A few days before Lothair’s visit was to terminate, the cardinal and Monsignore Berwick arrived at Vauxe. His eminence was received with much ceremony; the marshalled household, ranged in lines, fell on their knees at his approach, and Lady St. Jerome, Miss Arundel, and some other ladies, scarcely less choice and fair, with the lowest obeisance, touched, with their honored lips, his princely hand.
The monsignore had made another visit to Paris on his intended return to Rome, but, in consequence of some secret intelligence which he had acquired in the French capital, had thought fit to return to England to consult with the cardinal. There seemed to be no doubt that the revolutionary party in Italy, assured by the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome, were again stirring. There seemed also little doubt that London was the centre of preparation, though the project and the projectors were involved in much, mystery. “They want money,” said the monsignore; “that we know, and that is now our best chance. The Aspromonte expedition drained their private resources; and as for further aid, that is out of the question; the galantuomo is bankrupt. But the atheists are desperate, and we must prepare for events.”
On the morning after their arrival, the cardinal invited Lothair to a stroll in the park. “There is the feeling of spring this morning,” said his eminence, “though scarcely yet its vision.” It was truly a day of balm, and sweetness, and quickening life; a delicate mist hung about the huge trees and the masses of more distant woods, and seemed to clothe them with that fulness of foliage which was not yet theirs. The cardinal discoursed much on forest-trees, and, happily. He recommended Lothair to read Evelyn’s “Sylva.” Mr. Evelyn had a most accomplished mind; indeed, a character in every respect that approached perfection. He was also a most religious man.
“I wonder,” said Lothair, “how any man who is religious can think of any thing but religion.”
“True,” said the cardinal, and looking at him earnestly, “most true. But all things that are good and beautiful make us more religious. They tend to the development of the religious principle in us, which is our divine nature. And, my dear young friend,” and here his eminence put his arm easily and affectionately into that of Lothair, “it is a most happy thing for you, that you live so much with a really religious family. It is a great boon for a young man, and a rare one.”
“I feel it so,” said Lothair, his face kindling.
“Ah!” said the cardinal, “when we remember that this country once consisted only of such families!” And then, with a sigh, and as if speaking to himself, “And they made it so great and so beautiful!”
“It is still great and beautiful,” said Lothair, but rather in a tone of inquiry than decision.
“But the cause of its greatness and its beauty no longer exists. It became great and beautiful because it believed in God.”
“But faith is not extinct?” said Lothair.
“It exists in the Church,” replied the cardinal, with decision. “All without that pale is practical atheism.”
“It seems to me that a sense of duty is natural to man,” said Lothair, “and that there can be no satisfaction in life without attempting to fulfil it.”
“Noble words, my dear young friend; noble and true. And the highest duty of man, especially in this age, is to vindicate the principles of religion, without which the world must soon become a scene of universal desolation.”
“I wonder if England will ever again be a religious country?” said Lothair, musingly.
“I pray for that daily,” said the cardinal; and he invited his companion to seat himself on the trunk of an oak that had been lying there since the autumn fall. A slight hectic flame played over the pale and attenuated countenance of the cardinal; he seemed for a moment in deep thought; and then, in a voice distinct yet somewhat hushed, and at first rather faltering, he said: “I know not a grander, or a nobler career, for a young man of talents and position in this age, than to be the champion and asserter of Divine truth. It is not probable that there could be another conqueror in our time. The world is wearied of statesmen; whom democracy has degraded into politicians, and of orators who have become what they call debaters. I do not believe there could be another Dante, even another Milton. The world is devoted to physical science, because it believes these discoveries will increase its capacity of luxury and self-indulgence. But the pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble. When we arrive at that barren term, the Divine voice summons man, as it summoned Samuel; all the poetry and passion and sentiment of human nature are taking refuge in religion; and he, whose deeds and words most nobly represent Divine thoughts, will be the man of this century.”
“But who could be equal to such a task?” murmured Lothair.
“Yourself,” exclaimed the cardinal, and he threw his glittering eye upon his companion. “Any one with the necessary gifts, who had implicit faith in the Divine purpose.”
“But the Church is perplexed; it is ambiguous, contradictory.”
“No, no,” said the cardinal; “not the Church of Christ; it is never perplexed, never ambiguous, never contradictory. Why should it be? How could it be? The Divine persons are ever with it, strengthening and guiding it with perpetual miracles. Perplexed churches are churches made by Act of Parliament, not by God.”
Lothair seemed to start, and looked at his guardian with a scrutinizing glance. And then he said, but not without hesitation, “I experience at times great despondency.”
“Naturally,” replied the cardinal. “Every man must be despondent who is not a Christian.”
“But I am a Christian,” said Lothair.
“A Christian estranged,” said the cardinal; “a Christian without the consolations of Christianity.”
“There is something in that,” said Lothair. “I require the consolations of Christianity, and yet I feel I have them not. Why is this?”
“Because what you call your religion is a thing apart from your life, and it ought to be your life. Religion should be the rule of life, not a casual incident of it. There is not a duty of existence, not a joy or sorrow which the services of the Church do not assert, or with which they do not sympathize. Tell me, now; you have, I was glad to hear, attended the services of the Church of late, since you have been under this admirable roof. Have you not then found some consolation?”
“Yes; without doubt I have been often solaced.” And Lothair sighed.
“What the soul is to man, the Church is to the world,” said the cardinal. “It is the link between us and the Divine nature. It came from heaven complete; it has never changed, and it can never alter. Its ceremonies are types of celestial truths; its services are suited to all the moods of man; they strengthen him in his wisdom and his purity, and control and save him in the hour of passion and temptation. Taken as a whole, with all its ministrations, its orders, its offices, and the divine splendor of its ritual, it secures us on earth some adumbration of that ineffable glory which awaits the faithful in heaven, where the blessed Mother of God and ten thousand saints perpetually guard over us with Divine intercession.”
“I was not taught these things in my boyhood,” said Lothair.
“And you might reproach me, and reasonably, as your guardian, for my neglect,” said the cardinal. “But my power was very limited, and, when my duties commenced, you must remember that I was myself estranged from the Church, I was myself a Parliamentary Christian, till despondency and study and ceaseless thought and prayer, and the Divine will, brought me to light and rest. But I at least saved you from a Presbyterian university; I at least secured Oxford for you; and I can assure you, of my many struggles, that was not the least.”
“It gave the turn to my mind,” said Lothair, “and I am grateful to you for it. What it will all end in, God only knows.”
“It will end in His glory and in yours,” said the cardinal. “I have spoken, perhaps, too much and too freely, but you greatly interest me, not merely because you are my charge, and the son of my beloved friend, but because I perceive in you great qualities—qualities so great,” continued the cardinal with earnestness, “that properly guided, they may considerably affect the history of this country, and perhaps even have a wider range.”
Lothair shook his head.
“Well, well,” continued the cardinal in a lighter tone, “we will pursue our ramble. At any rate, I am not wrong in this, that you have no objection to join in my daily prayer for the conversion of this kingdom to—religious truth,” his eminence added after a pause.
“Yes religious truth,” said Lothair, “we must all pray for that.”
Lothair returned to town excited and agitated. He felt that he was on the eve of some great event in his existence, but its precise character was not defined. One conclusion, however, was indubitable: life must be religion; when we consider what is at stake, and that our eternal welfare depends on our due preparation for the future, it was folly to spare a single hour from the consideration of the best means to secure our readiness. Such a subject does not admit of half measures or of halting opinions. It seemed to Lothair that nothing could interest him in life that was not symbolical of divine truths and an adumbration of the celestial hereafter.
Could truth have descended from heaven ever to be distorted, to be corrupted, misapprehended, misunderstood? Impossible! Such a belief would confound and contradict all the attributes of the All-wise and the All-mighty. There must be truth on earth now as fresh and complete is it was at Bethlehem. And how could it be preserved but by the influence of the Paraclete acting on an ordained class? On this head his tutor at Oxford had fortified him; by a conviction of the Apostolical succession of the English bishops, which no Act of Parliament could alter or affect. But Lothair was haunted by a feeling that the relations of his Communion with the Blessed Virgin were not satisfactory. They could not content either his heart or his intellect. Was it becoming that a Christian should live as regards the hallowed Mother of his God in a condition of harsh estrangement? What mediatorial influence more awfully appropriate than the consecrated agent of the mighty mystery? Nor could he, even in his early days, accept without a scruple the frigid system that would class the holy actors in the divine drama of the Redemption as mere units in the categories of vanished generations. Human beings who had been in personal relation with the Godhead must be different from other human beings. There must be some transcendent quality in their lives and careers, in their very organization, which marks them out from all secular heroes. What was Alexander the Great, or even Caius Julius, compared with that apostle whom Jesus loved?
Restless and disquieted, Lothair paced the long and lofty rooms which had been secured for him in a London hotel which rivalled the colossal convenience of Paris and the American cities. Their tawdry ornaments and their terrible new furniture would not do after the galleries and portraits of Vauxe. Lothair sighed.
Why did that visit ever end? Why did the world consist of any thing else but Tudor palaces in ferny parks, or time be other than a perpetual Holy Week? He never sighed at Vauxe. Why? He supposed it was because their religion was his life, and here—and he looked around him with a shudder. The cardinal was right: it was a most happy thing for him to be living so much with so truly a religious family.
The door opened, and servants came in bearing a large and magnificent portfolio. It was of morocco and of prelatial purple with broad bands of gold and alternate ornaments of a cross and a coronet. A servant handed to Lothair a letter, which enclosed the key that opened its lock. The portfolio contained the plans and drawings of the cathedral.
Lothair was lost in admiration of these designs and their execution. But after the first fever of investigation was over, he required sympathy and also information. In a truly religious family there would always be a Father Coleman or a Monsignore Catesby to guide and to instruct. But a Protestant, if he wants aid or advice on any matter, can only go to his solicitor. But as he proceeded in his researches he sensibly felt that the business was one above even an oratorian or a monsignore. It required a finer and a more intimate sympathy; a taste at the same time more inspired and more inspiring; some one who blended with divine convictions the graceful energy of human feeling, and who would not only animate him to effort but fascinate him to its fulfilment. The counsellor he required was Miss Arundel.
Lothair had quitted Vauxe one week, and it seemed to him a year. During the first four-and-twenty hours he felt like a child who had returned to school, and, the day after, like a man on a desert island. Various other forms of misery and misfortune were suggested by his succeeding experience. Town brought no distractions to him; he knew very few people, and these be had not yet encountered; he had once ventured to White’s, but found only a group of gray-beaded men, who evidently did not know him, and who seemed to scan him with cynical nonchalance. These were not the golden youth whom he had been assured by Bertram would greet him; so, after reading a newspaper for a moment upside downward, he got away. But he had no harbor of refuge, and was obliged to ride down to Richmond and dine alone, and meditate on symbols and celestial adumbrations. Every day he felt how inferior was this existence to that of a life in a truly religious family.
But, of all the members of the family to which his memory recurred with such unflagging interest, none more frequently engaged his thoughts than Miss Arundel. Her conversation, which stimulated his intelligence while it rather piqued his self-love, exercised a great influence over him, and he had omitted no opportunity of enjoying her society. That society and its animating power he sadly missed; and now that he had before him the very drawings about which they had frequently talked, and she was not by his side to suggest and sympathize and criticise and praise, he felt unusually depressed.
Lothair corresponded with Lady St. Jerome, and was aware of her intended movements. But the return the family to London had been somewhat delayed. When this disappointment was first made known to him, his impulse was to ride down to Vauxe; but the tact in which he was not deficient assured him that he ought not to reappear on a stage where he had already figured for perhaps too considerable a time, and so another week had to be passed, softened, however, by visits from the father of the oratory and the chamberlain of his holiness, who came to look after Lothair with much friendliness, and with whom it was consolatory and even delightful for him to converse on sacred art, still holier things, and also Miss Arundel.
At length, though it seemed impossible, this second week elapsed, and to-morrow Lothair was to lunch with Lady St. Jerome in St. James’s Square, and to meet all his friends. He thought of it all day, and he passed a restless night. He took an early canter to rally his energies, and his fancy was active in the splendor of the spring. The chestnuts were in silver bloom, and the pink May had flushed the thorns, and banks of sloping turf were radiant with plots of gorgeous flowers. The waters glittered in the sun, and the air was fragrant with that spell which only can be found in metropolitan mignonette. It was the hour and the season when heroic youth comes to great decisions, achieves exploits, or perpetrates scrapes.
Nothing could be more cordial, nothing more winning, than the reception of Lothair by Lady St. Jerome. She did not conceal her joy at their being again together. Even Miss Arundel, though still calm, even a little demure, seemed glad to see him: her eyes looked kind and pleased, and she gave him her hand with graceful heartiness. It was the sacred hour of two when Lothair arrived, and they were summoned to luncheon almost immediately. Then they were not alone; Lord St. Jerome was not there, but the priests were present and some others. Lothair, however, sat next to Miss Arundel.
“I have been thinking of you very often since I left Vauxe,” said Lothair to his neighbor.
“Charitably, I am sure.”
“I have been thinking of you every day,” he continued, “for I wanted your advice.”
“Ah! but that is not a popular thing to give.”
“But it is precious—at least, yours is to me—and I want it now very much.”
“Father Coleman told me you had got the plans for the cathedral,” said Miss Arundel.
“And I want to show them to you.”
“I fear I am only a critic,” said Miss Arundel, “and I do not admire mere critics. I was very free in my comments to you on several subjects at Vauxe; and I must now say I thought you bore it very kindly.”
“I was enchanted,” said Lothair, “and desire nothing but to be ever subject to such remarks. But this affair of the cathedral, it is your own thought—I would fain hope your own wish, for unless it were your own wish I do not think I ever should be able to accomplish it.”
“And when the cathedral is built,” said Miss Arundel “what then?”
“Do you not remember telling me at Vauxe that all sacred buildings should be respected, for that in the long-run they generally fell to the professors of the true faith?”
“But when they built St. Peter’s, they dedicated it to a saint in heaven,” said Miss Arundel. “To whom is yours to be inscribed?”
“To a saint in heaven and in earth,” said Lothair, blushing; “to St. Clare.”
But Lady St. Jerome and her guests rose at this moment, and it is impossible to say with precision whether this last remark of Lothair absolutely reached the ear of Miss Arundel. She looked as if it had not. The priests and the other guests dispersed. Lothair accompanied the ladies to the drawing-room; he lingered, and he was meditating if the occasion served to say more.
Lady St. Jerome was writing a note, Mss Arundel was arranging some work, Lothair was affecting an interest in her employment in order that he might be seated by her and ask her questions, when the groom of the chambers entered and inquired whether her ladyship was at home, and being answered in the affirmative, retired, and announced and ushered in the duchess and Lady Corisande.
It seemed that the duchess and Lady St. Jerome were intimate, for they called each other by their Christian names, and kissed each other. The young ladies also were cordial. Her grace greeted Lothair with heartiness; Lady Corisande with some reserve. Lothair thought she looked very radiant and very proud.
It was some time since they had all met—not since the end of the last season—so there was a great deal to talk about. There had been deaths and births and marriages which required a flying comment—all important events; deaths which solved many difficulties, heirs to estates which were not expected, and weddings which surprised everybody.
“And have you seen Selina?” inquired Lady St. Jerome.
“Not yet; except mamma, this is our first visit,” replied the duchess.
“Ah! that is real friendship. She came down to Vauxe the other day, but I did not think she was looking well. She frets herself too much about her boys; she does not know what to do with them. They will not go into the Church, and they have no fortune for the Guards.”
“I understood that Lord Plantagenet was to be a civil engineer,” said Lady Corisande.
“And Lord Albert Victor to have a sheep-walk in Australia,” continued Lady St. Jerome.
“They say that a lord must not go to the bar,” said Miss Arundel. “It seems to me very unjust.”
“Alfred Beaufort went the circuit,” said Lady Corisande, “but I believe they drove him into Parliament.”
“You will miss your friend Bertram at Oxford,” said the duchess, addressing Lothair.
“Indeed,” said Lothair, rather confused, for he was himself a defaulter in collegiate attendance. “I was just going to write to him to see whether one could not keep half a term.”
“Oh! nothing will prevent his taking his degree,” said the duchess, “but I fear there must be some delay. There is a vacancy for our county—Mr. Sandstone is dead, and they insist upon returning Bertram. I hope he will be of age before the nomination. The duke is much opposed to it; he wishes him to wait; but in these days it is not so easy for young men to get into Parliament. It is not as it used to be; we cannot choose.”
“This is an important event,” said Lothair to Lady Corisande.
“I think it is; nor do I believe Bertram is too young for public life. These are not times to be laggard.”
“There is no doubt they are very serious times,” said Lothair.
“I have every confidence in Bertram—in his ability and his principles.”
The ladies began to talk about the approaching drawing-room and Lady Corisande’s presentation, and Lothair thought it right to make his obeisance and withdraw. He met in the hall Father Coleman, who was in fact looking after him, and would have induced him to repair to the father’s room and hold some interesting conversation, but Lothair was not so congenial as usual. He was even abrupt, and the father, who never pressed any thing, assuming that Lothair had some engagement, relinquished with a serene brow, but not without chagrin, what he had deemed might have proved a golden opportunity.
And yet Lothair had no engagement, and did not know where to go or what to do with himself. But he wanted to be alone, and of all persons in the world at that moment, he had a sort of instinct that the one he wished least to converse with was Father Coleman.
“She has every confidence in his principles,” said Lothair to himself as he mounted his horse, “and his principles were mine six months ago, when I was at Brentham. Delicious Brentham! It seems like a dream; but every thing seems like a dream; I hardly know whether life is agony or bliss.”
The duke was one of the few gentlemen in London who lived in a palace. One of the half-dozen of those stately structures that our capital boasts had fallen to his lot.
An heir-apparent to the throne, in the earlier days of the present dynasty, had resolved to be lodged as became a prince, and had raised, amid gardens which he had diverted from one of the royal parks, an edifice not unworthy of Vicenza in its best days, though on a far more extensive scale than any pile that favored city boasts. Before the palace was finished, the prince died, and irretrievably in debt. His executors were glad to sell to the trustees of the ancestors of the chief of the house of Brentham the incomplete palace, which ought never to have been commenced. The ancestor of the duke was by no means so strong a man as the duke himself, and prudent people rather murmured at the exploit. But it was what is called a lucky family—that is to say, a family with a charm that always attracted and absorbed heiresses; and perhaps the splendor of CRECY HOUSE—for it always retained its original title—might have in some degree contributed to fascinate the taste or imagination of the beautiful women who, generation after generation, brought their bright castles and their broad manors to swell the state and rent-rolls of the family who were so kind to Lothair.
The centre of Crecy House consisted of a hall of vast proportion, and reaching to the roof. Its walls commemorated, in paintings by the most celebrated artists of the age, the exploits of the Black Prince; and its coved ceiling, in panels resplendent with Venetian gold, contained the forms and portraits of English heroes. A corridor round this hall contained the most celebrated private collection of pictures in England and opened into a series of sumptuous saloons.
It was a rather early hour when Lothair, the morning after his meeting the duchess at Lady St. Jerome’s, called at Crecy House; but it was only to leave his card. He would not delay for a moment paying his respects there, and yet he shrank from thrusting himself immediately into the circle. The duke’s brougham was in the court-yard. Lothair was holding his groom’s horse, who had dismounted, when the hall-door opened, and his grace and Bertram came forth.
“Halloa, old fellow!” exclaimed Bertram, “only think of your being here. It seems an age since we met. The duchess was telling us about you at breakfast.”
“Go in and see them,” said the duke, “there is a large party at luncheon; Augusta Montairy is there. Bertram and I are obliged to go to Lincoln’s Inn, something about his election.”
But Lothair murmured thanks and declined.
“What are you going to do with yourself to-day?” said the duke. And Lothair hesitating, his grace continued: “Well, then, come and dine with us.”
“Of course you will come, old fellow. I have not seen you since you left Oxford at the beginning of the year. And then we can settle about your term.” And Lothair assenting, they drove away.
It was nine o’clock before they dined. The days were getting very long, and soft, and sweet; the riding-parties lingered amid the pink May and the tender twilight breeze. The Montairys dined to-day at Crecy House, and a charming married daughter without her husband, and Lord and Lady Clanmorne, who were near kin to the duchess, and themselves so good-looking and agreeable that they were as good at a dinner-party as a couple of first-rate entrées. There was also Lord Carisbrooke, a young man of distinguished air and appearance; his own master, with a large estate, and three years or so older than Lothair.
They dined in the Chinese saloon, which was of moderate dimensions, but bright with fantastic forms and colors, brilliantly lit up. It was the privilege of Lothair to hand the duchess to her seat. He observed that Lord Carisbrooke was placed next to Lady Corisande, though he had not taken her out.
“This dinner reminds me of my visit to Brentham,” said Lothair.
“Almost the same party,” said the duchess.
“The visit to Brentham was the happiest time of my life,” said Lothair, moodily.
“But you have seen a great deal since,” said the duchess.
“I am not a sure it is of any use seeing things,” said Lothair.
When the ladies retired, there was some talk about horses. Lord Carisbrooke was breeding; Lothair thought it was a duty to breed, but not to go on the turf. Lord Carisbrooke thought there could be no good breeding without racing; Lothair was of opinion that races might be confined to one’s own parks, with no legs admitted, and immense prizes, which must cause emulation. Then they joined the ladies, and then, in a short time, there was music. Lothair hovered about Lady Corisande, and at last seized a happy opportunity of addressing her.
“I shall never forget your singing at Brentham,” he said; “at first I thought it might be as Lady Montairy said, because I was not used to fine singing; but I heard the Venusina the other day, and I prefer your voice and style.”
“Have you heard the Venusina?” said Lady Corisande, with animation; “I know nothing that I look forward to with more interest. But I was told she was not to open her mouth until she appeared at the opera. Where did you hear her?”
“Oh, I heard her,” said Lothair, “at the Roman Catholic cathedral.”
“I am sure I shall never hear her there,” said Lady Corisande, looking very grave.
“Do not you think music a powerful accessory to religion?” said Lothair, but a little embarrassed.
“Within certain limits,” said Lady Corisande—“the limits I am used to; but I should prefer to hear opera-singers at the opera.”
“Ah! if all amateurs could sing like you,” said Lothair, “that would be unnecessary. But a fine mass by Mozart—it requires great skill as well as power to render it. I admire no one so much as Mozart, and especially his masses. I have been hearing a great many of them lately.”
“So we understood,” said Lady Corisande, rather dryly, and looking about her as if she were not much interested, or at any rate not much gratified by the conversation.
Lothair felt he was not getting on, and he wished to get on, but he was socially inexperienced, and his resources not much in hand. There was a pause—it seemed to him an awkward pause; and then Lady Corisande walked away and addressed Lady Clanmorne.
Some very fine singing began at this moment; the room was hushed, no one moved, and Lothair, undisturbed, had the opportunity of watching his late companion. There was something in Lady Corisande that to him was irresistibly captivating; and as he was always thinking and analyzing, he employed himself in discovering the cause. “She is not particularly gracious,” he said to himself, “at least not to me; she is beautiful, but so are others; and others, like her, are clever—perhaps more clever. But there is something in her brow, her glance, her carriage, which intimate what they call character, which interests me. Six months ago I was in love with her, because I thought she was like her sisters. I love her sisters, but she is not the least like them.”
The music ceased; Lothair moved away, and he approached the duke.
“I have a favor to ask your grace,” he said. “I have made up my mind that I shall not go back to Oxford this term; would your grace do me the great favor of presenting me at the next levée?”
One’s life changes in a moment. Half a month ago, Lothair, without an acquaintance, was meditating his return to Oxford. Now he seemed to know everybody who was anybody. His table was overflowing with invitations to all the fine houses in town. First came the routs and the balls; then, when he had been presented to the husbands, came the dinners. His kind friends the Duchess and Lady St. Jerome were the fairies who had worked this sudden scene of enchantment. A single word from them, and London was at Lothair’s feet.
He liked it amazingly. He quite forgot the conclusion at which he had arrived respecting society a year ago, drawn from his vast experience of the single party which he had then attended. Feelings are different when you know a great many persons, and every person is trying to please you; above all, when there are individuals whom you want to meet, and whom, if you do not meet, you become restless.
Town was beginning to blaze. Broughams whirled and bright barouches glanced, troops of social cavalry cantered and caracolled in morning rides, and the bells of prancing ponies, lashed by delicate hands, gingled in the laughing air. There were stoppages in Bond Street, which seems to cap the climax of civilisation, after crowded clubs and swarming parks.
But the great event of the season was the presentation of Lady Corisande. Truly our bright maiden of Brenthani woke and found herself famous. There are families whom everybody praises, and families who are treated in a different way. Either will do; all the sons and daughters of the first succeed, all the sons and daughters of the last are encouraged in perverseness by the prophetic determination of society. Half a dozen married sisters, who were the delight and ornament of their circles, in the case of Lady Corisande were good precursors of popularity; but the world would not be content with that: they credited her with all their charms and winning qualities, but also with something grander and beyond comparison; and from the moment her fair cheek was sealed by the gracious approbation of Majesty, all the critics of the Court at once recognised her as the cynosure of the Empyrean.
Monsignore Catesby, who looked after Lothair, and was always breakfasting with him without the necessity of an invitation (a fascinating man, and who talked upon all subjects except High Mass), knew everything that took place at Court without being present there himself. He led the conversation to the majestic theme, and while he seemed to be busied in breaking an egg with delicate precision, and hardly listening to the frank expression of opinions which he carelessly encouraged, obtained a not insufficient share of Lothair’s views and impressions of human beings and affairs in general during the last few days, which had witnessed a Levée and a Drawing-room.
‘Ah! then you were so fortunate as to know the beauty before her début,’ said the Monsignore.
‘Intimately; her brother is my friend. I was at Brentham last summer. Delicious place! and the most agreeable visit I ever made in my life, at least, one of the most agreeable.’
‘Ah! ah!’ said the Monsignore. ‘Let me ring for some toast.’
On the night of the Drawing-room, a great ball was given at Crecy House to celebrate the entrance of Corisande into the world. It was a sumptuous festival. The palace, resonant with fantastic music, blazed amid illumined gardens rich with summer warmth.
A prince of the blood was dancing with Lady Corisande. Lothair was there, vis-à-vis with Miss Arundel.
‘I delight in this hall,’ she said to Lothair; ‘but how superior the pictured scene to the reality!’
‘What! would you like, then, to be in a battle?’
‘I should like to be with heroes, wherever they might be. What a fine character was the Black Prince! And they call those days the days of superstition!’
The silver horns sounded a brave flourish. Lothair had to advance and meet Lady Corisande. Her approaching mien was full of grace and majesty, but Lothair thought there was a kind expression in her glance, which seemed to remember Brentham, and that he was her brother’s friend.
A little later in the evening he was her partner. He could not refrain from congratulating her on the beauty and the success of the festival.
‘I am glad you are pleased, and I am glad you think it successful; but, you know, I am no judge, for this is my first ball!’
‘Ah! to be sure; and yet it seems impossible,’ he continued, in a tone of murmuring admiration.
‘Oh! I have been at little dances at my sisters’; half behind the door,’ she added, with a slight smile. ‘But to-night I am present at a scene of which I have only read.’
‘And how do you like balls?’ said Lothair.
‘I think I shall like them very much,’ said Lady Corisande; ‘but to-night, I will confess, I am a little nervous.’
‘You do not look so.’
‘I am glad of that.’
‘Why?’
‘Is it not a sign of weakness?’
‘Can feeling be weakness?’
‘Feeling without sufficient cause is, I should think.’ And then, and in a tone of some archness, she said, ‘And how do you like balls?’
‘Well, I like them amazingly,’ said Lothair. ‘They seem to me to have every quality which can render an entertainment agreeable: music, light, flowers, beautiful faces, graceful forms, and occasionally charming conversation.’
‘Yes; and that never lingers,’ said Lady Corisande, ‘for see, I am wanted.’
When they were again undisturbed, Lothair regretted the absence of Bertram, who was kept at the House.
‘It is a great disappointment,’ said Lady Corisande; ‘but he will yet arrive, though late. I should be most unhappy though, if he were absent from his post on such an occasion I am sure if he were here I could not dance.’
‘You are a most ardent politician,’ said Lothair.
‘Oh! I do not care in the least about common politics, parties and office and all that; I neither regard nor understand them,’ replied Lady Corisande. ‘But when wicked men try to destroy the country, then I like my family to be in the front.’
As the destruction of the country meditated this night by wicked men was some change in the status of the Church of England, which Monsignore Catesby in the morning had suggested to Lothair as both just and expedient and highly conciliatory, Lothair did not pursue the theme, for he had a greater degree of tact than usually falls to the lot of the ingenuous.
The bright moments flew on. Suddenly there was a mysterious silence in the hall, followed by a kind of suppressed stir. Everyone seemed to be speaking with bated breath, or, if moving, walking on tiptoe. It was the supper hour?
Soft hour which wakes the wish and melts the heart.
Royalty, followed, by the imperial presence of ambassadors, and escorted by a group of dazzling duchesses and paladins of high degree, was ushered with courteous pomp by the host and hostess into a choice saloon, hung with rose-coloured tapestry and illumined by chandeliers of crystal, where they were served from gold plate. But the thousand less favoured were not badly off, when they found themselves in the more capacious chambers, into which they rushed with an eagerness hardly in keeping with the splendid nonchalance of the preceding hours.
‘What a perfect family,’ exclaimed Hugo Bohun, as he extracted a couple of fat little birds from their bed of aspic jelly; ‘everything they do in such perfect taste. How safe you were here to have ortolans for supper!’
All the little round tables, though their number was infinite, were full. Male groups hung about; some in attendance on fair dames, some foraging for themselves, some thoughtful and more patient and awaiting a satisfactory future. Never was such an elegant clatter.
‘I wonder where Carisbrooke is,’ said Hugo Bohun. ‘They say he is wonderfully taken with the beauteous daughter of the house.’
‘I will back the Duke of Brecon against him,’ said one of his companions. ‘He raved about her at White’s yesterday.’
‘Hem!’
‘The end is not so near as all that,’ said a third wassailer.
‘I do not know that,’ said Hugo Bohun. ‘It is a family that marries off quickly. If a fellow is obliged to marry, he always likes to marry one of them.’
‘What of this new star?’ said his friend, and he mentioned Lothair.
‘Oh! he is too young; not launched. Besides he is going to turn Catholic, and I doubt whether that would do in that quarter.’
‘But he has a greater fortune than any of them.’
‘Immense! A man I know, who knows another man——’ and then he began a long statistical story about Lothair’s resources.
‘Have you got any room here, Hugo?’ drawled out Lord St. Aldegonde.
‘Plenty, and here is my chair.’
‘On no account; half of it and some soup will satisfy me.’
‘I should have thought you would have been with the swells,’ said Hugo Bohun.
‘That does not exactly suit me,’ said St. Aldegonde. ‘I was ticketed to the Duchess of Salop, but I got a first-rate substitute with the charm of novelty for her Grace, and sent her in with Lothair.’
St. Aldegonde was the heir apparent of the wealthiest, if not the most ancient, dukedom in the United Kingdom. He was spoiled, but he knew it. Had he been an ordinary being, he would have merely subsided into selfishness and caprice, but having good abilities and a good disposition, he was eccentric, adventurous, and sentimental. Notwithstanding the apathy which had been engendered by premature experience, St. Aldegonde held extreme opinions, especially on political affairs, being a republican of the reddest dye. He was opposed to all privilege, and indeed to all orders of men, except dukes, who were a necessity. He was also strongly in favour of the equal division of all property, except land. Liberty depended on land, and the greater the landowners, the greater the liberty of a country. He would hold forth on this topic even with energy, amazed at anyone differing from him; ‘as if a fellow could have too much land,’ he would urge with a voice and glance which defied contradiction. St. Aldegonde had married for love, and he loved his wife, but he was strongly in favour of woman’s rights and their extremest consequences. It was thought that he had originally adopted these latter views with the amiable intention of piquing Lady St. Aldegonde; but if so, he had not succeeded. Beaming with brightness, with the voice and airiness of a bird, and a cloudless temper, Albertha St. Aldegonde had, from the first hour of her marriage, concentrated her intelligence, which was not mean, on one object; and that was never to cross her husband on any conceivable topic. They had been married several years, and she treated him as a darling spoiled child. When he cried for the moon, it was promised him immediately; however irrational his proposition, she always assented to it, though generally by tact and vigilance she guided him in the right direction. Nevertheless, St. Aldegonde was sometimes in scrapes; but then he always went and told his best friend, whose greatest delight was to extricate him from his perplexities and embarrassments.