Lady Kirkbank’s house in Arlington Street was known to half fashionable London as one of the pleasantest houses in town; and it was known by repute only, to the other half of fashionable London, as a house whose threshold was not to be crossed by persons with any regard for their own dignity and reputation. It was not that Lady Kirkbank had ever actually forfeited her right to be considered an honest woman and a faithful wife. People who talked of the lady and her set with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders and a dubious elevation of the eyebrows were ready, when hard pushed in argument, to admit that they knew of no actual harm in Lady Kirkbank, no overt bad behaviour.
‘But — well,’ said the punctilious half of society, the Pejinks and Pernickitys, the Picksomes and Unco–Goods, ‘Lady Kirkbank is — Lady Kirkbank; and I would not allow my girls to visit her, don’t you know.’ ‘Lady Kirkbank is received, certainly,’ said a severe dowager. ‘She goes to very good houses. She gets tickets for the Royal enclosure. She is always at private views, and privileged shows of all kinds; and she contrives to squeeze herself in at a State ball or a concert about once in two years; but any one who can consider Lady Kirkbank good style must have a very curious idea of what a lady ought to be.’ ‘Lady Kirkbank is a warm-hearted, nice creature,’ said a diplomatist of high rank, and one of her particular friends, ‘but her manners are decidedly — continental!’
About Sir George, society, adverse or friendly, was without strong opinions. His friends, the men who shot over his Scotch moor, and filled the spare rooms in his villa at Cannes, and loaded his drag for Sandown or Epsom, and sponged upon him all the year round, talked of him as ‘an inoffensive old party,’ ‘a cheery soul,’ ‘a genial old boy,’ and in like terms of approval. That half of society which did not visit in Arlington Street, in whose nostrils the semi-aristocratic, semi-artistic, altogether Bohemian little dinners, the suppers after the play, the small hours devoted to Nap or Poker, had an odour as of sulphur, the reek of Tophet — even this half of the great world was fain to admit that Sir George was harmless. He had never had an idea beyond the realms of sport; he had never had a will of his own outside his stable. To shoot pigeons at Hurlington or Monaco, to keep half a dozen leather-platers, and attend every race from the Craven to the Leger, to hunt four days a week, when he was allowed to spend a winter in England, and to saunter and sleep away all the hours which could not be given to sport, comprised Sir George’s idea of existence. He had never troubled himself to consider whether there might not possibly be a better way of getting rid of one’s life. He was as God had made him, and was perfectly satisfied with himself and the universe; save at such times as when a favourite horse went lame, or his banker wrote to tell him that his account was overdrawn.
Sir George had no children; he had never had a serious care in his life. He never thought, he never read. Lady Kirkbank declared that she had never seen him with a book in his hands since their marriage.
‘I don’t believe he would know at which end to begin,’ she said.
What was the specific charge which the very particular people brought against Lady Kirkbank? Such charges rarely are specific. The idea that the lady belonged to the fast and furious section of society, the Bohemia of the upper ten, was an idea in the air. Everybody knew it. No one could quite adequately explain it.
From thirty to fifty Lady Kirkbank had been known as a flirty matron. Wherever she went, a train of men went with her; men young and middle-aged and elderly; handsome youths from the public offices; War, Admiralty, Foreign Office, Somerset House young men; attractive men of mature years, with grey moustachios, military, diplomatic, horsey, what you will, but always agreeable. At home, abroad, Lady Kirkbank was never without her court; but the court was entirely masculine. In those days the fair Georgie did not scruple to say that she hated women, and that girls were her particular abomination. But as the years rolled on Lady Kirkbank began to find it very difficult to muster her little court, to keep her train in attendance upon her. ‘The birds were wild,’ Sir George said. Her young adorers found their official duties more oppressive than hitherto; her elderly swains had threatenings of gout or rheumatism which prevented their flocking round her as of old at race meeting or polo match. They were loyal enough in keeping their engagements at the dinner table, for Lady Kirkbank’s cook was one of the best in London; and the invited guests were rarely missing at the little suppers after opera or play: but Georgia’s box was no longer crowded with men who dropped in between the acts to see what she thought of the singer or the piece, and her swains were no longer contented to sit behind her chair all the evening, seeing an empty corner of the stage across Georgia’s ivory shoulder, and hearing the voices of invisible actors in the brief pauses of Georgie’s subdued babble.
At fifty-five, Georgina Kirkbank told herself sadly enough that her day, as a bright particular star, all-sufficient in her own radiance, was gone. She could not live without her masculine circle, men who could bring her all the news, the gossip of the clubs; where everything seemed to become known as quickly as if each club had its own Asmodeus, unroofing all the housetops of the West End for inspection every night. She could not live without her courtiers; and to keep them about her she knew that she must make her house pleasant. It was not enough to give good dinners, elegant little suppers washed down by choicest wines; she must also provide fair faces to smile upon the feast, and bright eyes to sparkle in the subdued light of low shaded lamps, and many candles twinkling under coloured shades.
‘I am an old woman now,’ Lady Kirkbank said to herself with a sigh, ‘and my own attractions won’t keep my friends about me. C’est trop connu ?a.’
And now the house in Arlington Street in which feminine guests had been as one in ten, opened its doors to the young and the fair. Pretty widows, lively girls, young wives who were not too absurdly devoted to their husbands, actresses of high standing and good looks, these began to be welcomed effusively in Arlington Street. Lady Kirkbank began to hunt for beauties to adorn her rooms, as she had hitherto hunted lions to roar at her parties. She prided herself on being the first to discover this or that new beauty. That lovely girl from Scotland with the large eyes — that sweet young creature from Ireland with the long eyelashes. She was always inventing new divinities. But even this change of plan, this more feminine line of politics failed to reconcile the strict and the stern, the Queen Charlotte-ish elderly ladies, and the impeccable matrons, to Lady Kirkbank and her sea. The girls who were launched by Lady Kirkbank never took high rank in society. When they made good marriages it was generally to be observed that they dropped Lady Kirkbank soon afterwards. It was not their fault, these ingrates pleaded piteously; but Edward, or Henry, or Theodore, as the case might be, had a most cruel prejudice against dear Lady Kirkbank, and the young wives were obliged to obey.
Others there were, however, the loyal few, who having won the prize matrimonial in Lady Kirkbank’s happy hunting grounds, remained true to their friend ever afterwards, and defended her character against every onslaught.
When Lady Maulevrier told her grandson that she had entrusted Lady Kirkbank with the duty of introducing Lesbia to society, Maulevrier shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. He knew no actual harm in the matter. Lady Kirkbank’s was rather a fast set; and had he been allowed to choose it was not to Lady Kirkbank that he would have delegated his grandmother’s duty. In Maulevrier’s own phrase it was ‘not good enough’ for Lesbia. But it was not in his power to interfere. He was not told of the plan until everything had been settled. The thing was accomplished; and against accomplished facts Maulevrier was the last to protest.
His friend John Hammond had not been silent. He knew nothing of Lady Kirkbank personally; but he knew the position which she held in London society, and he urged his friend strongly to enlighten Lady Maulevrier as to the kind of circle into which she was about to entrust her young granddaughter, a girl brought up in the Arcadia of England.
‘Not for worlds would I undertake such a task,’ said Maulevrier. ‘Her ladyship never had any opinion of my wisdom, and this Lady Kirkbank is a friend of her own youth. She would cut up rough if I were to say a word against an old friend. Besides what’s the odds, if you come to think of it? all society is fast nowadays, or at any rate all society worth living in. And then again, Lesbia is just one of those cool-headed girls who would keep herself head uppermost in a maelstrom. She knows on which side her bread is buttered. Look how easily she chucked you up because she did not think you good enough. She’ll make use of this Lady Kirkbank, who is a good soul, I am told, and will make the best match of the season.’
And now the season had begun, and Lady Lesbia Haselden was circulating with other aristocratic atoms in the social vortex, with her head apparently uppermost.
‘Old Lady K— has nobbled a real beauty, this time,’ said one of the Arlington Street set to his friend as they lolled on the railings in the park, ‘a long way above any of those plain-headed ones she tried to palm off upon us last year: the South American girl with the big eyes and a complexion like a toad, the Forfarshire girl with freckles and unsophisticated carrots. “Those lovely Spanish eyes,” said Lady K—— “that Titianesque auburn hair!” But it didn’t answer. Both the girls were plain, and they have gone back to their native obscurity spinsters still. But this is a real thorough-bred one — blood, form, pace, all there.’
‘Who is she?’ drawled his friend.
‘Lord Maulevrier’s sister, Lady Lesbia Haselden. Has money, too, I believe; rich grandmother; old lady buried alive in Westmoreland; horrid old miser.’
‘I shouldn’t mind marrying a miser’s granddaughter,’ said the other. ‘So nice to know that some wretched old idiot has scraped and hoarded through a lifetime of deprivation and self-denial, in order that one may spend his money when he is under the sod.’
Lady Lesbia was accepted everywhere, or almost everywhere, as the beauty of the season. There were six or seven other girls who aspired to the same proud position, who were asserted by their own particular friends to have won it; just as there are generally four or five horses which claim to be first favourites; but the betting was all in favour of Lady Lesbia.
Lady Kirkbank told her that she was turning everyone’s head, and Lesbia was quite willing to believe her. But was Lesbia’s own head quite steady in this whirlpool? That was a question which she did not take the trouble to ask herself.
Her heart was tranquil enough, cold as marble. No shield and safeguard so secure against the fire of new love as an old love hardly cold. Lesbia told herself that her heart was a sepulchre, an urn which held a handful of ashes, the ashes of her passion for John Hammond. It was a fire quite burned out, she thought; but that extinguished flame had left death-like coldness.
This was Lesbia’s own diagnosis of her case: but the real truth was that among the herd of men she had met, almost all of them ready to fall down and worship her, there was not one who had caught her fancy. Her nature was shallow enough to be passing fickle; the passion which she had taken for love was little more than a girl’s fancy; but the man who had power to awaken that fancy as John Hammond had done had not yet appeared in Lady Kirkbank’s circle.
‘What a cold-hearted creature you must be,’ said Georgie. ‘You don’t seem to admire any of my favourite men.’
‘They are very nice,’ Lesbia answered languidly; ‘but they are all alike. They say the same things — wear the same clothes — sit in the same attitude. One would think they were all drilled in a body every morning before they go out. Mr. Nightshade, the actor, who came to supper the other night, is the only man I have seen who has a spark of originality.’
‘You are right,’ answered Lady Kirkbank, ‘there is an appalling sameness in men: only it is odd you should find it out so soon. I never discovered it till I was an old woman. How I envy Cleopatra her Caesar and her Antony. No mistaking one of those for the other. Mary Stuart too, what marked varieties of character she had an opportunity of studying in Rizzio and Chastelard, Darnley and Bothwell. Ah, child, that is what it is to live.’
‘Mary is very interesting,’ sighed Lesbia; ‘but I fear she was not a correct person.’
‘My love, what correct person ever is interesting? History draws a misty halo round a sinner of that kind, till one almost believes her a saint. I think Mary Stuart, Froude’s Mary, simply perfect.’
Lesbia had begun by blushing at Lady Kirkbank’s opinions; but she was now used to the audacity of the lady’s sentiments, and the almost infantile candour with which she gave utterance to them. Lady Kirkbank liked to make her friends laugh. It was all she could do now in order to be admired. And there is nothing like audacity for making people laugh nowadays. Lady Kirkbank was a close student of all those delightful books of French memoirs which bring the tittle-tattle of the Regency and the scandals of Louis the Fifteenth’s reign so vividly before us: and she had unconsciously founded her manners and her ways of thinking and talking upon that easy-going but elegant age. She did not want to seem better than women who had been so altogether charming. She fortified the frivolity of historical Parisian manners by a dash of the British sporting character. She drove, shot, jumped over five-barred gates, contrived on the verge of seventy to be as active us a young woman; and she flattered herself that the mixture of wit, audacity, sport, and good-nature was full of fascination.
However this might be, it is certain that a good many people liked her, chiefly perhaps because she was good-natured, and a little on account of that admirable cook.
To Lesbia, who had been weary to loathing of her old life amidst the hills and waterfalls of Westmoreland, this new life was one perpetual round of pleasure. She flung herself with all her heart and mind into the amusement of the moment; she knew neither weariness nor satiety. To ride in the park in the morning, to go to a luncheon party, a garden party, to drive in the park for half an hour after the garden party, to rush home and dress for the fourth or fifth time, and then off to a dinner, and from dinner to drum, and from drum to big ball, at which rumour said the Prince and Princess were to be present: and so, from eleven o’clock in the morning till four or five o’clock next morning, the giddy whirl went on: and every hour was so occupied by pleasure engagements that it was difficult to squeeze in an occasional morning for shopping — necessary to go to the shops sometimes, or one would not know how many things one really wants — or for an indispensable interview with the dressmaker. Those mornings at the shops were hardly the least agreeable of Lesbia’s hours. To a girl brought up in one perpetual tête-à-tête with green hill-sides and silvery watercourses, the West End shops were as gardens of Eden, as Aladdin Caves, as anything, everything that is rapturous and intoxicating. Lesbia, the clear-headed, the cold-hearted, fairly lost her senses when she went into one of those exquisite shops, where a confusion of brocades and satins lay about in dazzling masses of richest colour, with here and there a bunch of lilies, a cluster of roses, a tortoise-shell fan, an ostrich feather, or a flounce of peerless Point d’Alen?on flung carelessly athwart the sheen of a wine-dark velvet or golden-hued satin.
Lady Maulevrier had said Lesbia was to have carte blanche; so Lesbia bought everything she wanted, or fancied she wanted, or that the shop-people thought she must want, or that Lady Kirkbank happened to admire. The shop-people were so obliging, and so deeply obliged by Lesbia’s patronage. She was exactly the kind of customer they liked to serve. She flitted about their showrooms like a beautiful butterfly hovering over a flower-bed — her eye caught by every novelty. She never asked the price of anything: and Lady Kirkbank informed them, in confidence, that she was a great heiress, with a millionaire grandmother who indulged her every whim. Other high born young ladies, shopping upon fixed allowances, and sorely perplexed to make both ends meet, looked with eyes of envy upon this girl.
And then came the visit to the dressmaker. It happened after all that Kate Kearney was not intrusted with Lady Lesbia’s frocks. Miss Kearney was the fashion, and could pick and choose her customers; and as she was a young lady of good business aptitudes, she had a liking for ready money, or at least half-yearly settlements; and, finding that Lady Kirkbank was much more willing to give new orders than to pay old accounts, she had respectfully informed her ladyship that a pressure of business would prevent her executing any further demands from Arlington Street, while the necessity of posting her ledger obliged her to request the favour of an immediate cheque.
The little skirmish — per letter — occurred while Lady Kirkbank was at Cannes, and Miss Kearney’s conduct was stigmatised as insolent and ungrateful, since had not she, Lady Kirkbank by the mere fact of her patronage, given this young person her chief claim to fashion?
‘I shall drop her,’ said Georgie, ‘and go back to poor old Seraphine, who is worth a cartload of such Irish adventuresses.’
So to Madame Seraphine, of Clanricarde Place, Lady Lesbia was taken as a lamb to the slaughter-house.
Seraphine had made Lady Kirkbank’s clothes, off and on for the last thirty years. Seraphine and Georgia had grown old together. Lady Kirkbank was always dropping Seraphine and taking her up again, quarrelling and making friends with her. They wrote each other little notes, in which Lady Kirkbank called the dressmaker her cher ange— her bonne chatte, her chère vielle sotte— and all manner of affectionate names — and in which Seraphine occasionally threatened the lady with the dire engines of the law, if money were not forthcoming before Saturday evening.
Lady Kirkbank within those thirty years had paid Seraphine many thousands; but she had never once got herself out of the dear creature’s debt. All her payments were payments on account. A hundred pounds; or fifty — or an occasional cheque for two hundred and fifty, when Sir George had been lucky at Newmarket and Doncaster. But the rolling nucleus of debt went rolling on, growing bigger every year until the payments on account needed to be larger or more numerous than of old to keep Seraphine in good humour.
Seraphine was a woman of genius and versatility and had more than one art at her fingers’ ends — those skinny and claw-shaped fingers, the nails whereof were not always clean. She took charge of her customer’s figures, and made their corsets, and lectured them if they allowed nature to get the upper hand.
‘If Madame’s waist gets one quarter of an inch thicker it must be that I renounce to make her gowns,’ she would tell a ponderous matron, with cool insolence, and the matron would stand abashed before the little sallow, hooked-nosed, keen eyed Jewess, like a child before a severe mother.
‘Oh, Seraphine, do you really think that I am stouter?’ the customer would ask feebly, panting in her tightened corset.
‘Is it that I think so? Why that jumps to the eyes. Madame had always that little air of Reubens, even in the flower of her youth — but now — it is a Rubens of the Fabourg du Temple.’
And horrified at the idea of her vulgarised charms the meek matron would consent to encase herself in one of Seraphine’s severest corsets, called in bitterest mockery à la santé— at five guineas — in order that the dressmaker might measure her for a forty-guinea gown.
‘A plain satin gown, my dear, with an eighteenpenny frilling round the neck and sleeves, and not so much trimming as would go round my little finger. It is positive robbery,’ the matron told her friends afterwards, not the less proud of her skin-tight high shouldered sleeves and the peerless flow of her train.
Seraphine was an artist in complexions, and it was she who provided her middle-aged and elderly customers with the lilies and roses of youth. Lady Kirkbank’s town complexion was superintended by Seraphine, sometimes even manipulated by those harpy-like claws. The eyebrows of which Lesbia complained were only eyebrows de province— eyebro............