1861.]

GOOD FOR

NOTHING;

DINNER that day was rather a tedious affair. Our host did not appear; nor was this an unusual practice with Gilbert of late. The very fine gentleman who condescended to officiate as Groom of the Chambers, and who was chiefly remarkable for the elegance with which he turned his periods, and the perseverance with which he pulled down his wristbands, announcing to us that Mr. Órme begged we would not wait. He had given orders not to be disturbed. Mr. Orme had a large amount of business to transact against post time.' So we paired off and rustled into dinner without him.

Bella seemed the liveliest of the party. Lady Gertrude, I could not but observe, was exceedingly uneasy; and John Gordon very much out of spirits and out of humour. Lady Olivia was disturbed about some shortcomings of her maid. Holyhead was quieter and more subdued than his wont, though still by no means a dull companion; and I myself, I must confess, felt oppressed by many vague and painful misgivings which I should have been at a loss to explain.

Miss Jones, however, was quite lively and talkative. This young lady was considerably improved by the misfortunes through which she had passed. Her somewhat hoydenish manner had acquired repose and dignity, without losing its frankness. Her tone was softened, and her bearing more self-restrained. She was a woman now; and one who had not only learned to depend on herself, but to act for others. Even her very appearance was changed, and, to my thinking, vastly for the better. She had lost the beauté de diable, the only beauty, by the way, to which she could lay

claim; but she had gained in its stead a depth of expression, and a defined characteristic cast of countenance, well worth all the red-andwhite in the world. I do not think I was the only person present of this opinion.

I do not set up, like many gentlemen of my age and habits, for a consummate judge of beauty. It is perhaps a subject on which study is by no means beneficial, and even in theory admits of every variety of taste and opinion. I do know one man, and that by no means an impressionable person, on whom an impediment in the female speech (doubtless a rare defect, and not without its advantages) produces instantaneous subjection. Stoically uninfluenced by regularity of features, adamant to complexion and crinoline, his defences fall to the abortive music of 'a stutter,' as the walls of Jericho crumbled at the trumpet-blast of the hosts of Israel. He is fascinated, conquered, bound hand and foot, before the fair mute can get out her offer of quarter. The one hesitates, and the other is lost. I only adduce this in corroboration of a proverb which exists in every known language, to the effect that 'there is no accounting for tastes.'

To my mind, our young English ladies are very tardy in reaching their prime. They do not usually get rid of their baby-faces' till person and intellect have for some years arrived at the stage of womanhood; and beautiful as those 'baby-faces' unquestionably are, I think most men will admit that time and experience, while altering their expression, rather add to than detract from their charms. In the south of Europe, twenty-five or thirty is synonymous with decay. A transatlantic beauty is in the

splendour of her prime at eighteen. Our Saxon cousins, with their fair hair and blue eyes, commonly grow so fat in their sixth lustre, as to lose all pretensions to admiration: whilst

a Frenchwoman's teeth rarely withstand the influence of the bonbonnière for half-a-dozen years after her marriage. It is only our English dames, I think, who, thanks to their climate, constitution, food, and habits, preserve their beauty unimpaired up to the very verge of middle age. Bella was yet a long way from that somewhat uncertain period; nevertheless she was acquiring expression of countenance and fascination of manner day by day. She was quite capable now of taking her part in the emptiest conversation-than which I hold no accomplishment more denotes familiarity with society and brought us down the very latest London gossip, which at the end of September, it is fair to conclude, was more likely to originate at Brighton than in the deserted city itself.

'Mrs. Montpellier was at the Old Steine. Mrs. Montpellier had called upon her. She had a piece of news especially for Lord Holyhead-Mrs. Montpellier had refused Charley Wing.'

Holyhead looked excessively conscious, though doubtless every one present mistook the cause.

'How very strange,' said he, with a forced laugh. 'Such a parti for a widow. You know Charley is smothered in money now. What can she be about? She must be waiting for a Rothschild.'

'I don't think Mr. Wing can be very rich,' observed Bella. 'I saw him one day walking on the chain pier in such shabby clothes, and with a cotton umbrella!'

"That's a sure proof of wealth,' remarked John Gordon. 'Capitalists always carry cotton umbrellas; I know it's so in the City. A very neat article, we consider, looks like borrowing money. I speak as a professional man.'

We laughed; and I remarked a smile on the staid countenance of the Groom of the Chambers, ex

officio a close observer of men and

manners.

'He's very good-looking,' said Miss Jones, simply, still harping on Charley Wing; if he would only dress himself a little better; but I suppose Mrs. Montpellier don't think so.'

'Is that really your opinion? asked Lord Holyhead, uneasily; then added with his frank laugh, 'Ah, Miss Jones, you should have seen him in his palmy days, when he hadn't a sixpence. He was the smartest and best-looking fellow about London then.'

'Gilbert used always to call him the Last of the Lady-killers,' remarked Gertrude. 'How amused he will be to hear of his rebuff. I have often heard him declare he should be more afraid of Charley Wing as a rival than anybody in the world.'

'He mustn't say so again,' interposed Holyhead, mischievously. 'I believe it is nobody but Gilbert that has cut out Charley with Mrs. Montpellier.'

'What nonsense! Gilbert never thought of her!' exclaimed Lady Gertrude, with flashing eyes and uncalled-for energy. 'I mean,' she added, calming suddenly down as if a little ashamed of her vehemence, 'it is so hard that people never can be friends without the world putting the most uncharitable constructions.'

Her ladyship's unqualified denial did not fail to produce its effect. The servants looked startled Lady Olivia displeased; Holyhead amused; and John Gordon's brow grew darker and darker. When the ladies rose en masse to take flight, he did not even stoop to pick up the gloves and handkerchief which Gertrude had of course suffered to escape below the table. I was forced to dive for them myself, no easy task for an old man after dinner; and though she thanked me kindly for the recovery of these superfluities, I do not think she was conscious of a syllable she said.

Soon after her departure, John thought proper to repeat his previously-announced intention of

starting by the early train next morning. Holyhead suddenly sank into a very unusual fit of abstraction, in which he not only forgot to pass the bottle, but neglected to fill his own glass. The consumption of claret was moderate in the extreme; and the bell that summoned coffee was felt to be a relief to all.

In the drawing-room matters were even worse. Lady Olivia had gone to bed with a head-ache-the only indisposition to which her strong organization was subject, and which was apt to come on when she was tired of her company. Gertrude, looking extremely restless and anxious, had taken a cup of tea to Gilbert's door. Miss Jones chatted on pleasantly enough for a time, chiefly to the edification of Lord Holyhead, who seemed never tired of asking news about her papa, her cottage, her parrot, and her pianoforte. On the three former topics they were growing quite confidential. She had told him that papa was getting better every day, and was a different man since he had escaped from the constant annoyances and anxieties of business; that he got his rubber four nights a week; and that she herself played 'double-dummy'

with him the other two. That the little house was very comfortable. She even described the situation of the rooms, and the pattern of the drawing-room carpet. That the parrot liked his new quarters as well as the rest of the family, and had 'quite left off biting people,' added Bella with a blush and a smile. And then she checked his Lordship's explosions of hilarity, and his assurances that he should bear the scars to his grave, by an allusion to the comfort she had derived from the possession of the pianoforte at the worst stage of their misfortunes, and her gratitude for the kindness and forethought which had provided her with the instrument.

'I never found out,' said Bella, in a much lower and rather unsteady voice, 'whose gift it was till John told me about it at Brighton. I had almost made up my mind to

595.

write and thank you, but I thought I had better wait till I should see you to express my gratitude; and now I hardly know how to do so strongly enough. It was very, very kind of you, Lord Holyhead,' said Bella, and the black eyes filled with tears, though she tried hard to smile. You must be a conjuror. You must have known exactly what I wanted, or you must have taken a great deal of trouble to find out.'

'I have thought of little else for many months,' he whispered, in a very low voice, not much steadier than her own; and I confess at this juncture I began to consider whether a third person must not be rather in the way. Gertrude had not returned from her mission with the tea.

Gordon was in the little drawing-room, as it was called, obviously reading the paper, to judge by the irritable crackling of the broadsheet. Besides myself, these two were the only inhabitants of the apartment, and they seemed to be quite forgetful of my presence, so engrossed were they with the absorbing topic which some one has described as 'talking to each other of each other.' Old gentlemen are all very well in their way, but if they are dense and inconsiderate they may sometimes be very much in the way of other people. I began to think I had better penetrate into the library; that was my natural sphere now. There was not much temptation to remain with John Gordon in the retreat he had selected, and I caught myself repeating the 'Me nec femina nec puer of Horace as I sat me down to a stiffish page of Diodorus Siculus which had long puzzled me, but of which that evening I certainly failed to extract the meaning.

No! I do not think I would have it all over again if I could. Otium Divos rogat in patenti.' How that Horace keeps running in my head! but surely Rest, Rest is what poor mortality must yearn for, after all. It is better to lie still, though it be down fathom-deep below the dark waters, than to be ever heaving to and fro, the sport of the

changing wave. No more fair breezes and smiling skies and purple islands studding the smooth sheen of the tropic sea; but then no more treacherous fogs and hidden reefs and sudden squalls and long-continued gales to baffle the bold mariner, and vex and weary and make him long for any port at last. No more joyous chorus round the capstan, nor pleasant carouse with jolly messmates on Saturday nights; but then no more turning up all hands to shorten sail in the night, with the sea washing heavily over the slippery deck, and the bare spars dancing and reeling aloft against the cheerless, windy, starry sky. The mariner is down in the seacaves, wrapped in his clean hammock, with a round shot at his feet. There let him sleep sound and still till the resurrection. He is better

SO.

Once it crossed my mind as I turned over the pages of Diodorus Siculus, that a lady of whom I had heard as the Signora Bravoura might be somewhat dissatisfied with the arrangements so obviously impending. How that strongminded vocalist herself, or any of her fashionable friends, would have laughed at my being so much behindhand in the gossip of the world. They had parted months ago; and from what I have heard of the lady, it was by no means the least courageous act of his lordship's life thus to free himself from a captivity that was growing more hopeless day by day.

With all the intuitive tact and administrative powers of the female intellect, there are some characters of the other sex, and those not the least capable, in the management of which women find themselves completely at fault. To soothe the hasty, to cajole the obstinate, to flatter and impose upon the vain, or with honied accents and specious eloquence to mystify the weak, what advocate so successful as a woman? But there is one class of disposition she usually mistakes, which baffles her persuasive powers, and before which her boasted influence is swept away like a mesh

of cobwebs. It is that of a frank, good-humoured, single-hearted, yet resolute man. His very absence of cunning foils all her tactics. He cannot be made to understand her hidden interpretations-her tortuous schemes-her pretty little affectations and harmless duplicity -the shaft that would sting a more artificial heart to the quick, rebounds innocuous from the stainless shield of honesty. There can be no trial of fence where one declines to use the small sword, and falsehood, with all its speed, has so much lost ground continually to make up, that it can never reach the goal so soon as truth. Beat from her usual mode of warfare by such an opponent, the fair aggressor is prone to mistake forbearance for weakness and patience for stupidity. Then she falls into a fatal error, and elects to try the issue by sheer strength. He has borne a good deal. He will bear just a little, ever such a little, more. You are bad handicappers, ladies! Ask your brothers or your husbands if it is not that last pound which turns the triumph of Newmarket to a defeat none the less ruinous that it was within a yard of victory! Be advised by me. If you have half reclaimed your falcon, be careful how you abuse the obedience of that tameless nature. Ruffle its feathers but once too often, and the bird breaks away from wrist and jesses never to stoop to the lure again.

Bravoura was a lady of considerable physical calibre. Deep-bosomed as Juno, ox-eyed also like the mother of the gods, and, not to speak it disrespectfully, a little bull-throated. The price of stalls and boxes on her benefit nights sufficiently vouched for the power of her lungs, and her servants and courier could answer for her high courage and temper to correspond. She feared nobody on earth but Holyhead, and she tried to bully him. The obvious result of such a measure was to be found in his lordship's happy escape from thraldom, which left him at liberty to tell Bella Jones such a tale in the quiet drawing-room at West-Acres