CHAPTER XVIII.

A State Concert.

Rank and wealth I pass unheeding, Never giving them their due, For my heart and soul are needing Nothing in the world but you.

"As I have often remarked," said Isabel one hot June morning, as she and Lady Farley were sitting together in the latter's boudoir, "the world--as the world--has nothing better to offer than a State Concert."

"I agree with you," replied her aunt, "it combines the charms of a religious service and a smart party, and has the advantages of both with the disadvantages of neither."

"The music is always good--so are the dresses and the diamonds--and the Palace is the coolest place in London."

"Quite true," said Lady Farley; "and what more can the heart and flesh of fashionable woman desire?"

"Several things. For instance, my cup of happiness will not overflow till I have a diamond tiara. Now there you have the advantage of me."

"But you cannot have a tiara without having a husband as well; and there you have the advantage of me."

"I shall not have the advantage of you long." And Isabel laughed.

"No; but you will then have the tiara in place of the advantage."

"One of my chief reasons in getting married is to secure to myself the right of wearing a tiara," remarked Isabel, "I consider that a woman of thirty without a tiara is as indecent as a woman of ninety without a cap. Women must be crowned with either youth or diamonds, or else must hide their diminished heads under the cloak of religion, and retire into nunneries and sisterhoods."

"My dear, you are too sarcastic for so young a person; no unmarried woman should ever say nasty things--unless she is a professional beauty. Still, I hope you will enjoy the Concert to-night, in spite of the shame of your uncovered head."

"I am thankful it is a Concert and not a Ball. If it were a Ball, I should have to talk to Wrexham all evening; but now I can keep silence, and let the dear man feast his eyes upon the beauties of my irregular profile, instead of feasting his ears upon the charms of my still more irregular conversation."

"Then poor Wrexham will come badly off to-night," said Lady Farley; "for your conversation is infinitely superior to your profile, my dear."

"I know it is; but I wish you would not tread upon my toes--or, more correctly, upon my nose--so ruthlessly. It is simply fiendish to throw a woman's nose in her teeth in that fashion."

"Poor Isabel!"

"I always envy the women with good noses more than I can express," continued Miss Carnaby, leaning back in her chair and gazing thoughtfully up to the ceiling; "eyes grow dim and teeth depart and figures increase, but a good nose is an abiding resting-place for your vanity. You know that it will last out your time, whatever happens; and that age cannot wither nor custom stale its satisfactory proportions."

"That is so," agreed Lady Farley, tenderly stroking her own perfect little aquiline.

"I always wonder how the women with pretty noses carry on their advertizing department. Of course, when we have good eyes, we call attention to the same by making use of eye service as men pleasers, so to speak; and when we have good teeth, we smile as often as is compatible with the reputation for sanity, and we frequently complain of the toothache."

"Oh! is that your plan of campaign? I have often wondered how teeth as white as yours are can ache as much as you say they do; but now I understand it is only a ruse."

"You misjudge me there, Aunt Caroline. I know my teeth are pretty, but they are merely little devils disguised as angels of light, for I have inherited an estate of fine and extensive achers. But you haven't yet informed me how the well-nosed women call attention to their stock in trade."

"My dear, when a thing is as plain as the nose on your face it does not require any advertisement, according to proverbial philosophy."

"It is not when it is plain that the necessity arises," continued Isabel, "but only when it is pretty."

"How absurd you are! Do you talk to Lord Wrexham like this?"

"Good gracious! no; he would think I was out of my mind, and would recommend some new German baths or other, which the faculty had discovered as the latest cure for insanity; and then he would carefully explain to me the chemical action of the waters upon the tissue of the human brain."

"You really are too bad, Isabel!" said Lady Farley severely, "Lord Wrexham is a peer, and one of the best matches in London; and yet you treat him as badly as if you were marrying him for love. It is very incorrect and improvident of you."

Isabel opened her blue eyes very wide. "You don't have to make love to him for three hours and more at a stretch, or you would not talk about him in that careless and happy way. I confess that the excellent man's wealth and rank and virtue are unequalled--save, perhaps, by his dulness; but, believe me, there is only one thing on earth more fatiguing than talking to Wrexham, and that is listening to him. Take this as a wrinkle from one who knows."

"You should adapt yourself to him, my dear; it does not do for a man to know that a woman is cleverer than he is."

"He doesn't know it; I do, but I have never let him find it out. And as for adapting myself--why, my dear aunt, if you heard me talk to him you would take me for a land-agent or a farm-labourer."

"Hardly," said Lady Farley, who was lazily looking through her list of engagements for the day.

"Yes, you would. Personally I prefer talking about hearts and souls and ideals, to discussing silos and reaping-machines and land-bills; but Wrexham dotes upon the latter, so on the latter does my nimble tongue run. Adaptability is my strong point, don't you know?"

"And your weak point too, my child. You are so exactly what people want you to be, that nobody knows what the real you is like."

"Ah! but _I_ know, more's the pity!"

"Then you know more than I do."

"Yes, I am wonderfully adaptable; in fact I have reduced adaptability to a science; I always make myself five years younger and one degree less intelligent than the man who takes me in to dinner; that is why I am so popular."

"It is the popular women who make shipwreck of their lives, and the unpopular ones who sail safely into pleasant havens. My experience is that the attractive women get the nice little things, and the unattractive ones the nice big things in this world." And Lady Farley sighed, as she sat down to answer invitations.

"I know," said Isabel, rising from her chair and strolling doorwards, "the latter, out of sheer gratitude, marry the first man that asks them, and spend the rest of their lives in returning thanks for his kind inquiry."

That night Isabel went with her uncle and aunt to the State Concert. The scene was as brilliant as usual, with the gay dresses and uniforms--with the daïs for Royalty at one end of the great saloon, and the musicians' gallery at the other, the intervening space being filled up with the cream of English society.

"I say," cried Lord Robert Thistletown, plumping himself down beside them as soon as they had taken their seats, "there will be a sound of revelry this night without a doubt; for I see a chorus out of one of old Wagner's things down on the programme, and he is the best chap for making a row I ever came across."

"You should not speak disrespectfully of Wagner," corrected Isabel, "he is one of the greatest composers--as I am one of the greatest conversationalists--of the age."

"I am not disrespectful; I only think that, compared with you and Wagner, the rest of the world is silence."

"I see it is the _Chorus of Flower Maidens_ out of _Parsifal_," remarked Isabel.

"I suppose all those young women in white are the maidens; but which are the flowers, I wonder?"

"Yourself, my dear young friend; you are the flower of the English aristocracy, don't you know?"

"Of course I am. Yet sometimes I forget that I am a flower, and behave like a stinging nettle. That is when the brilliancy of my wit outruns the benevolence of my heart."

"If you lightly touch a nettle----" Isabel began.

"Exactly so; you have hit the nail on the head, most wise young woman. It is only when you trifle with me that I become dangerous; 'grasp me like a man of mettle,' and you will find that the tighter you squeeze me the more affectionate shall I become."

"I wonder if 'a man of mettle' means a warrior or an iron-master," remarked Isabel.

"It entirely depends upon how you spell the word, and that again depends upon which type of man you prefer to grasp, so it is all a matter of taste."

"How absurd you are!"

"Don't the little boys out of the Chapel Royal choir look dear?" exclaimed Lord Robert, pointing to the orchestra. "It is a sweet dress! I mean to sing in the choir of the Chapel Royal when I am grown up, because the dress is so peculiarly becoming to my style of beauty."

"It would be, I should say; and you are just the right size for it, only about six foot two."

"Exactly; scarlet is my colour. I was always bent on wearing a scarlet uniform, but I have gone through agonies of indecision as to whether I should attain that end through joining the British army or the choir of the Chapel Royal. I decided on the former, and made a mistake; and a mistake is worse than a crime, and only one degree better than a virtue."

"Then what is your reason for resigning the army in favour of the St. James's choir?" asked Isabel, opening her huge feather fan.

"Merely this, that whenever I am called upon to fight or to sing, I invariably run away; and my friends consider that what is a sign of cowardice in the one case becomes an act of public charity in the other, and that therefore the choir is my true vocation and calling."

"I should like to hear you sing."

"Pardon me, you wouldn't," replied Lord Bobby. "When I overcome my natural diffidence and give tongue, the noise is something tremendous; walls tremble, foundations shake, and roofs are carried bodily away. One day a traveller in passing through our place asked if there had been a whirlwind or an earthquake or a siege, the devastation was so appalling; but he was told that there had only been a village concert the night before, and my lordship had sung a couple of comic songs."

"It must be a terrible sound!"

"It is; that is why I so rarely do it. As Shakespeare or Milton or some other old Johnnie remarked, it is all very well to have a giant's strength, but to use it as a giant is simply beastly."

"Isn't it a brilliant scene?" said Isabel. "I love to see the stars and garters and things; don't you?"

"They are awfully jolly. Don't you think an order would suit me? Then--

With my Bath upon my shoulder and my Garter by my side, I'd be taking some great heiress and be making her my bride.

Has your uncle got his ribbon on?"

"Of course; he always takes his Bath when he goes to grand parties," replied Isabel.

"How nice and clean of him I And that reminds me that my mother was overhauling the school-children the other day down at our place at home, and telling them that dirt was very wrong and very unwholesome. 'But please, your ladyship,' piped up a little chap, 'it's very warm.' Wasn't that quite too nice?"

"Delicious. Oh! look at the bishops. Don't they look dear?"

"Simply sweet; just like lovely, purple, saintly footmen," agreed Bobby.

"I never saw a saintly footman."

"But I did: we had one once. He had conscientious scruples against saying 'Not at home,' and laying the wineglasses for dinner. We bore with that for a long time, because he was six foot three and very good-looking; but finally it developed into socialism, and he wanted to call the governor, Wallingford, and my mother, Augusta. Then he had to go. And mother made a rule that for the future the footmen might keep bicycles, on condition that they did not want to keep consciences as well."

"What nonsense you do talk, Bobby!"

"I know I do; it is my greatest charm. But here comes Wrexham, so I must resign my seat in his favour, as if he were a party-leader. It must be funny to be engaged, and always obliged to sit by the same person!"

Isabel gently fanned herself.

"I love variety," continued Bobby, "and I hate having to take the same woman down to dinner twice in the same season. That is one good thing in getting married; you know then that, whatever happens, there is one woman you will never have to take in to dinner again as long as you live. It is this thought alone which has inspired the majority of proposals that I have already made."

And then Bobby flew off to "fresh woods and pastures new," while Lord Wrexham sat down beside Isabel, and began to talk to her in his gently instructive manner.

Isabel was wrong when she said that her lover had no idea that he bored her. It may be easy for a woman to throw dust in the eyes of the men who only admire her; but the men who love her see too clearly to be blinded by any paltry artifice, and frequently suffer accordingly. Lord Wrexham knew that he bored Isabel, and the knowledge well-nigh broke his heart; but he could no more help boring her than he could help breathing. He made mistakes in his dealings with her, and frequently said the wrong thing; therefore Isabel was hard upon him. Friendship may pardon our misdeeds; but it is only love that can forgive our mistakes. Nevertheless Isabel's lover succeeded in making her think that he thought she did not think him stupid--wherein he showed himself the cleverer of the two.

"Isn't the room delightfully cool?" remarked Isabel.

"It is; the system of ventilation here is admirable. I wish I could introduce it at Vernacre."

"Vernacre is perfect as it is," said Miss Carnaby graciously, "so please don't begin to improve it. I am a good Liberal; and experience has taught me that there is nothing so deteriorating in its influence as improvement, nor so retrogressive in its tendency as reform."

"You are joking," replied Lord Wrexham, kindly explaining to Isabel that she did not mean what she said, "of course it is true that a too abrupt or sudden improvement partakes more of the nature of revolution than of reform; but a slow and steady tendency in a progressive direction, is the only healthy condition for a State as for an individual."

"Nevertheless, I have noticed that reform generally means discomfort, and that ventilation invariably means draughts."

"Proper ventilation ought not, however, to mean draughts; it should change the air imperceptibly, without causing a strong current anywhere. But you don't feel a draught here, do you, dear?" inquired his lordship anxiously, looking up at the high windows, "because, if so, I will find you another seat at once."

"Good gracious! no; how could I, on such a broiling night? I should think that even the Ministers are warm enough now."

"Are they not generally?"

"Not in their war-paint; bald heads and silk stockings are very chilly wear; it is like burning the candle at both ends."

"Or rather at neither; as candles are warm instead of cold."

"Of course; you are always right," replied Isabel, accepting the correction in the letter but not in the spirit of meekness. "This room really is a lovely sight, isn't it?" She was wondering how soon the Royalties would arrive.

"It is; its proportions are so fine that it never strikes one as large or small," agreed her lover.

"Oh! I don't mean that it is a fine sight architecturally; I mean the company looks so smart. Everybody is here--that is to say, everybody who is anybody."

"Well, not quite everybody; you are a little inaccurate, my dear. Some people are asked to the second Concert and the first Ball, instead of to the first Concert and the second Ball as we have been," explained Lord Wrexham. "I do not know how the Lord Chamberlain picks and chooses, but there is no advantage of one over the other."

"I expect they divide, the people alphabetically," observed Isabel absently, looking towards the entrance at the upper end of the room.

"I expect so; that is always a most satisfactory plan in lists of any kind. But no," he continued, looking puzzled, "that cannot be the system, because I am invited to the first Concert and my name begins with a _W_."

"But there is no reason, that I can see, why the alphabet should not begin at _W_ and end at _V_ for a change, instead of the old eternal _A_ and _Z_ system," said Isabel wickedly.

Lord Wrexham appeared more puzzled than ever. "It would be most unusual, and I do not see that any advantage would be gained thereby."

"It would be a reform, and that is always a distinct advantage, don't you know?"

Lord Wrexham's face relaxed. "Ah! now I see you are laughing at me," he said pleasantly; and after a moment's meditation, he began to laugh himself. "That was very funny, Isabel--very funny indeed! To begin the alphabet at _W_ by way of a reform! Capital! capital! And, as you say, my dear, quite as sensible as many reforms that are suggested."

"Hush!" whispered Isabel, "they are coming."

And then that silence fell upon everybody which always falls just before something is going to happen--be that something the advent of a royal procession, or only the more every-day occurrence of dawn. The officers of the Household entered walking backwards, and all the company rose to their feet as the orchestra struck up the National Anthem. Finally the Royalties themselves appeared and bowed to their assembled guests, while the ladies curtsied in response, till the room looked like a cornfield when a summer breeze goes by.

When everybody was seated, Isabel whispered to Lord Wrexham: "I do love anything in the shape of a function; it gives me a thrill all down my back. Do you ever have thrills down your back?"

Lord Wrexham considered for a moment: he never answered a question hurriedly, lest he should thereby be led into inaccuracy. "No, I cannot say that I ever do, unless I am suffering from the effects of a chill."

"Then there must be something wrong with your back, if 'God Save the Queen' does not send a thrill all down it. I would consult a spine doctor if I were you--a 'bacteriologist' I suppose one would call him."

"If you feel a sensation of that kind now, I feel sure you must be sitting in a draught; I can account for it in no other way," said Lord Wrexham, his kind face clouded over with loverlike anxiety.

"Nonsense!" replied Isabel rather sharply, "what I feel is no draught, but a deeply rooted human instinct which cries out for functions both in Church and State; and that instinct will have to be eradicated before all forms of Royalty and Ritualism can be abolished from this best of all possible worlds. It takes a strong Government to disestablish an instinct."

"I cannot quite follow you, dear; you go too quickly for a slow old coach like myself, and I am mentally out of breath with trying to keep up with you. What connection can a draught down one's back have with established methods of worship and government?"

"Never mind about following me; I am not worth the trouble. And we must not talk any more; the music is beginning."

After the music began, strange and disturbing thoughts whirled through Isabel's mind. Whether it was because the beauty of sight and sound stimulated her emotional nature, she could not tell; but the old, aching hunger for Paul, which she had succeeded in stifling for so long, woke up and would not be put to silence. She looked at the gorgeous scene around her, and realized that the world had given her of its best; she had bartered her heart and her soul for its glory and honour, and the price had been paid her to the uttermost farthing. She had nothing to complain of on that score; and she was too clever and experienced a woman to call the triumph she had accomplished dust and ashes. It was a good enough thing in its way, only it was not Paul--and Paul, unfortunately, was the only thing that she cared for. It is absurd to call worldly success worthless, because it does not happen to be the precise thing that we personally desire; just as it would be absurd to call roast beef uneatable, when we happen to be thirsty rather than hungry. But we want what we want, and not what is suitable or convenient or wise--and nothing else in the whole world will satisfy us.

It is one of the saddest, if not one of the most comforting, things in life, that when people have caught a glimpse of the best, the second-best can never again content them. If they have once--be it only for a moment--worn the best robe and sat down to the feast, they will never more really enjoy the husks of the far country; even though the citizens of that country prepare the same with their most delicate arts, and serve them up on gold plate. Unwise men do not consider this, and fools do not understand it; so that the former find out too late that their souls must be starved to death for lack of that better thing which they once so carelessly threw away; while the latter enjoy their husky diet in peace, unknowing that there is any better thing at all.

Isabel Carnaby belonged to the former class. She was wise enough to recognize the best when she saw it; and foolish enough, having seen it, to let it go. She might have been a happy woman, had she had more heart or less; but, now, such as she had was breaking. Suddenly the veil, which she had so carefully draped in front of her inner life, was ruthlessly torn away, and the ideal self, whom she thought she had slain, woke up in the renewed strength of a long slumber; and she knew that she loved Paul as she had loved him in the beginning and as she would love him to the end, and that no other man could ever supplant him in her love or in her life. She could have laughed aloud at the grim irony of the thing, as she realized that the brilliant scene around her, with its perfection of everything that civilization has to offer, was as nothing in her eyes in comparison with a quaint little chapel in an old-fashioned country town, where she and Paul once stood side by side and sang a hymn together.

"How these people would laugh at me," she said to herself, "if they knew that I would gladly give up all the best music of the finest orchestras in London, to hear once more 'There is a land of pure delight' sung in a Methodist chapel! But, all the same, I would."

When the concert was over and they went into the supper-room, Isabel was strangely quiet and subdued; which convinced Lord Wrexham more forcibly than ever that she had been sitting in a draught and would be ill next day.

"My dear, I wish you had a little wrap with you," he said, "to put on when you walk along the corridors and through the drawing-rooms."

"Well I haven't," replied Isabel; "I am so fond of giving little raps to my friends that I don't keep any for myself--which perhaps is too altruistic on my part."

When they had had supper and were leaving the Palace, Lord Robert Thistletown drew Isabel on one side. "I only just want to say good-bye to you," he said; and she saw, to her surprise, that his usually rosy face was very white.

"Why, where ever are you going to, Bobby, that you should say good-bye instead of good-night?"

"I am starting with my regiment for India to-morrow. There is some nasty fighting out there, don't you know? and we are ordered to the front."

"Oh, Bobby!"

"Of course it is a piece of awfully good luck for me to see active service so soon, and I should be wild with delight if it wasn't for Violet. But somehow the things you want always seem to come to you just as soon as you've left off wanting them."

"Have you spoken to Violet?" asked Isabel.

"I did not mean to. I thought it was more honourable to leave her free till I came back, and all that sort of thing. But I went to say good-bye to her to-day, and it somehow popped out without my intending it. I am afraid I was rather a selfish brute to tell her, considering how young she is; but she looked so pretty I could not help it." And Bobby tugged at his moustache regretfully.

"Don't regret it," said Isabel earnestly, "men have an idiotic notion that it is the proper thing to keep a woman in ignorance of the fact that they love her, till they are ready with the marriage-settlements; it never appears to occur to them that to her the settlements are of no importance compared with the love."

"And I'm so poor that when we get to the settlements they'll only be strait settlements," replied Bobby, with a rueful attempt to laugh.

"Never mind that. Always remember that to a man, love-making is the prologue to marriage; but to a woman, marriage is the epilogue to making-love."

"Then good-bye," whispered Lord Bobby, squeezing her hand very tight, and manfully swallowing down a silly lump that would come in his throat, "and if I am potted by the niggers, you'll comfort my little girl, won't you, and teach her to forget?"

Isabel's eyes filled with tears. "My dear boy, I cannot teach her that, for I have not learnt it myself; it is an art never mastered by women. But I will teach her that there is really no such thing as forgetfulness just as there is really no such thing as death."