There was a dinner party in one of the new houses in Grosvenor Place that evening, to which Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had been bidden. The new house belonged to a new man, who was supposed to have made millions out of railways, and other gigantic achievements in the engineering line; and the new man and his wife were friends of Mr. Smithson, and had made the simple Georgie’s acquaintance only within the last three weeks.
‘Of course they are stupid, my dear,’ she remarked, in response to some slighting remark of Lesbia’s, ‘but I am always willing to know rich people. One drops in for so many good things; and they never want any return in kind. It is quite enough for them to be allowed to spend their money upon us.’
The house was gorgeous in all the glory of the very latest fashions in upholstery; hall Algerian; dining-room Pompeian; drawing-room Early Italian; music-room Louis Quatorze; billiard-room mediaeval English. The dinner was as magnificent as dinner can be made. Three-fourths of the guests were the haute gomme of the financial world, and perspired gold. The other third belonged to a class which Mr. Smithson described somewhat contemptuously as the shake-back nobility. An Irish peer, a younger son of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator, a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a wig, and diamonds which were so large as to suggest paste.
Lesbia sat by her affianced at the glittering table, lighted with clusters of wax candles, which shone upon a level parterre of tea roses, gardenias, and gloire de Malmaison carnations; from which rose at intervals groups of silver-gilt dolphins, supporting shallow golden dishes piled with peaches, grapes, and all the costliest produce of Covent Garden.
Conversation was not particularly brilliant, nor had the guests an elated air. The thermometer was near eighty, and at this period of the season everybody was tired of this kind of dinner, and would gladly have foregone the greatest achievements of culinary art, in favour of a chicken and a salad, eaten under green leaves, in a garden at Wargrave or Henley, within sound of the rippling river.
On Lesbia’s right hand there was a portly personage of Jewish type, dark to swarthiness, and somewhat oily, whose every word suggested bullion. He and Mr. Smithson were evidently acquaintances of long standing, and Mr. Smithson presented him to Lesbia, whereupon he joined in their conversation now and then.
His talk was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was a subscriber at the Theatre Fran?ais. He had seen all the races at Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown and Ascot. But every now and then he and Mr. Smithson drifted from the customary talk about operas and races, pictures and French novels, to the wider world of commerce and speculation, mines, waterworks, and foreign loans — and Lesbia leant back in her chair, and fanned herself languidly, with half-closed eyelids, while two or three courses went round, she giving the little supercilious look at each entree offered to her, to be observed on such occasions, as if the thing offered were particularly nasty.
She wondered how long the two men were going to prose about mines and shares, in those subdued half-mysterious voices, telling each other occult facts in half-expressed phrases, utterly dark to the outside world; but, while she was languidly wondering, a change in her lover’s manner startled her into keenest curiosity.
‘Montesma is in Paris,’ said Mr. Sampayo, the dark gentleman; ‘I dined last week with him at the Continental.’
Mr. Smithson’s complexion faded curiously, and a leaden darkness came over his countenance, as of a man whose heart and lungs suddenly refuse their office. But in a few moments he was smiling feebly.
‘Indeed! I thought he was played out years ago.’
‘A man of that kind is never played out. Don Gomez de Montesma is as clever as Satan, as handsome as Apollo, and he bears one of the oldest names in Castile. Such a man will always come to the front. C’est un rastaquouère mais rastaquouère de bon genre. You knew him intimately là bas, I believe?’
‘In Cuba; yes, we were pretty good friends once.’
‘And were useful to each other, no doubt,’ said Mr. Sampayo, pleasantly. ‘Was that Argentiferous Copper Company in sixty-four yours or his?’
‘There were a good many people concerned in it.’
‘No doubt; it takes a good many people to work that kind of thing, but I fancy you and Montesma were about the only two who came out of it pleasantly. And he and you did a little in the shipping line, didn’t you — African produce? However, that’s an old song. You have had so many good things since then.’
‘Did Montesma talk of coming to London?’
‘He did not talk about it; but he would hardly go back to the tropics without having a look round on both sides of the Channel. He was always fond of society, pretty women, dancing, and amusements of all kinds. I have no doubt we shall see him here before the end of the season.’
Mr. Smithson pursued the subject no further He turned to Lesbia, who had been curiously interested in this little bit of conversation — interested first because Smithson had seemed agitated by the mention of the Spaniard’s name; secondly, because of the description of the man, which had a romantic sound. The very word tropic suggested a romance. And Lesbia, whose mind was jaded by the monotony of a London season, the threadbare fabric of society conversation, kindled at any image which appealed to her fancy.
Clever as Satan, handsome as Apollo, scion of an old Castilian family, fresh from the tropics. Her imagination dwelt upon the ideas which these words had conjured up.
Three days after this she was at the opera with her chaperon, her lover in attendance as usual. The opera was “Faust,” with Nillson as Marguerite. After the performance they were to drive down to Twickenham on Mr. Smithson’s drag, and to dance and sup at the Orleans. The last ball of the season was on this evening; and Lesbia had been persuaded that it was to be a particular recherché ball, and that only the very nicest people were to be present. At any rate, the drive under the light of a July moon would be delicious; and if they did not like the people they found there they could eat their supper and come away immediately after, as Lady Kirkbank remarked philosophically.
The opera was nearly over — that grand scene of Valentine’s death was on — and Lesbia was listening breathlessly to every note, watching every look of the actors, when there came a modest little knock at the door of her box. She darted an angry glance round, and shrugged her shoulders vexatiously. What Goth had dared to knock during that thrilling scene?
Mr. Smithson rose and crept to the door and quietly opened it.
A dark, handsome man, who was a total stranger to Lesbia, glided in, shaking hands with Smithson as he entered.
Till this moment Lesbia’s whole being had been absorbed in the scene — that bitter anathema of the brother, the sister’s cry of anguish and shame. Where else is there tragedy so human, so enthralling — grief that so wrings the spectator’s heart? It needed a Goethe and a Gounod to produce this masterpiece.
In an instant, in a flash, Lesbia’s interest in the stage was gone. Her first glance at the stranger told, her who he was. The olive tint, the eyes of deepest black, the grand form of the head and perfect chiselling of the features could belong only to that scion of an old Castilian race whom she had heard described the other evening —‘clever as Satan, handsome as Apollo.’
Yes, this must be the man, Don Gomez de Montesma. There was nothing in Mr. Smithson’s manner to indicate that the Spaniard was an unwelcome guest. On the contrary, Smithson received him with a cordiality which in a man of naturally reserved manner seemed almost rapture. The curtain fell, and he presented Don Gomez to Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia; whereupon dear Georgie began to gush, after her wont, and to ask a good many questions in a manner that was too girlish to seem impertinent.
‘How perfectly you speak English!’ she exclaimed. ‘You must have lived in England a good deal.’
‘On the contrary, it is my misfortune to have, lived here very little, but I have known a good many English and Americans in Cuba and in Paris.’
‘In Cuba! Do you really come from Cuba? I have always fancied that Cuba must be an altogether charming place to live in — like Biarritz or Pau, don’t you know, only further away. Do please tell me where it is, and what kind of a place.’
Geographically, Lady Kirkbank’s mind was a blank. It was quite a revelation to her to find that Cuba was an island.
‘It must be a lovely spot!’ exclaimed the fervid creature. ‘Let me see, now, what do we get from Cuba? — cigars — and — and tobacco. I suppose in Cuba everybody smokes?’
‘Men, women, and children.’
‘How delicious! Would that I were a Cuban! And the natives, are they nice?’
‘There are no aborigines. The Indians whom Columbus found soon perished off the face of the island. European civilisation generally has that effect. But one of our most benevolent captain-generals provided us with an imported population of niggers.’
‘How delightful. I have always longed to live among a slave population, dear submissive black things dressed in coral necklaces and feathers, instead of the horrid over-fed wretches we have to wait upon us. And if the aborigines were not wanted it was just as well for them to die out, don’t you know,’ prattled Lady Kirkbank.
‘It was very accommodating of them, no doubt. Yet we could employ half a million of them, if we had them, in draining our swamps. Agriculture suffered by the loss of Indian labour.’
‘I suppose they were like the creatures in Pizarro, poor dear yellow things with brass bracelets,’ said Lady Kirkbank. ‘I remember seeing Macready as Rolla when I was quite a little thing.’
And now the curtain rose for the last act.
‘Do you care about staying for the end?’ asked Mr. Smithson of Lesbia. ‘It will make us rather late at the Orleans.’
‘Never mind how late we are,’ said Lesbia, imperiously. ‘I have always been cheated out of this last act for some stupid party. Imagine losing Gounod and Nillson for the sake of struggling through the mob on a stifling staircase, and being elbowed by inane young men, with gardenias in their coats.’
Lady Lesbia had a pretty little way of always opposing any suggestion of her sweetheart. She was resolved to treat him as badly as a future husband could be treated. In consenting to marry him she had done him a favour which was a great deal more than such a person had any right to expect.
She leant forward to watch and listen, with her elbow resting on the velvet cushion — her head upon her hand, and she seemed absorbed in the scene. But this was mere outward seeming. All the enchantment of music and acting was over. She only heard and saw vaguely, as if it were a shadowy scene enacted ever so far away. Every now and then her eyes glanced involuntarily toward Don Gomez, who stood leaning against the back of the box, pale, languid, graceful, poetic, an altogether different type of manhood from that with which she had of late been satiated.
Those deep dark eyes of his had a dreamy look. They gazed across the dazzling house, into space, above Lady Lesbia’s head. They seemed to see nothing; and they certainly were not looking at her.
Don Gomez was the first man she ever remembered to have been presented to her who did not favour her with a good deal of hard staring, more or less discreetly managed, during the first ten minutes of their acquaintance. On him her beauty fell flat. He evidently failed to recognise her supreme loveliness. It might be that she was the wrong type for Cuba. Every nation has its own Venus; and that far away spot beyond the torrid zone might have a somewhat barbarous idea of beauty. At any rate, Don Gomez was apparently unimpressed. And yet Lesbia flattered herself that she was looking her best to-night, and that her costume was a success. She wore a white satin gown, short in the skirt, for the luxury of freedom in waltzing, and made with Quaker-like simplicity, the bodice high to the throat, fitting her like a sheath.
Her only ornaments were a garland of scarlet poppies wreathed from throat to shoulder, and a large diamond heart which Mr. Smithson had lately given her; ‘a bullock’s heart,’ as Lady Kirkbank called it.
When the curtain fell, and not till then, she rose and allowed herself to be clad in a brown velvet Newmarket, which completely covered her short satin gown. She had a little brown velvet toque to match the Newmarket, and thus attired she would be able to take her seat on the drag which was waiting on the quietest side of Covent Garden.
‘Why should not you go with us, Don Gomez?’ exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in a gush of hospitality. ‘The drive will be charming — not equal to your tropical Cuba — but intensely nice. And the gardens will be something too sweet on such a night as this. I knew them when the dear Duc d’Aumale was there. Ay de mi, such a man!’
Lady Kirkbank sighed, with the air of having known his Altésse Royale intimately.
‘I should be charmed,’ said Don Gomez, ‘if I thought my friend Smithson wanted me. Would you really like to have me, Smithson?’
‘I should be enchanted.’
‘And there is room on the drag?’
‘Room enough for half-a-dozen. I am only taking Sir George Kirkbank and Colonel Delville — whom we are to pick up at the Haute Gomme — and Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn, who are in the stalls.’
‘A nice snug little party,’ exclaimed that charming optimist, Lady Kirkbank. ‘I hate a crowd on a drag. The way some of the members of the Four-in-hand Club load their coaches on parade reminds me of a Beanfeast!’
They found Lady Kirkbank’s footman and one of Mr. Smithson’s grooms waiting in the hall of the opera house. The groom to conduct them to the spot where the drag was waiting; the footman to carry wraps and take his mistress’s final orders. There was a Bohemian flavour in the little walk to the great fruit garden, which was odorous of bruised peaches and stale salads as they passed it. Waggon-loads of cabbages and other garden stuff were standing about by the old church; the roadway was littered with the refuse of the market; and the air was faint and heavy with the scent of herbs and flowers.
Lesbia mounted lightly to her place of honour on the box-seat; and Lady Kirkbank was hoisted up after her. Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn followed; and then Don Gomez took his seat by Lady Kirkbank’s side and behind Lesbia, a vantage point from which he could talk to her as much as he liked. Mr. Smithson seated himself a minute afterwards, and drove off by King Street and Leicester Square and on to Piccadilly, steering cleverly through the traffic of cabs and carriages, which was at its apogee just now, when all the theatres were disgorging their crowds. Piccadilly was quieter, yet there were plenty of carriages, late people going to parties and early people going home, horses slipping and sliding on stones or wood, half the roadway up, and luminous with lanterns. They stopped in front of the Haute Gomme, where they picked up Sir George Kirkbank and Colonel Delville, a big man with a patriarchal head, supposed to be one of the finest whist players in London, and to make a handsome income by his play. He had ridden in the Balaclava charge, was a favourite everywhere, and, albeit no genius, was much cleverer than his friend and school-fellow, George Kirkbank. They had been at Eton together, had both made love to the lively Georgie, and had been inseparables for the last thirty years.
‘Couldn’t get on without Delville,’ said Sir George; ‘dooced smart fellow, sir. Knows the ropes; and does all the thinking for both of us.’
And now they were fairly started, and the team fell into a rattling pace, with the road pretty clear before them. Hyde Park was one umbrageous darkness, edged by long lines of golden light. Coolness and silence enfolded all things in the summer midnight, and Lesbia, not prone to romance, sank into a dreamy state of mind, as she leaned back in her seat and watched the shadowy trees glide by, the long vista of lamps and verdure in front of her. She was glad that no one talked to her, for talk of any kind must have broken the spell. Don Gomez sat like a statue in his place behind her. From Lady Kirkbank, the loquacious, came a gentle sound of snoring, a subdued, ladylike snore, breathed softly at intervals, like a sigh. Mr. Smithson had his team, and his own thoughts, too, for occupation — thoughts which to-night were not altogether pleasant.
At the back of the coach Mrs. Mostyn was descanting on the evolution of the nautilus, and the relationship of protoplasm and humanity, to Colonel Delville, who sat smiling placidly behind an immense cigar, and accepted the most stupendous facts and the most appalling theories with a friendly little nod of his handsome head.
Mr. Mostyn frankly slept, as it was his custom to do upon all convenient occasions. He called it recuperating.
‘Frank ought to be delightfully fresh, for he recuperated all the way down,’ said his wife, when they alighted in the dewy garden at Twickenham, in front of the lamp-lit portico.
‘I wouldn’t have minded his recuperating if he hadn’t snored so abominably,’ remarked Colonel Delville.
It was nearly one o’clock, and the ball had thinned a little, which made it all the better for those who remained. Mr. Smithson’s orders had been given two days ago, and the very best of the waiters had been told off for his especial service. The ladies went upstairs to take off their wrappings and mufflings, and Lesbia emerged dazzling from her brown velvet Newmarket, while Lady Kirkbank, bending closely over the looking-glass, like a witch over a caldron, repaired her complexion with cotton wool.
They went through the conservatory to the octagon dining-room, where the supper was ready, a special supper, on a table by a window, a table laden with exotics and brilliant with glass and silver. The supper was, of course, perfect in its way. Mr. Smithson’s chef had been down to see about it, and Mr. Smithson’s own particular champagne and the claret grown in his own particular clos in the Gironde, had been sent down for the feast. No common cuisine, no common wine c............