Miles Tremenhere Volume Ii Part 13

"True," he replied, smiling; "I am very rude, but my attention was so engrossed by this most lovely Diana. I will endeavour to answer you: were _I_ a happy man, whom one so fair as yourself, Lady Dora, expected impatiently, I should not choose the commonplace mode of transporting myself; but, borrowing the wings of the wind (that is, supposing them disengaged,) flutter to her feet."

"Mr. Tremenhere is pleased to be facetious," answered Lady Dora, pettishly.

"Pardon me, I never was more serious. I am trying to convey to your mind how great my impatience would be; but you have interrupted, without hearing all I had to say. If fate and inclination together, had cast me upon the waters--we will say, for example, in a yacht--why, I would summon to my aid some fairy spell, and, like the peterel, run over the surface of the waters, from the blue Mediterranean to the dusky Seine, till I found myself, web-footed, and incapable of running thence, on the polished floors of your hotel!"

There is nothing more disagreeable than to have taken up a weapon to wound, and suddenly to find the point in your own bosom. She felt he was laughing at her.

"Mamma," she cried, "did Lady Lysson show you a letter she received to-day?"

"My love?" asked her mother, looking up from a book she had been perusing. Lady Dora repeated the question.

"Yes, his lords.h.i.+p wrote much pleased with his cruise."

"I trust Lord Randolph Gray is quite well?" inquired Tremenhere, with perfect composure. "Lady Lysson mentioned, in my presence, that he was shortly expected from Malta."

"Quite well!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lady Dora, amazed at his coolness; "but you are mistaken about his locality, Mr. Tremenhere; he was at Florence when she last heard from him."

"Indeed! Then," he continued, laughing, "I will sketch him as the peterel of my idea; shall I?"

"He will feel flattered, doubtless, at any notice from your pencil, Mr.

Tremenhere," was her cold reply. Her mother was again deep in her book.

"I have an ornithological thought in my brain, hatching, Lady Dora; I propose sketching all my friends, _a la plume_."

"What will you make me?" she asked, hoping to change the style of their previous conversation.

"You!" and he lowered his tone, and looked fixedly at her. She could not withdraw her gaze, he was sketching her brow--"You!--you shall be the fabled weevil, and I, the sick man, fit to die, turning my face to you to implore for life. Do not turn your head away, and thus bid that sickness be to death; but, extracting my heart's disease, with your sweet breath, fly upwards to heaven, and burn it out by the sun that we may so live together!"

"You must be mad!" she involuntarily cried, turning her eyes hastily to where her mother sat. But _she_ had heard nothing; they were at some distance from her, and he spoke so low.

"Yes, perhaps I am; but madmen have happy dreams sometimes, we cannot refuse them these, where their reality is so hopeless and sad. But you have not answered me; may I place you among my ornithological specimens, as the milkwhite weevil of my thoughts?"

"And if not the sick man," she asked, and the voice trembled, though she endeavoured to smile as in jesting, "what will you depict yourself?"

"A goose!" he answered, laughing; "and I will lend your ladys.h.i.+p my quills to write to Florence! Am I not a _bon enfant_?"

This term in French, so completely in keeping with the character of the bird he chose as his representative, provoked a laugh even from Lady Dora, beneath which she covered, at least she fancied she covered, her confusion.

"How very lively you are, Dora!" said her mother approaching. "What has occurred?"

"A most absurd error on my part," he answered. "Only fancy, Lady Ripley: I was to-day forgetting s.e.x, character--all, and (the quiver of arrows misled me) was going to transform Lady Dora into Cupid! Ye G.o.ds! who could withstand arrows from such a bow?"

"How could you imagine so absurd a thing, Mr. Tremenhere?" asked the not very imaginative Lady Ripley, not certain whether to feel offended or no.

"I really cannot conceive! Altogether it would have been out of place; for love, they say, flies out of the window when poverty enters at the door. This never could be applicable to Lady Dora," and he bowed in seeming excuse before her. So much did his heart war against her, that, even desirous as he was to gain his point, he could not restrain his tongue from words of bitterness; yet she felt it impossible to think he meant them: she looked upon it as a natural sarcasm of character, which made a gentle word doubly dangerous.

"You are going in a huge body to see a Parisian wonder to English eyes, to-night, I understand, Lady Ripley," he said, turning the conversation.

"Yes, truly; I am curious to see a _Bal Masque a l'Opera_, never having witnessed one."

"Indeed! shall you go early?"

"I really do not know. I was averse to going, and especially taking Lady Dora; but Lady Lysson has made up her party, and, closely concealed by dominoes, I presume we shall pa.s.s unnoticed."

"You accompany us, I believe?" hazarded Lady Dora, addressing him.

"I hope to meet you there," was the reply; "accompany, _that_ I shall not be able to accomplish. Lady Lysson spoke of a signal by which her party should know one another; a rose on the left breast, I think?"

"Yes; but it seems unnecessary to me," replied Lady Ripley; "for, of course, we shall none of us separate."

"But in mercy to those forced to come late and rejoin the party, it is done," he answered.

"_A propos_, Mr. Tremenhere!" cried Lady Dora. "I have not yet chosen my domino; until this moment I had forgotten it. Madame ---- had promised to have two or three for my choice, completed this afternoon. We will, if you please, leave 'Diane' for to-day," and she rose.

"With regret, then, Lady Dora; but where so grave an occupation calls you, I must submit;" and with a few constrained words they parted.

Parting is very awkward, where two persons have been trying their wings together in a flight of love; one or the other is sure to lose some feathers in endeavouring to smooth them down into sober propriety at the last moment. Tremenhere was perfectly calm, and all a mamma like Lady Ripley might wish to see him. Lady Dora blushed--half held out her hand--half withdrew it.

"Permit me to fasten your glove, Lady Dora," he said quietly; "I see it embarra.s.ses you."

She held it towards him, colouring deeply. Scarcely touching the hand, he b.u.t.toned it; and, bowing with perfect ease, he led the way to the outer door.

"Has the workwoman sent in those dominoes?" asked Madame ----, of her forewoman, that afternoon.

"No."

"Then send directly, and say they _must_ come in at once; for _cette belle Anglaise Milady_ Dora Vaughan, is coming to select one of them, and _Milady_ Lysson, and several others, who are going _en cachette_ to a _bal de l'opera_, this evening."

This message was given to the workwoman; and Minnie's pale fingers trembled violently as she finished off the last hood, for she was the workwoman, in her little, sad garret!

CHAPTER XIV.

Need we describe a _bal de l'opera_?--we mean, in all its varied groups, its mystery, its joyousness! Or only skim over the surface, and speak of the mounting the carpeted stair, with the immense mirrors on the landing, where you are startled at first by the shadow you cast upon it--a gloomy vision pourtraying _tout en noir_! Then the almost silent whispering groups, like m.u.f.fled demons. Here, a couple _en costume_; there, a man leaning against a pillar, looking frightfully sheepish, and trying to smile and retort.

'Tis an Englishman, _sans masque_, of course, (no gentleman covers his face, unless he has a motive for so doing,) who is dreadfully intrigued by two black dominoes, who are telling him all he has been doing the last fortnight. He has been lured hither by an anonymous letter, asking him to come and meet a blue domino; twice he has furtively looked at this letter, to be certain it said blue, being positive in his own mind that one of these two must be the writer. Shall we leave him in his perplexity, and, standing on the stair leading down into the _salle de danse_, where a dense crowd, in every imaginable dress, is jostled together, endeavouring to dance, and, looking on, admire the sober, judge-like gravity of several men--authors, artists, men of the highest rank, semi-disguised--who are dancing the most grotesque figures without a smile on their countenances? They look as if they had made a pact, for an allotted time, with some mocking spirit, to make fools of themselves.

Or shall we look up in a _loge au premier_, and see a group of many, the ladies all in black dominoes, the gentlemen in plain evening dress, unmasked?

Yes; we will pause here. This is Lady Lysson's box; for see!--every lady has a rose on the left breast. How amused they all appear! Some had been before, others never; and there is something peculiarly exciting and novel to an English lady the first time she sees a _bal de l'opera_: she has heard so much of and against them, it is almost as a forbidden tree, which makes the fruit the sweeter.

Tremenhere came in rather late, and alone. He was standing in the _foyer_, looking around him: this large saloon was crowded to excess.

Near the clock (that place for rendezvous) he stood, well a.s.sured there he should soon be seen by some of the party; but for some time he looked in vain: they were all in their _loge_, too much delighted with the scene to quit hastily. As he stood thus, some one brushed past him; rather, they were pushed by the crowd. _He_ had not previously noticed them, but they had been fixed, statue-like, regarding him; and the crowd pushed them from their contemplative position against him.

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed a trembling voice; "I beg pardon. I----"