Two, by Tricks: A Novel

It was the week after Ascot, and town was full. Society, which had been amusing itself with the cancans of the season--such as how the Duke of Pimlico, who had been hitherto regarded as the greatest screw in the world, buying his coats from Hyam's, and his hats from the peripatetic Israelites in the streets, dining off a fried sole and half a pint of Hungarian wine, and driving a horse so starved and weak that even Lord ---- would have spared it, had suddenly taken to giving splendid banquets to Royalty, and lighting up the ancestral hall with more wax candles than his grace's father-in-law, the eminent tallow-chandler, had ever sold in a week; how the slim and good-looking Charles Bedford, while playing whist at the Tattenham, had been discovered, not merely with two aces on his lap, but, like the heathen Chinee, with twenty-four packs secreted on various portions of his person; how the noble Master of the Buckhounds had given one of the best boxes at Ascot to pretty Mrs. Delamere, whose husband was away on a scientific expedition inspecting the Fauna and Flora of Central Asia,--society had discussed all these matters, and wanted something new to talk about. It was going to have it.

It was hot everywhere in London that night, but hottest of all at the Opera. Outside, the air was thick and heavy, tainted by vegetable refuse from the neighbouring market, laden with fetid odours from the surrounding coffee-shops, taverns, and crapulous dens; inside, the eye was distracted by the constant fluttering of the fans in the boxes and from the area of the stalls, and the ear tortured by the stifled groan of the obese foreigners who line the outer ring of the pit, sweltering terribly.

There were many foreigners present that night: slim, olive-skinned, black-muzzled Spaniards, with close blue-black hair growing low down on their foreheads, and with their forefingers stained by constant contact with the cigarette; plethoric pudgy Germans, long-bearded and bald-headed, beating time with dumpy hands, ring-bedecked, and not too clean; lively volatile Italians, musical fanatics, who winced at a false note, and shrieked out 'Sh--sh!' in shrillest anger when any of their neighbours attempted conversation. Other foreigners in the boxes--ambassadors these. The Turk, with his crimson fez, in such contrast with his dead-white face; the Russian, who sits with sated eyes and palled ears, looking at indeed, but not regarding, what is going on before him, and thinking of the days when Taglioni danced and Malibran sang; the Frenchman, smiling and chattering with the full knowledge that his own recall is imminent, and that the members of the government which he served might be at any moment displaced, and would be only too thankful if they escaped massacre. A subscription night this, with Patti in the Barbiere, with royal highnesses and a serene transparency on a visit for a few weeks, in the royal box; with Philippa Marchioness of Mont-Serrat, with her luxuriant ringlets, looking like a vignette from the Book of Beauty of the year '42, on the grand tier; and with Tom Lydyeard in the fifth row of the stalls, yawning as though his head were coming off.

This is Tom Lydyeard, the tall well-bred-looking man with the red beard turning silver at the roots, and the fair hair in which the parting is rather broader than it used to be. Not so young or so active as on that cheerless April morning when he marched across Waterloo-bridge with his regiment on their way to join the troops in the Crimea; but a handsome fellow yet, with a well-preserved figure and a keen eye. Tom has preserved his figure better than his temper, which, on occasions, is apt to be remarkably short; 'Hansom and Growler' is the nickname which this combination of good looks and bad temper has obtained for poor Tom from some of the junior members of the Rag, where he grumbles about the wine and the cooking, snaps at the waiters, and requires all the cajolery of St. Kevin, pleasantest of Irish army-doctors, to keep him within bounds.

Tom is evidently not best pleased at the present moment. The man in the stall next to his is a very stout Italian, with lustreless black gloves on his hands and a square diamond brooch in the middle of his plaited shirt-front, who is mopping himself with a purple-silk handkerchief, and with whom Tom Lydyeard is horribly disgusted.

'Can't think what they let such brutes into the place for!' he says to himself, looking over rather than at his dripping neighbour. 'Gad, what a comfort he would have been in the Row this morning when the dust was blowing! I can't imagine what has come to this place; one scarcely ever sees a soul one knows--a lot of foreigners and City people; not like the old stamp of men whom one could always rely upon finding in the stalls, or in the omnibus-box at the old house when the curtain for the ballet went up. They were a better style, those fellows; what they call the "old school,"--_vieille école, bonne école_,--and that sort of thing. Men go now to that reeking Alhambra, and think they enjoy it. What a queer thing it is to think that so few of the old set are left! There is one of them though, by Jove!' he muttered with a start. 'I haven't seen him for twenty years, but I'd lay my life that's Uffington.'

The man by whom he was attracted looked up at the same instant, and their eyes met. The stranger's cheeks flushed, and for a moment he made as if he would turn away; but when he saw that Tom Lydyeard had left his stall he stopped, and the next moment they were shaking hands with more effusion than is usually shown in present society.

He was a man of middle height, with small regular features, keen black eyes, thick black hair and moustache, small hands and feet, and a youthful, almost a boyish, figure. At a distance you might have guessed him five-and-twenty; and it was only when you looked closely at him that you noticed the lines round the eyes and deep indented furrows stretching from the nostrils to the corner of the mouth, which, like the ground-swell on the shore, told of the storms that had been. In the year '51 Nugent Uffington was looked upon as one of the likeliest young fellows in town, though he had nothing in the world beyond his handsome face, some two hundred a year, and his commission in the Grenadiers. Every one, however, was kind to the cheery good-looking lad; men lent him money and horses, women smiled upon him, and manoeuvring mothers, when they had no more daughters of their own to provide for, enlisted themselves in Nugent's service, and actually tried to procure for him some of the season's prizes. It was said at one time that he might have married Miss Amelia M'Craw, the prettier of the twin Scotch heiresses, who in their marriage gave up to the peerage what was meant for themselves. Good-natured Mrs. Waddledot Hepburn gave three dances (at the command of the Marchioness of Melton) in order that the young people might be thrown together; and old Waddledot himself used to lean across the railings by Apsley House regarding them caracoling in the distant Row with a 'Bless-you,-my-children!' kind of aspect. But, as fate would have it, in the month of June that year Mr. Mudge, whose father and grandfather had made an enormous fortune by converting old rags into shoddy-cloth in the village of Batley, Yorkshire, came to town to see the Great Exhibition, bringing with him his wife and letters of introduction to the members for the county and several leading spirits among the commercial magnates who were just beginning to colonise the now plutocratic region of Tyburnia. The people who asked them out to dinner did not think much of Mr. Mudge, who was a fat, stupid, good-looking man of a common type, but they (the male portion at least) found Mrs. Mudge very charming. She was a Canadian blonde, very pretty and piquante, whom Alfred Mudge had met when on a business excursion to Montreal, had a captivating way of saying saucy things with a tinge of French accent, and was sometimes full of sentiment, at others full of raillery, but always coquettish in the highest degree.

After Nugent Uffington had seen Julie Mudge once or twice, he left off thinking about Miss M'Craw and her hundred thousand pounds, though, indeed, that heavily-ingoted lady had never occupied many of his thoughts; after he had met Julie half a dozen times, he thought of no one else. Julie was very much taken by the appearance and manners of Captain Uffington, who belonged to quite a different world from any which she had known. She did not care for Alfred Mudge; but she had no intention of doing him any harm; that was all Nugent Uffington could get out of her after assailing her with more numerous and more delicate temptations than ever beset St. Antony. This continued for three weeks, and Nugent, who had never given so much attention to any matter before, and who was becoming exhausted, thought of retiring from the pursuit, when one night after Alfred had started off to dine with the Bellowsmenders' Company in the City, and Julie had announced to him her intention of going to bed at eight o'clock as some compensation for unwonted dissipation, a note came from Lady Rosemount saying that she had stalls at the French plays, where M. Levassor was then giving his delightful entertainment, and nothing would so please her as that her dear Mrs. Mudge should keep her company. Julie pondered for an instant. She knew that Lady Rosemount was a great friend of Nugent Uffington's, and would probably arrange for his attendance; but she wanted to see M. Levassor, and as Alfred had deserted her for the Bellowsmenders, she could see no reason why she could not accept such innocent amusement. Lady Rosemount called for her at half-past eight. They found Nugent Uffington on escort duty at the theatre-door, and as they walked up the stairs they were stopped by an altercation between the checktaker and a lady and gentleman immediately preceding them, as to the number of a certain box. The lady was gorgeously dressed in a cerise-coloured satin and a voluminous crinoline, as was the fashion in those days, very much decollétée, with diamonds on her neck and in her ears, and a liberal allowance of rouge and bismuth on her cheeks and chin. The gentleman who was with her seemed very angry at not being permitted immediate access to the theatre; but reference had to be made to another official, and in the mean time he stepped by to let the Rosemount party pass; in doing so he presented under the bright flare of the gaslight his full face, the full face of Mr. Alfred Mudge, who, instead of carousing with carnival Bellowsmenders, was acting as escort to the notorious Miss Leggat of the Theatre Royal, Hatton-garden.

The next day Mrs. Mudge, accompanied by her maid and Captain Uffington, crossed the Channel and proceeded by long stages to Switzerland. At the Hôtel Beau Rivage at Ouchy they remained during the summer and autumn months, and only left it to settle down into a pretty quaint old châlet in the neighbourhood of Lausanne. There was the usual three-days' scandal in town, where some laughed, some shrugged their shoulders, and all had a secret delight that Nugent Uffington, of whom, as a popular man, they had naturally been envious, had come to grief. Mr. Alfred Mudge brought an action in the Divorce Court, which he would probably have gained but for the intervention of the Queen's Proctor, who had heard of the petitioner's intimacy with Miss Leggat, an intimacy which had cost Mr. Mudge two or three thousand pounds, which the lady had duly divided with her complacent husband, Mr. Tapps, the leader of the orchestra.