Chapter X: A Party on the Water

Captain Fane, young wiseacre as he was, reckoned foolishly with little knowledge of the world, and less knowledge of woman’s nature, that the next time he met Lady Bell he should take up the acquaintance at the very point at which he had left it off, on the lucky hit of his introducing the ladies to the galleries of science and art.

Far from it, every incident, every influence was different. _Dramatis personæ_ had entered on the scene who were as new as they were distasteful to Harry Fane; but they were not new to Lady Bell, and they and their fellows were possessed of long established claims on her regard.

True, some weeks had passed, during which Captain Fane had been before his chiefs of the Admiralty, and kept hard at work on his professional business; but a few weeks were nothing, in Harry Fane’s estimation, to warrant this transformation.

When Captain Fane employed his next disengaged morning, in repairing to his cousin’s house in Cleveland Court, he found a gay company marshalled there, about to take advantage of an unusually fine February day to have a party on the water.

“Well come, Harry!” cried hearty Lady Sundon; “we only lacked a naval man to sit in the end of our barge.”

“We shall be glad to avail ourselves of your experience, sir,” Lady Bell, whose party it was specially, was polite enough to say; but it was said carelessly, and she did not wait for an answer, as both her ears were monopolized.

The one ear was filled with the whispers of an affected, lisping woman, into whose affectation and lisp there could yet be infused such a judiciously-mixed spice of wit and scandal as very often rendered her whispers irresistible to their hearers.

Lady Bell’s remaining ear was kept fixed by the honeyed sharpness of tongue of a long, lazy, handsome man, in the lingering exquisiteness of costume of a purple-velvet coat and breeches and white silk stockings, double vest—one white, the other jonquil colour—two watch guards, a solitaire, diamond buckles, and a little hat.

Beside this full-fledged, fine-hued gentleman, Captain Fane, in his plain blue and white uniform, looked a very sober, and, in his present humour, a somewhat gruff bird; but Harry took up his gold-laced hat on the amount of encouragement he received, and went with the company.

He was the more induced to join the party because he was all at once seized with a burning wish and necessity to ascertain the precise terms on which Lady Bell Trevor stood with two of her companions.

Partial and superficial as Captain Fane’s acquaintance with the fashionable world was, the pair were too marked for him not to have a chance of being familiar with their antecedents.

Sir George Waring and Mrs. Lascelles were connected by more than an accidental association, though they had escaped the ignominy of a miserable bond of union. The owners of the names were continually to be seen together at the same gay parties, some of which were of a debatable character.

It was well understood that the couple were fast allies, though the nature of the alliance remained a mystery. Was it friendship among the heartless, as there is honour among thieves? Lady Bell honestly believed so.

Was it true, as some said, that Sir George had bought over Mrs. Lascelles by a large debt won from her at piquet, to back him in all his endless idle schemes and intrigues, and to play into his hand in the fickle, evil aims of the life at once of a Sir Fribble and a Lovelace?

Did the solution lie in an unauthorised, low-toned love between the wickedly good-natured pair, who, with the wisdom of the serpent, held the passion in check, and preserved their cool, careless mask, trusting faintly that death might one day interpose in their behalf, and remove Mrs. Lascelles’s husband, or waiting deliberately till the love rooted in ashes and fed on malignant vapours, should be surely and for ever extinguished?

As for Mrs. Lascelles’s husband, he played no prominent part in the drama, and put in no claim for sympathy. He was as basely indifferent as the others; he simply tolerated his wife, and accorded her his protection, so long as she did not outrage it.

In reality there was no public scandal concerning these people; but Harry Fane could not endure to see Lady Bell Trevor with them, on intimate terms, and she was still seated between the two in the barge.

Mrs. Lascelles wriggled as a serpent wriggles its glossy spots, and shot forth unholy green fire, dragon-like, on the right of Lady Bell.

On the left lounged Sir George, as a splendid sleek tiger steps stealthily before it springs, and even when it is too gorged and not greedy enough to spring, bites in wanton playfulness.

Lady Bell was so ignorant of the true nature of such persons, that she stopped short with admiring their orange and sable glories; she was tickled and taken with, rather than repelled, by the green fire of Mrs. Lascelles’s brilliant scandal, and the playful biting of Sir George’s half-caressing, highly cultivated cynicism,—something altogether different from Harry Fane’s wholesome, blustering criticism.

In addition to Lady Bell’s ignorance, her perceptions were slightly warped, so that she was disposed to be but too lenient to the hole whence she herself had been dug, and the pit from which she had been drawn.

The barge swept along, among other and less ornamental barges laden with hay, coals, sheep, and pigs, past wharfs and piers, under bridges, below balconies and projecting stories of buildings, by gables of houses—until it left stone and lime behind, and reached green banks and lawns, though the trees still stretched brown, gnarled, or drooping boughs, sharp and unclothed, against the blue of the sky. There was just the dimly sweet, green budding of a fine February to tell that spring was at hand.

Lady Bell smiled brightly and chatted freely with her chosen companions.

Captain Fane had no resource but to fume secretly, and seek, as he steered, to be contented with the companionship of the Sundons. There was one safeguard in Lady Sundon’s irrepressible good fellowship, which was restrained by no extreme delicacy or humility, that it combated successfully her instinctive homage to rank and fashion, and prevented her from being left entirely out of any group in her vicinity.

Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles’s blandness,—the great quality on which they prided themselves, in the absence of all higher qualities,—might not have remained unalloyed with insolence. The gentleman and lady might have rebuffed what they regarded as offensive intrusion in Lady Sundon’s freedom of speech, seeing that the pair attached themselves to the Sundons solely on Lady Bell’s account. But dear, delightful, naïve little Lady Bell had her weaknesses, which her friends were quick enough to perceive and respect in time. One of these weaknesses was, that she would not submit to see snubbing administered in her presence to the hospitable country baronet’s wife and her absurdly gawky step-daughters, with whom she had the misfortune to be domiciled in town.

Neither would the froward goddess consent at present to be rescued, to quit these Sundons and put herself under the guardianship of Mrs. Lascelles, who, if she and Sir George had got their will, would have had Lady Bell, without delay, cut the whole connection, even so far as her dear Mrs. Sundon.

Mrs. Sundon was a true woman of quality, and of the world, indeed, but she had abandoned her sphere, and might live to turn queen’s evidence against her old world, any day. She was blue, stuck up, and tiresomely virtuous for a young woman. Lady Bell spoilt herself by quoting and aping this model.

But Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles must set to work cautiously in doing their benevolent “possible” to cure Lady Bell of this and other defects. Rome was not built in one day, and neither in one day would a wilful girl’s rampant staunchness and warm-heartedness be converted into a conveniently faithless and lukewarm state of the affections.

In the meantime, Lady Sundon had insisted on drawing everybody’s attention to Chelsea, because she had once assisted at a “whim” there, when she had gone over Chelsea Hospital.

The building had, at this time, its wounded soldiers who had been disabled at Bunker’s Hill, and some of whom Captain Fane had brought home in his frigate.

There was a little talk of the engagement, in which the general company joined. It was notable that Sir George, who was a carpet knight, treated the resistance as a sorry trifle, and always called the men who had instituted it, “rebels.” But Captain Fane, who had seen service, and fought stoutly against the very men, merely named them “provincials,” and stated plainly that they were right, when they declared that they had not lost the battle, since, though they were driven out of the entrenchments, they had succeeded in no less an achievement than that of blockading the English army.

Lady Bell inquired with interest after Captain Fane’s own adventures, of which he was specially unwilling to speak in such a company. But he told what some of his messmates had done under fire: how they had been lying waiting their turn from the surgeons, when red-hot shot had passed once and again through the cockpit; notwithstanding, it had spared the _Thunderbomb’s_ lads, though it was only for them to be lodged, by his Majesty’s and the country’s kindness, in the other hospital, Greenwich.

“I suppose the dear timber-toes prefer their beef salt and their tobacco stale for the sake of old associations,” suggested Sir George mincingly.

“Then, I’m sure it is no kindness to deny them their sweet tastes,” followed up Mrs. Lascelles. “There need not be these rows about the Lords of the Admiralty helping themselves to the funds. The Lords of the Admiralty are always helping themselves to something, worse than the Lords of the Treasury,—but both lords must live. Oh, forgive me, Captain Fane, and don’t look so fierce. I dare say it is the shore that demoralises your friends.”

“I dare say it is, madam, if they are demoralised, which I, their servant, have no business to take for granted,” replied Captain Fane angrily.