“I am sure it will be perfect. Yon have such good taste.”
“Fond flatterer. I have nothing but money, which can buy the educated taste of other people.”
* * * * *
Gerard spent Christmas at the Rectory, partly because his mother was especially anxious that he should be with her at that season of family gatherings, and partly because his latest letters from builder, architect, and furniture man promised the completion of the house on the last day of the year. There had been a good deal of prevarication in former letters, and there had been various excuses for delay — excuses chiefly of a climatic nature, the elements seeming to have conspired against the completion of that particular house. Frost may have told Fog that the house belonged to a new man, and that the new man ought to wait. Could he not be content with the dog-kennel in which he had lived hitherto, forsooth?
But Roger’s last letter was specific. The builder pledged himself that his men should clear out of the house on the morning of the 31st. Decorators, carpet-layers, needlewomen should vanish from the scene, silently as goblins at cockcrow, and on New Year’s Eve men and women, builders’ minions and upholsterers’ minions, were to feast together on a grand supper at the “Bell and Horns,” in the Brompton Road.
Edith Champion had undertaken what she called the mounting of the establishment. She had secured an all-accomplished housekeeper, and a clever man cook, who did not accept the situation until assured of three underlings in the kitchen, a private sitting-room, and the use of a brougham for his marketing. She had chosen butlers and footmen, and had devised a livery for the latter — darkest green, with black velvet collar and facings, black velvet small clothes, and black silk stockings. “It is a sombre livery,” she wrote; “but the powder relieves it, and I think you will like the effect. Your men will wear silk stockings always, that is a point, and I have told your housekeeper to be very particular about their shoe-buckles. Their shoes will be made in Bond Street, and will cost thirty shillings a pair. Forgive me for troubling you with these details; but with your wealth your only chance of distinction is by nicety in minor points. Your house will be simply perfect. I went through the reception-rooms yesterday. The ceilings are painted in the style of the Ricardi Palace — a banquet in Olympus. Cobalt predominates in the drapery of the goddessess, who, although Rubensesque, are quite unobjectionable. The effect is brilliant, and harmonises admirably with the subdued amber and russet of the brocade hangings and chair covers. I long for you to see your house now all is coming together. I engaged your Major Domo yesterday — a chance such as rarely falls in the way of a nouveau riche. He was fifteen years with Lord Hamperdonne, to whom ho was guide, philosopher, and friend, rather than servant. It was he who rescued Hamperdonne from that odious engagement with Dolores Drumio, the Spanish dancer. He has a genius for organising every kind of entertainment; and if he and your chef can only work harmoniously your establishment will go on velvet. You will see that I am not engaging many servants. Parton will be house steward, groom of the chambers, and butler, with an under-butler and two footmen, a lad for cellar work, and a house messenger, so that your stablemen may never be called away from their work. For a bachelor, I think this personnel, with half a dozen women, quite sufficient. Any tiling further would mean display, rather than usefulness, and I’m sure you don’t desire that.”
“How wise she is!” thought Gerard, as he read this letter for the second time. “How delightful to have to deal with an accomplished woman of the world instead of a sentimental girl; and what a wife she will make for a man in my position, by-and-by, when poor Champion’s time has come! Beautiful, well-born, and full of tact and social knowledge. Could any man desire a more delightful companion?” Of her husband, Mrs. Champion wrote in a melancholy strain. Mont Oriol had done him very little good. He had allowed his work and his worries to follow him to the valleys of Auvergne. He had not taken that absolute rest which the doctors had so strenuously urged, and he was considerably worse than ho bad been in the summer. The specialist who had seen him then now talked of “Stock Exchange spine,” which Edith feared was some kind of mental ailment. Her husband was depressed and restless, and there was an idea of sending him to St. Leonards till the end of the winter with a trained attendant, as well as his valet.
“If he goes, I shall go with him,” Mrs. Champion concluded, with the air of a Roman wife. “I must not allow pleasure or inclination to interfere with my duty to him. I should have infinitely preferred any part of the Riviera — even Mentone — to St. Leonards, which I detest; but it will be some advantage to be near you, as I dare say you will be too much taken up with your new house to go to the South this year. By the way, have you any idea of the other House? A seat in Parliament would give you kudos, and our party wants all the strength it can get.”
“Pas si bête,” thought Gerard. “I am not going to waste any portion of my scanty life in an ill-ventilated, malodorous, overcrowded bear-garden!”
He was to go to London on New Year’s Day, his sister accompanying him, delighted at the idea of the journey, and all the more delighted since John Cumberland had made it convenient to travel on the same day, and by the same train. He preached his farewell sermon on St. Stephen’s Day, and drew tears from many of his hearers by the pathos of his farewell. His congregation knew that the pathos was real, and that he had really loved them, and worked for them as only love can work. Gerard had been glad to spend Christmas at home, for his mother’s sake; but despite his affection for both parents, and his tender regard for the associations of childhood and early youth, the small domestic pleasures and twaddling recurrences to past years, the fuss about the home-grown turkey and the home-cured ham — ham cut from a pig of which the Rector talked as of a departed friend — the church decorations, the parochial festivities, the mothers’ meetings, coal and blanket distributions, and exhibition of Christmas cards, bored him excessively. In the country life goes round like a wheel, and nothing but death or calamity can change the circle of infinitesimal events. In London there is always something new to be done or to be heard of — new fashions, new scandals, the unexpected in some form or other.
Gerard was consumed by the feverish impatience of the “child who has new robes and may not wear them.” That last week at the Rectory seemed illimitable. He wanted to be on the strong tide of life — to feel the swift river carrying him along — and here he seemed to be sitting on a vast stretch of level sand, from which ho but faintly saw the distant flood. Yet this was precisely the kind of existence he had been advised to lead — a life of placid monotony, passionless, uneventful.
On his last night at the Rectory, and in one of his last talks with his mother, she asked him in a casual way if he had seen or heard anything more of Hester Davenport.
“No; I have not tried to find her. The attempt seemed too hopeless; and after all, the face I saw was more a dream than a reality; yet I know it was Miss Davenport’s face.”
“I don’t understand, Gerard—”
“No, dearest,” interrupted her son. “I must say to you as Hamlet said to his fellow-student, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than’ you — or I — can quite account for. You must come to London, mother. London is full of revelations for any one who has been buried alive for half a lifetime in a rustic Rectory. You will hear of new sciences, new religions. You will find Buddha placed shoulder to shoulder with Christ. You will find people discrediting the four evangelists and pinning their faith upon ‘materializations.’ You will find the cultured classes despising Dickens and making light of Thackeray, in favour of the last smart young man who has written a smart story of three or four pages in a smart magazine. The old order is always changing. London is for ever new, for ever young. You will feel twenty years younger there than you do here.”
“Younger under a smoky sky, Gerard! Younger in a place where one must put on one’s gloves before one can venture to pick a rose! Younger among crowds of rushing people and over-worked cab-horses, and sickly to
wn babies, whose poor little faces make one miserable! I shall be glad to be with you, dear; but I love this sleepy old Rectory better than the finest house in Park Lane or Grosvenor Square.”
Gerard did not try to combat these benighted notions. His own face was set Londonwards early nest morning, and he and Lilian were installed in the new house before afternoon tea. They had explored every room, and were ready to receive Mr. Cumberland and Mrs. Champion at eight o’clock to a friendly New Year dinner — a snug parti carré at a round table in the breakfast-room, one side of which was all window, opening into a winter-garden, where a fountain played in a low marble basin, encircled with camellias and palms.
The shaded lamps gave a soft and tempered light. The colouring in this room was subdued and cool, pale bluish green for the most part, the walls the colour of a hedge-sparrow’s egg, relieved by the warm sepia and Indian red of a few choice etchings. These, with a wonderful arrangement of peacock’s feathers and celadon Sevres vases over the chimney-piece, were the only ornaments.
“No quaint corners or ingle-nook, nothing Moorish or Japanese in all the house; no copper or brass, or any one of the things I delight in,” sighed Mrs. Champion. “Mr. Larose has been horridly tyrannical. Yet I must confess he has succeeded. Your house is a creation.”
The service was perfection, every servant eager to please the new master, and the dinner was worthy of a company of gourmets, rather than of these four, who cared very little what they ate, and who were, some of them, too much absorbed in their own thoughts and feelings to know what they were eating. An oyster soufflé which would have evoked praises from Lucullus or Lord Alvanley, went round without comment or commendation. But if Mr. Hillersdon’s friends did not talk about the dinner there was plenty of talk about other things. Edith Champion was full of offers to take Lilian to her particular friends and her favourite tradespeople, during the few days she had left before going to St. Leonards with her invalid husband.
“I want you to go to Madame St. Evremonde for your gowns,” said Mrs. Champion. “She is the only woman in London who knows where a waist ought to begin and end — excuse my talking chiffons, Mr. Cumberland, we ought to keep that kind of thing for after dinner — but it is such a treat for a battered woman of the world like me to have a neophyte to instruct. I should like to take you to my shoemaker, too, for he is rather a difficult person to deal with; and if he don’t take to you he won’t even try to fit your foot.”
“If that is the way of London shoemakers I should buy my boots ready-made at the Stores,” said Cumberland, grimly.
“Are there ready-made shoes?” Mrs. Champion asked innocently. “How terrible! I know some people buy gloves in shops ready-made; but ready-made shoes must be too dreadful. They can’t fit anybody.”
“Their particular merit is that they fit everybody,” said Cumberland. “It is only a question of size.”
“Oh, if people don’t care about shape or style, or whether they have an instep or not, I suppose a ready-made boot or shoe would do,” said Mrs. Champion, taking a philosophical tone. “They would keep out the wet. Only if one is to take a proper pride in one’s clothes one must have them from the best makers. I could be content to go through life in a tweed gown; but it must be made by Redfern or Felix.”
“I’m afraid your dressmaker would be a great deal too smart and too expensive for me, Mrs. Champion,” Lilian answered quietly.
“Too smart, too expensive — for Mr. Hillersdon’s sister! Why, you will be expected to dress as well as the Princess of Wales. Your toilette will be under the fierce light that beats upon a millionaire. You will have to dress up to this house.”
“I should be sorry to dress in a way that would be unsuited to a country clergyman’s daughter.”
“Or to a London clergyman’s promised wife,” said John Cumberland, stealing a tender look at the fair young face from under his strongly-marked brows. Those brief looks meant a world of love to Lilian.
“Let her dress as plainly or as smartly as she pleases, Mrs. Champion,” said Gerard, gaily; “but if Madame St. Evremonde is the best dressmaker in London to Madame St. Evremonde she must go. While you are in this house, Lilian, you must look your prettiest for my sake; but when you migrate to Greek Street you may wear a Quakeress’s poke bonnet, or a Sister of Charity’s hood.”
“Greek Street,” exclaimed Mrs. Champion, in her most childish manner. “Where is Greek Street?”
CHAPTER X. “STILL ONE MUST LEAD SOME LIFE BEYOND.”
THE dull beginning of the year, before the opening of Parliament and the gradual awakening of London, passed like a dream. The delight of installation in the home that he had created for himself, and the novel sensation of squandering money were enough to keep Gerard Hillersdon occupied and happy; while Lilian was divided between two absorbing duties. On the one side she had her brother, whom she dearly loved, and all the pomps and vanities of this wicked world; and on the other side she had her future husband, now fully established as Vicar of St. Lawrence’s, and wanting her counsel and co-operation in every undertaking. “I want the parish to be as much your parish as mine, Lilian,” he said. “I want your mind and your hand to be in all things, great and small.”
So on one day Lilian was trudging up and down some of the dirtiest alleys in West Central London, deliberating and advising as to a Night Refuge for women and children, and on the next she was with her brother at Christie’s, giving her opinion about a Reynolds or a Raffaelle.
Gerard was profuse in his offers of money, would, indeed, from his own purse have supplied all the needs of St. Lawrence’s; but Jack Cumberland exercised a restraining influence, and would only accept moderate benefactions — a hundred pounds for the new Refuge, a hundred for the Working Man’s Institute, and fifty each for the Magdalen Rescue Society and Dispensary, two hundred for the schools; five hundred pounds in all.
“It seems absurd that you should want money for anything while I — have ever so much more than I want,” remonstrated Gerard, toying with his open cheque-book.
“You shall do something more for us a year or two hence, when you have familiarised yourself with your fortune, and have acquired a sense of proportion,” said Cumberland, smiling at his eagerness. “At present you are like a child with a new box of toys, who thinks that he can distribute them among his playfellows and yet have the boxful for himself. When you better know what money means you shall be our benefactor on a larger scale — always supposing you are still in the humour. In the meantime that five hundred pounds is a prodigious God-send, and will help us along capitally. I never hoped for such an excellent start.”
“I believe the fellow wants to keep his parish poor,” Gerard said afterwards, in a confidential talk with his sister.
“He doesn’t want to sponge upon your fortune, Gerard, and he is afraid of pauperising his people by doing too much.”
“Pauperising? Ah, that’s always the cry nowadays; but it would take as long a head as Henry Brougham’s to find out where help ends and pauperisation begins. If the State were to feed the Board School children, yea, even with one substantial meal per diem, we are told that we should be teaching the parents to look to State aid, and to squander their wages on drink. I dare say it might work that way in a good many cases; but if, on the other hand, we could succeed in rearing a healthy race the craving for drink might be lessened in the next generation.”
Hillersdon House was a success. Society flocked to the millionaire as flies go to the honey-pot. The Northern farmer’s advice to his son is one of the chief points in social ethics. We all like to go where money is. There is a fascination in wealth and the luxury it can buy that only a Socrates can resist, and even Socrates went to rich men’s houses, and smartened his rough attire for the feast. Society, which had always approved of Gerard Hillersdon, was on tiptoe to know what he would do with his money; that portion which envied him his wealth opining that he would run through this vast fortune in a year or two, while everybody had his own theory as to
how he ought to spend it.
As a social adviser there could be no one better than Roger Larose, architect, poet, painter, and man of fashion; a man who seemed to have founded his style and manners upon the long-forgotten bucks of those golden days before the Regency, when George, Prince of Wales, was young.
“I call Roger Larose the Sleeping Beauty,” said Reuben Gambier, “for he looks as if he had fallen asleep in some corner of the Cocoa Tree Club, at the close of the eighteenth century, in a bag-wig, a puce coat, and a frilled shirt, and as if he had never become reconciled to modern costume.”
Larose was an amiable enthusiast, full of pleasant whimsicalities, and Gerard, who was naturally indolent, allowed him full scope as a counsellor.
“You must give parties,” said Larose; “it is useless having a fine house if you bury yourself alive in it! You had better have built yourself a mausoleum — not half a bad idea, by-the-by. If any dear old gentleman ever leaves me a few millions, I will build myself a pyramid, like Cheops, and live in it till I am ready for the embalmers — a pyramid in which I will receive only a few chosen friends — a pyramid in which I will give choice little dinners to those chosen ones. Yes, my dear Gerard, you must give parties — breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, musical evenings. It is written in the stars that you are to provide a good many of the amusements of this ensuing season. I hope you like the notion of being a social centre, Miss Hillersdon?” said Roger, turning to Lilian, with an insinuating smile. Not a handsome man, by any means, this Larose, but with a delicate pallor, attenuated features, and a languid smile which women pronounced sympathetic.
“It is rather alarming, but I want Gerard to be happy and amused,” Lilian replied brightly; “and Mr. Cumberland will help us to receive people. He was immensely popular in Devonshire.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 903
