CHAPTER X.

Parties ran high at Kensington and Notting Hill. Stella stood up for charades, Jane for tableaux. Mr. Hartley naturally sided with his wife, Miss Charlmont held back from volunteering any opinion, Mrs. Tyke voted for the last speaker, Dr. Tyke ridiculed each alternative; at last Mr. Durham ingeniously threw his weight into both scales, and won for both parties a partial triumph. ‘Why not,’ asked he,—‘why not let Pug speak, and Miss Jane be silent?’

This pacific suggestion once adopted, Dr. Tyke proposed that a charade word should be fixed upon, and performed by speech or spectacle, as might suit the rival stars; for instance, Love-apple.

But who was to be Love?

Everybody agreed in rejecting little boys; and Jane, when directly appealed to, refused to represent the Mother of love and laughter; ‘for,’ as she truly observed, ‘that would not be Love, after all.’ Mr. Durham, looking laboriously gallant, aimed at saying something neat and pointed; he failed, yet Jane beamed a smile upon his failure. Then Dr. Tyke proposed a plaster Cupid; this, after some disputing, was adopted, with vague accessories of processional Greek girls, to be definitely worked out afterwards. For ‘Apple’ Alan suggested Paris and the rival goddesses, volunteering himself as Paris: Jane should be Venus, and Catherine would make a capital Juno. Jane accepted her own part as a matter of course, but doubted about her sister. ‘Yes,’ put in Miss Charlmont, decisively, ‘I will be Juno, or anything else which will help us forward a little.’ So that was settled; but who should be Minerva.? Stella declined to figure as the patroness of wisdom, and Jane drily observed, that they ought all to be tall, or all to be short, in her idea. At last a handsome, not too handsome, friend, Lady Everett, was thought of to take the part. The last scene Dr. Tyke protested he should settle himself with Stella, and not be worried any more about it. So those two went into committee together, and Alan edged in ere long for consultation; finally, Miss Charlmont was appealed to, and the matter was arranged amongst them without being divulged to the rest.

But all was peace and plenty, smiles and wax-candles, at Kensington, when at last the evening came for the performance. Mrs. Hartley’s drawing-rooms being much more spacious than Mrs. Tyke’s, had been chosen for convenience, and about two hundred guests assembled to hear Stella declaim and see Jane attitudinize, as either faction expressed it. Goodnatured Mrs. Tyke played the hostess, whilst Mrs. Hartley remained occult in the green-room. Dr. Tyke was manager and prompter. Mr. Durham, vice Paris-Hartley, welcomed people in a cordial, fussy manner, apologising for the smallness of London rooms, and regretfully alluding to the vast scale of Orpingham Place, ‘where a man can be civil to his friends without treading on their toes or their tails—ha! ha!’

But there is a limit to all things, even fussiness has an end. At last every one worth waiting for had arrived, been received, been refreshed. Orpingham Place died out of the conversation. People exchanged commonplaces, and took their seats; having taken their seats they exchanged more commonplaces. ‘What’s the word?’—‘It’s such a bore guessing: I never guess anything’—‘People ought to tell the word beforehand.’—‘What a horrible man! Is that Mr. Hartley?’—‘No, old Durham; backbone Durham.’—‘Why backbone?’—‘Don’t know; hear him called so.’—‘Isn’t there a Beauty somewhere?’—‘Don’t know; there’s the Beast,’—and the hackneyed joke received the tribute of a hackneyed laugh.

The manager’s bell rang, the curtain drew up.

A plaster cast of Cupid, with fillet, bow, and quiver, on an upholstery pedestal, stood revealed. Music, commencing behind the scenes, approached; a file of English-Grecian maidens, singing and carrying garlands, passed across the stage towards a pasteboard temple, presumably their desired goal, although they glanced at their audience, and seemed very independent of Cupid on his pedestal. There were only six young ladies; but they moved slowly, with a tolerable space interposed between each and each, thus producing a processional effect. They sang, in time and in tune, words by Dr. Tyke; music (not in harmony, but in unison, to ensure correct execution) by Arthur Tresham:—

‘Love hath a name of Death: He gives a breath And takes away. Lo we, beneath his sway, Grow like a flower; To bloom an hour, To droop a day, And fade away.’

The first Anglo-Greek had been chosen for her straight nose, the last for her elegant foot; the intermediate four, possessing good voices, bore the burden of the singing. They all moved and sang with self-complacent ease, but without much dramatic sentiment, except the plainest of the six, who assumed an air of languishment.

Some one suggested ‘cupid-ditty,’ but without universal acceptance. Some one else, on no obvious grounds, hazarded ‘Bore, Wild Boar:’ a remark which stung Dr. Tyke, as playwright, into retorting, ‘Boreas.’

The second scene was dumb show. Alan Hartley as Paris, looking very handsome in a tunic and sandals, and flanked by the largest sized, woolly toy lambs, sat, apple in hand, awaiting the rival goddesses. A flourish of trumpets announced the entrance of Miss Charlmont, a stately crowned Juno, robed in amber coloured cashmere, and leading in a leash a peacock, with train displayed, and ingeniously mounted on noiseless wheels. She swept grandly in, and held out one arm, with a studied gesture, for the apple; which, doubtless, would have been handed to her then and there, had not warning notes on a harp ushered in Lady Everett: a modest, sensible-looking Minerva, robed and stockinged in blue, with a funny Athenian owl perched on her shoulder, and a becoming helmet on her head. Paris hesitated visibly, and seemed debating whether or not to split the apple and the difference together, when a hubbub, as of birds singing, chirping, calling, cleverly imitated by Dr. Tyke and Stella on water-whistles, heralded the approach of Venus. In she came, beautiful Jane Charlmont, with a steady, gliding step, her eyes kindling with victory, both her small hands outstretched for the apple so indisputably hers, her lips parted in a triumphant smile. Her long, white robe flowed classically to the floor; two doves, seeming to nestle in her hair, billed and almost cooed; but her face eclipsed all beside it; and when Paris, on one knee, deposited the apple within her slim, white fingers, Juno forgot to look indignant and Minerva scornful.

After this the final scene fell dead and flat. In vain did Stella whisk about as the most coquettish of market-girls of an undefined epoch and country, balancing a fruit-basket on her head, and crying, ‘Grapes, melons, peaches, love-apples,’ with the most natural inflections. In vain did Arthur Tresham beat down the price of peaches, and Alan Hartley bid for love-apples:—Jane had attained one of her objects, and eclipsed her little friend for that evening.

The corps dramatique was to sit down to supper in costume; a point arranged ostensibly for convenience, secretly it may be for vanity’s sake: only Stella laid her fruit-basket aside, and Miss Charlmont released her peacock. Lady Everett continued to wear the helmet, which did not conceal her magnificent black hair (she had been a Miss Moss before marriage, Clara Lyon Moss), and Jane retained her pair of doves.

But during the winding up of the charade, more of moment had occurred off the stage than upon it. Jane, her part over, left the other performers to their own devices, and quietly made her way into a conservatory which opened out of the room devoted for that evening to cloaks and hoods.

If she expected to be followed she was not disappointed. A heavy step, and an embarrassed clearance of throat, announced Mr. Durham. He bustled up to her, where she sat fanning herself and showing white and brilliant against a background of flowers and leaves, whilst he looked at once sheepish and pompous, awkward and self-satisfied; not a lady’s man assuredly.

‘Hem—haw—Miss Jane, you surpassed yourself. I shall always think of you now as Venus; I ‘shall, indeed.’ Jane smiled benignantly. ‘Poor Pug’s nose is quite out of joint; it is, indeed But the chit has got a husband, and can snap her fingers at all of us.’ Jane surveyed him with grave interrogation, then cast down her lustrous eyes, and slightly turned her shoulder in his direction. Abashed, he resumed: ‘But really. Miss Jane, now wasn’t Venus a married lady too.’ and couldn’t we—?’ Jane interrupted him: ‘Pray give me your arm, Mr. Durham;’ she rose: ‘let us go back to the company. I don’t know what you are talking about, unless you mean to be rude and very unkind:’ the voice broke, the large, clear eye softened to tears; she drew back as he drew nearer. Then Mr. Durham, ill-bred, but neither scheming nor cold-hearted, pompous and fussy, but a not ungenerous man for all that,—then Mr. Durham spoke: ‘Don’t draw back from me. Miss Jane, but take my arm for once to lead you back to the company, and take my hand for good. For I love and admire you. Miss Jane; and if you will take an oldish man for your husband, you shall never want for money or for pleasure while my name is good in the City.’

Thus in one evening Jane Charlmont attained both her objects.

Supper was a very gay meal, as brilliant as lights, glass, and plate could make it. People were pleased with the night’s entertainment, with themselves, and with each other. Mr. Durham, with an obtrusive air of festivity, sat down beside Jane, and begged his neighbours not to inconvenience themselves, as they did not mind squeezing. Jane coloured, but judged it too early to frown. Mr. Durham, being somewhat old-fashioned, proposed healths: the fair actresses were toasted, the Anglo-Greeks in a bevy, the distinguished stars one by one. Mr. Tresham returned thanks for the processional six; Dr. Tyke for Miss Charlmont, Sir James Everett and Mr. Hartley for their respective wives.

Then Jane’s health was drunk: who would rise to return thanks? Mr. Durham rose: ‘Hem—haw—’ said he: ‘haw—hem—ladies and gentlemen, allow me to return thanks for the Venus of the evening—I mean for the Venus altogether, whose health you have done me the honour to drink’—knowing smiles circled round the table. ‘Done us, I should say: not that I unsay what I said; quite the contrary, and I’m not ashamed to have said it. I will only say one word more in thanking you for the honour you have done her and all of us: the champagne corks pop, and suggest popping; but after popping mum’s the word. Ladies and gentlemen, my very good friends, I drink your very good health.’

And the master of Orpingham Place sat down.