, Eleanor found herself suffering from unusual depression. Something in Lady Forestfield's manner when speaking about Spiridion Pratt convinced the girl that May knew more than she was willing to tell. So far as Mr. Pratt himself was concerned Eleanor had no feeling in the matter, and had she regarded him in the light of a common acquaintance she would have pronounced him to be a gentleman, but rather a vain and silly man. She knew, however, that Mrs. Chadwick's project had not been lightly conceived, and would not be easily departed from, and objectionable as the idea of, marriage with Mr. Pratt had been before, since she had discussed it with her friend the vague dread with which May Forestfield's words had inspired her made her regard it with increased aversion. On her arrival at Fairfax-gardens she found her sister just returned from her drive, and looking through the cards which had been left during her absence.
'"P.P.C." on nearly all of them,' said Mrs. Chadwick, looking up. 'There was quite a thin Park, and there is not the smallest doubt that everybody is leaving town; and it was only this morning that James told me there was no possibility of our getting away for another month. That won't matter to you, Eleanor, I suppose,' she said as she seated herself; 'for you don't seem to me to care whether it is the season or not--indeed, I think you are rather happier when nobody comes.'
'I am sure of it,' said Eleanor quietly.
'Well, my dear child, you really must get out of these moping ways,' said Fanny. 'As I have told you so many times, you should leave off your mourning and come out with me; a drive in the Park would have done you infinitely more good than sitting with that invalid schoolfellow of yours; for I suppose that is where you have been all the day?'
'Yes,' said Eleanor, with a slight blush; 'that is where I have been.'
'I can't understand it; for my part,' said Mrs. Chadwick, 'I don't believe I should be alive if I did not have a drive every day, and I was just looking forward to Scotland to revive me. However, I daresay we shall do tolerably well; there are sure to be some people left in town, and we shall be more thrown together with them than is possible when all the world has to be attended to. It is time to dress now, dear; and will you please make yourself look particularly nice?'
'Why?' asked Eleanor.
'For my sake,' said Fanny. Then stepping to her sister she said, in what she intended to be an arch voice, but what was really a somewhat angular manner, 'Spiridion Pratt is coming to dinner.'
Mrs. Chadwick was in the drawing-room when Eleanor came down, and looked up as her sister entered the room to see whether Eleanor had adopted her suggestion as to her dress. A plain black-silk gown with simple muslin frilling such as Eleanor wore was not much to Mrs. Chadwick's taste, for it was her custom to attire herself in bright colours made in the extremest fashion, and to wear about her head and shoulders so many flowers and trinkets as to make her look like a combination of a florist's shop and a jeweller's window. This was done partly in accordance with her own rather vulgar taste, and partly out of desire to please Mr. Chadwick, who, all generous as he was, liked to see what he called 'his money's worth.' For this reason, though a great patron of art, he never bought specimens of the old masters, arguing that there was 'nothing to look at in them;' never gave still champagne; and on the occasion of his entertainments liked to have as few of the blinds drawn as possible, in order that the outside world might see what was going on. But Mrs. Chadwick, who was in no way jealous of her sister, could not help admitting to herself that she had never seen Eleanor more to advantage; and the gentleman who was sitting by her roused up at once from the somewhat indolent manner in which he had been carrying on conversation and awoke to life. A somewhat romantic-looking gentleman this--rather like a Velasquez portrait--with long dark hair parted in the middle and taken off behind the ears, dark eyes, regular features, peaked beard, and sallow complexion. He wore tiny mosaic studs in his shirt, and a large antique cameo on his little finger; had the finest line of coral links for a watch-chain; and during his talk with Mrs. Chadwick had been engaged in contemplating with great admiration his little feet, which were incased in black-silk socks and shoes with silver buckles. This was Mr. Spiridion Pratt, who rose to greet Miss Irvine, and to express his delight at finding her still in town.
'I was just saying to Mrs. Chadwick,' he murmured, 'that, delighted as I have always been to find myself a guest at this house, I never found it so delightful as now, when it is positively an oasis in this desert of London.'
'We may think ourselves lucky in securing you, Mr. Pratt,' said Eleanor. 'I should have thought that you, who are so essentially a portion of the world, would have been with the world.'
'Where should I go to, my dear Miss Irvine?' said Spiridion plaintively. 'To Goodwood, to sit on the burnt lawn in a broiling sun, with a hundred wretches bawling their wagers in my ears; to Cowes, to sit on the damp deck of a yacht with my knees up to my chin, to have to move perpetually while the men shift their horrible sails, and to get my fingers covered with pitch and tar? That's what the world is doing just now, I believe, and I confess it has no attraction in my eyes.'
'Mrs. Hamblin is still in town, is she not?' asked Mrs. Chadwick, looking fixedly at him.
'Yes, I believe she is,' said Spiridion, with the faintest trace of colour appearing in his cheeks; 'Mr. Hamblin's official position prevents his getting away just yet, and--and--'
'Exactly,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'Where will they go when Mr. Hamblin can get away?'
'I have no idea for certain,' said Spiridion, who was growing uncomfortable under Mrs. Chadwick's gaze. 'I don't think, however, that they will leave town till October, and then I heard something of their going to Italy.'
'You had yourself some idea of wintering in Rome, had you not?' asked his unswerving questioner.
'I had at one time, but that was before you--I mean to say that I have given up that notion, and I am now by no means certain of my plans.'
To relieve him from his confusion, Mr. Spiridion Pratt was only too glad to welcome the entrance of Mr. Chadwick; a big, burly, broad-shouldered man of about fifty, with a bald head fringed with crisp iron-gray hair, clean-shaved ruddy face, merry gray eyes, and a manner redeemed from vulgarity by its hearty geniality.
'Glad to see you, Mr. Pratt,' said he, seizing Spiridion's little hand in a tight grip, which printed off an impression of the cameo on his other finger. 'How d'ye do? Nell, you were off early this morning, young lady; I thought to see you at breakfast, but they told me you had gone out.'
'To see her sick schoolfellow, you know,' said Mrs. Chadwick. Then turning towards Spiridion Pratt, she whispered, 'She has such a tender heart.'
'Quite right,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'always look after those who are down on their luck, Nelly. I recollect when I was a youngster being laid by the heels with typhus fever down at Jarrow, when I would have given anything for the sight of a kindly woman's face at my bedside; but I never saw anybody except the pitman's wife who kept the cottage where I lodged, and the doctor attached to the works, who had to attend to about two hundred of us for thirty pounds a year. I pulled through somehow, though.'
'Thanks to our blessed Nature,' said Spiridion, with a side-glance at Eleanor, to see if she were looking at him. 'What beneficent wonders does she not work when left to herself!'
'She has worked the beneficent wonder of giving me a rare appetite this evening,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'not that that is a wonder though, when I come to think of it, as I have it pretty nigh every day about this time. My Fan, shall I ring for dinner, or do you expect any more swells?'
Mrs. Chadwick crimsoned as the objectionable word--of the perpetual use of which she had tried so hard to break her husband--struck upon her ear; but seeing that Mr. Pratt, being engaged in conversation with Eleanor, evidently had not heard it, she merely said, 'I am waiting for Mr. Eardley, my dear James, and a friend of his whom he has promised to bring with him.'
'Any friend of his will be welcome,' said Mr. Chadwick. 'I like Eardley, and I like his pictures, though I don't quite understand them; but he puts in plenty of colour; and though I wish he wouldn't paint so many people without their clothes, I--'
'James!' whispered his wife; and at that moment the door was thrown open, and the butler announced Mr. Eardley and Mr. Huff. It was not, however, under that name that Mr. Eardley introduced his friend to the hostess. 'Let me present to you Sir Nugent Uffington, my dear Mrs. Chadwick,' said he; 'a friend whose acquaintance I made under strange circumstances in a wild place several years ago, and to whose kindness and attention I owe my life.'
'Pray don't believe a word of this, Mrs. Chadwick,' said Uffington, with a somewhat cynical smile; 'our friend Eardley carries that romantic spirit which is so invaluable to him in his painting into his daily life, and unconsciously allows it to colour his utterances. His recovery was due rather to my medicine-chest than to my exertions, and there was nothing wonderful about it.'
'You say that out of courtesy, Sir Nugent, but I have heard Mr. Eardley speak of it before,' said Mrs. Chadwick, with her most gracious smile. 'Let me introduce you to my husband--Sir Nugent Uffington.'
'Glad to know you, sir,' said Mr. Chadwick, putting out his hand--'glad to know any friend of Mr. Eardley's. Are you in this line?' pointing to the pictures on the walls.
'Not I, Mr. Chadwick,' said Uffington, with a laugh. 'I wish I were anything as useful. I have the misfortune to do nothing, to have been doing it all my life, and,' he added in rather a lower tone, 'to have made a singularly bad job of it.'
And then dinner was announced, and the conversation stopped.
Charley Ormerod was quite right when he spoke with such high praise of the quality of the dinners and the wines in Fairfax-gardens. Mr. Chadwick looked after these himself. He had a natural taste for good living, and though in his early days he had been quite content with a chump of coarse-grained meat broiled by himself over the furnace fire, and washed down by some cold weak tea out of a soda-water bottle, as soon as he could provide himself with better fare he took care to have it. 'A man is like an engine,' he used to say; 'his bearings get hot, and the whole thing goes crank and stiff, unless his works have been properly greased. Half my planning and thinking is done at night, after a good dinner and a bottle of fizz, when my Fan's in bed, and all these chattering servants are out of the way, and I sit up in the library and put down all I have got in my head. It's no good to attempt to plan anything up in the North, for there they have their heavy meal in the middle of the day, and after that I am good for nothing but to go to sleep, or to see what I have ordered is carried out; but here, after afilly dy soleand a bottle ofIrroy, I am as clear as a bell and as fresh as a two-year-old.'
The dinner on this occasion was especially good, for it was the host's boast that, whatever kudos he might have gained in the world for his 'large spreads,' his 'little feeds,' or, as Mrs. Chadwick called them, their dinners 'en petit comité,' were really much better. Spiridion Pratt, who was agourmet, revelled in the various dishes, and the rare wines brought a slight flush into Uffington's usually pale cheeks.
'Like that sherry, Sir Nugent?' cried the host, beaming from his side of the round table. 'That's some of the Emperor's wine from the Tooleries. I was in Paris at the time of the sale, and when I tasted, I determined to have some. This is the real stuff, I know, because I took care to have it put aside and brought over at once. But, lor bless you, at some of the houses where my Fan and me dine--you know the parties I am alluding to, Eardley--they have got some stuff which passes for the Emperor's wine that old Nap would never have put his beak into.'
'My dear James!' murmured Mrs. Chadwick.
'Fact, Fan,' said her husband, who misunderstood the gist of the hint--'never put his beak into; though I daresay the Swassers--what a fellow I am! there I have been and let the name out!--well, I daresay the Swassers paid a long figure for it, and believed it was old Nap's own tipple. Poor old Nap! fancy him gone, and Ujaney left alone!'
'Were you ever at the imperial court?' asked Spiridion.
'O yes,' replied the host. 'We supplied a set of engines for the imperial yacht Leagle, I think it was called--the Eagle--very like English, ain't it? And there was some talk about our building a new vessel for him, and I was sent for to see the Emperor about it. I shall never forget. Just before I started, I was talking to some funny fellows I knew then who wrote in the newspapers, and when I told them I was going to see the Emperor, one of them, named Rupert Robinson, said, "Well, then, just have the kindness to ask him for the eighteenpence he owes me." "Eighteenpence!" says I. "How can he owe you eighteenpence?" "Why," he says, "I often used to see him in the old days at Lady Blessington's, at Gore House, on a Sunday night; and one night we came home together in a cab, and he asked me to pay his share as well as my own, as he had no change, and he would pay me next time he saw me. Next time I saw him," Robinson said, "he was driving in his carriage, with an escort riding beside him, and I thought that was a bad time to ask him for the eighteenpence; so he owes it me still."'
'I suppose you did not ask the Emperor for it?' said Spiridion.
'Not I,' said Mr. Chadwick, with a laugh. 'I had enough to do to mind my own business. Our friend Eardley here tells me that you have been a great traveller, Sir Nugent?'
'Yes, I have knocked about a good deal, Mr. Chadwick,' said Uffington, turning towards him. 'I have been and done and suffered as much as most men.'
'Quite like a dear old verb, isn't he?' said Eardley, shaking back his clustering locks and smiling at Eleanor.
'I had a great notion of travelling once myself,' said Mr. Chadwick. 'When I was first apprentice, at the Jarrow works, I thought I would like to see the world, and I was very nearly running off to be a cabin-boy.'
'My dear James!' murmured Mrs. Chadwick. Then turning to Spiridion with a sweet smile, 'You too, Mr. Pratt, have been a great traveller; only the other day I was reading to Eleanor that delightful description of your being stopped by the brigands in Greece.'
'The description, I imagine, was a good deal pleasanter than the reality,' murmured Eardley. 'They kept dear old Prattikins on very short commons, and wouldn't let him have a comb to do his back hair with.'
'Well, I'm a queer kind of John Bull, I suppose, in my notions,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'but I don't hold much with all this travelling abroad and intercourse with foreign nations. It's all very well so far as business is concerned--gives us an outlet for our goods, and enables us to pick up a good many wrinkles in matters in which these fellows beat us hollow--but I don't think we have gained much by being so hand and glove with these chaps, having them at our houses, and that sort of thing.'
'Ungrateful monster,' laughed Eardley, 'to say such things when the work of the French stranger within your gates has scarcely left the table! Could any one but a Frenchman have made thatbonne femmesoup? Is there a British hand light enough to have turned out thatsoufflet?'
'I wasn't talking about cooking,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'there they're A1, and no mistake. When I was a lad we used to think that all Frenchmen were either cooks or dancing-masters; and I imagined all French boys were brought up in the belief that Englishmen were either sailors or grooms. No; what I meant to say,' he continued, looking a little more serious, 'is, that I don't think we are quite so respectable since we have mixed so freely with foreigners.'
'You are not alluding to ourselves, James, I suppose,' interposed Mrs. Chadwick. 'I am sure that--'
'No, no, my dear Fan,' said her husband; 'I mean English people generally. It don't appear to me that we are so strong in temperance, soberness, and chastity--those three virtues which the Catechism tells us to look sharp after--as we were before the days of excursions abroad and cheap tourists' tickets.'
'I don't see that anything could possibly be more temperate than the French and the Italian gentlemen who come to this house, James. Some of the Germans are large eaters, we know, but seem to be even more so than they are from the manner in which they handle their knives and forks and swallow their food.'
'I rather think that it is to a falling off in the other virtues named to which Mr. Chadwick is making special allusion,' said Spiridion Pratt, with a smile. 'Some of our continental visitors have recently proved themselves rather destructive to the peace of families.'
'Are you speaking generally, or alluding to any special case?' asked Uffington.
'I was speaking generally,' said Spiridion; 'but there are doubtless special cases which would point the--immoral.'
'There is one, a very flagrant case, which quite bears out what my husband says,' observed Mrs. Chadwick, drawing herself up and looking as virtuous as the mother of the Gracchi. 'I understand that you have only just returned to England, Sir Nugent Uffington, and therefore, perhaps, you have not heard of it--the scandal about Lady Forestfield.'
Uffington bowed coldly. He had heard some mention of that sad story, he said.
'A sad story indeed, and a great disgrace to our English nobility, of which we are naturally so proud,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'Anything worse than the conduct of Lady Forestfield could not well be imagined.'
Eleanor Irvine, who had been endeavouring to hide her agitation as this conversation proceeded, could restrain herself no longer. 'Surely Lady Forestfield is not entirely to blame, Fanny!' she cried. 'Surely some excuse is to be made for one who was cruelly treated and almost wholly deserted by her husband, whose sole recognition of her was to throw dust in the world's eyes!'
'Eleanor,' cried Mrs. Chadwick, bridling up, 'I cannot understand what you mean.' Then, seeing that the sharpness of her tone had been remarked by the company, she changed her voice, and said, with affected gaiety, 'You must allow me, as an old married woman, to be a much better judge of such matters than you. It is not to be surprised at,' she said, turning to Spiridion Pratt, 'that Eleanor, who has the sweetest nature in the world, should feel a strong compassion for Lady Forestfield, for they were brought up together, and in their childhood were quite like sisters, though Lady Forestfield is two or three years the elder of the two. I admire her generosity,' she added, in a lower tone; 'but of course it is my duty, in my position as elder sister and married woman, to rebuke the expression of such sentiments.'
'Gad, I don't see that,' returned Spiridion in the same undertone. 'She seems to me perfectly charming, and it is, we are told, the duty of angels to plead for the fallen.'
'You asked me if I had heard anything of this wretched case,' said Uffington to Mrs. Chadwick. 'What has been mentioned to me is, that for some time before their separation Lord Forestfield had been in the habit of treating his wife with systematic rudeness and even cruelty. If that be the case, he has himself to thank for all that has subsequently happened to him.'
'It is as bad a case against him as could possibly be,' said Eardley, turning to Uffington, who was his neighbour, and speaking quietly. 'Both before and after the birth of her child he worried her so savagely, that the baby, naturally small and weak, only lived a few months. She was desperately fond of this infant, and from the time of its death, which she attributed entirely to her husband's misconduct, she has been scarcely accountable for her actions.'
'That, I suppose, Mr. Eardley,' said Mrs. Chadwick, who caught the last words, 'will be the excuse for Lady Forestfield taking up with such people as Mrs. Ingram and Lady Northaw, and declining to associate with others who, though they cannot boast of being fast, have at least a reputation, and are visited by some of the best people.'
'I don't think,' said Mr. Chadwick, who had been silent for some time, 'that we ought to lay the blame wholly upon one or the other of these unfortunate young people. I don't quite agree with my Fan that Lady F.'s the party in fault, though I daresay she was flighty, and didn't keep herself as strict as she would have done had she lived half a century two ago; and I don't think Lord F. is to be entirely blamed, though from what I have seen of him in one or two matters of business he is a roughish customer. My verdict should be against the third person in the case; the man who, in the guise of a friend, comes into a house where, to all outward appearance at least, and for anything that he could tell, things were going on quite smoothly, and takes advantage of the opportunities of his intimacy to bring ruin upon one and misery upon both. Upon both, I say. Don't tell me--whatever sort of man this Lord Forestfield may be, however glad he may be now to be freed from his wife, he will not be able to give up all thought of her. He may get rid of her, as of course he will; and he may marry again, as they say he wants to; but he cannot get rid of the memory of her, let him be as happy as he may. Years hence he will find himself thinking about her, wondering what has become of her, what she may be like then--thinking of the early days of their courtship, when she was a pretty girl and he a likely young fellow, when their lines lay in pleasant places and all that the world held good seemed to be in store for them. Lord, Lord, they will be wretched enough then! The crime in a case of this kind belongs to the seducer. Don't you think so, Sir Nugent Uffington?'
Uffington started for an instant, as did Eardley, to whom his story was known. Then he said quietly, 'No doubt; but it brings its own punishment with it sooner or later, as he will find.'
The conversation then turned into another channel, and soon afterwards the ladies retired.
Uffington, who had been much struck with Eleanor's outburst in defence of Lady Forestfield, made up his mind to have some farther talk with her; but when they reached the drawing-room they found Mrs. Chadwick alone.
'Eleanor had a headache,' the hostess explained to Spiridion Pratt; 'and though I did all I could to persuade her, I found it impossible to make her await your coming.'
'She was right,' Uffington muttered to himself, pondering over this as he walked home. 'Headache or no headache, she is far too sensible a girl to waste her time on such a donkey as that man Pratt. There must be something more in Lady Forestfield than I imagined to enlist the sympathies of such a girl as this. For the first time for years I really begin to feel interested in something.'
When Sir Nugent Uffington woke the next morning, instead of, according to his usual custom, yawning and composing himself for another nap, he roused up at once. It is for a psychologist to explain how it is that the subject uppermost in our minds invariably flashes across our thoughts at the first instant of shaking off our slumbers, and that we go to the pleasure or business of the day with a light or heavy heart, according to our impressions on waking. That acceptance which has so nearly run out; that confoundedly incautious letter which, on the spur of the moment, we wrote to a man who is now doubtless making use of it; that awkward dilemma in which, without any serious intentions, we placed ourselves with Smith's wife--all these things rise before us with as much but not more certainty than the recollections of our successful after-dinner speech, of thrilling tones and touches at that special interview on the previous evening, or of the assurance from our attorney that the long-protracted lawsuit was coming to an end at last, and that the judgment could not fail to be in our favour. Through the Gate of Ivory and through the Gate of Horn come dreams and thoughts to sleeping man, who is acted upon by them in his waking moments.
Nugent Uffington had been so long unaccustomed to anything like the smallest excitement, his life for so many years past had gone on slowly and monotonously, that he could not at first understand what it was that caused him to rouse up briskly, and with a certain hitherto unwonted feeling of interest. A little reflection brought before him the events of the previous evening, and he lay lazily back on his pillow, thinking them through and making his comments upon them.
'It is a curious thing,' he said to himself 'that a man of my age and experience should find himself suddenlyintriguéabout the affairs of a set of people, some of whom I never saw till Wednesday, and one of whom I could scarcely be said to have seen at all. And yet undoubtedly I was much amused, and something more than that, at the proceedings of those queer people with whom Eardley took me to dine last night. There was an honesty and a sense of right about that genial rough fellow, the host, which was to me infinitely pleasanter and more refreshing than thefadenonsense talked by people who are far better educated, and who are supposed to be better mannered; though unintentionally, in his great blundering way, he came down hot and heavy upon me, and sent his blade through the joints in my harness. I wonder how I looked under the infliction? I must ask Eardley, whose glance I caught at the moment; but I have a notion that to him, at least, I must have shown that the hit had gone home. Strange that after all these years anything which in the slightest degree resembles or hinges upon my life with Julie should have such an effect upon me. All the time that that good honest fellow was droning away about the impossibility of Forestfield's being able to shake off the memory of this wife whom he has just deserted--and I think Chadwick was right there, it is impossible to lay such ghosts--I was thinking of that day, when I first induced her to meet me at the Great Exhibition, when we were hidden away in the Machinery Court amongst all kinds of wonderful engines, as much to ourselves as if we had been in a palm-grove in Africa. At this instant I can see her in the thin muslin dress which she wore, the bright gold chain round her neck, the tiny parasol swinging open over her shoulders; can distinguish that soft violet perfume, which seemed to be a portion of herself, and--I imagined I had cured myself even of thinking of these things! "The crime in a case of this sort belongs to the seducer--don't you think so, Sir Nugent Uffington?" It was a home thrust. I wonder whether I turned red or white, or betrayed myself in any way to the rest of the party? The man never meant to sting me--he hadn't made his money in those days, and such a story was not likely to penetrate to Newcastle, though Manchester and its neighbourhood must have heard enough of the wrongs of the injured husband, and Mrs. Chadwick must have been a mere child at the time. That man Pratt may have heard something about it, but, donkey that he is, he is decently behaved, and made no sign. I don't think I should quite like that young girl, Mrs. Chadwick's sister, to have Mr. Pratt's version of the affair though, for I don't think he would make the best case for any one else, and I am rather interested in Miss Eleanor Irvine; not for herbeaux yeux, God knows, for I am past any attraction from that kind of thing; I don't know what for, unless it is for the manner in which she spoke up for her friend, Lady Forestfield. How the girl's eyes flashed, and what ringing scorn and defiance there was in her tone as she defended her absent friend! Men do not do that sort of thing if any of their particular acquaintances is attacked; they content themselves with a very mild protest; but this girl plainly meant to hit hard, and was all too many for that conventional moralist, her sister, who made a bad retreat of it. Those two women do not pull well together, it is impossible they should; for one is all natural fire, and the other all artificial ice. Mrs. Chadwick is evidently bent upon throwing this pretty girl at the head of Mr. Pratt, who is graciously condescending to spread out his palms to catch her; but Miss Eleanor, I imagine, does not intend to allow herself to be tossed about for her sister's amusement or advantage, and she will hold to her friend whom the worldly-wise Mrs. Chadwick so roundly denounces. Both these women, each in her own way, evidently feel strongly about that matter. There must have been a further discussion about it in the drawing-room, in which the married lady must have carried the day and reduced her sister to tears, or she would not have quitted the room for the mere sake of shirking a further interview with Spiridion Pratt. I am actually curious to see more of those people and to watch the progress of affairs there; for an idle than with all his time to fill up it will afford at all events occupation, and perhaps amusement. Moreover, I may in some way or other--one can never tell how--be able to lighten the burden which this poor deserted woman seems to have brought upon herself, which, as a voluntary act on the part of the "seducer," may perhaps be looked upon as some expiation of his "crime."'
And with a shrug, Nugent Uffington rang for his valet and turned out of bed. He was pretending to eat his breakfast, dallying with his toast and grumbling over the newsless newspaper, when Mr. Eardley was announced.
Nothing could be more unlike the conventional idea of an artist than Mr. Eardley's appearance, so far as dress was concerned. His classical profile and hyacinthine locks were all that could be looked for in those Greek heroes whom he loved to paint; indeed, it was said, and not without truth, that his looking-glass supplied him with the best models. But in his costume he not merely despised the velvet shooting-coat and general looseness of garb which are supposed to be characteristic of his calling, but affected a neatness and precision which were in strong contrast with the prevailing loudness of taste. He was a man of excellent education and information, who had taken up the profession of a painter simply because it was the first that came to his hand, and who had continued it because he saw his way to large prices and high social position, but who had talent and pluck enough to have succeeded in several other callings had he felt so disposed. Mr. Eardley's talent was, moreover, of a very different kind from that of Spiridion Pratt, and although the latter was always putting himself forward, whilst the former never made any public appearance outside his adopted art, Mr. Eardley's self-contained reticence was regarded as evidence of much more power than Mr. Pratt's perpetual attempts. There were few men to whom the world had shown so much of its sunny side, fewer still who would have been so little spoiled by the indulgence. Dick Tinto and Jack Whitewash, with their tobacco-smelling beards, their paint-bedaubed jackets, and their dirty hands, and their companions of the Palette Club, used to revile Frank Eardley, calling him swell and stuck-up beast; but when the first lay ill for six weeks with the fever, it was Frank's purse which induced the doctor to come in and the broker's man to go out; and when Jack Whitewash swaggered about the good position awarded to his picture at the Academy, he little knew that it was owing to Frank's interposition with the council. Eardley mixed but little with men of his own profession, though he took much interest in all its charitable and social institutions at the periodical gatherings, where he spoke with great readiness and fluency; and though he went a great deal into society he had but very few intimates. For Nugent Uffington, Eardley entertained a great liking; the kindness shown to him by Nugent at their first meeting had touched him very deeply, and there was something in Uffington's solitude and isolation--which was even more noticeable now in the midst of the London world than it had been in the wild and uncivilised regions where they first formed acquaintance--that called forth his pity and admiration. Since Nugent's return, a day seldom passed without the friends meeting. Uffington would sit for hours in Eardley's studio, smoking countless cigarettes and watching his friend at work; their talk was always of the frankest and most open character, and Nugent's one wish seemed to be that Frank, with all the world at his feet, should shun the social snares and pitfalls into which he himself had fallen at the outset of his career.
'You will wonder what brings me to you at such an early hour,' said Eardley, 'more especially after our settling that you should come round and give me your opinion of the Niobe; but when I got home last night, I found a letter from Dossetor, asking me to look at some blue Chelsea china at one o'clock. So I thought I would make an idle morning of it, and inflict my company on you.'
'I am very glad to see you--more glad than I usually should be at this hour; but to-day I happen to be awake--not a very frequent occurrence with me--at eleven o'clock.'
'And in Albania you were always ready to start on our excursions at five,' said Eardley, with a laugh.
'Exactly, my dear Frank; but Albania and the Albany, though almost synonymous, are very different places. It was worth while getting up at any absurd hour for the wild-fowl, shooting there; but there is nothing to shoot at here, unless I were to pot the beadle, or a fellow-lodger shaving at the opposite window. Recollect, too, the air and the silence and all the other enjoyable things.'
'Silence!' cried Eardley. 'If you call that enjoyable, you surely have got enough of it here. I never could understand how people lived in these chambers, with nothing ever to wake the echoes except the occasional footfalls in that melancholy long covered walk.'
'You have that idea because you are never here of an evening, my dear Frank,' said Uffington, 'and have never heard the shrieks of laughter and the very unbridled mirth which floats out upon the evening air when the opposite windows are open, and little Mr. Pincushion, of the Stock Exchange, is entertaining his female friends from the Varieties and the Parthenon. By the way, that was a very good dinner you took me to last night.'
'Of course it was; you have known me long enough to trust me in such matters, have you not? You may be certain that your palate and digestion are always safe in my charge; not that I could guarantee you such wines and such cooking as Chadwick's on every occasion, for they are really first-rate. And the company, what did you think of that?'
'I was amused.'
'Indeed, how very kind of your lordship! We ought all to be deeply indebted to you for your condescension.'
'Don't be an ass, Frank. I was more than amused, for I was pleased and interested.'
'I thought you would be pleased with Mr. Chadwick's high-bred punctiliousness, interested by Mrs. Chadwick's unaffected geniality,' said Eardley, laughing. 'Chaff apart, they are very pleasant people. What did you think of the young lady?'
'What little I saw of her I was much pleased with, but I had hardly a chance of speaking to her.'
'Of course not; Mrs. Chadwick, who is always managing for somebody else, has taken it into her head that it would be a great thing if she could catch that tremendous idiot, Spiridion Pratt, and make up a match between him and her sister; the girl is much too good for that, don't you think?'
'It is impossible for me to say,' replied Uffington, 'having only seen Mr. Pratt once; but he does not seem to me to be such a goose as you rate him. He affects to be romantic, and is unquestionably conceited, but I don't see much else the matter with him, and he is a gentleman, which, after all, goes a very long way.'
'What a dear large-hearted old boy it is!' said Eardley, clapping his friend affectionately on the shoulder. 'But what do you say, then, to Mr. Chadwick? I am afraid he won't come up to your standard.'
'I don't see why not,' replied Uffington. 'Do you imagine that I should not consider Mr. Chadwick a gentleman, because his manner is rather brusque, and he uses odd phrases? I declare to you he seems to me as perfect a specimen of a real gentleman as I have seen for many a long day. There are many men, my dear Frank, who drop theirh's and pick up fish-sauce with their knives, who are more trulypreux chevaliersthan the purest bred among us.'
'Very likely,' said Eardley, 'but a droppedhgrates on the ear, and knife-swallowing, except at a circus, is not pleasant to look at. Did you notice--but of course you did--how Miss Irvine blazed out in defence of her friend, Lady Forestfield?'
'I noticed it with more than astonishment,' said Uffington. 'But from what little I saw of her I should judge her to be a young lady who would speak out boldly in favour of any one whom she imagined to be oppressed, whether a friend of hers or not.'
'Perhaps so,' said Eardley; 'but I know she was particularly fond of Lady Forestfield.'
'The intimacy has been dropped since the smash, I presume,' said Uffington. 'Mrs. Chadwick seems far too strict a person to allow it to continue.'
'Decidedly, if she knew it,' said Eardley; 'but I have some idea that the worthy woman is slightly hoodwinked in the matter. Mrs. Ingram told me that Lady Forestfield is lodging in Podbury-street--poor child, fancy Podbury-street after the lovely luxury of Seamore-place!--and the other morning I saw Miss Irvine walking down that very street. I know it was she, though I did not recollect her at first, and I was thinking what a pretty model she would make for a certain class of subject, when suddenly it came upon me that she was the daughter of that raffish old buck Irvine, who used to hang about Clipstone-street in former days.'
'So Lady Forestfield is lodging in Podbury-street, is she?' said Uffington musingly. 'Do you know the number?'
'Sixty-eight, I think,' said Eardley, looking at him in surprise; 'but what on earth does it matter to you?'
'Nothing,' said Uffington with a start, 'not the least in the world; I was only wondering--'
'My dear old Nugent,' said Eardley, taking him by the arm, and looking inquiringly into his face, 'what are you thinking about? You are not going to do anything quixotic, I hope. Lady Forestfield, as every one will allow who knows anything about the case and speaks fairly, has been deucedly badly treated; but nothing would warrant any interference in the matter, and any attempt might probably recoil upon the poor woman herself.'
'You need not be afraid, Frank,' said Uffington; 'I am not likely to make any such attempt. I was only thinking--' and again he fell into a musing fit.
'Exactly; but don't think,' said Eardley, touching him on the shoulder. 'You have finished your breakfast; come down with me to Dossetor's, and help me to form an opinion on the blue china. After that we will go down to Richmond, stroll about the park, and have a dinner at some quiet place where we shall not have to watch the melancholy amusement of professedly festive people.'
'Agreed, so far as Richmond, the stroll, and the dinner are concerned; but I cannot come with you now, I will meet you there. My head aches a little, and would ache worse if I had to listen to Dossetor's disquisitions on his china; so I will go and get rid of my trouble by a canter in the Row.'
'That will be better perhaps,' said Eardley, 'not only for yourself, but for my china, as it is the one thing in which I require that the opinions of people I consult should coincide with my own, and you seem to me to be rather contradictory this morning. I suppose you will drive me down? Then I will be waiting for you at the club at four.'
'I shall be there to the minute,' said Uffington.
And then Eardley, with an 'Au revoir!'took his hat and strolled leisurely away.
Sir Nugent Uffington was rather more lively and alert after his friend's departure than he had been in the early morning. He paced up and down the room, revolving in his mind whether the affection of Eleanor Irvine for Lady Forestfield was such as would naturally be felt by her for any other person in so desolate and unfortunate a position, or whether it was the outcome of some special interest which Lady Forestfield had awakened in her--if so, what were the sources of that interest? She must be a peculiar woman, Nugent thought, to arouse a feeling which, in the fact that it caused Miss Irvine to act in opposition to the expressed wish of one on whom she was dependent, as Eardley had hinted, must approach devotion. Lady Forestfield must have a powerful will of her own to obtain ascendency over a mind like Eleanor's.
Altogether, Sir Nugent Uffington, who for so many years had been almost emotionless, was beginning to take a certain amount of interest in the affairs which were passing round him, and the centre of that interest, so far as he could judge, was Lady Forestfield.
The ordinary frequenters of the Row, to whom Sir Nugent Uffington had become a familiar figure, and who were not disposed to regard him as a lively or agreeable companion, had no occasion to alter their opinion of him from his behaviour on this particular day. The few who noticed him mentioned him to each other as 'mooning about as usual;' he nodded to very few, and only stopped once, and that was to speak to his old friend Tom Lydyeard, who was leaning over the rails. Their conversation was common-place and matter-of-fact enough, the usual platitudes of society talk--for Tom Lydyeard, a really good-natured fellow, was not much gifted with brains, and even in what he had to say was a triflerococoand old-worldly--when a sudden impetus was given to it by Lydyeard saying, 'Look at this man on the bright bay, riding outside of the girl with the chestnut; that is the man that everybody is talking of just now--I pointed him out to you the first night we met at the Opera--Lord Forestfield.'
Uffington looked quickly round. At that moment the bay horse shied at a dog which darted from under the railings, and its rider, turning white with rage, brought his riding-stick down with all his force between its ears. The horse bucked and lashed out, but its rider never moved in his seat, and the next moment the little cavalcade had broken into a gallop and were out of sight.
'Nice lot, isn't he?' muttered Tom Lydyeard between his teeth; 'they say he treated his wife that way, and yet they tell me that now there is not a soul in the place, man or woman, to speak a kind word to her, or to do her a good turn. Queer world, ain't it, Uffington?'
'Very,' said Nugent. 'Good-bye;' and he cantered off in the direction of Grosvenor-place.
It was not time for luncheon yet, he thought, as he rode out under the arch, and he might as well ride round and see where Podbury-street--what a curious name!--where Podbury-street was. Sixty-eight was the number that Frank Eardley had mentioned; and here was Podbury-street, and there was sixty-eight, with a handsome brougham--harness a little too heavily plated, and coachman's livery a thought too gorgeous--standing at the door. Now the door opened, and a young lady came out, whom Nugent had no difficulty in recognising as Miss Irvine--she did not see him, for she darted hastily into the carriage--saw her, too, sufficiently plainly to notice that tears were rolling down her cheeks.
What could be the meaning of that? Decidedly Sir Nugent Uffington was much interested in Miss Eleanor Irvine and Lady Forestfield.