Edmund Yates

“ There was a pause for a minute, and then Lord Sandilands said: "Do you mean that Miss Lambert should make her début on the Italian stage?"
"Not a bit of it," shrieked Mr. Munns; "keep her début for here! A gal like that, who can walk up to the piano and sing away before me, won't have any stage-fright, I'll pound it! Let her go to Florence, to old Papadaggi--which you know him well, my lord, and can make it all square there; let her take lessons of him, and make her début with me. I'm a man of my word, as you know, and I see my way." ”

“ But all Gertrude Keith's childlike peace and passionless calm vanished when she met Gilbert Lloyd, at a house where Mrs. Bloxam was in the habit of visiting during the vacations, and whither she brought Gertrude, in order to avoid leaving her to the portentous solitude of the Vale House, in the absence of her companions. The girl fell in love with the young man--who paid her quiet, stealthy, underhand attentions--with a suddenness and a vehemence which would have alarmed anyone who loved her, for the future of a woman endowed with so imaginative, sensitive, and passionate a nature. ”

“ For a few moments she hesitated, a thousand thoughts rushed through her mind--thoughts of her real position, retrospect of her past life--a wild, feverish vision of future triumph, where she, the put-aside and rejected of Gilbert Lloyd, the pupil-teacher of the suburban boarding-school, should be queen regnant, and have some of the greatest and highest in the kingdom for her slaves. As prima donna of the Opera, what position might she not assume, or where should her sway stop, if ambition were to be gratified? ”

“ Gilbert Lloyd, Miles had crossed the threshold of Lady Carabas' mansion as seldom as social decency, in deference to the Marchioness's constantly renewed invitations, would permit him. The invitations were constantly renewed; for Lady Carabas had taken a liking to the young man, and, indeed, the idea had crossed her ladyship's mind that when Gilbert Lloyd's time of office had expired--and his tenure had been already more than the average--she could scarcely do better than intrust Miles Challoner with the secret of the existence of her Soul, and permit him to share in its aspiration. ”

“ Mdlle. de Meronville was a bright lithe little woman, with large black eyes, an olive complexion, and what Lord Ticehurst called a "fuzzy" head of jet-black hair; a pleasant good-natured little woman, fond of admiration and bonbons and good dinners and plenty of champagne; a little woman who played constantly at the tables, screaming with delight when she won, and using "strange oaths" when she lost--who smoked cigarettes on the promenade, and gesticulated wildly, and beat her companions with her parasol, and, in fact, behaved herself as unlike a British female as is possible to be imagined. ”

“ Finding he paused, Gertrude said, "I scarcely understand you."
"Well, I mean that 'parting for ever' does not mean coming together again next month, to live in a fool's paradise for a week, and then hate each other worse than ever. If we part, we part for ever, which means that we never meet again on earth--or rather, that we begin life afresh, with the recollection of the last few months completely expunged. We have neither of us any relations to worry us with attempts at reconciliation; not half-a-dozen men know of the fact of my having been married, and none of them have ever seen you. ”

“ It was a pleasing delusion: there never existed a man less likely to have done anything of the kind than John Borlase; but he cherished the belief, which nothing in his former life tended to justify. He was a proud man in a totally unaffected way; and only his fancy--not for a moment his real practical self--regarded the possibility of the elevation into a future British peeress of a girl whose father was a painter, of the Bohemian order, and in whose maternal ancestry the most noteworthy "illustration" was a wholesale grocer. As for Gertrude, she loved him, and that was enough for her. ”

“ Answering him, Miles said that he had nothing to do, and that he was entirely at his friend's disposal.
"Then," said Lord Sandilands, "suppose we stroll out Bayswater way? You have not seen Miss Lambert for a long time now, though you know--for I wrote to you, and you must have heard in a hundred other places--of her success. Really, the greatest thing for years. Everybody enchanted; and, best of all, has not made the smallest difference in her; just the same unaffected, quiet, unpretending girl as when we met her that first night--don't you recollect?--at Carabas House." ”

“ From evil indeed, from terrible and irremediable evil Miles Challoner felt it must have been; else why the hopeless banishment, why the impenetrable silence, why the apparently complete oblivion? He brooded upon these things in the solitude to which the first few weeks of his proprietorship of Rowley Court were devoted, almost to the exclusion of every other subject of thought; and Mr. Styles found him singularly inattentive and indifferent to the details of his property and his squirearchical duties, as that experienced person laid them before him. ”

“ It was one of Gilbert Lloyd's strongest points that he could put aside anything unpleasant that might be pressing upon him, no matter how urgently, and defer it for future consideration. In the midst of trouble of all kinds--pecuniary complications, turf anxieties, on the issue of which his position in life depended--he would, after looking at them vigorously with all his power, turn into bed and sleep as calmly as though his mind were entirely free, rising the next morning with renewed health and courage to tackle the difficulties again. ”

“ It is not for me to teach etiquette to any lady, especially to Lady Carabas, who despises conventionality, and who, besides, is quite old enough to take care of herself. I should have thought that for a lady to come to a bachelor's house--however, of course she'll have her maid and her footman, and some one to act as her âme damnées--her sheep-dog. Who is the sheep-dog, by the way?"
"I don't know about sheep-dog," said Lord Ticehurst, flushing very red; "but Lady Carabas said the lady she proposed to do me the honour to bring to my house was--was Miss Grace Lambert." ”

“ Perhaps it was the entire novelty of her style and conduct that gave her such a charm in the eyes of Lord Ticehurst, for charm she undoubtedly had. A devotion to the opposite sex had never hitherto been classed among the weaknesses of that amiable nobleman; but he was so completely overcome by the fascinations of Eugénie de Meronville, that no youth ever suffered more severely from "calf-love" than this reckless roisterer. ”

“ Had Miles Challoner been either older or younger at the time of the occurrence, he might have been unable to observe his father's peremptory command with the reluctant obedience he had manifested until the end, when his pent-up anxiety had found vent in his useless appeal to the dying Squire. But he had outlived the restless irrepressible curiosity of the child, and he had not reached the calm deliberative reasoning of the man. ”

“ Bloxam, a good woman in her way, and of more than average intelligence, had no feelings towards the girl which even bordered on the maternal; and the habitual authority of the schoolmistress was naturally in some degree abrogated by the fact that it was vacation-time. She was not of a very confiding or unsuspicious disposition; but she had, unconsciously to herself, to deal in Gilbert Lloyd with one who knew well how to lull suspicion, and he in his turn found an apt pupil in Gertrude. They met again and again; the girl's beauty, freshness, and daring had a strong charm for a man like Lloyd ”

“ So, thoroughly happy, the old nobleman permeated society, listening with eager ears, to all comments on Miss Grace Lambert. He heard them everywhere. Steady old boys at the Portland had heard of the new singer from their "people," and intended, the first evening they had to spare, to make one in the family-box, and hear her. Fast men, young and old, at the Arlington, relaxing their great minds--neque arcum semper tendit Apollo--between turf-talk and whist-playing, spoke of her in exaggerated laudation. ”

“ Ah, a great deal may be ascribed to that, my dear sir; a great deal may be ascribed to that!"
"Yes," said Gilbert Lloyd carelessly; "if a man will take as much lobster-salad and Strasbourg pie as he can eat, with as much champagne and moselle as he can carry; and if, in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, he will sit without his hat on the top of a drag, with the August sun beating down upon him--"
"Did he do that, my dear sir--did he do that?" ”

“ When they had gone a few steps, Miles asked his friend who was the lady of whom he and Lady Carabas were speaking.
"My dear fellow," said Lord Sandilands with a little chuckle, "I haven't the remotest notion. Dear Lady Carabas is always giving one half-confidences about people she's interested in, and 'pon my life I'm too old to open my heart indiscriminately, and make myself partaker of the joys and sorrows of half the world. ”

“ Mr. Gilbert Lloyd shortly bade his friend not to be an ass, but if he had anything to say, to out with it. Nothing abashed at the strength of Gilbert's language, Tommy said,
"My dear fellow, I mean exactly what I say; you're under a mistake, while all the time it's all right for you!"
"What's all right for me--with whom--where?"
"There!" said Tommy Toshington, wagging his new wig and his curly-brimmed hat in the direction where Lord Ticehurst was sitting; "his lordship is entêté with a certain warbler, eh? Fourth finger of the left hand--death do us part, and all that sort of thing, eh? ”

“ John Borlase had been unscrupulous, and a trifle hard in his nature; and despite the conflict in his breast which had ensued on Gertrude Gautier's death, and which for all his impassive bearing had been fierce and long, Lord Sandilands was not much more scrupulous, and was decidedly harder. If the girl married, or if she died, he should be made acquainted with the circumstance; and as a matter of fact--fact, not sentiment, being the real consideration in this matter--either was all he need know. As time went on, this frame of mind about his unknown daughter became habitual to Lord Sandilands ”

“ The sun streamed into the room, but little impeded by the green blinds, which shed a sickly hue over everything, and lent additional ghastliness to the face, which was turned away from Gertrude when she entered the chamber. The bed, a large structure of extraordinary height, stood in front of one of the windows; the furniture of the room was of the usual lodging-house quality; an open portmanteau, belching forth tumbled shirts and rumpled pocket-handkerchiefs, gaped wide upon the floor ”

“ The absconding turfite might go to America, or to the deuce, for the matter of that; Gilbert Lloyd felt it an impossibility to leave the place where he then was, and tried to cheat himself by pretending that it was expedient for his own interest that he should keep a close watch upon Lord Ticehurst just at that time. That young nobleman certainly took no pains to conceal his warm admiration for Miss Lambert, and his intense delight at her performance. ”

“ Emerging from the dull country-squire life to which he at first had imagined himself relegated, he should now mix on excellent footing with that society which he had always thought of with envy, but never thoroughly comprehended. In a word, when Sir Purcell Arne left the room for the purpose of fetching the new singer, there was not in England, perhaps, at that moment, a more thoroughly happy young man than Miles Challoner. But ever since Grace Lambert's voice had fallen on his ear, he had been a different man. ”

“ How could he prepare the Bosotian mind of Gloucestershire to receive as his wife a woman who would bring with her such associations as these? What would be said by the old county neighbours, by whom the old Challoner name was yet held in the highest respect and regard? What by the wealthy new-comers, whose influence was day by day increasing, and who gave themselves airs of pride and position and exclusiveness far more intolerable than the loftiest hauteur of the real territorial seigneurie? ”

“ Gilbert Lloyd looked up without the smallest trace of perturbation, and said, "Miss Grace Lambert? O, the--the celebrated singer! O, indeed!"
"Yes," said Lord Ticehurst; "there's a chance of her getting a holiday on Thursday night--town will be very empty, you know, and I think I shall be able to square it with Munns--and then she might come down to the races, and she and Lady Carabas could come over here afterwards. She's a most charming person, Gilbert."
"Is she?" said Gilbert Lloyd very slowly. "I have not--what you seem to have--the pleasure of her acquaintance. Have you known her long?" ”

“ He felt quite certain that there was but one man in the world who could resolve his doubts, who could tell him the worst,--might it not rather be the best--of this matter, which so sorely perplexed him. That man was Lord Sandilands. If anyone knew the truth, it was he; but whether Miles would ever hear it from him depended, as he felt, entirely on the terms on which the communication had been made, if it had been made at all, by his father to Lord Sandilands. That the family lawyer knew nothing of it, Miles felt confident ”

“ That confounded meeting with Miles had upset him entirely. Harvey Gore!--did Gertrude suspect--she knew. He was certain, she knew, and that was what--It was for the best that he had got rid of her; for the best that he was on his own hook--only himself to consult and rely upon, and no one else with a chance of selling him. All women were unreliable, and interfered with business. By the way, what was that Ticehurst was saying as they came away in the brougham about some woman who had sung in the early part of the evening, before he got to Carabas House? ”