It was a Saturday afternoon, and even in that great world which has no occupation in life except to amuse itself, whose days are all holidays, there is a sort of exceptional flavour, a kind of extra excitement on Saturday afternoons, distinguished by polo matches at Hurlingham, just as Saturday evenings are by the production of new plays at fashionable theatres. There was a great military polo match for this particular Saturday — Lancers against Dragoons. It was a lovely June afternoon, and Hurlingham would be at its best. The cool greensward, the branching trees, the flowing river, would afford an unspeakable relief after the block of carriages in Bond Street and the heated air of London, where even the parks felt baked and arid; and to Hurlingham Lady Kirkbank drove directly after luncheon.
Lesbia leaned back in the barouche listening calmly, while her chaperon expatiated upon the wealth and possessions of Horace Smithson. It was now ten days since the meeting at Ascot, and Mr. Smithson had contrived to see a great deal of Lesbia in that short time. He was invited almost everywhere, and he had haunted her at afternoon and evening parties; he had supped in Arlington Street after the opera; he had played cards with Lesbia, and had enjoyed the felicity of winning her money. His admiration was obvious, and there was a seriousness in his manner of pursuing her which showed that, in Lady Kirkbank’s unromantic phraseology, ‘the man meant business.’
‘Smithson is caught at last, and I am glad of it,’ said Georgie.
‘The creature is an abominable flirt, and has broken more hearts than any man in London. He was all but the death of one of the dearest girls I know.’
‘Mr. Smithson breaks hearts!’ exclaimed Lesbia, languidly. ‘I should not have thought that was in his line. Mr. Smithson is not an Adonis, nor are his manners particularly fascinating.’
‘My child how fresh you are! Do you suppose it is the handsome men or the fascinating men for whom women break their hearts in society? It is the rich men they all want to marry — men like Smithson, who can give them diamonds, and yachts, and a hunting stud, and half a dozen fine houses. Those are the prizes — the blue ribbons of the matrimonial race-course — men like Smithson, who pretend to admire all the pretty women, who dangle, and dangle, and keep off other offers, and give ten guinea bouquets, and then at the end of the season are off to Hombourg or the Scotch moors, without a word. Do you think that kind of treatment is not hard enough to break a penniless girl’s heart? She sees the golden prize within her grasp, as she believes; she thinks that she and poverty have parted company for ever; she imagines herself mistress of town house and country houses, yachts and stables; and then one fine morning the gentleman is off and away! Do not you think that is enough to break a girl’s heart?’
‘I can imagine that girl steeped to the lips in poverty might be willing to marry Mr. Smithson’s houses and yachts,’ answered Lesbia, in her low sweet voice, with a faint sneer even amidst the sweetness, ‘but, I think it must have been a happy release for any one to be let off the sacrifice at the last moment.’
‘Poor Belle Trinder did not think so.’
‘Who was Belle Trinder?’
‘An Essex parson’s daughter whom I took under my wing five years ago — a splendid girl, large and fair, and just a trifle coarse — not to be spoken of in the same day with you, dearest; but still a decidedly handsome creature. And she took remarkably well. She was a very lively girl, “never ran mute,” Sir George used to say. Sir George was very fond of her. She amused him, poor girl, with her rather brainless rattle.’
‘And Mr. Smithson admired her?’
‘Followed her about everywhere, sent her whole flower gardens in the way of bouquets and Japanese baskets, and floral parures for her gowns, and opera boxes and concert tickets. Their names were always coupled. People used to call them Bel and the Dragon. The poor child made up her mind she was to be Mrs. Smithson. She used to talk of what she would do for her own people — the poor old father, buried alive in a damp parsonage, and struggling every winter with chronic bronchitis; the four younger sisters pining in dulness and penury; the mother who hardly knew what it was to rest from the continual worries of daily life.’
‘Poor things!’ sighed Lesbia, gazing admiringly at the handle of her last new sunshade.
‘Belle used to talk of what she would do for them all,’ pursued Lady Kirkbank. ‘Father should go every year to the villa at Monte Carlo; mother and the girls should have a month in Park Lane every season, and their autumn holiday at one of Mr. Smithson’s country houses. I knew the world well enough to be sure that this kind of thing would never answer with a man like Smithson. It is only one man in a thousand — the modern Arthur, the modern Quixote — who will marry a whole family. I told Belle as much, but she laughed. She felt so secure of her power over the man. “He will do anything I ask him,” she said.’
‘Miss Trinder must be an extraordinary young person,’ observed Lesbia, scornfully. ‘The man had not proposed, had he?’
‘No; the actual proposal hung fire, but Belle thought it was a settled thing all the same. Everybody talked to her as if she were engaged to Smithson, and those poor, ignorant vicarage girls used to write her long letters of congratulation, envying her good fortune, speculating, about what she would do when she was married. The girl was too open and candid for London society — talked too much, “gave the view before she was sure of her fox,” Sir George said. All this silly talk came to Smithson’s ears, and one morning we read in the Post that Mr. Smithson had started the day before for Algiers, where he was to stay at the house of the English Consul, and hunt lions. We waited all day, hoping for some letter of explanation, some friendly farewell which would mean à revoir. But there was nothing, and then poor Belle gave way altogether. She shut herself up in her room, and went out of one hysterical fit into another. I never heard a girl sob so terribly. She was not fit to be seen for a week, and then she went home to her father’s parsonage in the flat swampy country on the borders of Suffolk, and eat her heart, as Byron calls it. And the worst of it was that she had no actual justification for considering herself jilted. She had talked, and other people had talked, and among them they had settled the business. But Smithson had said hardly anything. He had only flirted to his heart’s content, and had spent a few hundreds upon flowers, gloves, fans, and opera tickets, which perhaps would not have been accepted by a girl with a strong sense of her own dignity.’
‘I should think not, indeed,’ interjected Lesbia.
‘But which poor Belle was only too delighted to get.’
‘Miss Trinder must be very bad style,’ said Lesbia, with languid scorn, ‘and Mr. Smithson is an execrable person. Did she die?’
‘No, my dear, she is alive poor soul!’
‘You said she broke her heart.’
‘“The heart may break, yet brokenly live on,”’ quoted Lady Kirkbank. ‘The disappointed young women don’t all die. They take to district visiting, or rational dressing, or china painting, or an ambulance brigade. The lucky ones marry well-to-do widowers with large families, and so slip into a comfortable groove by the time they are five-and-thirty. Poor Belle is still single, still buried in the damp parsonage, where she paints plates and teacups, and wears out my old gowns, just as she is wearing out her own life, poor creature!’
‘The idea of any one wanting to marry Mr. Smithson,’ said Lesbia. ‘It seems too dreadful.’
‘A case of real destitution, you think. Wait till you have seen Smithson’s house in Park Lane — his team, his yacht, his orchid houses in Berkshire.’
Lesbia sighed. Her knowledge of London society was only seven weeks old; and yet already the day of disenchantment had begun! She was having her eyes opened to the stern realities of life. A year ago when her appearance in the great world was still only a dream of the future, she had pictured to herself the crowd of suitors who would come to woo, and she had resolved to choose the worthiest.
What would he be like, that worthiest among the wooers, that King Arthur among her knights?
First and foremost, he would be of rank higher than her own — duke, a marquis, or one of the first and oldest among earls. Title and lofty lineage were indispensable. It would be a fall, a failure, a disappointment, were she to marry a commoner, however distinguished.
The worthy one must be noble, therefore, and of the old nobility. He must be young, handsome, intellectual. He must stand out from among his peers by his gifts of mind and person. He must have won distinction in the arena of politics or diplomacy, arms or letters. He must be ‘somebody.’
She had been seven weeks in society, and this modern Arthur had not appeared. So far as she had been able to discover, there was no such person. The dukes and marquises were mostly men of advanced years. The young unmarried nobility were given over to sport, play, and foolishness. She had heard of only one man who at all corresponded with her ideal, and he was Lord Hartfield. But Lord Hartfield had given himself up to politics, and was no doubt a prig. Lady Kirkbank spoke of him with contempt, as an intolerable person. But then Lord Hartfield was not in Lady Kirkbank’s set. He belonged to that serious circle to which Lady Kirkbank’s house appeared about as reputable a place of gathering as a booth on a race-course.
And now Lady Kirkbank told Lesbia that this Mr. Smithson, a nobody with a great fortune, was a man whose addresses she, the sister of Lord Maulevrier, ought to welcome. Mr. Smithson, who claimed to be a lineal descendant of that Sir Michael Carrington, standard-bearer to Coeur de Lion in the Holy Land, whose descendants changed their name to Smith during the Wars of the Roses. Mr. Smithson bodily proclaimed himself a scion of this good old county family, and bore on his plate and his coach panels the elephant’s head and the three demi-griffins of the Hertfordshire Smiths, who only smiled and shrugged their shoulders when they were complimented upon the splendid surroundings of their cousin. Who could tell? Some lateral branch of the standard-bearer’s family tree might have borne this illustrious twig.
Lady Kirkbank and all Lady Kirkbank’s friends seemed to have conspired to teach Lesbia Haselden one lesson, and that lesson meant that money was the first prize in the great game of life. Money ranked before everything — before titles, before noble lineage, genius, fame, beauty, courage, honour. Money was Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Mr. Smithson, whose antecedents were as cloudy as those of Aphrodite, was a greater man than a peer whose broad acres only brought him two per cent., or half of whose farms were tenantless, and his fields growing cockle instead of barley.
Yes, one by one, Lady Lesbia’s illusions were reft from her. A year ago she had fancied beauty all-powerful, a gift which must ensure to its possessor dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. Rank, intellect, fame would bow down before that magical diadem. And, behold, she had been shining upon London society for seven weeks, and only empty heads and empty pockets had bowed down — the frivolous, the ineligible — and Mr. Smithson.
Another illusion which had been dispelled was Lesbia’s comfortable idea of her own expectations. Her grandmother had told her that she might take rank among heiresses; and she had held herself accordingly, deeming that her place was among the wealthiest. And now, since Mr. Smithson’s appearance upon the scene, Lady Kirkbank had informed her young friend with noble candour that Lady Maulevrier’s fortune, however large it might seem at Grasmere, would be a poor thing in London; and that Lady Maulevrier’s ideas about ............