The Mystery of a Hansom Cab Part 36

"And on what are your political opinions founded?" asked Mr. Frettlby, absently, without looking at Felix.

"Oh, you see, I've read the Parliamentary reports and Const.i.tutional history, and--and Vivian Grey," said Felix, who began to feel himself somewhat at sea.

"The last of which is what the author called it, a LUSUS NATURAE,"

observed Chinston. "Don't erect your political schemes on such bubble foundations as are in that novel, for you won't find a Marquis Carabas out here."

"Unfortunately, no!" observed Felix, mournfully; "but we may find a Vivian Grey."

Every one smothered a smile, the allusion was so patent.

"Well, he didn't succeed in the end," cried Peterson.

"Of course he didn't," retorted Felix, disdainfully; "he made an enemy of a woman, and a man who is such a fool as to do that deserves to fall."

"You have an excellent opinion of our s.e.x, Mr. Rolleston," said Madge, with a wicked glance at the wife of that gentleman, who was listening complacently to her husband's aimless chatter.

"No better than they deserve," replied Rolleston, gallantly.

"But you have never gone in for politics, Mr. Frettlby?"

"Who?--I--no," said the host, rousing himself out of the brown study into which he had fallen. "I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently patriotic, and my business did not permit me."

"And now?"

"Now," echoed Mr. Frettlby, glancing at his daughter, "I intend to travel."

"The jolliest thing out," said Peterson, eagerly. "One never gets tired of seeing the queer things that are in the world."

"I've seen queer enough things in Melbourne in the early days," said the old colonist, with a wicked twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh!" cried Julia, putting her hands up to her ears, "don't tell me them, for I'm sure they're naughty."

"We weren't saints then," said old Valpy, with a senile chuckle.

"Ah, then, we haven't changed much in that respect," retorted Frettlby, drily.

"You talk of your theatres now," went on Valpy, with the garrulousness of old age; "why, you haven't got a dancer like Rosanna."

Brian started on hearing this name again, and he felt Madge's cold hand touch his.

"And who was Rosanna?" asked Felix, curiously, looking up.

"A dancer and burlesque actress," replied Valpy, vivaciously, nodding his old head. "Such a beauty; we were all mad about her--such hair and eyes. You remember her, Frettlby?"

"Yes," answered the host, in a curiously dry voice.

But before Mr. Valpy had the opportunity to wax more eloquent, Madge rose from the table, and the other ladies followed. The ever polite Felix held the door open for them, and received a bright smile from his wife for, what she considered, his brilliant talk at the dinner table.

Brian sat still, and wondered why Frettlby changed colour on hearing the name--he supposed that the millionaire had been mixed up with the actress, and did not care about being reminded of his early indiscretions--and, after all, who does?

"She was as light as a fairy," continued Valpy, with wicked chuckle.

"What became of her?" asked Brian, abruptly.

Mark Frettlby looked up suddenly, as Fitzgerald asked this question.

"She went to England in 1858," said the aged one. "I'm not quite sure if it was July or August, but it was in 1858."

"You will excuse me, Valpy, but I hardly think that these reminiscences of a ballet-dancer are amusing," said Frettlby, curtly, pouring himself out a gla.s.s of wine. "Let us change the subject."

Notwithstanding the plainly-expressed wish of his host Brian felt strongly inclined to pursue the conversation. Politeness, however, forbade such a thing, and he consoled himself with the reflection that, after dinner, he would ask old Valpy about the ballet-dancer whose name caused Mark Frettlby to exhibit such strong emotion. But, to his annoyance, when the gentlemen went into the drawing-room, Frettlby took the old colonist off to his study, where he sat with him the whole evening talking over old times.

Fitzgerald found Madge seated at the piano in the drawing-room playing one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words.

"What a dismal thing that is you are playing, Madge," he said lightly, as he sank into a seat beside her. "It is more like a funeral march than anything else."

"Gad, so it is," said Felix, who came up at this moment. "I don't care myself about 'Op. 84' and all that cla.s.sical humbug. Give me something light--'Belle Helene,' with Emelie Melville, and all that sort of thing."

"Felix!" said his wife, in a stern tone.

"My dear," he answered recklessly, rendered bold by the champagne he had taken, "you observed--"

"Nothing particular," answered Mrs. Rolleston, glancing at him with a stony eye, "except that I consider Offenbach low."

"I don't," said Felix, sitting down to the piano, from which Madge had just risen, "and to prove he ain't, here goes."

He ran his fingers lightly over the keys, and dashed into a brilliant Offenbach galop, which had the effect of waking up the people in the drawing-room, who felt sleepy after dinner, and sent the blood tingling through their veins. When they were thoroughly roused, Felix, now that he had an appreciative audience, for he was by no means an individual who believed in wasting his sweetness on the desert air, prepared to amuse them.

"You haven't heard the last new song by Frosti, have you?" he asked, after he had brought his galop to a conclusion.

"Is that the composer of 'Inasmuch' and 'How so?'" asked Julia, clasping her hands. "I do love his music, and the words are so sweetly pretty."

"Infernally stupid, she means," whispered Peterson to Brian. "They've no more meaning in them than the t.i.tles."

"Sing us the new song, Felix," commanded his wife, and her obedient husband obeyed her.

It was ent.i.tled, "Somewhere," words by Vashti, music by Paola Frosti, and was one of those extraordinary compositions which may mean anything--that is, if the meaning can be discovered. Felix had a pleasant voice, though it was not very strong, and the music was pretty, while the words were mystical. The first verse was as follows:--

"A flying cloud, a breaking wave, A faint light in a moonless sky: A voice that from the silent grave Sounds sad in one long bitter cry.

I know not, sweet, where you may stand, With s.h.i.+ning eyes and golden hair, Yet I know, I will touch your hand And kiss your lips somewhere-- Somewhere! Somewhere!-- When the summer sun is fair, Waiting me, on land or sea, Somewhere, love, somewhere!"

The second verse was very similar to the first, and when Felix finished a murmur of applause broke from every one of the ladies.

"How sweetly pretty," sighed Julia. "Such a lot in it."

"But what is its meaning?" asked Brian, rather bewildered.

"It hasn't got one," replied Felix, complacently. "Surely you don't want every song to have a moral, like a book of Aesop's Fables?"