Dr. Wardan liked the frame of the observations, disliked the substance.
‘One is to understand that the English language has these pretensions?’ he said:—he minced in his manner, after the well-known mortar-board and tassel type; the mouthing of a petrifaction: clearly useless to the pleadings of the patriotic Dr. Bouthoin and his curate.
He gave no grip to Colney, who groaned at cheap Donnish sarcasm, and let him go, after dealing him a hard pellet or two in a cracker-covering.
There was Victor all over the field netting his ephemerae! And he who feeds on them, to pay a price for their congratulations and flatteries, he is one of them himself!
Nesta came tripping from the Rev. Septimus Barmby. ‘Dear Mr. Durance, where is Captain Dartrey?’
Mrs. Blathenoy had just conducted her husband through a crowd, for an introduction of him to Captain Dartrey. That was perceptible.
Dudley Sowerby followed Nesta closely: he struck across the path of the Rev. Septimus: again he had the hollow of her ear at his disposal.
‘Mr. Radnor was excellent. He does everything consummately: really, we are all sensible of it. I am. He must lead us in a symphony. These light “champagne overtures” of French composers, as Mr. Fenellan calls them, do not bring out his whole ability:—Zampa, Le Pre aux clercs, Masaniello, and the like.’
‘Your duet together went well.’
‘Thanks to you—to you. You kept us together.’
‘Papa was the runaway or strain-the-leash, if there was one.’
‘He is impetuous, he is so fervent. But, Miss Radnor, I could not be the runaway-with you… with you at the piano. Indeed, I… shall we stroll down? I love the lake.’
‘You will hear the bell for your cold dinner very soon.’
‘I am not hungry. I would so much rather talk—hear you. But you are hungry? You have been singing twice: three times! Opera singers, they say, eat hot suppers; they drink stout. And I never heard your voice more effective. Yours is a voice that… something of the feeling one has in hearing cathedral voices: carry one up. I remember, in Dresden, once, a Fraulein Kuhnstreich, a prodigy, very young, considering her accomplishments. But it was not the same.’
Nesta wondered at Dartrey Fenellan for staying so long with Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy.
‘Ah, Mr. Sowerby, if I am to have flattery, I cannot take it as a milliner’s dumb figure wears the beautiful dress; I must point out my view of some of my merits.’
‘Oh! do, I beg, Miss… You have a Christian name and I too: and once … not Mr. Sowerby: yes, it was Dudley!
‘Quite accidentally, and a world of pardons entreated.’
‘And Dudley begged Dudley might be Dudley always!’
He was deepening to the Barmby intonation—apparently Cupid’s; but a shade more airily Pagan, not so fearfully clerical.
Her father had withdrawn Dartrey Fenellan from Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy. Dr. Schlesien was bowing with Dartrey.
‘And if Durandarte would only—but you are one with Miss Graves to depreciate my Durandarte, in favour of the more classical Jachimo; whom we all admire; but you shall be just,’ said she, and she pouted. She had seen her father plant Dartrey Fenellan in the midst of a group of City gentlemen.
Simeon touched among them to pluck at his brother. He had not a chance; he retired, and swam into the salmon-net of seductive Mrs. Blathenoy’s broad bright smile.
‘It’s a matter of mines, and they’re hovering in the attitude of the query, like corkscrews over a bottle, profoundly indifferent to blood-relationships,’ he said to her.
‘Pray, stay and be consoled by me,’ said the fair young woman. ‘You are to point me out all the distinguished people. Is it true, that your brother has left the army?’
‘Dartrey no longer wears the red. Here comes Colonel Corfe, who does. England has her army still!’
‘His wife persuaded him?’
‘You see he is wearing the black.’
‘For her? How very very sad! Tell me—what a funnily dressed woman meeting that gentleman!’
‘Hush—a friend of the warrior. Splendid weather, Colonel Corfe.’
‘Superb toilettes!’ The colonel eyed Mrs. Blathenoy dilatingly, advanced, bowed, and opened the siege.
She decided a calculation upon his age, made a wall of it, smilingly agreed with his encomium of the Concert, and toned her voice to Fenellan’s comprehension: ‘Did it occur recently?’
‘Months; in Africa; I haven’t the date.’
‘Such numbers of people one would wish to know! Who are those ladies holding a Court, where Mr. Radnor is?’
‘Lady Carmine, Lady Swanage—if it is your wish?’ interposed the colonel.
She dealt him a forgiving smile. ‘And that pleasant-looking old gentleman?’
Colonel Corfe drew-up. Fenellan said: ‘Are we veterans at forty or so?’
‘Well, it ‘s the romance, perhaps!’ She raised her shoulders.
The colonel’s intelligence ran a dog’s nose for a lady’s interjections. ‘The romance?… at forty, fifty? gone? Miss Julinks, the great heiress and a beauty; has chosen him over the heads of all the young men of his time. Cranmer Lotsdale. Most romantic history!’
‘She’s in love with that, I suppose.’
‘Now you direct my attention to him,’ said Fenellan, ‘the writing of the romantic history has made the texture look a trifle thready. You have a terrible eye.’
It was thrown to where the person stood who had first within a few minutes helped her to form critical estimates of men, more consciously to read them.
‘Your brother stays in England?’
‘The fear is, that he’s off again.’
‘Annoying for you. If I had a brother, I would not let him go.’
‘How would you detain him?’
‘Locks and bolts, clock wrong, hands and arms, kneeling—the fourth act of the Huguenots!’
‘He went by way of the window, I think. But that was a lover.’
‘Oh! well!’ she flushed. She did not hear the ‘neglected and astonished colonel speak, and she sought diversion in saying to Fenellan: ‘So many people of distinction are assembled here to-day! Tell me, who is that pompous gentleman, who holds his arms up doubled, as he walks?’
‘Like flappers of a penguin: and advances in jerks: he is head of the great Firm of Quatley Brothers: Sir Abraham: finances or farms one of the South American Republics: we call him, Pride of Port. He consumes it and he presents it.’
‘And who is that little man, who stops everybody?’
‘People of distinction indeed! That little man—is your upper lip underrateing him?… When a lady’s lip is erratically disdainful, it suggests a misuse of a copious treasury, deserving to be mulcted, punished—how?—who can say?—that little man, now that little man, with a lift of his little finger, could convulse the Bacon Market!’
Mrs. Blathenoy shook. Hearing Colonel Corfe exclaim:
‘Bacon Market!’ she let fly a peal. Then she turned to a fresh satellite, a round and a ruddy, ‘at her service ever,’ Mr. Beaves Urmsing, and repeated Fenellan’s words. He, in unfeigned wonderment at such unsuspected powers, cried: ‘Dear me!’ and stared at the little man, making the pretty lady’s face a twinkling dew.
He had missed the Concert. Was it first-rate? Ecstasy answered in the female voice.
‘Hem’d fool I am to keep appointments!’ he muttered.
She reproved him: ‘Fie, Mr. Urmsing; it’s the making of them, not the keeping!’
‘Ah, my dear ma’am, if I’d had Blathenoy’s luck when he made a certain appointment. And he was not so much older than me? The old ones get the prizes!’
Mr. Beaves Urmsing prompted Colonel Corfe to laugh in triumph. The colonel’s eyebrows were up in fixity over sleepy lids. He brightened to propose the conducting of the pretty woman to the banquet.
‘We shall see them going in,’ said she. ‘Mr. Radnor has a French cook, who does wonders. But I heard him asking for Mr. Beaves Urmsing. I’m sure he expected The Marigolds at his Concert.’