Phantom Fortune Part 36

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 ca_.'

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 ladys.h.i.+p 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 b.u.t.tered. 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 n.o.bbled 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 Forfars.h.i.+re girl with freckles and unsophisticated carrots. "Those lovely Spanish eyes," said Lady K----, "that t.i.tianesque 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 sc.r.a.ped and h.o.a.rded 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 a.s.serted 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 pa.s.sion 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 wors.h.i.+p her, there was not one who had caught her fancy. Her nature was shallow enough to be pa.s.sing fickle; the pa.s.sion 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 att.i.tude. 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 blus.h.i.+ng 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 t.i.ttle-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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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 ma.s.ses of richest colour, with here and there a bunch of lilies, a cl.u.s.ter of roses, a tortoise-sh.e.l.l fan, an ostrich feather, or a flounce of peerless Point d'Alencon 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 fas.h.i.+on, and could pick and choose her customers; and as she was a young lady of good business apt.i.tudes, 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 ladys.h.i.+p 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 fas.h.i.+on?

'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 _chere 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 _a la sante_--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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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_--eyebrows _de voyage_. In London Georgie was much more particular; and Seraphine was often in Arlington Street with her little morocco bag of washes and creams, and brushes and sponges, to prepare Lady Kirkbank for some great party, and to instruct Lady Kirkbank's maid. At such times Georgie was all affection for the little dressmaker.

'_Ma chatte_, you have made me positively adorable,' she would say, peering at her reflection in the ivory hand-mirror, a dazzling image of rouge and bis.m.u.th, carmined lips, diamonds, and frizzy yellow hair; 'I verily believe I look under thirty--but do not you think this gown is a thought too _decolletee--un peu trop de peau, hein?_'

'Not for you, Lady Kirkbank, with your fine shoulders. Shoulders are of no age--_les epaules sont la vraie fontaine de jouvence pour les jolies femmes._'

'You are such a witty creature, Seraphine, Fifine. You ought to be a descendant of that wicked old Madame du Deffand. Rilboche, give Madame some more chartreuse.'

And Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker would c.h.i.n.k their liqueur gla.s.ses in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her peerless shoulders to be m.u.f.fled in a plush mantle to go down to her carriage, fortified by that last gla.s.s of green chartreuse.

There were always the finest chartreuse and curacoa in a liqueur cabinet on Lady Kirkbank's dressing-table. The cabinet formed a companion to the dressing-case, which contained all those creamy and rose-hued cosmetics, powders, brushes, and medicaments, which were necessary for the manufacture of Georgie's complexion. The third bottle in the liqueur case held cognac, and this, as Rilboche the maid knew, was oftenest replenished. Yet n.o.body could accuse Lady Kirkbank of intemperate habits. The liqueur box only supplied the peg that was occasionally wanted to screw the superior mind to concert pitch.

'One must always be at concert pitch in society, don't you know, my dear,' said Georgie to her young protegee.

Thus it happened that, Miss Kearney having behaved badly, Lesbia was carried off to dear old Seraphine, and delivered over to that modern witch, as a sacrifice tied to the horns of the altar.