Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
"Collecting toys,
As children gather pebbles by the deep."
Milton.
"Well," said Mr. Brown, with that ironical pleasantry common to intense despair, "that is what I call pleasant."
The Disowned.
There needed very little diplomacy to persuade Lady Alicia to exchange the study of natural history in Kensington Gardens for its pursuit in Howell and James's, where bracelets made of beetles, and brooches of butterflies, are as good as a course of entomology. A gay drive soon brought them to that emporium of china and chronometers—small, as if meant to chime to fairy revels—of embossed vases, enamelled like the girdle of Iris, and in which every glass drawer is a shrine
"Where the genii have hid
The jewelled cup of their king Jamshid."
Truly, the black sea of Piccadilly, in spite of mud and Macadam, is, from four to five o'clock in the season, one of those sights whose only demerit is its want of novelty.
The carriage, entering at Stanhope Gate, first wound its way through a small but brilliant crowd—vehicles, from which many a face glanced fair
"As the maids
Who blushed behind the gallery's silken shades."
in Mokanna's gathering from Georgia and Circassia, and drawn by horses whose skins were soft as the silks and satins of their owners—steeds like the one which owes its immortality to its Macedonian victor, curbed by the slight rein and yet slighter touch of some patrician-looking rider, whose very appearance must be a consolation to those melancholy mortals who prose over the degeneracy of the human race—cabriolets guided apparently as the young prince was waited on in the palace of the White Cat, by hands only, or rather gloves, varying from delicate primrose to pale blue.
Then the scene itself—the sweep of light verdure, the fine old trees which in Kensington Gardens formed the background of the distance, the light plantation of flowering shrubs on one side, the fine statue of Achilles, looking down like a dark giant disdainfully on the slight race beneath; the slender and elegant arches through which the chariot wheels rolled as if in triumph; the opening of the Green Park, ended by the noble old Abbey, hallowed by all of historic association; the crowded street, where varieties approximated and extremes met; the substantial coach, with its more substantial coachman, seeming as if they bore the whole weight of the family honours; the chariots, one, perhaps, with its crimson blind waving and giving a glimpse of the light plume, or yet lighter blonde, close beside another whose olive-green outside and one horse told that the dark-vested gentleman, seated in the very middle, as if just ready to get out, is bound on matters of life and death, i. e. is an apothecary. Then the heavy stages—the omnibus, which so closely resembles a caravan of wild beasts–and, last descent of misery and degradation, the hackney-coaches, to which one can only apply what Rochefoucault says of marriages—"they may be convenient, but never agreeable."
Of the pedestrians—as in telling a gentleman faults in the mistress he married that morning—the least said, the soonest mended. No woman looks well walking in the street: she either elbows her way in all the disagreeableness of independence, or else shuffles along as if ashamed of what she is doing; her bonnet has always been met by some unlucky wind which has destroyed half its shape, and all its set: if fine weather, her shoes are covered with dust, and if dirty, the petticoat is defyingly dragged through the mud, or, still more defyingly, lifted on one side to show the black leather boot, and draggled in deepest darkness on the other. No female, at least none with any female pretensions, should ever attempt to walk, except on a carpet, a turf, or a terrace. As for the men, one half look as if they were running on an errand or from an arrest, or else were creeping to commit suicide.
So much for the pavement. Then the shops on either side, can human industry or ingenuity go farther? Ah, human felicity! to have at once so many wants suggested and supplied! Wretched Grecian daughters! miserable Roman matrons! to whom shopping was an unknown pleasure, what did, what could employ them? Harm, no doubt; for
"Satan finds tome mischief still
For idle hands to do."
At Howell's, Emily was aroused from the contemplation of a bracelet formed of bees' wings united by lady-birds, by seeing Lady St Leon, a large, good-natured person—one of those who take up a chariot or a sofa to themselves—one of those fortunate beings who have never had a cross but a diamond one in the world—one who, as a child, was amusing enough to be papa's pet, and pretty enough to be mamma's. She fell in love at sixteen with the very person she ought,—the heir of the estate which adjoined her father's; she was wedded in a month, had a fine large family, none of whom were ever ill; had sons, with an uncle to adopt every one but the eldest, and daughters predestined to be married, and who fulfilled their destinies as soon as possible. She never contradicted her husband, who never contradicted her; and they had gone on to fifty, equally fat and fortunate together. No wonder her ladyship's good humour was enough for herself—and other people.
While discussing with the old lady the effects of an east wind, and the rival merits of liquorice and lemon lozenges, who should she see examining the sentiments and seals but Mr. Boyne Sillery; and whose conversation should she overhear but that passing between him and a young guardsman, who was bestowing on him his idleness and his company?
"Pray," said Captain Sinclair, "who is that pretty girl whose peace of mind you have been annihilating the last night or two?"
"In good truth, I hardly know—a Miss Arundel—a wood-nymph, the daughter of either a country squire or a clergyman—equipped, I suppose, by a mortgage on either the squire's corn-fields, or the parson's glebe land—sent with her face for her fortune to see what can be done during a London season in the way of Cupid and conquest."
"I am at a loss," said his companion, "to understand your devotion."
"It was a mixture of lassitude and experiment, carried into execution by a little Christian charity: she appeared entirely neglected—and your nobodies are so very grateful! But I find the fatigue too much: moreover, one should never let pleasure interfere with business. Last night, at the Opera, one of those crushes which bewilder the uninitiated, did wonders for me with a pretty (by courtesy) little Oriental whose forty thousand pounds have lately been suggesting themselves in the shape of a new system of finance."
"And what oriental lure can tempt you to risk your complexion in the city?"
"Oh, a removed one: Miss Goulburn."
Louisa Emma Anastasia Goulburn had fewer drawbacks than most heiresses. Her father was one of those aborigines whose early history was, like most early histories, involve in considerable obscurity. "Nothing in life became him like the leaving it;" for he left one fair daughter and forty thousand pounds to benefit posterity. A sentimental friendship formed at school with a damsel some years her senior, whose calculating talents Mr. Hume himself might envy, induced her, on her friend's marriage, to settle with her in Harley Street; and this friend having neither brother nor brother-in-law, the fair Louisa Emma remained, rather to her own surprise, unappropriated at four-and-twenty. As to characteristics, she had none; and, to use a simile to describe her, she was like that little volume "The Golden Lyre," whose only merit was being printed in golden letters.
"Rich, silly," said Mr, Boyne Sillery, "what rational man could wish for a more pattern wife? I am now going to Kensington Gardens to meet her, where, by the by, I also expect Miss Arundel—one rival queen is often useful with another."
"Well," said Captain Sinclair, "I think I should be amused by a scene between your sylph and your gnome: my cabriolet waits at the corner; shall I drive you?"
"Agreed," rejoined Mr. Sillery, pausing a moment to make choice of two seals, one a kneeling Cupid—and to decide whether it was an apple or a heart which he held in his hand, would have puzzled an anatomist or a naturalist—with the motto à vous: the other, an equally corpulent Cupid chained, the inscription "at your feet." "I always consider," observed our calculating cavalier, "billets the little god's best artillery: the perfumed paper is a personal compliment, and your fair correspondent always applies the seal to herself: like the knights of old, I look to my arms."
A prolonged gaze on the mirror opposite, a satisfactory smile, and our two adventurers left the shop—like Pizarro, intent on a golden conquest. Emily's lip was a little bitten, and her colour not a little heightened, as she emerged from the expanse of Lady St. Leon's ermine. What a pity it is to throw away a good resolution!