Part 16 (1/2)
”We'll have one turn for health in the Park,” said Mrs. Lascelles, as the two ladies seated themselves in her open carriage. ”You know you're in my charge to-day, Helen; and I mean to bring you out in what your papa calls the 'best possible form.' To-night, dear, I'm determined you shall win all your engagements!”
So her stout and florid coachman, shaving the kerbstone to an inch, turned under the Marble Arch at a liberal twelve miles an hour, which subsided into three before he reached Grosvenor Gate, and so, losing his ident.i.ty in a double column of carriages, brilliant and glittering as his own, commenced the performance of that imposing function--grand, deliberate, and funereal--which is solemnised every lawful day in Hyde Park between six and half-past seven p.m. Barouches, sociables, tax-carts, Victorias, every kind of wheeled conveyance, were wedged three-deep in the road. All the chairs on the footway were occupied, and the path was blocked with walkers to the rails. Mounted policemen, making themselves ubiquitous, pranced about and gesticulated with unusual vehemence. Those on foot ferried pa.s.sengers across the drive at intervals, majestically rebuking for that purpose the horse and his rider, the charioteer, and the foaming, highly-bitted animal he controlled.
It was once said of London by a visitor, I believe, from Dublin, that ”you could not see the town for the houses.” Here, in this high tide of humanity, you could not see the people for the crowd.
”Not a soul in the Park!” observed Mrs. Lascelles, languidly scanning the myriads that surrounded her.
”I can't think where they get to,” said Helen. ”n.o.body ever seems to come here that one knows.”
But a vivid blush rose to her temples while she spoke. So becoming was its effect, that a young man, leaning against the rails, extricating his intellect for a moment out of vacancy, exclaimed to his companion:
”_Caramba!_ Jack!”--he had once been at Gibraltar for a week, and piqued himself on swearing in Spanish--”_Caramba!_ Jack! what a good-looking girl! Who is she?”
And Jack, never at a loss, detailed her private history forthwith, identifying her as the daughter of a foreign minister, and furnis.h.i.+ng his friend with a jaw-breaking German name, impracticable to p.r.o.nounce, even had it been possible to remember. But the origin of this young lady's confusion occupied a position far beyond these pedestrian admirers, and was, indeed, none other than Frank Vanguard, taking the air on a very desirable hack amongst several equestrians of the season, but so part.i.tioned off from Helen by dandies, dowagers, peers, commoners, and servants in livery, to say nothing of an iron railing, that, for all gratification to be obtained from his society, he might as well have been the other side of the Serpentine.
He saw her, though, that was some comfort. So did Mrs. Lascelles, confirming thereby into certainty the suspicions she entertained that Helen cherished a real affection for this captivating dragoon.
”She's a dear girl,” thought that quick-sighted lady; ”and Jin shall not interfere with her. He's tolerably well off. They might both do worse; and Sir Henry would like it. Home, John!”
So, although Frank sent his hack along as fast as our police-regulations permit, in order to catch a glimpse of his charmer while she left the Park at Albert Gate, he was rewarded only with a back view of Mrs.
Lascelles's carriage, ornamented by a boy and a basket taking a free pa.s.sage to their next destination.
”Never mind,” thought the rider. ”I can't miss seeing her to-night at Battledore House. We'll put it all right in the tea-room. I _think_ she'll say, 'Yes.' Why shouldn't she? My darling, I'll make you as happy as ever I can.”
I wonder if the hack thought his master's caress at this moment was bestowed entirely for his own sake. He shook his dainty head as if he did, rolling his shoulders, and rising into one or two managed gambols, as he bore Frank homewards at a canter.
To meet one's lady-love at an exceedingly smart ball with the desperate intention of proposing to her then and there, ought to be excitement enough, in all conscience, for any one day; but, during the London season, people cram a week's work into twenty-four hours, and Frank had yet a good deal to do before he could find himself in that tea-room at Battledore House, to which he looked forward so longingly, and with the recesses of which his previous experience, I fear, had rendered him unjustifiably familiar.
A protracted mess-dinner to meet an ill.u.s.trious personage must first be gone through. It would be impossible to leave the barracks till that personage gave the signal for breaking up; and although a London ball is the latest of all festive gatherings, Frank, I think, was the only individual present, at an early hour of the morning, who felt anything but regret when the guest, who had thus honoured them, taking a kind and cordial farewell of his entertainers, announced himself ready to depart.
”If I can get there by two,” thought the young officer, ”I may catch her before she leaves. It's just my luck to have tumbled into this d----d thing, when I wanted to be elsewhere!”
Thus, you see, does one man undervalue privileges which another perhaps esteems the height of human felicity. Of all Thackeray's keen touches, there are none keener than that in which Lord Steyne says, ”Everybody wants what they haven't got. 'Gad, I dined with the King yesterday, and we'd boiled mutton and turnips!”
”We're late, Frank,” said young Lord Kilgarron. ”Jump into my brougham.
It will get us there quicker than a cab. Battledore House, Tom. Drive like blazes!” The last to a smart lad in livery, who obeyed this injunction to the letter, as Lord Kilgarron leaped lightly in after his friend, and banged to the door.
”I _must_ go,” added his lords.h.i.+p. ”She's my aunt, you know. What's the _use_ of an aunt, Frank? I get very little good out of mine. Now a _grandmother's_ a decent kind of relations.h.i.+p. Mine gave me the very mare we're driving--half-sister to Termagant. She's a rum 'un, I can tell you!”
”A fast one, I see,” remarked Frank, with much composure, considering they were now whirling past the lamps at a gallop.
”Is it fast?” demanded his companion, exultingly. ”Wouldn't she have won the Garrison Cup at the Curragh last year, as sure as ever she was saddled, only the fools ran the race at a walk, and never began at all till the finis.h.!.+”
Lord Kilgarron was a thorough Irishman, devoted to sport, reckless of danger, and possessing the knack, indigenous to his countrymen, of hitting off graphic description by a happy blunder.
”She can go,” he added, ”and she can stay. That mare, sir, would gallop for a week. Faith, an' she's running off now!”
She was, indeed! The Termagant blood, roused by contradiction and an injudicious pull at that side of her mouth which had not been rendered callous in training, rose to boiling pitch. Irritation, resentment, and fear of subsequent punishment, combined to madden her. A frantic rise at her collar, a plunge, a lift of her shapely quarters, that only the strongest of kicking-straps prevented from dissevering the whole connection, and the mare was fairly out of her driver's hands, and swinging down Piccadilly with a brougham and two dandies behind her, almost as fast as she ever swept across the Curragh of Kildare.