by George Moore
“But who is Lady Marion!” asked Lewis, a little perplexed.
“Oh, the dearest old lady in the world, but awfully learned, and interested in everything, particularly art. She is dying to ask you some questions about French decorative painting.”
Then Mrs. Bentham told Mrs. Thorpe to be sure to remind her to tell the gardeners to pass the mowing machine over the ground. There was an immense discussion with the housekeeper about the luncheon, and the things they would be obliged to send to Brighton for.
Every minute Mrs. Bentham remembered something, or Mrs. Thorpe would remind her of something; between times, everybody in the county was discussed.
“But, my dear,” said the old lady, suddenly stopping her knitting, “we have forgotten to tell him about Lady Helen. Do you know, Mr. Seymour, that you will see one of the most beautiful girls in the world. All St. Petersburg went mad about her last season. You are sure to fall in love with her.”
Lewis declared that he would be enchanted to see the beauty, but hoped he would not fall in love with her.
Then, after a pause, Mrs. Thorpe, who seemed to have Lady Helen and Lewis terribly mixed up in her head, said:
“Do you know, Lucy, I am thinking what a pretty picture Mr. Seymour could make of Lady Helen. You ought to ask her to sit to him.”
“I shall be delighted to do so, but I don’t know that Lady Helen will have time to sit; she is going away, you know, very soon,” replied Mrs. Bentham, slightly embarrassed.
“But I really have no time to begin a portrait,” said Lewis. “I am too much occupied with the decorations.” In reply Mrs. Bentham smiled pleasantly, and asked him to come and sing at the piano.
CHAPTER XI.
A TENNIS PARTY.
A LITTLE AFTER two o’clock, before either Mrs. Bentham or Mrs. Thorpe had finished dressing, Lord Senton and Mr. Day drove up in a dog-cart. They were both in tennis suits. The footman showed them into the drawing-room, saying that Mrs. Bentham would be downstairs in a few minutes.
“I can’t understand it,” said Lord Senton; “she has put me off three times; I am certain that she will never go out to ride with me again.”
The prophecy was uttered in a thin whine, expressive of misery. Day did not speak at once, but continued to caress his chin.
“Now tell me exactly what you said to her the last time you saw her,” he asked, with the air and voice of a doctor prescribing.
“Well, I can’t remember the exact words,” replied Lord Senton, brightening up like a patient who expects to be told he is likely to recover; “but we were riding along a road, trees grew on both sides, and the sun was setting, and I said something about — well, about holding her hand.”
“But were you holding her hand?” exclaimed Mr. Day, looking up anxiously.
“No, no, how could I? we were out riding; but I leaned my hand on the pommel of her saddle.”
At this moment a carriage passed round the sweep to the hall door. It contained an old lady in mauve and two young girls in pink dresses, who shaded their faces with blue and cream-coloured sunshades.
“Here are the French girls; what bores they are!” said Day, as he looked out of the window.
Sussex society consisted of three distinct elements: the aristocracy, the landed gentry, and the people connected with, but who did not belong to, the county. This last class may be termed the hangers-on; they included the gentlemen farmers who held land from either the gentry or the aristocracy, the parson, the curates, the doctor, and the people who leased shooting or hunting lodges in the county. At the head of the county the Marquis of Worthing was throned like a fixed star, and for radiance he had scattered his sisters in marriage to the right and left. He was a grave man, who was always spoken of with great respect. When he came to spend his annual three months at Westland Manor, every one was invited either to dinner or on a visit of a few days; and the position of the fag end of the landed gentry was determined by the length of their visit, and that of the hangers-on by the number of luncheons and dinners they had eaten at Westland Manor. The Marquis’ eldest sister, Lady Marion, had married a Mr. Lindell, a county gentleman, who had died many years ago. She was an old, childless woman, but rejoiced in a great reputation for-learning. As Mr. Day said, she was a “regular treasure trove to a young man seeking for information;” she represented the erudition of the county.
Lady Alice, the second sister, had married a Sir Richard Sedge wick, who had a large property, but who lived very little in the county. The third sister, Lady Henrietta, had married a diplomatist, Lord Granderville, who was now ambassador at St. Petersburg.
Lord Senton and Sir John Archer were the two great catches; but the formers vain efforts to play at Don Juan, and the latter’s passion for racing, preserved them both from hymeneal influences.
The landed gentry were more numerous than the aristocracy. Mrs. Bentham had five thousand a year; she represented modern fashion. Mr. Swannell, whose rent-roll was about the same, was the politician; he had contested the county at the last election in the Conservative interest. Then came Mr. Vyner, whose income was about the same as Mr. Swannell’s; his daughter was desperately in love with Sir John Archer. The Frenchs and Fanshaws were remarkable principally on account of their numbers, and the two Miss Davidsons were much spoken of in connection with matrimony; they had a little fortune of eight hundred a year between them.
Of the hangers-on, Dr. Morgan and Mr. Day alone occupied much of the attention of the county families. The former was very popular, the latter very much disliked; yet both were seen everywhere; no party was complete without them.
Dr. Morgans flirtation with Mrs. French’s governess, and an enumeration of the ladies who would and who would not marry Mr. Day, were he to ask them, were subjects that never failed to provoke an interesting discussion.
When a few of the guests had assembled, the conversation flitted from tennis to the weather, from the weather to tennis. Then Mrs. Bentham asked Mrs. French, who simmered in her mauve dress, how her husband’s health had been lately.
“Thank you, pretty well; indeed, he is very anxious for the shooting to commence, and I am afraid he will lay himself up with rheumatism as he did last year. He forgets he was sixty-five last birthday, and wants to do what he did at twenty.”
“We find it difficult to remember that we are no longer as young as we used to be,” said Mrs. Bentham, smiling vacantly.
“Lady Marion Lendell, Lady Granderville, and Lady Helen Trevor,” shouted the footman. Mrs. Bentham got up to receive them.
Cursing his luck and the footman, Lord Senton went over and spoke to the eldest Miss French.
In the meanwhile, Lady Granderville sat on a sofa and whined; the heat of the drive had made her feel faint. Her daughter, the great beauty, was beautiful in a clear, flower-embroidered dress; and Lady Marion, anxious to find a listener, fidgeted a little.
“And how is Mr. Seymour getting on with the decorations? I want you to show me what he has done,” she said, at last, getting near Mrs. Bentham; “you didn’t tell me how you met the young man.”
“I should be very glad, but I am under a promise not to show what he is doing to anybody,” said Mrs. Bentham, preferring to answer the first part of Lady Marion’s phrase rather than the second.
Lord Senton had gone to speak to Lady Helen; and the Miss Frenchs, finding themselves alone, had commenced to whisper together; the elder said to the younger:
“I wonder she lets him come out; I hear he is just too handsome.”
“How much she must regret being married,” said the younger sister, reflectively: and then both went into a little smothered fit of laughter.
Carriages now drove up in quick succession, and emptied their cargoes of pink muslin and jersey-dressed young ladies at the hall-door. The word tennis was heard all over the drawingroom, and Mrs. Bentham, observing a great desire on the part of the younger people to commence the serious part of the day’s pleasure, proposed that they should go out on the terrace.
Everything had been prepared; the gardeners had done nothing since six in the morning but pass the machine over the ground; the turf was like velvet, and the white chalk lines glittered in the sun. The tennis players felt the ground with their feet; they could complain of nothing but a want of shade. There were trees on the north, south and east, but on the valley side the terrace was exposed, and the sinking sun overspread it with light till the end of the day. It only, however, affected the players, for at the far end three splendid silver firs and some spreading beeches formed a tent, in whose shade the white cloth of the luncheon table glittered like a bank of snow. It was there the company collected and talked as they watched the game.
The terrace was large enough for three courts, so it was hoped that they would be able to play off the last ties of the ladies’ and gentlemen’s doubles. The tossing for sides took some few minutes, and then the games began in real earnest.
The girls looked charming in their tennis aprons; they forgot the heat, and their light shadows flitted o’er the green sward.
Mrs. Bentham walked with Lord Senton up and down the terrace. She had a vague notion that people had already commenced to connect her name with Lewis, and was glad, therefore, to pretend to flirt with Lord Senton. He was delighted, for since the beginning of the week, he had resolved on a plan which would bring matters to a conclusion.
All this while the matches were progressing; some of the ladies and gentlemen waiting their turn, wandered, racquets in hand, through the pleasure grounds. Under the shade of the silver firs next to the laurel-covered garden-wall, sat a group of chaperones dressed in dark colours, in the middle of which Mrs. French’s mauve silk made a crude stain. Lady Marion sat talking to her sister about Lord Granderville. Miss Vyner, who had at last secured Sir John, walked across the terrace, and Mr. Vyner, under cover of listening to Mrs. French’s description of her husband’s gout, kept his eyes on his daughter and her companion.
“My dear Marion,” said Lady Granderville, who, as usual, was boring herself almost as much as she bored her sister, “I always thought Mrs. Bentham a charming woman, though a little fast; but, really, this young man — I hear that he is perfectly beautiful.”
“I cannot understand you, Henrietta; surely the woman must have her room decorated, and I hear that this man has a great deal of talent. It is not Mrs. Bentham’s fault if he is good-looking, any more than it is that her friend Lord Senton is very ugly.”
Lady Granderville, who was disposed to consider Lord Senton as a very possible husband for her daughter, raised her eyes to see if Lady Helen, who was standing a few yards away talking to two sisters in white, had heard Lady Marion’s ill-advised remark; The light filled Lady Helen’s saffron-coloured hair with strange flames, and the red poppies in her straw hat echoed, in a higher key, the flowers embroidered on her dress. She was quite five feet seven, and very slender. She was the type of all that is elegant, but in her elegance there was a certain hardness; her face seemed to have been squeezed between two doors. Lady Helen was very pale, and in the immaculate whiteness of her skin there was scarcely a trace of colour; it was pure as the white of an egg, only around the clear eyes it darkened to the liquid, velvety tint, which announces a passionate nature. The head beautifully placed on a long, thin neck, fell into ever varying attitudes; the waist, which you could span with your hands, swayed deliciously, and the slight hips recalled more those of the Bacchus than the Venus de Milo. Her figure, if the expression be permitted, was beautifully decorative, and could not but attract the eye of a painter.
“Lord Senton says that he doesn’t think him a bit good-looking, and that he is awfully silly,” said one of the girls in white.
“Lord Senton thinks everybody silly who doesn’t drink brandies and sodas, and tell beastly stories,” replied Lady Helen, with indifference.
“How do you know that Lord Senton tells beastly stories?”
“My brother told me that his conversation is simply abominable; and if William thinks so—”
The sisters looked up at each other slyly, but Lady Helen intercepted the look, and replied:
“Oh, you needn’t look, I know that everybody knows that my mother wants to make a match between Lord Senton and me, but I wouldn’t have him; no, not if—”
At that moment, fortunately for Mrs. Bentham, her tete-à-tete with Lord Senton had been propitiously interrupted by the arrival of Mr and Mrs. Swannell.
As Mr. Swannell approached, everybody instinctively tried to think of what they had read that morning in the Times, for Mr. Swannell never spoke on any subject but politics.
Lady Marion turned away to speak to Mrs. Bentham; a political conversation with Mr. Swannell would be as great a loss as a domestic one with Lady Granderville; but Mr. Swannell, encouraged by a group of young men who crowded to listen, addressed himself to Lady Marion as he would to the speaker of the House of Commons.
But suddenly, in the middle of a fine period, a fine rolling sentence, he noticed that he had lost the attention of every one. The ladies looked towards the house, and a feminine look went round.
“I am sure it is he,” whispered the elder girl in white; “did you ever see anything so peculiar in your life?”
As Lewis walked down the gravel walk, the sun turned the brown hair that fell on his neck to gold; the weak but delicately featured face was beautiful: the too developed hips gave a feminine swing to his walk.
There was a momentary lull in the tennis playing as he walked down the terrace with Mrs. Thorpe. Even Miss French stopped to look, and she said to her partner that she should like to see him play tennis.
Mrs. Bentham waited to introduce Lewis to Lady Marion, for she knew that half the county took their opinions from the old lady.
What with Lady Granderville’s whining stories of her little worries, Mr. Swannell’s political common-placeness, and the young men who assailed her from time to time with their stupid questions, Lady Marion was not in too critical a humour, and was disposed to hail anyone as a redeemer.
“I hear that you are decorating Mrs. Bentham’s ball-room,” said the old lady, by way of leading up to more serious matter.
“I have not yet finished my first panel; but all my sketches are done,” said Lewis, very timidly, not knowing whether he should address Lady Marion as Lady Marion or your ladyship.
“Are your sketches original drawings?” asked Lady Marion, meaning to get on the subject of modern French decorative art.
“They are original... that is to say that I take a cupid from one engraving, and a nymph from another, and put them together.”
Lewis was so pre-occupied, trying to catch how the gentleman who was speaking to Lady Granderville addressed her, that he could scarcely explain to Lady Marion that Mrs. Bentham had a very large collection of engravings and photographs, which she wished him to arrange into suitable pictures for the panels.
The footmen were handing round ices, tea, and claret cups; and in groups and single figures, ladies and gentlemen stood eating pastry and ices, and talking of tennis.
Lady Marion was quite satisfied with Lewis, and they were deeply engaged in discussing modern French art, at least Lady Marion was; Lewis knowing nothing about the subject, listened.
There was but one opinion among the ladies, that he was very good looking, although a little effeminate. Mrs. Bentham looked the picture of happiness as she watched her protégés triumph over Lord Senton, who, with his usual want of tact, had been abusing him to everybody.
Lewis had asked Lady Marion, with very good manner, if she would come to the refreshment table, whether he could get her some tea or an ice. Having overheard how these phrases were used, he made use of them in the same way. As they got up he saw Lady Helen for the first time; she was talking to Lord Senton, and their eyes met.
He was startled by her decorative gracefulness; she was a beautiful motive for a picture, as she stood against a clump of flowering rhododendrons. The blossoms on her dress mixed with those in the tre
es, and the whole was drowned in light mellow shadow; her clear face and dress standing out against the green dark leaves. Seeing that Lady Helen was being bored, and thinking that Lewis might amuse her, Lady Marion introduced them.
Lady Granderville, who saw the introduction, said to herself, “Dear me, what a fool Marion is; she introduces that man to Helen simply because he can gabble about pictures; and now Helen’s chances of being agreeable to Lord Senton are done for: that fellow won’t leave her the whole afternoon. Really, Marion is too thoughtless.”
At this moment a carriage drove up, and a murmur went round that it was Miss Fanshaw, last year’s champion, who was to play with Miss French for the gold bracelet. She stopped the carriage and got out without going to the house, and stood to see her rival play.
She was a thin, wee girl, dressed in blue silk, and she looked as active as a flea.
The last games were won easily by Miss French and partner, and Miss Fanshaw came forward, and, coquettishly swinging her racquet, congratulated her rival, and the two girls went to have tea together.
The arrival of the two famous players invested the entire attention of the company in tennis, and the different points of their play were discussed passionately. It was contended that Miss Fanshaw, although a more brilliant, was not so sure a player as Miss French, and that she often lost a set by trying to kill every ball. But the Fanshaw supporters declared that Miss French would never be able to do anything with the champion’s returns; they declared that she had improved very much lately, and that her service was now simply terrific.
But they all agreed that Miss French had been very foolish to tire herself in the double, and that she had prejudiced her chance very considerably. ‘She, however, insisted that when it was time to begin she would be quite fresh, and she ate an ice, and talked blithely with Miss Fanshaw. The match had been arranged for half-past, and it was now four. The sun had passed over the trees and hung at an angle of forty-five over the sea. The breasts of the silver clouds that filled the great blue hollow of the sky were just faintly touched with crimson, and the violent heat was beginning to soften to the persuasive languor of evening.
