. Danvers had read one half of the paragraph, she would have forgotten the other. She had a good-natured husband, a large fortune, and a noble house in an unexceptionable street; and in giving parties, she only fulfilled the destiny attached to such possessions.
Their year was the most uniform of Time's quietest current. In February they came up to town, for three reasons: they had a family house, to which the family had come up for a century past,—and they were none of those new-light people who so disrespectfully differ from their grandfathers and grandmothers; secondly, all their neighbours came to town,—for their neighbourhood was too aristocratic not to be migratory; and, thirdly, Mr. Danvers represented a borough which was very prolific in petitions, road-bills, &c. In town they remained till near August, when Mr. Danvers went to Scotland to shoot grouse; and Mrs. Danvers consoled herself, during his absence, at their seat by wondering how much the children of her parish-school and shrubs had shot up while she was away, and by superintending the house-keeper's room—where, with almost a dash of sentiment, she saw to her husband's grouse being potted, and a whole array of white jars filled with pickles as acid as Mr. Roger's temper and tongue, and with preserves as sweet as Sir Walter Scott's letter of thanks—(by the by, they say he keeps a set lithographed)—for the first copy of some young poet's first effusion. Partridges and Mr. Danvers re-appeared in September. He shot before Christmas, and hunted after; while the rest of the time was disposed of by dinners and drowsiness in the afternoon; but, we must add, with every morning given to kind and useful employment,—for their tenants might have changed landlord and lady some dozen times, and yet have changed for the worse.
But to return to May and its multitudes. Mrs. Danvers was in a black velvet dress, mutually pertinacious in their adherence to each other—and diamonds, which only required new setting to have made her the envy of half her acquaintance, three parts of whom were already crowding her superb rooms. Emily first went through a languid quadrille, with a partner whose whole attention was given to his vis-à-vis, and then resumed her seat by Lady Alicia, melancholy and meditative, when her attention was attracted by that most musical inquiry of, "Who is that pretty dark-eyed girl?—a very wood-nymph beside that frozen water-spirit Lady Alicia Delawarr!" The reply was inaudible; but a moment afterwards Mrs. Danvers presented Mr. Boyne Sillery. "Miss Arundel for the next quadrille."
With such an introduction, what partner but would have been graciously received? Perhaps, had not Emily's judgment been a little blinded by the diamond-dust which vanity flings in the eyes, Mr. Boyne Sillery might not have appeared such a very nice young man. He was precisely of an order she had too much good taste to admire–he was, to use the expression a French critic applied to Moore's poetry, trop parfumé; there was an occasional glisten on his curls, that savoured too much of a professor and l'huile aux mille fleurs; his tailor was evidently a person of great consideration in his eyes—that was but gratitude; and his chance mention of acquaintance was too carefully correct—that air of the Court Guide which so much betrays the parvenu or débutant. But Emily was in no mood to be critical. During the quadrille they progressed as rapidly as an American settlement. He gave her his arm to the supper-room: grapes, pine-apple, jelly, and pretty speeches, blended amicably together. Afterwards their engagement was extended to a waltz. They talked of the Corsair—the exquisite picture of Parris's Bridesmaid in the British Gallery—and ended with Italy and moonlight; when she was shawled, cloaked, and handed to the carriage with the most exquisite air of anxiety—but not till her partner had learned the number of Lady Alicia's Opera-box, and that they were going the following evening to Mrs. William Carson's fancy ball.
Alas! for the weakness and vanity of the female sex. Mlle. Hyacinthine quite marvelled at her young lady's animation, as she unbound the wreath of lilies from her hair, and received a caution about to-morrow's costume: such an injunction had not passed Emily's lips for weeks.
Even in this world of wonders, there are two subjects of our especial marvel;—how people can be so silly as to give fancy balls; and, still more, how people can be so silly as to go to them. With a due proportion of the coldness of our insular atmosphere entering like a damp sea-breeze into our composition, we English are the worst people in the world to assume characters not our own—we adapt and adopt most miserably—and a fancy ball is just a caricature of a volume of costumes, only the figures are somewhat stiffer and not so well executed.
Emily was that evening, by the aid of shining spangle and silver gauze, an embroidered sylph; and in attempting to be especially airy and graceful, was, of course, constrained and awkward. However, Mr. Boyne Sillery assured her she looked like the emanation of a moonlit cloud; and she could not do less than admire the old English costume, by which she meant the slashed doublet and lace ruff of her companion. On they went, through the most ill-assorted groups. Young ladies whom a pretty ankle had seduced into Switzerland, but who now walked about as if struck by sudden shame at their short blue silk skirts. Sultanas radiant in their mothers' diamonds, which they seemed terribly afraid of losing; and beauties in the style of Charles the Second, wholly engrossed by the relaxation of their ringlets.
But if the ladies were bad, the cavaliers were worse. Was there a youth with a bright English colour, and a small nose with an elevated termination, "he stuck a turban on his brow, and called himself Abdallah." Was there a "delicate atomy" of minute dimensions and pale complexion, he forthwith strutted a hardy Highlander. But our very pages would grow weary were we to enumerate the solemn Rochesters, the heavy Buckinghams, contrasted by Spaniards all slip, slide, and smile—and officers with nothing warlike about them but their regimentals. The very drawing-rooms partook of the general discomfort: one was fitted up as a Turkish tent, where, à propos des Turcs, the visitors drank champagne and punch; while a scene in Lapland, terribly true as to chilliness, was filled with écarté players and most rheumatic draughts. The master of the house wandered about, looking as if he longed to ask his way; and the mistress, who was queen of some country—whether African or Asiatic it would have been difficult from her dress to decide—curtsied and complimented, till she seemed equally weary of her dignity, draperies, and guests.
To Emily the scene was new—and novelty is the best half of pleasure. Mr. Boyne Sillery was too attentive not to be agreeable. Attention is always pleasant in an acquaintance till we tire of them. Moreover, he was very entertaining, talked much of every body, and well of none; and ill nature is to conversation what oil is to the lamp—the only thing that keeps it alive. Besides, there were two or three whispers, whose sweetness was good, at least in the way of contrast.
Mr. Boyne Sillery was seventh, eighth, or ninth, among a score of divers-sized children—in a large family, like a long sum, it is difficult to remember the exact number. His father was the possessor of some half-dozen ancestors, a manor, and landed property worth about twelve hundred a-year. He married the daughter of a neighbour whose purse and pedigree were on a par with his own—the heiress of two maiden aunts, one of whom left her a set of garnets, three lockets, and the miniature of an officer; the other a book of receipts, and three thousand pounds, which, together with what her father gave, was properly settled on the younger scions of the house of Sillery.
Had Mr. S. studied Malthus more, and multiplication less, it would have greatly added to the dignity and comfort of his household. As it was, he had to give up his hunters, and look after his preserves. His wife took to nursing and cotton velvet—and every fiftieth cousin was propitiated with pheasants and partridges, to keep up a hope at least of future interest with the three black graces, "law, physic, and divinity;" nay, even a merchant, who lived in Leatherlug Lane, was duly conciliated at Michaelmas by a goose, and at Christmas by a turkey; the more patrician presents being addressed due west.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men;" and the tide on which Francis Boyne Sillery's fortune floated was of esprit de vanille. A cousin, Colonel Boyne, of whom it is enough to say, the first ten years of his life passed beside his mother's point apron; the second at a private tutor's, with seven daughters, all of whom entertained hopes of the youthful pupil; the third series in a stay-at-home regiment, whose cornets and captains were of too delicate material to brave the balls and bullets of "outrageous fortune;" and the last few years at Paris, a slave to the slender ankle and superlative suppers of an Opera-dancer. Her reform, in a convent, and the necessity of raising his rents, brought the Colonel to England. Soon after his arrival, that patent axletree of action, the not knowing what to do with himself, domesticated him during some weeks of the shooting season at Sillery House, where, not being a sportsman, all the benefit he derived from September was having his morning's sleep disturbed, and seeing partridges that would have made the most exquisite of sautés, drenched with an infantine-looking pap called bread sauce.
His attention, among the red-cheeked, red-handed, and large-eared race, that formed the olive plantation around his cousin's table, was drawn to his namesake, Francis Boyne Sillery, by one day missing from his dressing-table a large portion of the most exquisite scent, with which he endeavoured to counteract the atmosphere of goose and gunpowder that filled Sillery House.
Mischief in a large family, like murder in the newspapers, is sure to come out. It was soon discovered that Master Francis, having his delicate nerves disturbed by the odour exhaled from Messrs. Day and Martin's blacking, had poured the esprit de vanille over the pumps with which he attended a neighbouring dancing-school.
Great was the indignation excited. With the fear of a lost legacy before their eyes, his mother burnt the shoes—his father took the horsewhip—when Colonel Boyne interfered, with a eulogium on the naturally fine taste of the boy, and a petition to adopt a youth whose predilections were so promising.
A week afterwards, the Colonel left for London, and with him Francis—the grief for whose departure was such as is generally felt by mothers on the marriage of their daughters, or fathers at the loss of supernumerary sons. Colonel Boyne took a house in Duchess Street, and a pretty housekeeper—walked St. James's and Bond Streets—kept both wig and whisker in a state of dark-brown preservation—and wore Hoby's boots to the last. Francis had too much of the parasite in his nature ever to loose his original hold; and after a few years of dread, touching a lady and her daughter who lived opposite, and spent an unjustifiable part of their time at the window—and some occasional terrors of the housekeeper, his cousin died, leaving him all he had, and not a little disappointment. A few hundreds a-year, and a few more at the banker's, were all that remained of the wasted property of the indulged and the indolent
But youth, even of the most provident species, rarely desponds. Mr. Boyne Sillery had enough to quiet his tailor and his perfumer—and he lived on, in hope, of an heiress. In the meantime—as Wordsworth says,
"Each man has some object of pursuit,
To which he sedulously devotes himself,"—
being too prudent for gambling, too poor for la gourmandise, too idle for any employment demanding time, too deficient for any requiring talent—he took to flirting, partly to keep his hand in for the destined heiress he was to fascinate, and partly as a present amusement. He spoke in a low tone of voice—a great thing, according to Shakespeare, in love affairs; he was pale enough for sentiment—made a study of pretty speeches—and was apt at a quotation. Did he give his arm to a damsel, whose white slipper became visible on the crimson carpeted staircase, it was
"Her fairy foot,
That falls like snow on earth, as soft and mute."
""Oh, what heart so wise.
Could, unbewildered, meet those matchless eyes?"
Did the fair dame wear flowers in her dark hair, he talked of
"Lillies, such as maidens wear,
In the deep midnight of their hair."
If she sang, he praised by whispering that her voice
"Bore his soul along
Over the silver waters of sweet song."
Dearly did he love a little religious controversy; for then the dispute could be wound up with
"Thou, for my sake, at Allah's shrine,
And I at any god's for thine."
This propensity had brought on him an absurd nickname. A young lady, whose designs on another he had thwarted for a whole evening by a course of ill-timed compliments—and the prosperity of a compliment, even more than of a jest,
"Must lie i' the ear of him who hears it,"
—called him Cupid Quotem; and the ridiculous is memory's most adhesive plaster.
It was some half dozen evenings or so before Emily was quite tired—but the past pleasant had degenerated into the present wearisome, that sure prophecy of the future odious—when, on the fifth evening, as he was leaning over her chair at the Opera, and, either in the way of idleness or experiment, his speeches were more than usually sentimental;—by way of diversion, Emily began questioning; and "Who is in that box? Do you know that person in the pit?" turned the enemy most scientifically.
Next to saying sweet things, Mr. Sillery loved saying sour; judge, therefore, if he was not entertaining.
A headach induced Lady Alicia to leave before the opera was half over. While waiting in the crush-room, Mrs. Fergusson and her daughters stopped to exchange those little nonentities of speech called civilities.
"Quite an attaché," said Miss Fergusson, in an audible sneer, as she turned from Emily and Mr. Boyne Sillery.
That night Emily meditated very seriously on the propriety of repressing attentions of which she was tired. It is curious to observe how soon we perceive the impropriety of departed pleasures. Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past. She thought how wrong it was to lead on a young man—how shameful to trifle with the feelings of another—and how despicable was the character of a coquette. She remembered something very like an appointment—no, that was too harsh a term—she had unguardedly mentioned the probability of their taking a lounge in Kensington Gardens. Thither she determined not to go, and resolved in her own mind to avoid future quadrilles, &c. She went to sleep, lulled by that best of mental opiates—a good resolution.