Читать книгу The storm of London: a social rhapsody - Fernande Blaze de Bury - Страница 7

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After looking at the prologue of the show, Lionel and Danford entered the house and ascended the steps of the once richly-carpeted staircase. At the top stood, or at least wabbled, a little woman, leaning heavily on a stick; at her side was Sam Yorick, the social guide, who had no rival as a mimic of Parliamentary members, but who could not hold a candle to Dick Danford. Mrs Webster had applied too late, and had to take Yorick and consider herself lucky to get him, for he was the last male guide available, and she strongly objected to having a woman guide.

The house was superbly decorated with large china vases in which magnolias, azaleas, and rhododendrons had been placed. The reception-rooms were filling rapidly; it was soon going to be a crush. Every description of plastic was there—the small, tall, large, thin; and one uniform shade prevailed, that of the flesh colour. As the rays of the burning sun entered obliquely, tracing long lines of golden light on the parqueted floor, it illuminated equally the phalanxes of refined feet and ankles, flat insteps and knobby toes.

“My lord, do you see there Mrs Archibald?”

“What, the vaporous Mrs Archibald? But where is the grace of the woman we used to call the sylph of Belgravia?”

“She lost her chiffon covering in the London storm, my lord.”

“Some fat old dowager malignantly said of her that she was draped in her breeding, so thin and undulating did she appear. But, has the breeding disappeared also in the torrential rain? for she looks as strong as a horse—see these thick ankles, short wrists, and red arms. I always objected to that sylph in cream gauze, for one never could get at her, she lived de profil and one only could peep at her through side doors.”

“Who was her husband?” inquired the little artist.

“He was colonel of a crack regiment. His ideas were limited to two dogmas: the sense of military exclusiveness, and a profound horror of intellectual women. Like his wife he was well-bred.”

“Yes, my lord, but the Englishman has definite limits to his gentility; the brute, though dormant, lies ready to leap and bite when he is annoyed.”

“What are you, Danford, if not an Englishman?” Lionel smiled.

“Ah! satirists have neither sex nor nationality; but pray go on with your alembic of Colonel Archibald’s character.”

“Well, he chose his wife because she was a well-bred girl—or at least had her certificate of good breeding—also because she was well connected and thoroughly trained in all social cunning.”

“Yes, and I daresay the thin, well-trained piece of machinery had been stirred by the dashing young officer. She secretly harboured love in that secret corner of the heart and senses which thorough-bred folks ignore outwardly but slyly analyse. We must not forget, my lord, that she has short wrists and thick ankles—ha! ha!—he was of her set, so nature could be let loose, while creeping passion was allowed to fill her whole being.”

“True, my dear Mephisto, but generations of women before her have done the same, and she did not disgrace the long lineage of mediocrity and avidity. She had been told what all women are told in our world—namely, that a lady never spoke loudly, never thought broadly; therefore she ruined her friends’ reputations under a whisper, and put the Spanish Inquisition to shame by her pietistical hypocrisy.”

As Lionel ended this homily of the vapoury Mrs Archibald, a group of bystanders dispersed, and Lady Carey was visible to our two pilgrims.

“That is Lady Carey, my lord, widow of Sir Reginald, who made himself so conspicuous in India.”

“Do you mean the positive little woman who followed fashion’s dictates, though she kicked, in words, at the absurdity of some exaggerated garments?”

“Ah! but finally submitted to all the caprices of the mode, my lord—resistance would have been a crime of lese-toilette—yes, it is she, or at least what is left of her—a bundle of mannerism and puckered flesh, sole survivals of an artificial state. At times she is deep, more often frivolous, of a hasty temper and a very cold temperament; in fact, her personality is made up of full stops. Her brain seems to have been built of blind alleys, which lead to nowhere. She is suggestive and narrow-minded, gushing and worldly-wise; she never allows passion to tear her heart to shreds, but talks freely about women’s frolics, and tells naughty stories with a twinkle in her eye and a pout on her lip. What a pity such a woman had missed the coach to originality, and had alighted at the first station—superficiality!”

“I say, Dan, can you put a label on that fine piece of statuary talking over there to Tom Hornsby?”

“That, my lord, surely you ought to know—ha! ha! ha! What an ingrate you are! it is Lady Ranelagh. She who reigned over London Society by right of her beauty.”

“By right of position, you might add, dear Mephisto.”

“And finally, my lord, by right of insolence,” interrupted the little buffoon.

“She frequently argued with life like a fishwife,” went on Lionel, “and few know as well as I do what funny questions she put to destiny; yet she never saw her true image in her mental mirror, and Society never recoiled from her; but as you know, Dan, Society never recoils from any of her members: the contract between swindlers and swindled is never broken, and if by any chance some speck of dirt sticks to one of the columns that support the social edifice, Society is always ready to pay the costs of whitewash.”

“Yet, my lord, this Carmen of Mayfair is now caught in the wheels of the inevitable, and she has to face to-day the worst of all judges—nature.”

“Do you see that little Tanagra figure leaning against the door?—there, just in front of you, Danford.”

“You mean Lady Hurlingham, my lord, with her vermilion cheeks framed in meretriciously youthful curls. She is a thorough woman of the world.”

“With her, my dear Danford, a man is quite safe. She did everything from curiosity, which enabled her to reappear unwrinkled and unsullied after her varied experience; she derived all the fun she could extract from life without singeing the smallest feather of her wings.”

“And still, my lord, one could hardly dare to whisper an indelicate word before that Greuzelike visage.”

“Quite so, dear Mephisto; those red lips would rather kiss than tell, those large melting eyes are pure—to an uninformed observer. Honi soit—ha! ha! ha!”

The sarcastic laughter of the two men was drowned by the tuning of a beautiful Stradivarius, and for a moment the rising uproar of a London At Home was hushed.

Johann Staub stood near the piano, his long brown hair framing a strong Teutonic face, his deep, dark eyes roving over the mass of heads turned towards him. He played magnificently, electric vibrations ran through his leonine mane, still, they hardly listened; the silence that had followed his first bars of the Kreuzer Sonata was soon broken, as voices one by one resumed their interrupted chatting, and the Dowager Lady Pendelton, lulled by the heat and the scent of exotic flowers, let her senile chin drop on her wrinkled breast. She was asleep. Staub ended his Sonata, and loud applause broke loose, a kind of thanksgiving applause, not in honour of the superb way in which the artist had played, but to celebrate their relief and satisfaction at his having finished. Old women went up to him, pressed his hands, asked him to luncheon, to dinner—would they were young—to what would they not invite him! The one had heard Paganini—“Psh! he was no match to you.” Another had known Beriot very well—he was the only one to whom he could be compared. Lady Pendelton woke suddenly, gave a few approving grunts, her eyes still shut, while she struck the parquet with her ebony stick. She wanted Mrs Webster to bring Staub to her at once, as she would like her granddaughter, Lady Augusta, to have some violin lessons.

“Danford, are you not, like me, struck by the incongruity of all this?”

“My lord, to-morrow, after breakfast, I shall submit to you some of my observations on the subject of entertainments. Look at these women seated on chairs, these men bending over them. Their movements are without grace and their hair badly dressed; we cannot have any more of the Patrick Campbell style in our modern mythology. Besides, there are too many people here, and in this Edenic attire the less people you group together, the better the effect.”

“I agree with you, Dan; but for God’s sake let us leave this room—I see someone approaching the piano. Let us be off, I am dying with thirst.” They edged their way down the staircase, not without trouble, for the crowd was coming back from partaking of refreshment, and climbing up the stairs with the renewed vigour that champagne and sandwiches give to drawing-room visitors. As they jammed sideways through the dining-room door, Lionel frowned at the discomfort, and Dan, finding himself breast to breast with his pupil, murmured to him,—

“I should abolish this barbarous fashion of going downstairs to feed at the altar of the tea-urn and bread-and-butter. Ah! at last we are through!”

“The buffet system has always revolted me”—a shiver ran down Lionel’s back. “That kind of social bar at which both sexes voraciously satisfy their internal craving has, to my mind, been a proof of the uncivilised state of Society.”

“But the whole thing is based on false pretences, my lord. Can I get you a glass of champagne?” and he ducked his head between two women who were talking loudly and munching incessantly. “Parties like these are Zoo entertainments at which the pranks of some animal are to be viewed; it is either a foreign prince, a cowboy, or a monkey.”

“Very often,” added Lionel, sipping his champagne, “it is not so original, and only consists of personal interests; this one is going to be introduced to a member of Parliament; a woman is going to meet her lover; a man to see his future bride. There is very little sociability in our social bazaars, I assure you.”

“Do you see that man leaning against the marble mantelpiece, my lord? That is old Watson telling a funny story to Lord Petersham.”

“The story must be highly flavoured, for Lord Petersham is shaking with laughter.”

“Do not be mistaken, my lord, his lordship never laughs at another man’s story—I know him well—he is bursting now with a joke he will tell old Watson when he has stopped laughing.”

“My dear Dan, we are the rudest nation on earth. We stick lightning conductors on the statues of our great men, and walk on people’s toes, only apologising when we happen to know them personally. The nobodies are insolent, because they wish you to think them somebodies; and the somebodies are arrogant, for they want you well to understand that you are nobodies.”

“The room is emptying, my lord, the sun has withdrawn its rays and the flowers are drooping their tired petals.”

“Let us be off then!” and Lionel laid his hand on Danford’s shoulder. “There is old Lady Pendelton being wheeled across the hall by her footman—unless it is her nephew, Lord Robert. She pompously looks round as she proceeds between the two rows of gazers. She is the epilogue of this comedy—a sort of ‘God Save the King’ unsung! This is all impossible, my dear fellow; this old woman, Mrs Webster, is played out in our new era, and the dowagers of the Pendelton kind have no place, any more in our reformed London.”

The two men left the house and walked into St James’s Park.

“I shall give a party, Dick—something out of the common.”

“Yes, my lord; they will accept from you what they would shirk from anyone else.”

“How ever could these people imagine that our present state of nature would admit of these social crushes? Why, the notion of rubbing against one’s neighbour ought to have deterred them from crowding into these rooms.”

“The cause of all this incongruity is laziness, my lord—apathy of the mind. That defect is the fundamental cause of the success of the Conservative policy. It suits the qualities and the failings of the race; and countries have but the politics they deserve, someone said. Very true, for politics are the expression of a country’s inner mind. The apathetic must naturally be Tories, for they are slow at reforms, and stand in terror of social upheavals; you saw, before the storm, how far acquiescence and lethargy could go, you will soon see that the country will stand at your elbows in all your reforms. It is nonsense talking of democracy in England as long as the peerage is the goal of all drapers and ironmongers, and, had not the Almighty poured water spouts over the whole sham and deprived us of our artificial husks, we should in time have seen London perish as Athens, Rome and Constantinople. You have to make the first move, my lord, for in this country the masses imitate the upper classes. Bear this well in mind: we are essentially caddish, so, my lord, make use of the defect to save the country.”